Microstory 1868: Walking Out

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It’s funny, all these stories coming out recently about employees walking out of their places of employment, not on strike, but genuinely quitting their jobs. In my day, I only know of that happening once. Most of the time, we’re talking about people who were brave enough to fight for their rights, but once they won, they expected to have their jobs waiting for them. That was the bluff, and sometimes it worked, while other times, not so much. Here, these kids are realizing that these jobs aren’t worth the heartache. They don’t pay enough, and there is plenty of competition. I actually witnessed one of them long ago. But since it was before camera phones and social media, most people didn’t hear about it unless they subscribed to the local paper, and found this particular story interesting enough to read. Let me set the scene. It was 14:00, which was when a certain unnamed popular restaurant opened. It was packed immediately, because it was the weekend, and the dinner rush was pretty much all day, especially since they didn’t do breakfast or lunch. So every table was filled, but no one had been served yet. It was the only time of day this was the case, but it happened at this place twice a week, every week. I say all this, because you have to understand that it didn’t really matter if you thought you ought to be served first. The waiters got to you when they got to you, and if you chose to arrive right when the doors opened, you had better been prepared to make a day of it. So I was sitting there with my friend at a table for four when the manager came up and asked if we would be willing to share with a couple. Sure, of course, we had no problem with that. But he was acting weird, and even when we agreed, his demeanor didn’t change. Something else was wrong, and this interaction had little to do with it.

So we continued to wait. Twenty minutes passed, we were getting to know our new friends, when one of them noted that no one had been helped at all. She hadn’t seen a single waiter come out, even to take a drink order. We had only seen the manager. Again, this was how it worked. At 14:00, you walked in, and found a table on your own. They didn’t start tracking who sat where until later. Another five minutes, and others were seemingly noticing the same thing. No one was upset, because only a few tables would have been first anyway, but it was still weird, and we were all getting worried. Five more minutes, that manager returned. He asked my friend if he could borrow his chair for a minute. Being the agreeable guy that he was, he hopped up, and stood by the table to wait, which he soon realized was a mistake. Because the manager didn’t take the chair away. He pulled it out a little more, and stood on top of it to give his speech, which kind of made it look like my friend was his lieutenant, or something. It would have been weirder if he had tried to step away. Anyway, the manager revealed himself to actually be the owner. “I’m sorry, folks, but we won’t be serving you today. Every single one of my employees has walked out on me.” He kept going, but didn’t get much further before a waitress ran out, and started arguing with him. They weren’t walking out on him, they were protesting unfair wages, and poor working conditions. I was close enough to hear her whisper that they were planning to sneak out the back, but now, because of his words, they would march out through the dining area. Silence reigned as they began, but I felt for them, so I began to clap, and soon...the whole room was doing the same.

Microstory 1867: Lottery Winners All

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In third grade, I took a math test. I wasn’t a child prodigy, but I was one of a handful of students who tested into a slightly more advanced math class. While the rest of the students stayed in the room, we went off to learn at a higher rate. We focused most on probability. The first question our designated teacher asked was what were the odds of winning the lottery. None of us knew the answer of course, nor were we expected to. It was just to get us warmed up to the basic concepts. I don’t remember the numbers people say, but the truth is that the chances are actually a hundred percent. Hi, my name is Arnie Arnoldson, and I’m about to die. But before I go, I’m gonna explain to you what I mean. The reason my answer works out is because each and every one of you has already won the lottery. The chances that the universe would exist were profoundly low. The chances that life would exist were profoundly low. The chances that any given person will be born to this world are low. You went through so much to get here even before you were alive to do anything on purpose. That’s amazing. You’re amazing, and I want you all to give yourselves a round of applause for making it this far, because as I’ve said, it was virtually impossible, yet you did it anyway. You know, I didn’t start out as a motivational speaker. I was just a wee li’le baby, like anyone else. What I did to get to this place in my life is I kept playing the lottery. Sometimes I won the pot, but I never truly lost, because at the very least, it was experience, which helped me play the next round. Because life isn’t really like a lottery, it’s hard work. Put in your time, day after day, and I promise you, no matter what, at the end of the week, you’ll be paid fairly.

Notice how I said that you’ll be paid weekly. This is important, because if you expect that paycheck every day, six times out of seven, you’ll be disappointed. As a result, you’ll stop working as hard, and you’ll start getting paid less, and that will make you even more discouraged. We all receive what we deserve. It may not feel like it, but that just means that you need to manage your expectations, work harder, and never give up. Say it with me, manage your expectations, work harder, never give up. That is your new philosophy. Whenever you’re down, or you think you have done nothing but lose, just ignore all that, and remind yourself that there is always time to turn things around. But you have to take charge of your life, and decide that you’re not satisfied with what you have right now. No one else can do that for you. Let me tell you a story about the moth in the pond. A moth fell into a pond, but he didn’t die. He had spent his whole life fluttering through the air, and landing on leaves, but now he realized that those same wings he used to balance himself and fly were also good for swimming. This opened up a whole new world to him. So he said to himself, I’m never going to fly again. I prefer to swim. I’m a swimmer now. He smiled—insomuch as a moth can smile—and continued to swim around, looking for food. But he could not find the fruits and flowers he normally drank from. Oh, the moth realized, now I know why we moths don’t usually swim. And so the moth summoned all of his might to get back into the air, but he quickly discovered that his wings were too heavy, weighted down by the water. Try as he would, all he could do was swim. He swam until he was too exhausted, but before he could drown, the hand of a human reached underneath, and raised him from perdition. All of you are that moth, and the water is every obstacle you face; past, present, and future. I am the hand.

Microstory 1866: Garden Path

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My family had more than enough money to afford college, but I refused to go, because I already knew what I wanted to do with my life, and four years of studying math and history weren’t going to do me any good. My parents were disappointed, but they understood. They worked long hours to earn that money, so my father’s parents chose to move closer to us so I could go over there after school every day. My grandmother would read me classic books while I was curled up in a plastic storage bin, and my grandfather would teach me things he thought every growing child should know, like how to hold a baseball like a pitcher. But we all three worked in that garden together. It was so beautiful that neighbors would ask them to landscape their yards for them. They were both retired, and appreciated the opportunities to do something productive with their lives. They didn’t start a real business, but I knew that it could become that one day, and that I would be responsible for it. By the time I graduated from high school, they were too old to be on their hands and knees all the time, so I took on the clients alone, and started charging money for my services. I kept getting more and more requests, and before I knew it, I had to hire some help to get everything done. In only a few years, I had an office clerk, an accountant, and two separate crews so we could serve two homes at the same time. I was making a real name for myself in the industry; so big, in fact, that I risked not being able to do what I loved, because I ended up with so many administrative duties. That was when a new opportunity knocked in my door.

A wealthy man who had already founded and sold off two companies had decided to break ground on the headquarters for a new organization right here in my community. Back then, before the internet, it was hard to determine who was a good guy, and who was bad, but I couldn’t find any skeletons in his closet. He asked me to design the landscaping for the building. He didn’t like the idea of anyone working in an office setting without windows, so there would be no cubicles, and no interior rooms, except for bathrooms, and storage closets. If it had a desk in it, it also had a view. To maximize the space, it was built with four separate courtyards that weren’t even all at the same height. So I guess some people would be working without windows, but for good reason. It was a company that shot commercials for other companies, so the soundstage had to be big, and soundproof. Anyway, that doesn’t matter. The point is the courtyards. The landscaping had to be gorgeous and extravagant, because hundreds of people were going to be looking at it, and living in it, every day. It was a huge project. I wasn’t sure I could handle it. I certainly wouldn’t have any time to plant any trees myself, which is what I always loved. Still, it was good money, so I had to take it. Once it was complete, the founder was so impressed that he essentially donated his nephew to me. The nephew wanted to be a businessman, but he didn’t want to work directly for a family member. He seemed perfect. He could handle all the boring stuff, and I could return to what I did best. It went well for the next few years until he pushed me out using some legal maneuvering that I still don’t understand. His uncle was horrified, but he said there was nothing that either of us could do. Except that wasn’t true. I started a new company from the ground up, using my good name to accumulate clients, and before I knew it, I was bigger than the nephew ever hoped to achieve.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 1, 2390

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There is no stealth in space. If you’re generating power, then you’re generating heat. There is nowhere to dump all that heat, except to radiate it away, which others can detect. According to Ramses’ research, some ships in this reality can shunt it to another dimension, but on its own, this takes a lot of energy, and can still be detected in other ways, so it’s not really that useful. Pilot Fish protocol was not about making themselves completely invisible, but hiding themselves in the chaos of a larger vessel; a very large vessel. The WTD was enormous, and radiated a ton of waste heat. It also had lots of other little ships flying around, executing repairs, and whatnot. It was rather easy for a tiny lifeboat such as the AOC to attach itself to a remote part of the hull, and sit there quietly. No one and nothing knew that they were there, which was good, but it was the easy part. Presumably, the Warmaker Training Detachment was presently in the middle of the beginning of a new war. While it was out here, there was no telling where the rest of the detachments were, or whether they would ever be rendezvousing with each other anytime soon. Fortunately, they only needed to cross paths with the SWD once. The team’s AI knew what to do when that happened. It would detach itself from the first ship, and attach itself to the next. They didn’t know if it would happen within the next year, but they figured it would occur at some point in the next few days from their perspective. It turned out to be one day realtime.

When the team returned to the timestream, they learned that the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had been pilot fishing the Security Watchhouse Detachment for almost the entire year. This was perfect, because it was even more massive than the WTD, so their chances of being caught eventually had actually gone down. Everything was going according to plan. They were going to make their way to Dilara Cassano’s office, reveal to her that she had a special time power, and a destiny in another reality, then all go home together.

“Wait, who are you again?” Dilara asked. She was sitting in the same place they had always seen her, in the breakroom area.

“Mateo. This is Leona, Ramses, Olimpia, Angela, and Marie.”

“Angela and Marie are twins?”

“Alternate selves,” Angela clarified.

Dilara yawned. “I remember you people looking older.”

“Eh. Time, right?” Ramses noted

“Right,” Dilara sort of agreed. “Did you need some...antiquated technology, or sanctuary...?”

“We want your help getting home,” Mateo requested.

“There’s nothing left for us here,” Leona added. “The main sequence is where you belong anyway.”

“How do you figure?” Dilara questioned.

“We’ve seen you there,” Leona claimed. “You have the ability to cross back into old timelines, which means you necessarily also have the ability to travel to parallel timelines.”

Dilara stared at her, and then looked one by one at the rest of the team, like she was waiting for someone to give away that this was some kind of prank. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We know,” Mateo said. “It happened in our past, but in your future.”

“Do I go on adventures in this future?” Dilara pressed. “Do I exert a lot of effort?”

Mateo leaned his head back in confusion. “I mean, I think so...”

“And I’m walking?”

“What?”

“This person who you think is me, does she walk?” Dilara continued.

“Yeah, she walks,” Leona confirmed.

Dilara opened a panel on her armrest, and pushed a few buttons. The chair gently flew out from under the table, and began to hover before them. “I can’t walk.”

“You what?”

“I have literally never walked,” she said, though it must have been a lie. “I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m not your girl. I don’t have any powers, and I’m not going to be going on any adventures.”

“They can’t cure whatever’s stopping you from walking?” Angela suggested.

“Mother says no. They tried when I was younger.”

“Can we speak to her?”

“She’s dead.”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Ramses said. “At the very least, you can strap an exoskeleton on her, and have her simulate walking. There is no way a reality this advanced can’t find a way to fix her.”

“I don’t need to be fixed,” Dilara contended. “I’m fine sitting down, thank you.”

“I’m sorry,” Ramses said sincerely.

“There’s also the matter of this.” Dilara reached up to her necklace, and pushed another button. A hologram flickered off, leaving a much older and wrinkled face behind. “I know what it’s like to change your age of appearance.”

They all stared at her, unsure what to say. Mateo looked to the floor behind them. “The football. You say you can’t find a record of it being a sport that ever existed before, yet you know what it is.”

“That’s right,” Dilara agreed.

“Mateo...” Leona began without finishing.

“You are our Dilara Cassano,” he realized. “You’ve just lost your memories. I don’t know how, or whether it was done on purpose, but that’s why you’re older than we knew you, and it probably partially explains why your mother claimed you couldn’t ever walk again. I don’t have all the answers, but the main sequence is not part of your future. It’s in your past, just like it is for the six of us.”

“Except it should also be in your future,” Dilara reasoned. “Because you want to get back there, whereas I don’t think I care to get those memories back, if they even exist.”

“They exist,” Mateo assured her, “and no one’s going back now. You were our last hope. If anyone else had the ability to cross realities, we probably would have heard of them by now. I mean, maybe if we were able to find Jupiter, or Jupiter, or one of the other Jupiters...”

“There may be another way,” Olimpia said, nervous about bringing up whatever it was she was thinking.

“What would that be?” Leona asked.

“I don’t wanna say anything without any more information.” Olimpia answered. “I was just hoping you could...point me towards that library database that you used a few days ago, Mateo?”

Mateo wanted to respect her wishes, even though he also wanted her to just say it. “Yeah, I’ll take you.” He offered her his hand. When Olimpia took it, he turned his head back to Dilara, who was resituating herself under the table. “Thank you for everything. I apologize for the confusion.”

“It’s quite all right.” Dilara reinitialized her youngification hologram.

Mateo escorted Olimpia to the library. Nothing had changed since last time. It was still completely empty. He tried to look over her shoulder as she began her search for whatever she was searching for, but she looked right back with a look. All he caught were the words mysterious war before he agreed to literally back off, and walk the perimeter. It wasn’t long before he started to get a feeling. It didn’t hurt, but he knew it wasn’t great either. It felt like waves of energy pulsating on the side of his forehead. When he turned his head, the waves stayed in place, so now they were on the other side of his forehead. He did a one-eighty, and now they were hitting the back of his head. Something external was out there, doing this to him. Again, it wasn’t painful, but he instinctually prepared himself for an attack of some kind.

The attack came in the form of a bullet, right in his shoulder joint. At least that was what he assumed it to be. He heard a loud explosive sound, and felt a sharp pain in his chest. It didn’t last very long. The pain went away to be replaced with another wave of information, reminding him that there was a bullet wound there. It happened several more times after that. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Somebody wanted him dead, but Mateo was getting the feeling now that that wasn’t going to happen. Ramses’ upgrades were just too good. He didn’t know if he could heal as fast as superheroes did in movies, but he was still standing even after all this, and the pain was gone.

A figure rounded the corner. “You think I wouldn’t recognize you, didn’t you?” It was the security guard from years ago. He was still patrolling the same area. He walked forward, and placed his gun against Mateo’s head. “You can hologram your face in whatever form you please, but I can still tell. You have a certain smell.”

“Hey, that rhymed.”

“Shut up!”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“I said I would, didn’t I?”

Mateo shrugged. “People changed their minds. It’s been six years.”

“No, it’s been one year.” He reached into his bag, and pulled out the mangled remains of the Cassidy cuff that Mateo forced upon him to make sure he didn’t leave him trapped in a time bubble.

“It took you that long to figure out how to get it off?”

“I don’t have any friends!”

“Sorry, dude.”

“It doesn’t matter, it’s just time. I told you that you shouldn’t ever come back, and now you’re gonna face the consequences.”

“Look at me,” Mateo said. “You’ve already shot me several times. Why do you think it hasn’t killed me yet?”

The man tugged at Mateo’s shirt. “Body armor.”

“No. Armored body,” he corrected.

He frowned, and loosened his grip on his weapon while he looked away. “This isn’t a hologram, is it?”

“No.”

“You people have technologies that we have never seen before.”

“Which is weird,” Mateo said. “I mean, consciousness transference? That’s not easy, but it didn’t take us as long as faster-than-light travel. It’s like you just skipped over a bunch of developments that would have been really helpful to your lives.”

“Or they were deliberately withheld from us.”

“That would sure make sense. I personally know the people who invented FTL where I come from. It’s taken them until recently to even begin thinking about sharing that with everyone else.”

“You’re trying to get back there, aren’t you?”

“We weren’t before, but we are now. Unfortunately, the tech we used to come in the first place has been lost to us. We’re working on it.”

Now the security officer lowered his arm completely. “Take me with you.”

“What?”

“It sounds like you have purpose. I want that too.”

Mateo sighed. “You wouldn’t be the first stray we took in.”

“Please.”

“Mateo!” Olimpia came up from behind him. “I found him.”

“Found who?”

“The guy who’s gonna get us back home,” she said cryptically.

“How’s he gonna do that?”

She presented her tablet. “Medavorken Alon.”

“Is that a band, errr...?”

“He was a famous Comradiant in the People’s Army of the Independent Triangulites For The Independence of Triangulum.”

Mateo couldn’t help but laugh, “wwwwhat?”

“The Triangulites?” the security guy questioned. “They were wiped out centuries ago.”

“Who are you again?” Olimpia questioned in return.

“Go on,” Mateo prompted.

“He went missing...before all that happened. They say he went into a deserted building alone, they heard a loud horn, and then it blew up.”

“So he’s not missing, he died,” the security—

“What is your name?” Mateo asked.

“Summit Ebora.”

“Well, Summit, we know he disappeared because of the horn. It’s The Transit. That’s your idea?” Mateo asked her. “You wanna hitch a ride?”

“They’re the only people who can do it,” Olimpia said. “And we know exactly where they’re gonna be, when they’re gonna be there.”

“The problem is that we don’t have a time machine,” Leona said, having teleported to their location. The rest of the team was there too.

“A time machine? I can get you to a time machine,” Summit claimed.

“Now, is it an actual time machine, or just an amusement park ride in the bulk store?” Angela joked.

“I don’t know what that is,” Summit said. “It’s an actual time machine, which can get you back to the 21st century.”

“Great!” Mateo said enthusiastically. “Leona, that’s your birthday present. I didn’t get you anything else.”

“Kind of an irresponsible gift to give to a thirteen-year-old,” Angela joked more.

Leona shook her head and half-scoffed, half-laughed. “I’m gonna get you back for that.”

“Thirteen-year-old or not,” Marie began, not joking, “you’re the captain.”

They waited patiently for her decision.

Leona waited to respond, considering the dangers and ramifications. “Very well. We’re going back to the past.”

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Extremus: Year 40

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All the truths came out after the debacle at Taila March’s broadcast. The passengers knew a little bit about the True Extremists, but there was so much more that Halan, Olindse, and Kaiora chose to keep from the majority. After Nuka Bloch completed their maximum term limit, a new first chair took over, but he didn’t survive the issues that the fake Rita Suárez caused. The December election saw him lose his seat to a man named Jepson Sandor, who quickly pivoted his campaign to a sentiment of governmental transparency. He vowed to combat the opacity that his predecessors supposedly laid between them and the people, as well as the secrecy of the crew. He shot up in popularity overnight, and won by a landslide. Unlike other politicians, he wasn’t talking out his ass either. He began to make real changes to the way the civilian government was run, and then he went after the other side.

For the most part, civilians have no control over the inner workings of running the ship itself, however there are exceptions to this division of power, and it has to do with preventing any one power from overtaking the other. A system of checks and balances would allow a captain to take emergency action if they should find the government becoming unfair or tyrannical. Likewise, the government can do the same, and through a convoluted system of loopholes, First Chair Sandor was able to create an entirely new bridged position. Similar to how the Hock Watcher serves equally both governing bodies, the Ship Superintendent has been given the latitude to make decisions that affect the staffing conditions throughout the whole vessel. He can fire, hire, replace, reassign, or even do away with a position altogether. Again, like the Hock Watcher, the way he was elected-slash-appointed was complicated and drawn out, but once the process began, it could not be stopped. Someone had to get this job, and as much as Kaiora fought it, it was going to happen, so their best bet was to find someone who everyone could trust.

Be not confused about the rank of Ship Superintendent. We are not talking about The Superintendent, who lives in another universe, apparently created all of these individuals as characters, and literally wrote the words you’re reading right now. Hey there. Superintendent Calixte Salmon is just a man who was born on Extremus shortly after it launched, and has always wanted to do something like this. Be not confused about this either. It’s a coincidence that he shares his surname with a subspecies of human who travel through time against their will. Or maybe it’s not so much of a coincidence. There was no one named Salmon when a fairly small group of humans first settled in the universe of Ansutah. Everyone here is descended from them, and the reason there aren’t only a couple hundred names is because over time, people began to choose their own to distance themselves from the original family tree. It made it easier to avoid worrying about committing incest after several generations passed, and it probably wasn’t a problem anymore anyway. It’s possible that someone chose the name on purpose at some point. Such historical records were hard to maintain while the ancestors were trying to hide from the white monsters in caves.

Calixte Salmon has not been given carte blanche to make any changes to the crew that he wants, but neither does he have to get approval for every little thing he does. It is in this gray area where doubt regarding his mandate lives. It’s going to take work for him to convince others that it’s not his job to drain the swamp, or alter the balance of power. He’s not there to change everything, but there is a lot of room for improvement, and finding ways to optimize is exactly what he was appointed to do. The Captain—and the captaincy—are fine, but the rest of the crew needs an overhaul. This is gonna hurt. It’s his first day on the job, and if the looks he’s getting from the crowd as he’s trying to explain his purpose are any indication, he will be met with much resistance. He needs help. It’s unclear whether Captain Leithe is approaching the podium in order to provide him that, or if she’s going to throw him under the bus.

She lowers the microphone, and clears her throat with purpose. “I understand that you’re all upset and concerned. I can’t guarantee that this is going to be easy, but we have been discussing this new dynamic for months. I have not been left out of the loop. If this weren’t the only way to overcome our obstacles, I wouldn’t let it happen. This is the first step towards solving the True Extremist crisis, figuring out whether the faux Rita was part of them, or some other faction, and if it’s the latter, solving that one too. I won’t lie to you. Some people may see their shifts cut short. But what I can promise is that each one of you will enjoy the compensation you always expected at the end of those shifts, whether they ultimately last as long as you expected, or not.” She held up her index finger to add, “with a caveat. He is here to help us, and you are here to help him do that. If any of you resist these changes—to an unreasonable degree at least—you run the risk of not only precipitating the deterioration of our society, but also of losing all of your benefits. I’ll throw you in hock if I have to. If anyone is going to revolt, I will be the one to lead, so as long as I’m okay with the state of things, you automatically know that you’re okay with it too. Pretty easy, knowing that you can relax, and accept reality, isn’t it? So check your attitudes, and follow my orders, as well as the Super’s. Understood?”

The crew lifts their knees and drops their feet back down in a stomp pretty simultaneously, though not perfectly. It’s a formal gesture of respect and attention.

“We’ll work on that, so you don’t embarrass me at our next presentation,” Kaiora says. She steps away from the mic, and nods at her new colleague. “Super.”

“Captain,” he replies. “Thank you.”

She solemnly motions for him to return to the podium.

“Thank you, Captain Leithe,” he repeats for all to hear. “I do understand that you’re all nervous about the upcoming changes, especially since you don’t know what they’re going to be. I want you to know that I haven’t decided anything yet. I’ve not had enough time to conduct a thorough assessment. Still, I may be able to answer some of your questions, so I would like to open up the floor to those. Please raise your hand, and stand once picked by the microdrone, which I control. For all not picked that time, please lower your hands and wait to put them back up until I’m finished providing my answer. Sound fair?”

Dozens of people raise their hands, most of them quite earnestly.

Meanwhile, downstage, Second Lieutenant Lars Callaghan is talking out the side of his mouth to his superior officers. “I know it’s gonna be me.”

“What will be you?” First Lieutenant Corinna Seelen questions.

“I’m gonna get the boot,” he answers.

Kaiora sighs rather loudly. She taps on her watch, and activates a sonic barrier, so they can talk freely without anyone else hearing them. “What are you going on about?”

“It’s the Second Lieutenant curse,” Lars tries to explain. “We always get screwed over.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Corinna presses. “You’re only the second L-T-two this ship has ever seen.”

“Yeah, and look at what happened to the last guy. He’s in hock. I’m next, it’s a pattern.”

“That’s not a pattern,” Kaiora argues. “It’s not even a coincidence yet, because Calixte hasn’t even mentioned you to me. It’s just something that happened, and what happened is not that Ovan Teleres was screwed over. He attacked the crew, so the rank isn’t cursed unless maybe you decide to do something similar. Are you planning something, Callaghan?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then shut the hell up and listen to the Q and A!” She makes a point of showing him her watch as she deactivates the barrier.

They listen quietly for a little bit. Lars nods at the good question about whether Superintendent Salmon is planning on merging crew and passenger responsibilities, or if there would remain a clear distinction. “I just think back to how there was never really supposed to be another lieutenant in the first place, and how Captain Yenant only instituted it in order to try to take Ovan out of power in the first place.”

“You can’t prove that,” Kaiora says legally. “And shh!”

Lars continues to try to take his mind off the future of his rank, but he can’t stand it. After a few minutes, he has to get back to it, “some of the things he says he’s gonna do are things that I’m supposed to be doing.”

Kaiora sighs again, and reactivates the sonic barrier. She also includes a visual time loop, which makes it look to people on the other side like the three of them are still sitting in their respective chairs, and not arguing with each other. She stands up to cover the gap between them, hovering her chest in front of Corinna’s face. “Lars, you are a member of the executive crew. As such, I get last say on what happens to you and your rank. He cannot override any decision of mine when it comes to that.”

“I didn’t know that. Good.”

“No. It’s not good,” she maintains. “Because he doesn’t know you, and probably wouldn’t think to do much with you. But I know you, and I’m pissed at you. You’re annoying, and sometimes you don’t do your job. So I’m thinking about dropping you anyway, just to make this whole process easier. I could probably blame it on him. If you don’t want that to happen, I suggest you keep your mouth shut, keep your head down, and take stock of what value you add to this mission.” She moves her hand through the air to illustrate a vertical spectrum. “Here’s neutral zero, otherwise known as mediocrity. Way up here is going above and beyond people’s expectations of you, especially mine. Down here is dead weight, we gotta throw you out an airlock. At the moment, you’re right here.” She adjusts her hand to slightly above the lowest point on the scale. “I think you know what to do to climb back up, mostly because I’ve told you.”

“Shut up, will do. Right, sir, thank you. Sorry.”

Kaiora sighs one last time, and sits back down. “It’s going to be a little jarring when I take us out of the loop. Time is going to jerk your body to where the audience thinks we were, so they don’t notice we’ve moved.” She raises her arm to look at her watch, but it’s not on the menu that she expected it to be. It looks as though the barrier and loop weren’t put up at all. She slowly lifts her eyes, and looks forward. Calixte has turned, and is leaning against the podium, staring at them. The audience is quiet. “Shit.”

Calixte pushes off, and walks towards them. “I can undo this.”

“Undo what?” Kaiora asks.

“This little interaction,” he clarifies. “I can send all four of our consciousnesses back in time a few moments, so no one else remembers that it happened.”

“That’s an illegal form of temporal manipulation.”

“Not for me.” He shows them his blue retractactable keychain. “They gave me this so I can try out different ways of dismissing a crewmember, in case the first time doesn’t go so great.”

“Then you would just be using it illegally.”

He shrugs. “No one has to know.”

She crosses her arms, and studies his face, hoping to ascertain if he can be trusted, or if this will come back to bite her in the ass. “Fine. Do it.”

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Microstory 1865: True Security

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This is the dumbest story from my life. Maybe that’s not the right word for it. Silly, I suppose. It’s certainly not the kind of thing a person should be thinking about as they’re on the brink of death. A normal person wouldn’t, anyway. I was known in my day as someone with an excellent memory. I didn’t have any supernatural ability, or even a diagnosable condition, like hyperthymesia or an eidetic memory, but I was good. In particular, I never forgot a name, and I never forgot a face. So it was a little jarring when a random woman came up to me in the bread aisle of the grocery store, acting like we were old pals. As she started talking, I was thinking that maybe she was mistaking me for someone else. I hear that sort of thing happens to other people. But while the things she was talking about didn’t make any sense, she used enough keywords for me to think that maybe we did know each other somehow, and I started questioning my confidence in my amazing mental faculties. Maybe I forgot people and things all the time, but they never came up again, so I never had the chance to even realize it. Perhaps this woman was tapping into a weakness that I was too blind to see I had at all. Was she a witch? A god? Was she still talking? I couldn’t understand most of what she was saying, her lips were moving so fast. She didn’t have an accent from my perspective, and she wasn’t mumbling, it was just too fast. I wished I had a little remote that would let me slow her down. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought I would probably just mute her, or turn her off. I didn’t need to talk to this person, except maybe I did, because she knew me, and I needed to know how! Yes, I had a cat when I was a child. No, his name wasn’t Mittens, it was Buttons. My first car? I made one up, because I don’t drive.

I keep trying to listen to her, but then I really did get bored of the “conversation” and wished that I could simply walk away. If I were anywhere else, I might have been able to, but I had this cart full of food. She would probably follow me, and skip the milk this week just so she wouldn’t have to end our little one-sided chat. Of course, I could have left my cart, and proceeded right to the exit, but that would have looked so weird, and again, what if she really did know me, and she tracked me down, and tried to spark a friendship? What was that about my mother’s maiden name? I still couldn’t—oh my God, she’s a scam artist. This woman was trying to get my bank information to steal my identity. Keep in mind that this was in the early days of the internet, so people were still mining for information in the real world. It was still bizarre. Joke’s on her, because of my great memory, all of my security answers were fake. I don’t find it any more difficult to recall a food that isn’t my favorite than one that is. It’s tomatoes, by the way, but I told her pizza, because that’s a normal answer. Then I just keep leading her on with her stupid little questions. I met my spouse in a city I had never been too, and also, I’m not married. The name of my first celebrity crush is an actor that I hate. My astrological sign? Really? I’ve never even seen that question before, and I would never use it, because it’s too easy to find out. I don’t even bother lying to her about that one. She went through so many questions, finding clever ways to sprinkle them in, I was almost impressed. Once she was satisfied, she claimed she had to get going, and we parted ways. It wasn’t until I tried to pay that I discovered my wallet missing. I realized that she wasn’t only probing for security answers. She was also distracting me from a pickpocket.

Microstory 1864: That’s It

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Here’s a story for ya. You can either choose to believe it or not, but I’m telling you, it happened, and it happened to me. My father and his father did not have a good relationship. According to what little my mother was able to relay to me, they fought all the time when he was young, and then they just stopped talking completely. I don’t know what they were so angry at each other over, but whatever it was, it’s the reason I never met my grandfather. When he died, he left no one to go to his funeral, let alone plan it. I decided to take up the responsibility of putting him to rest. Because hey, if my dad wouldn’t tell me what the guy did that was so wrong, he couldn’t expect me to hate him as much as he did. Four hundred bucks gets you a bag of your loved one’s ashes, and that’s pretty much it. I didn’t hold a service, and I didn’t buy a fancy urn. I just kept it in the cardboard box that the guy at the morgue went out of his way to tell me was included free of charge, and walked away with the rest of his personal effects. And when I say effects, I really just mean the one thing. Besides his pajamas—which he died in, and I didn’t want back—the only possession he had was a key around his neck. Per the paperwork, he lived only a few blocks from my childhood home, which makes the whole thing even sadder. I took that key, drove to my grandfather’s house, and unlocked the door. The place was immaculate. No dust, no dirt, no smudges on the windows. It looked like it had just been cleaned, but it couldn’t have, because it was missing the smell of cleaning chemicals. Oh, and everything else. Like the man himself, the only thing in the house was a key, hanging from the chain for the entryway light. I tried it on every interior door, but it didn’t work anywhere. It didn’t even fit. I had to investigate, which was harder back then, because my phone couldn’t magically spit out information about it just by taking a picture, like my grandson’s does. He showed me that once.

I went to three locksmiths until one happened to recognize it. It belonged to a storage facility on the edge of town. Most facilities require that the renter use their own lock, but this particular location prided itself in excellent security. Their keys couldn’t be copied, and you couldn’t use it unless you were already on the list of people allowed to access the unit. Still, I figured I might as well go check it out in case they made an exception. They didn’t have to. Their records showed that I was on the list, as was my grandfather, and nobody else. He left this all for me. Whatever was in there, it must have been pretty special. Was it a pristine collection of rare figurines worth millions? Did he just leave me a chest of actual millions? Could it be a creepy, ominous freezer, inside of which was the dead body of his archnemesis? I just kept thinking of all the amazing things that could be waiting for me, and nothing was even close to what I ended up finding when I opened that roll up door. Was this it? I was about to run back to the office to ask for a flashlight, but the guy who signed me in had followed me, and had one at the ready. I switched it on, and shined it all over the unit. “Any secret entrances?” I asked. No, this was it. Both of the neighboring units were recently emptied, in between renters. This. Was. It. On the floor in the center of the unit was a key, like someone had dropped it without noticing. But it wasn’t just any key. It was the key to my parents’ house. It looked exactly like the one on my keychain. All that anticipation just to learn that my mom had given him access to our house in case of emergency, and he had never used it. That’s it.

Microstory 1863: Magnetic

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I’ve met, and heard about, voldisil before. There seems to be a consensus that each one of them is born with two spirit abilities. One is whatever specific special thing they can do. The other is simply knowing that that’s what they are. If I’m a voldisil, then I only have the first thing, and not the second. I’m not inherently conscious that there’s something different about me, but there must be, right? I mean, no single person can run into this many unusual people over the course of a lifetime. My home life was normal. My parents were normal, my half-brother was normal, my neighbors were normal. In high school, I started asserting my independence, which is very normal. As a result, I began to regularly leave my bubble behind, and met all sorts of—let’s call them quirky—characters. I think the first time I noticed it was when I was in psychology class. I had this thing where I would sit at the desk in the far corner of the room on the first day of school. The more interested I became in the subject, the farther up I would move, sometimes to great annoyance to the students who had already chosen their spots, and wanted to stay there. So it was the second day, and I still didn’t think I would want to move, when another kid sat next to me who I guess skipped the first day of school. He seemed to think that we were kindred spirits, even though we didn’t know each other. His big thing was serial killers. He signed up for that course so he could learn all about them. Fine, whatever; to each their own, but he wouldn’t stop pestering me about it. He wanted us to share in the passion for the topic, and I wasn’t into it. I found it difficult to move on the third day. People knew I did that by then, and even though I went in early to get a different seat, they kicked me out. But he was just the first. The first of many.

I could not go on a single blind date, or even a non blind date, without that date deciding that I wanted to hear their weird ideas, like how the stars weren’t real, and if animals don’t wear clothes, why do humans? One of them didn’t like to eat bread, which I’m sure doesn’t sound too crazy, but for me, it’s a non-starter. I met this one guy at a party who thought that water was trying to talk to us through the bubbling and jetting in fountains. A neighbor of mine when I got my own place kept sleepwalking into my unit. I even had the super change the locks, but that guy always managed to get in. Come to find out, he happened to be a thief, and while he wasn’t trying to steal from me, muscle memory occasionally drove him to break in to any door he saw. When I finally got a job, all of my coworkers were bizarre in their own special ways. I began to wonder if they were hired as part of some charity for flat-earthers and autistic people. I know, that sounds really insensitive, but it made me question my sanity, because if I was saying such things about them, what did others say about me? Were they the normal ones, and I was the weirdo? What if none of those people even existed, and I just made them all up in my padded cell? This continued throughout the rest of my life. I met a lot of regulars, to be sure, but the ratio of people I couldn’t understand or relate to seemed higher than it should be. Well anyway, I don’t think I have any superpowers. I don’t think I’m voldisil. I think it’s either dumb luck, or I’m particularly judgmental, and it’s something I never got over. Or it’s like my mom said, everyone’s a little strange, and part of what makes me unique is my tendency to pick up on people’s special traits. Yeah, that makes me sound kind of nice. I’m gonna go with that. I’m not a crazy person magnet. I’m a niche detector.