Microstory 1880: Promovere

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I don’t wanna talk about my work. People are always asking me about it, like isn’t that so sad? I can’t go to a party, or the bar, without having to discuss it. Like, it’s the first thing they ask. I just think that’s so sad. It’s my 25th anniversary there. Same place, different jobs, but it’s just nothing. Really, I’m not going to talk about it. And you know, my boss is such an asshole. He’s always giving me these looks, like, I know what you’re thinking, buddy. He’s one of those guys who thinks the world of himself, and everyone wants to be like him. That smug look on his face when something right happens, and he gets the chance to take credit for it, whether he had anything to do with it, or not. Oh, I just want to rip it off his face. But I’m not going to talk about work. That’s a promise I’m making to myself. My job does not define me. My final thoughts can’t be of the 45 hours a week I spend in hell. Man, 25 years. That’s not how long I was in the workforce, just here, which only makes it all the more depressing. They gave me a certificate, isn’t that nice? My boss handed it to me so delicately, like I was to cherish it. Others proudly pin theirs to their cubicles. They legitimately seem to love what they do. I don’t want to die, but at least I won’t ever have to come back here. No, this isn’t about work. This is about my whole life, and that is only a small part. Is it small, though? I mean, at the bare minimum, it represents a quarter of my time, and that’s not counting all the time I spent stressing about it. I remember the day I was promoted to exempt status. This is it, I thought to myself. I’ve made it. Sure, more promotions would be great, but a salary is a benchmark of success that they can never take away. Nope, stop. Stop that.

Stop talking about your meaningless job. Everything’s meaningless, though. Your life, that was meaningless too, though maybe a little less meaningless, because at least you had the chance to help people. Did you help anyone, though? When you really get down to it, were you a generous and good person, or was that just always something you aspired to be, but you were too busy with your terrible job that you hated? I said, stop talking about your job! Hobbies. Surely you had hobbies. Knitting? Why is knitting the first hobby you think of when you think of hobbies? How is that the default? Because I’m a woman? Because I’m older now? I’m not an old woman. Plenty of younger women like to do arts and crafts, don’t be an ageist. A what? An ageist; you know what that word means, because you’re talking to yourself. I guess that’s true, I guess I just normally hear it in the form of ageism, or maybe age discrimination. Whatever. Yeah, whatever to you too...me. Wow, you really light up a room with your attitude, don’t you? Oh, ha-ha-ha. They say, it’s not the fire that kills you, it’s the smoke, but it’s the pointlessness of it all. I didn’t do anything with my life. I could have taken control, but I just kept tripping down the steps. Most people go up the stairs of life, but I went right down, and not to say I was never privileged. I recognize my privilege, I really just mean it always felt more like falling, because I didn’t control it. That’s what a promotion is, isn’t it? You don’t apply for it, it’s given to you. Sure, you probably did something to earn it, but you couldn’t take it. You can go get a new job, but you can’t be the agent of a promotion, unless you’re promoting someone else. But does that feel any better, giving other people promotions? I think not. And look at you now, you’re stuck in the break room with everybody else, and you’re gonna die with everybody else, except that it’ll happen to you first.

Microstory 1879: Mow Problems

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I was so excited when I first heard about Landis Tipton, and his miraculous healing abilities. It would spell the end of death for all of humanity. I know, I know, people think that humans can’t live forever, or we’ll have an overpopulation problem, but I doubt it would ever come to that. Yes, futurists were expecting life extension technology to develop in tandem with other advancements, which might alleviate such issues, but I still wasn’t worried. I knew that we wouldn’t all be saved overnight, but I’m young and healthy, so I was eternally optimistic about it, especially when it came to myself. As a friend pointed out to me, though, Landis has been predominantly concerned with curing terminal illnesses, and for good reason; those are the ones that aren’t normally fixed. Lots of people have died from terrible injuries, but many have survived them too. Of course you want to help the ones least likely to survive without you. Even so, it would have been nice to have some kind of solution to my problem when Death came knocking at my door. Or rather when it came banging on it. Because it was loud, unsubtle, and is taking much longer than I would have guessed. Though, to be fair, the magic panacea that researchers promise will one day come out of studying Landis’ abilities probably wouldn’t have helped me anyway. It happened too fast. I remember, I said that it was too long, but I was talking about the process. The incident was instant, and irreversible, and once it happened, I was incapacitated. I should say that I am incapacitated, because it’s still going on as I muse on my final thoughts. I can’t call for help—for reasons that will become clear once I explain—I can’t even move. The ironic thing is I was just looking up freak accidents on the internet, and one eerily similar situation scared me so much that I locked my dog in the house, instead of letting her supervise my work, like I usually do. She loves it, and she grew used to it, and she’s been stressed out because I took her job away. But I’m glad I did, because I don’t want her to see me like this.

It was a mowing accident, though probably not as bloody and disgusting as you’re imagining. It had nothing to do with the blades. Well, I guess it did, but they didn’t cut me. There’s no blood. I hate mowing, but the thing I hate the most about it is picking up the yard before starting to mow. Those sticks and rocks, ugh. I would rather just roll over them, damage my blades a little, and then get them sharpened in the winter. I’m lazy like that, and a huge procrastinator, which is what got my into this mess, because the tall grass is what hid the murder weapon from my view in the first place. It was a rock, and I can only speculate here, since like I said, it was so quick, but I think it shot out of the side, ricocheted off of my chain link fence at just the right angle, and headed right for me. But you said there’s no blood, you remind me. There’s not, because the rock didn’t just hit me in the head. It flew into my mouth, and lodged itself in my throat. I fell down, and began to squirm, because that’s all I can do. I understand I should try to stand back up, and slam my chest against the deck railings or even the mower—wouldn’t that be funny; the thing that tried to kill me could save my life—but I’m unable to even sit up. Maybe there is blood, because I’m choking on something wet. I don’t know if this is punishment for being so irresponsible, and letting the lawn get this bad, but at this point, I just want the pain to end. My second-to-last thoughts are of the people I love, and of my dog, but my very last thought is when did I last clear my browser history?

Microstory 1878: Devoted to Self

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I dedicated my life to the attainment of absolute goodness and purity. I believe in evil. I believe in the Devil. And of course, I believe in God. I was born into a family of hedonistic atheists, who cared for nothing but earthly pursuits. They did not study the bible, and they had no faith. For the ones who died before me, I know that they are now in hell. They have to be, for they did not heed the word of our Lord and Savior. I heed it, and it’s all thanks to an amazing little girl I met on the school bus. She went real dark for our first discussion, talking about God’s wrath, and the punishment man has faced due to his sins. I was so scared, I went straight to church immediately after school, and had to walk all the way back home afterwards. My parents were so upset and worried, but they should have been worried for themselves. For I had just begun the long walk on a road of righteousness, and they were filled to the brim with sin. It was not easy, learning everything I needed to be a good Christian, but I never gave up, and I never compromised. Here’s what I believe. I believe that a woman has the right to choose what to do with her own body...unless that choice affects the life of another. I can’t understand how it could be any other way. Yes, you have personal autonomy, but so does the child. You cannot take that away from it. I mean, it’s not okay to kill people after they’re born, is it? I mean, I guess you have to if you’re in a war. And I suppose some criminals need to be dealt with to a level of irreversibility. This world must be cleansed from sin, and sometimes death is the only way to achieve that goal. But that baby is not evil, is it? I mean, I guess it is, because of original sin. But still, leave it alone!

The point is that there is only one path to Heaven, and I’ve finally reached the end of it, so my reward is near. All those people, dedicating their time to worthless endeavors, like the accumulation of wealth. I earned my money the right way, by raising and slaughtering cattle to nourish the world by my man’s side. I do not value material possessions. I constructed a large house to shelter my family, because God says to be fruitful and multiply. I own a nice car, so I don’t have to buy a new one every year. I make it last at least five years, or it gets too old, it’s not worth it anymore. I shop at boutique shops, because they always have the best stuff. And of course, I eat gourmet food, because that is the healthiest kind. But other than that, my entire self is devoted to God, and his teachings. Everything I do is to serve him, and his will. I haven’t even counted the number of people that I’ve converted to the side of light using The Good Word. Though I’m sure they number in the thousands; maybe even tens of thousands. But you don’t hear me bragging about that, because pride is a deadly sin. I am a sinful woman, just like anyone, but I make up for it, unlike all those other people who insist on spitting in the face of truth. I can’t wait to see what the eternal paradise looks like. Oh, it will be so grand. Every need will be provided for me, and I shall sit under the throne of our Creator. This is it; it’s everything that I’ve been working for. All those backbreaking hours at the charity galas and church bake sales will finally be worth it. I hope they serve rosé. Oh, tee-hee-hee, I’m just kidding, but really, I’m not. Because I deserve it. I’m a good person. No, I’m a great person. Nay, I’m the best. Feel free to take me now, Jesus. I’m ready.

Microstory 1877: Obeying Gravity

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I don’t remember where I was when we first put a man on the moon. What I remember is that I made a point not to be near a television or radio. I was a dumb little rebel back then. If normal people were into something, then I had to not be into it. Funny enough, I stayed away from drugs and alcohol for this reason, which is probably the only good choice I made in my youth. Normal people cared about grades, and finding good jobs. It was a long phase, but I finally grew out of it. I still didn’t care about things like the moon landing, but I wish I hadn’t been so eager to avoid it. Of course, I would later be able to watch the footage—and more recently at my leisure—but it just isn’t the same as knowing that millions of others were watching the same thing. Then again, everything I did, including not watching the landing, has led me to this moment. Because of this thing my niece told me about called the Butterfly Effect, I may never have met my future wife, nor had the children that we had, and without them, I wouldn’t have met my first grandchild. She was born in the most unusual circumstances, but not by accident. You see, even before people went to the moon, humans have been trying to live up in outer space. At first just for a little bit, but further missions increased the duration. Part of this research was to study other things about low gravity, but a not insignificant amount of it was to test an organism’s ability to survive under such conditions. Obviously no creature evolved to live this way. We were all designed by nature to exist in this exact atmosphere, with this amount of surface gravity. Some are better in water, and some can even fly, but we’re all the same in this regard. If we want to visit other planets, and other star systems, however, we have to figure out how to adapt. We have to learn.

As of yet, scientists don’t really know what any of that looks like. They have some ideas, but these ideas have to be tested first. We can’t just fly up here, and hope it works out. Can it be done in the first place? What do we have to do to prepare ourselves? Should we create certain habitats, or is there a way to modify our bodies to cope with the atrophy, and other health problems that come with low gravity? All of these questions are being studied on a new mission that my family and I were selected for. Most astronauts have to go through a series of tests, and be in peak physical condition, in order to qualify for even the most modest of missions. Not us. The whole point is to understand how normal people handle low-g. We were each chosen for a number of reasons, but my daughter, her husband, and I are up here to test family dynamics, along with a few other things. For instance, it’s important that scientists know whether people can have children in space, and now we know they can, but what will her physiology be like? Will she be able to go back down to Earth after this mission is over? If so, will she have to acclimate in a certain way? This is a dangerous mission, but we all agreed to it, and I’m proud to be a part of something so vital to the future of our species. Not every person, and not every country, is on board with this, but my nation has a space program of their own, and they didn’t need anyone else’s permission. As morbid as it may sound—and as unethical as you may consider it—our team believes it’s important for us to get these answers under controlled experiments, rather than experience them as surprises. Until today, many have died in the attempt to travel to space, but I’m honored to be the first ever to pass on while already all the way up here. The last thing I see will be a great thing of beauty.

Microstory 1876: Necessary Work

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Gross things don’t bother me, and they never did. I don’t remember how old I was, but there was one time when we walked in to find a dead rodent in our classroom. It was just a single room back in those days, if you can believe it. We all just learned together, I don’t know how we got anything done. Anyway, our teacher was afraid. He probably would have had us conduct our lessons outside that day if it wasn’t the middle of winter. That’s probably why the animal crawled its way in there in the first place. Though I suppose it didn’t do him much good. Something had to be done about it, and I was the only one willing. The other kids stayed away from me starting that day. You would think they would be grateful that I handled it like a champ, but I guess that level of graciousness is just not something you can expect from a child. It doesn’t matter, the ostracization didn’t bother me none. I made it out of my small town. I made a new life for myself in the city. I had a few jobs here and there; all of them fit for a lady, even though that’s not how I would ever characterize myself. One night, I was riding in the passenger seat with the boy who was courting me when a deer ran out into the road, and got herself hit. She was bleeding and convulsing, and like the rodent, something had to be done. Once again, I was the only one capable. I grabbed a tire tool from his truck, and bashed it over the deer’s head to put it out of its misery. And of course, just like before, the guy was more freaked out than appreciative. He drove me back into town, and never called me back. But I didn’t care, because this was how I found my calling.

We left the deer on the side of the road, but I didn’t want it to rot there permanently, so I walked myself to the animal control center. I told the guy what had happened, and he said he would take care of it. It’s not that I didn’t believe him, but I wasn’t sure I trusted him, so I demanded he take me back out there right this very minute. Well, he couldn’t leave the place unoccupied, so I agreed to wait until someone else returned. Then we did go out there. He lamented that I severely undersold how large the animal was, but I didn’t think it was that big of a deal. I could help him load up the carcass. He said that was against protocol, so I asked him if my being there at all was protocol, so he gave in, and let me help. To my surprise, we drove the thing out to a bird sanctuary, so the meat wouldn’t go to waste. I mean, it wouldn’t have gone to waste in the wild—something would have turned it into its meal—but I liked that they had a way of disposing roadkill responsibly, instead of just tossing it away like garbage. I was sick of being a secretary, so I asked for a job, and as hesitant as the bossman was, my new friend vouched for me, and I started a couple weeks later. I know that it’s not glamorous work, but someone has to do it, so it may as well be me, rather than some poor little thing who retches at the sight of blood and guts. Not everything about the job is like that, though. We would also get calls for animal abuse and neglect, and that was the part that I hated the most. Animals die, it happens, but there is no reason to take responsibility for a helpless creature if you’re not going to treat it right. So I wouldn’t say I loved every minute of my life, but I always felt useful, and I can die happy. I made pretty decent money, and retired with more than enough to support myself, and my family. Well, that’s about all I have to say for myself. I’m sure you were expecting something more interesting, but some of us just do what we can, and try not to make too many mistakes.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Boltzmann Brane

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The men continued to struggle against each other. Mateo and the team’s visions started coming back to them until it was clear enough for them to see that most of them didn’t recognize the fighters. Mateo did. One was part of Lucius’ group in the universe where he got his soul back. The other only looked familiar, but he couldn’t place him. He did get the feeling that he wasn’t a good guy, though.

“Listen, I know we don’t know each other yet,” Lucius said, sort of contradicting himself, “but could you help us get this guy out the airlock?”

“It’s not an airlock,” his friend said. Man, what was his name?

“Whatever.”

“Uhhhhh...okay,” Mateo said. He looked like a fifteen-year-old, but Ramses built his body to be stronger than the average person, so he didn’t find it too difficult to help.

“Are you freakin’ serious?” the bad man cried. “Stop, you son of a bitch! Get me—no! Argh!” The other dude was right. It wasn’t an airlock. They didn’t place him in another room, and then close the doors between them before opening a set of outer doors. They just threw him directly into the void. He was caught in some kind of current, and pulled away before he could grasp onto anything.

Lucius’ friend shut the door again. “Thanks, Mateo.”

“How do I know him?”

The friend sighed, and thought about it for a moment. “Oh, you were there. Yeah, when Cain and I were sent off on our respective missions, you were in the room.”

Mateo tilted his lizard brain.

“On Gatewood,” he continued. “When you were trying to get the Ansutahan humans safely across the threshold?”

“Oh, yeah!” Mateo said, remembering. “Oh...yeah.”

“Don’t worry,” Lucius comforted, “this one is good now...we think.”

“It’s complicated,” the other guy—Abel; his name was Abel—said.

“What also must be complicated,” Lucius began, “is how you remember any of this when you’re barely out of diapers. This all happened when you were adults.”

“We are adults,” Leona explained. “We just had to move into younger bodies.”

Lucius nodded. “I see. Well, you wanna come back to the other room, and meet with the rest of us, or...?”

“I’m afraid he doesn’t have time for that,” came a voice from behind the team. It was someone they hadn’t seen in a very long time, and never knew all that well. Back when Arcadia Preston was forcing Mateo and Leona to plan their wedding before they were ready, many of their guests arrived via The Crossover. It was a special machine that could travel between universes, and it was larger than anyone knew. It even included a hotel, which this man here was apparently responsible for. They just called him Bell.

“Bell,” Leona said.

“Yes, that’s me. Have we met?”

“Maybe not yet for you.”

“Okay,” Bell said. “Well, like I was saying—”

“Before you explain,” Mateo began, “could you tell us your real name? I feel weird not knowing it.”

“It’s Apothem Sarkisyan,” he answered.

“Sarkisyan. Are you related to a Dodeka?” Leona asked.

“She’s my sister.”

“Running hotels must run in the family.”

“It really doesn’t,” Apothem said bluntly. “Anyway, Lucius..Abel, thank you. You can go now.”

“What do you want with them?” Lucius asked, worried about his friends.

“I assure you that I will take great care of them. They are all on the guestlist.”

“The guestlist for what?” Lucius pressed.

“Come on,” Abel urges, taking Lucius by the upper arm. “It’s fine. It’s not nefarious. It is a great honor. I still don’t know if I’m on the list.”

“Don’t tell anyone else we’re here,” Apothem warned.

“Of course not,” Abel replied as they were stepping away.

“The guestlist for what?” Angela echoed.

“You have been selected to witness the birth of a Boltzmann Brane.”

“Are you serious?” Ramses questioned with great interest. “They’re real?”

“This one is,” Apothem confirmed.

“Wait, where’s Medavorken?” Olimpia asked.

“He’s on his own path,” Apothem claimed. “Follow me.” He led them down the corridors, into what Mateo recognized as a black box theatre. Except instead of a stage, the couple hundred or so seats were angled towards a large window to the equilibrium space outside. “Welcome...to The Stage,” he said proudly.

“So this is a show?” Olimpia asked.

“The greatest show this side of the bulkverse,” Apothem said.

“Did you bring us here?” Leona asked.

“No, but I knew you were coming, because like I said, you’re on the list. And as our first guests, you shall have the privilege of the first row.”

“When does it begin?” Marie asked.

Apothem stood up straighter, and looked at her. Then he looked over at Angela. “Which one of you is Angela Walton?”

Mateo interrupted before Marie could point to her alternate self. “They both are.”

Apothem pulled at an embellishment on his uniform sleeve, which revealed a scroll of e-paper. He studied it for a moment. “One name, one person...” He looked up to the group, and added, “one ticket.”

“One of them can have mine,” Mateo volunteered.

“You don’t have to do that,” Marie said with unwarranted shame. “I’m the temporal intruder. I’ll recuse myself.”

“No,” Mateo insisted. “I don’t know what this is we’re supposed to see, but I’m sure I’ll get little out of it.”

“It’s the spontaneous emergence of an ordered intelligence in the vastness of infinite spacetime due to random fluctuations in a balanced thermodynamic state,” Ramses explained poorly.

“Huh?”

“It’s a person who just suddenly exists due to the crazy amounts of time that have passed, rather than as the result of some logical series of causal events,” Leona translated, though even that was a little much. “But he doesn’t mean a Botlzmann brain as in B-R-A-I-N, do you? You mean B-R-A-N-E, which isn’t a person, but a universe?”

“It’s both,” Apothem disclosed.

“Hot damn,” Ramses said, which didn’t sound like him at all.

“The tickets are transferable,” Apothem went on, “but there are no plus ones, no extra seats, no double bookings, no waitlist. We invited a certain number of people, and since time doesn’t matter here, we don’t worry about whether everyone can make it. Every one of the two hundred and sixteen guests will make it, and they’ll arrive sometime in the next hour, from our perspective. The six of you will have to work it out amongst yourselves, but there is no loophole.”

“They can have my seat.” It was Gavix Henderson, an immortal from another universe who was present, not only at Mateo and Leona’s wedding, but also their engagement party a year prior.

“Sir, you don’t have to do that,” Apothem said.

“You and I both know that this event is not a rarity,” Gavix said to him. “It’s just easier for the humanoid mind to comprehend this particular instance in three dimensions. I’ve seen it before, and I’m sure I’ll see it again.”

“Very well,” Apothem acquiesces. “You may exit.”

“Thank you for this,” Mateo calls up to Gavix, embarrassed for having let him get so far before he remembered.

“Yes, thank you,” Marie echoed, since it was she who would be taking the seat.

“Just invite me to that fancy weddin’ o’ yours,” he returned, not turning around.

“We saw you there,” Leona said.

“Nah, not that one.” He rounded the corner without another word.

It was hard to describe what it was Marie would have missed. No, literally, it was hard to describe. It wasn’t exactly an explosion, which was how scientists back home had always described the big bang. But was this even the same thing, or entirely different? Mateo was at one end of their group, sitting right next to a clearly intelligent and knowledgeable individual, who explained a little more about what they were witnessing. Like stars and planets coming together particle by particle, chunk by chunk, and collapsing into their gravitational forces, something called bulk energy was becoming so hot and dense that it was transforming itself into solid matter. So it was less of an explosion, and more an implosion, though he said that this made perfect sense, because the explosion would be seen as such from inside the universe in question. But from out here, all that energy and matter had to come from what we would consider a low entropy state. This was evidently the greatest mystery in his field of brane cosmology. In a given universe, entropy increases, so why does it happen in the reverse in the outer bulkverse? Why does it operate so differently from the metacelestial objects that it creates? And why, from their puny human eyes, does each one look like a knife?

Well, Mateo had trouble following the man’s lecture, but it was still fun, and made a lot of sense while he was saying it. The team was grateful for having been around to witness such a thing. Apparently, like Gavix said, branes form like this all the time. His own did at some point, as did everyone else’s, but dimensionally speaking, they were all like partial eclipses, while this was a full eclipse, as seen from their position in the greater cosmos. After it was sufficiently over, the crowd began to stand, and move over towards the refreshments, where they could get to know one another.

There didn’t seem to be anything they all had in common. Some were scientists too, but others were just regular people. Some of them already knew about these other branes before today, but some hadn’t heard of any of it. Why and how they were chosen was another mystery their new friend couldn’t explain. The team itself was pretty special, but only within the context of their own pocket of that bulkverse. Out here, they were small fish in an infinite ocean.

“I don’t know of anyone in my universe who could help ya with that,” said an older gentleman by the desserts. He had a thick southern accent, and didn’t look anyone in the eye. This wasn’t out of a superiority complex, but more like his eyes would wander around, and he would forget where exactly he was meant to be directing his words. “I tell you, maybe that genie over there could help ya. Her special thing is she refused to grant anybody any wishes on her world, which is why the rest of the genie council, or whatever, sort of exiled her.”

“Why would she help us if her defining characteristic is that she doesn’t help people?” Leona reasoned.

The old man chuckled with delight. “Yeah, I guess yer right ‘bout that.” He took another swig from his flask. “I’m such a dumbass sometimes. By the way, drinkin’s legal on my planet. I feel I hafta say that, cuz some people think it’s weird.”

“It’s legal in ours,” Mateo said.

“Oh.” He widened his eyes, and presented the flask.

“No, thank you.”

“Aright.” He shrugged his cheeks as if to say your loss.

“Well, it was nice meeting you,” Angela said to him, gracefully stepping away. The others followed like magnets. “Seemed too eager to give children alcohol,” she said once they were out of earshot.

“We told him we weren’t as young as we look,” Olimpia reminded her.

“I know, but a normal person would still hesitate to believe it, let alone act on it.”

“What is normal?” asked a woman they hadn’t noticed before. It was Thack Natalie Collins of voldisilaverse.

“Miss Collins,” Mateo said. “It’s nice to meet you in person.”

“Likewise.” She shook everyone’s hands.

“Wait, you put us on the list, didn’t you?” Mateo guessed.

Thack sighed. “It was either this, or have you join the Newtonian Expats on their adventures. I wanted to give you a break. I know you reconnect with them in the future.”

“If you know all you know,” Leona began, “then you must know both of someone who can get us back home, and provert us to more appropriate ages.”

“Yes to the second one, but no to the first. We all came here through Westfall.”

“What’s that?” Olimpia asked her.

“Basically...we don’t know how we got here,” Thack said cryptically. “It’s a special feature of the Crossover. It just happens. You walk through a door, and you’re in a different universe, and most of the time, you don’t even realize it. You just end up going back home, and living under the belief that everyone you met on the otherwise simply lives on the same world as you. Of course we only went halfway, and made a stop here.”

“Sounds trippy,” Marie decided.

“The point is it’s not. You don’t notice unless you knew enough about brane cosmology before. Anyway, this is my friend.” She reached over without looking, and ushered a young woman into the huddle. “She’s not technically a proverter, but she can accomplish the same thing in her own way. Just tell her how old you wanna be.”

“Hi, I’m Xolta McCord.”

Leona frowned at her with rage. “We’ve met.”

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Extremus: Year 42

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Ship Superintendent Calixte Salmon pings the door. “Thistle, please give us a moment,” Kaiora asks the computer, who relays the message to the hallway.

“I don’t understand why he has to be here for this,” Corinna complains.

“It’s technically a change in personnel,” Kaiora explains.

“It’s really not,” temporal engineer Kumara Bhasin argues.

“Something could go wrong, and he has to know about it,” the Captain continues, holding firm. “This has been approved across all levels of government...except him.”

“Very well,” Corinna says.

“Let him in,” Kaiora orders.

The door opens. Calixte looks around, intrigued. The Captain, the Lieutenant, the temporal engineer, and Head of Security Errol McLain. This ought to be good. “What’s this here?”

“Superintendent Salmon,” Kaiora begins, “this is a formal briefing regarding a new investigative initiative that has been approved for use by a team of two, which will be using a new brand of time travel technology to witness past events. The purpose of this mission will be to gather intelligence that will help us better understand the origins of the hostile entity known as Fake!Rita Suárez. To be clear, the two agents of time will not be able to affect the past in any way. They cannot be seen, nor heard, nor otherwise detected. They will merely watch the past events from a...unique observation dimension. We tell you this because there is a chance that something will go wrong, which could result in a shift in crew assignments. Engineer Bhasin and Officer McLain will be sent into the past, but once they have learned all they believe they can and must, they should return to this very moment. If they do not, we will have to assume the worst, and move on without them, and it will be your responsibility to backfill their positions. Do you have any questions?”

“Thousands,” Calixte answers. “But they extend beyond my purview.”

“All right, then,” Captain Leithe says. “You may go now.”

“No, thank you,” he says plainly.

“You are not approved for audience privileges,” Kaiora tries to tell him. “The launch does not require your attendance.”

“Yeah, but I wanna be here anyway.”

“Superintendent, please...”

“Captain, please...you owe me,” Calixte says, widening his eyes suggestively.

Kaiora is literally taken aback. “That was two years ago.”

Calixte chuckles, and looks at his watch pointlessly, “the favor doesn’t expire.”

“This is all you want, just to watch this?” She reiterates. “Then we’re even?”

“Then we’re even,” he agrees.

“Fine.” Kaiora sighs, and looks over at the away team. “Are you two ready?”

“Very,” Kumara replies.

“Indeed,” confirms Errol.

“Greenley?” Kumara asks.

“Are you sure about this, sir?” Greenley Atkinson is Kumara’s current temporal engineering apprentice. There was one before her, but he wasn’t able to handle the stress, so she hasn’t been doing this for very long. He designed the machine that’s going to take him and his partner into the past, but she’s going to have to actually operate it. It should be relatively simple, but of course, that doesn’t mean she isn’t nervous. “Are you sure I’m ready?”

“I have every confidence in you,” Kumara says genuinely.

She nods, trying to express that same level of confidence in herself.

“Come on,” Kaiora says to Calixte as the time witnesses are stepping into the machine. “The rest of the leadership is watching from the observation room.”

“No, that wasn’t part of the deal,” Calixte contends. “I asked to watch from here.”

“You didn’t say that.”

“Well, I’m saying it now.”

Kaiora sighs again, and looks to Corinna, who has stopped midstride. “Go on. Yeah, it’s suspicious, which is why I’ll stay here too.”

“Okay,” the lieutenant accepts.

“So tell me about this technology,” Calixte asks as Greenley is running the final diagnostic on the machine. “You all act like it’s something weird and new. It’s not just regular observational time travel?”

“No,” Kaiora begins. “It’s a special temporal dimension. Well, it’s technically spatio-temporal, but its defining characteristic is that it runs in reverse. When the two witnesses exit the machine on their end, they’ll watch this entire interaction a second time, but in reverse. Then they’ll watch themselves go through the final briefing. Then they’ll watch their awkward conversation with the governmental officials. Then they’ll watch themselves walk backwards out of the room. They will continue like this for the next six plus years. Once they reach the moment the cargomaster discovered the box that the fake Rita was found in, they’ll follow it back to whatever celestial body it was retrieved from, and continue investigating until they get some answers.”

“So they can interact with the real world. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to teleport to the origin point,” Calixte points out.

“There are a few loopholes to the technology,” Kaiora admits, “but I would hardly call that an interaction.”

“If you say so,” Calixte says, unconvinced. “Anyway, they’ll have to interact in some way, or how are they going to eat for six years?”

The Captain’s eyes widen in fear. “Oh my God, you’re right. We didn’t think of that. Holy crap, we have to stop the experiment, they’ll die!”

The witnesses and Greenley stop what they’re doing, and stare at her.

“I’m kidding,” she says to them. “Carry on.” She rolls her eyes. “They’ll have plenty of food and water. We figured out how to reverse engineer Fake!Rita’s miniature dimension. We’ve stored a ton of supplies, and even living spaces, in their packs. Don’t worry, we have thought of everything.”

“I’m sure you have,” Calixte says insincerely. “I’m sure you have.”

She rolls her eyes again, and gives an a-okay sign to the witnesses in the form of a question. They return the gesture in the affirmative. Greenley shuts them into the machine, and initiates the launch sequence. “Eleven...” Kaiora and Calixte stand back a little more, but don’t leave. It’s not particularly dangerous to be in the room when it happens, but the observation room is certainly safer.

Kumara and Errol take each other by the hands. They’re not afraid of the tech itself. It’s been tested, and proven sound. They just have to prepare themselves for the long haul. They would have rather just jumped back to the time period of their choice, and entered a different observational dimension, in order to avoid messing with the timeline. Not only was it possible, but it would have been easier. That’s how they would have done it had Valencia not written a paper on this weird temporal dimension years ago. Still, if Kumara had to sit through all this, at least he was with the man he loved. Errol felt the same.

As Greenley begins the countdown, Calixte has one more thing to say. “One question—which actually does pertain to my job—do we think it’s wise to send a married couple on a potentially hazardous mission together?”

“Six...five...four...three...”

Kaiora looks over at him, and says in a clear and unambiguous tone, “yes.”

“One...launch.”

It’s immediately clear that something has gone wrong. They can hear the energy flowing through the machine, but nothing happens in the chamber. Instead, they hear a commotion in the observation room behind them. Kaiora and Calixte look up through the window. Electricity is arcing across the metal beams, freaking everyone out, and causing them to jump and crouch away in fear. One of them tries to get out, but the door won’t open. The energy builds, and builds, and builds. Corinna, being the smart one there, realizes what’s happening. She makes eye contact with her captain, and salutes her just in time before the power reaches critical mass, and spirits them all away.

“What the hell just happened?!” Kaiora screams.

Greenley shakes her head, petrified and confused.

“I think...” Calixte tilts his head. “I think that is the machine, and this is nothing.” He points to the observation room, and then to the machine that Kumara built. The two of them are still in it, and trying to get out, but their door won’t budge either.

“You don’t seem too upset about this,” Kaiora accuses.

He smiles. “Why would I be? I think we did pretty good, eh? Only missed one. Why wasn’t Lars here?”

“This was you?”

“It was us,” he corrects.

Kaiora’s eyes dart over to Greenley, who still looks horrified and sad.

“No, not me and her. Us!” He waves his hand back and forth between his stomach, and Kaiora’s.

“What the shit are you talking about?”

“Oh, come on, Captain, you don’t have to pretend anymore. We got ‘em. We got almost all of ‘em. They’re gone, they can’t stop us anymore.”

Kaiora’s hands shake as she’s reaching them up, desperately trying to hold herself back from strangling him right here and now. “I don’t know what you’re saying. I didn’t do anything! I don’t know how you did it, or who helped you, but I wasn’t part of it!”

“Yes, you were!” Calixte cries. “We’ve been working on this plan for two years!”

“Argh!” She moves past him, and steps up to the machine. “Can we undo this? Can we get them back?”

“I don’t even know if they’re still alive,” Kumara shouts through the little view window, which muffles it terribly.

Kaiora turns to Greenley. “Get their door open, and then all three of you need to report to hock. If you don’t, I’ll know you’re in on it...got it?”

“Yes, Captain,” Greenley answers.

She spins back around. “As for you, I already know you’re in on it. So I’m just gonna send you there.” She reaches for her teleporter controls, but they don’t work. The screen is dead, and none of the buttons do anything. “Goddammit.”

“Oh, did you forget to charge it this morning?” Calixte jokes.

“It doesn’t have to be charged!” she shouts. “The ship charges it constantly! Argh!” she repeats. “Come on, I’ll escort you there myself.”

She places him in zip cuffs, and heads for the door. It opens before they reach it. Someone who looks exactly like Kaiora is standing there, holding some kind of gun. She could be from the future, or a mirror universe. Or she could be a clone, or a hologram, or any number of things. All the real Kaiora knows is that she’s fake, and she’s evil, and she was probably good friends with Fake!Rita.

“Oooooooooooohhhhhh,” Calixte lets out. “That makes more sense.”

“You are such an idiot,” Fake!Kaiora laments.

“You really thought I was plotting a coup?” Kaiora questions.

He shrugs innocently.

Fake!Kaiora shakes her head. “I told you to put me in the room too. The whole point was to get rid of her, so I could take her place. Now that’s going to be a lot harder.”

“Yeah, you did say that,” he utters apologetically.

“I can’t work like this.” Fake!Kaiora unceremoniously shoots him with the gun. He just disappears completely.

“An Ant-Man gun?” the real Kaiora guesses.

“Basically. It’s better, though, because we can replace him with one of our own.”

“Go on and get on with it,” Kaiora urges.

Fake!Kaiora laughs. “It’s not that easy. I know that captains have a failsafe. Your consciousness will just be preserved for future use.”

“Old Man did that to Halan against his will. It was a one time thing.”

“No, it wasn’t. I’ll have to find some creative way of dealing with you. But in the meantime, those three can die.” She turns her weapon, and fires it at Greenley.

The apprentice lifts her hands defensively, but not just out of futile instinct. The bullet doesn’t stop, but it slows to a crawl. They can see a wave of energy emanating from Greenley’s right hand, possibly ultimately originating from a ring she’s wearing on her middle finger. The left hand is farther out, like it’s keeping her steady. As she slowly pulls her right hand in towards her chest, she leans back at a slightly slower rate. She then curves the hand outward, which forces the bullet to curve too. Once it’s covered the curve, she pushes forward, sending the bullet in the opposite direction it was going. It heads directly for Fake!Kaiora, who—despite having watched it in slow motion with everybody else—doesn’t have time to dodge. It hits her, and she disappears.

“Is that just something you keep on hand at all times?” Kaiora asks her.

“Captain, you’ll forgive me, but there are just some things that I can’t tell you. It’s to protect my job, and yours. I promise that I didn’t know all this was going to happen.”

“You just theoretically saved the ship. So I’ll let it go, but if something ever comes up again that places your loyalties in question, I might not be as accommodating.”

“I understand, Captain.”

“Good. Now get them of that thing so you and Mr. Bhasin can figure out what the hell went wrong with it, and how it was sabotaged. Don’t think this mission is over. It’s even more important than ever. Someone has to go back in time and rescue our people.”

« < » > Table of Contents

Microstory 1875: Or Dig a Bigger Grave

< > Table of Contents

I didn’t have any friends in high school. I had a stutter, so I didn’t like talking to people. I would wish I liked it, and I think the other kids would have been nice enough about it, but I was too self-conscious. One day in literature class, the teacher had us read a story together. Each student would take a paragraph or two, and then she would call on the next kid. I was so scared, and didn’t pay any attention to them, as I was just trying to figure out how to not embarrass myself. I couldn’t even start. I couldn’t say the first word, so I asked the teacher if I could opt out. She said it wouldn’t be fair to the other kids who never had that option. A cursory glance at my classmates suggested that they couldn’t care less, because they didn’t have speech impediments! She refused to listen until my hero swooped in to defend me. She scolded the teacher for being insensitive and unfair, and I never had to read out loud again. I was also in love for the rest of grade school, and into university. We happened to go to the same institution, where she would smile and wave at me on the occasion that we  passed each other, but we didn’t speak and I didn’t ask her out. After we graduated, she married someone else, and moved to a different country for work. Maybe a decade later—no, it was more like fifteen years—the internet created this new thing called instant messaging, and I pretty quickly reconnected with her on the most popular platform. I was over her by then, and mostly over my stuttering problem, but it was cool to be nostalgic a couple times a week when I had time. After a few years, I found myself scheduled for a business trip in her area, told her as much quite innocently, and was immediately invited to a small dinner party. And small, it was. She and her husband had only invited one other guy; a coworker of hers.

The dinner was great, and so was the company. It was nice, showing her how much my life had improved, and being able to finally have the nerve to thank her in person for what she did for me that day. It was a nice moment, which will forever be clouded by the darkness that followed. The other dinner guest had been sweating and rocking for a time, but trying to power through. But then, after convulsing for a few minutes, he fell off his chair, and died right before our eyes. We were all shocked, but I sprang into action. After checking for a pulse, I grabbed the phone, and desperately asked the couple what the emergency number was in their country. It wasn’t like I could just look it up. They didn’t want to tell me, and I eventually got them to admit that they were afraid of the authorities believing that they had anything to do with it. I argued with them, but they would not relent. They said he was already dead, and there was nothing we could do to undo that, so I might as well help move the body. I continued to argue but they told me they could blame it on me, since I was the one who brought the tea. I questioned that, and soon realized that this was no accident. It was murder, and my tea was the weapon. They revealed that they had secretly added something called yew seeds into his cup, and they told me they had to do it because he sexually assaulted her at work numerous times. I didn’t want to help them, but I didn’t think I had a choice. Once we were finished digging the grave—which I did mostly by myself—they apologized, and admitted that I drank a lower dosage of the poison, which meant I would die too, which was why they made me make such a large grave. That was the week I learned that I was at least moderately immune to yew seed poisoning. Bonus, I didn’t even go to jail.