The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 4, 2393

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Mateo looked at his wife, who was seething with anger. He was worried she was about to jump up and tackle this McCord girl, or whatever her name was. Thack seemed as lost as him, but then it apparently dawned on her. “Oh. Oh, that’s right. I forgot you went to their universe once.”

“It was not a pleasant experience.” That was the day that Leona learned she was just a character in a role-playing game, being moved around time and space by a group of children. She spent a lot of time in therapy with Bungula’s once-leader, Eight Point Seven because of all that. The one good thing about the situation was that she and Mateo were temporarily off of the Matic pattern, or Leona would still be in therapy today, working out her issues, it having only been six months since the trauma in that hypothetical scenario.

“What is this?” Mateo questioned. “I don’t know who this is. I should know everything you know, since Nerakali gifted me your memories during the time that I didn’t exist.”

“This was after that,” Leona said, not breaking her gaze from Xolta. To be sure, Xolta was one of the younger players she met, and the only one to express sadness over learning the truth about their game. If she had to run into one of those again, it was best that it was her. “This was when you were on Dardius, and I was on Bungula.”

“Oh, right,” Mateo recalled. “You didn’t talk about your time there.”

“Maybe it’s time I tell you the truth,” Leona said to him, finally looking away from the target of her fury. “Do we have time?” she asked Thack.

Thack bowed slightly. “Time has no meaning here. Miss McCord can wait.”

Leona went off to another room to explain what had happened to her those years ago. When they returned, the rest of the audience had cleared out. Only the team was left, along with Thack and Xolta. No one was talking, nor looked like they had been talking that whole time.

“Okay,” Thack continued, “as I was saying, this is Xolta McCord. She is a witch from Universe Prime, and she can age you up.”

“I haven’t actually agreed to that,” Xoltra reminded her.

“Yes, you have,” Thack corrected. She was not one to be argued with.

Ramses stood up, and shook the witch’s hand. “Ramses Abdulrashid. Mid to late twenties, please. I would very much appreciate it.”

Xolta waited a moment to see if anyone protested, but they were all just waiting to see what it would look like. Then she shut her eyes, and prepared herself. She quite slowly moved her hands around, like she was trying to find the exact right position.

“Is this gonna take very long?” Leona asked after a few minutes of this.

“I’ve never done it in the outer bulkverse,” Xolta explained. “I don’t know how to reach the gods from here.”

“The gods?”

“That’s just what we call them,” Xolta defended.

Thack placed a hand on her shoulder. “You don’t need the gods for this. It’s a local engagement. Just sense his body.”

Ramses opened his eyes back up, having closed them instinctively, and sported a certain look.

Thack reached over, and physically moved Xolta’s hand to Ramses’ chest. “Connect with him. Remember what I taught you about soulwork. Craft and spirit articulation are not so different.”

Xolta kept trying, until something apparently clicked. “I have it.”

“Now, don’t summon the gods. Use the words, but don’t worry about them. Use them to command Ramses to change directly.”

Xolta took a breath, and whispered, “eesa..avra..turo.”

Ramses did begin to change. He rose a couple inches taller. His hair lengthened. His skin wrinkled. By the time Xolta reopened her eyes, he was an old man.

“Oh no,” the witch lamented.

“What is it?” Ramses asked.

“Shit,” Thack said, which sounded very unlike her.

Embarrassed, Xolta held her left hand in front of her eyes, palm outwards. She then clapped it with her right, turned that palm outwards as well, and slapped them back together a second time. Finally, she slid them away from each other—quite abruptly at first, then smoothly—right hand downwards, and left hand up a little. Xolta’s face was gone, replaced with Ramses’ own. She turned herself into a mirror image of him. “I’m so sorry,” she told him.

“Is it not reversible?” he questioned.

“It is,” Thack promised.

“No, it’s not,” Xolta argued, “because this is one of the easiest engagements. I’ve done it a million times before, so if I messed it up, it means I just can’t do it.”

Thack put Xolta’s hands back together, and wiped Ramses’ face away. “That was one of the easier engagements, and you performed it beautifully, with no hesitation. You just need to concentrate harder on the one you really want. Do it again, but in reverse. We all believe in you...right?”

“Yeah,” and “we do,” the group confirmed, not all that convincingly.

Xolta took a breath. “Okay.” She placed her hand on his chest again, and reconnected with him. “Asee...arva...turo.”

That did it. As requested, Ramses was back to his twentysomething self.

“There,” Thack said happily. “Now the other five will be easy, ‘cause you know you can do it.”

“I would like to be a little younger than that,” Angela asked, bashfully. “If that’s possible.”

“Yeah, I can do that,” Xolta said.

“And I would like to be older,” Marie asked. “Just to tell us apart easierly,” she explained when people looked at her funny. “I’ll be the older one.”

“I’m the older one,” Angela pointed out.

“By a few days, Marie contended. “Please, let me give this to you. I promise I won’t fall on my sword ever again. I’ll look thirty-five, but I won’t age beyond that, will I, Ramses?”

“No, sir,” Ramses agreed.

And so Xolta continued her magic, except that she was clear it wasn’t magic. Craft, as it was called—and very much not called witchcraft—was not magic. Nor were the gods. They were people who were in charge of certain technologies in her home universe, having used this technology to tap into a higher level of physics than most other cultures ever grew to understand. Craft was a way of hacking into this tech, except that the so-called gods were aware that this was happening, and rarely withheld it, though they surely could. They didn’t interfere with the regular people in the main dimension, for reasons no one could say, so this was kind of their loophole. Witches studied enough about the cosmos to learn some of their secrets, and that was fine.

Before too long, the whole team was back to where they belonged, not necessarily at the age they were before they died, but it was close enough, and exactly what they were looking for. Mateo was particularly relieved, more so than Leona, who had been trapped in a body younger than them all. That was precisely why he was so relieved. Ever since they transferred to these bodies, they were too busy with other things to dwell on how uncomfortable it was, looking so illicitly young. There was one specific thing it robbed them of. “Now we can have sex again,” he mused...in mixed company. 

“Mateo, damn,” Leona scolded.

“What, you’re my wife.”

“And we no longer have access to our grave chamber, so it’ll have to wait. We can’t even get back to our home universe.”

“Yes, you can,” Thack said. “Though I admit, I can’t get you back to your reality.” She ushered them into another room, where a young man was sitting in a recliner, reading something on an e-reader. “You can go home now. Your passengers are ready.”

The man shut off his device, and stood up. “Whatever.”

“Gang, this is—” Thack tried to say.

“No, no,” the young man stopped her. “Rule Number Two...”

“Never be surprised, but never assume you have the whole story,” Olimpia recited proudly.

The man shook his head, and at the same time as Leona, recited, “no names.” He was pleasantly surprised by this, which was slightly ironic.

“You’re not the first person to tell me that,” Leona said.

“Where does he live?” Mateo asked.

“Fourth Quadrant,” Thack answered. “It’s the best I could do. I pulled a lot of strings just to get him here, and it cost me. He was not invited, so it was not received well. Getting you six in was easy by comparison.”

“Do you have a way back to the main sequence?” Leona asked of the man.

“Not personally. I’ll point you towards someone who might.”

“Thank you,” Miss Collins,” Leona said. Then she turned. “Thank you, Miss McCord.”

“Forgive me what my friends and I did in our youth.”

“I do not blame you,” Leona admitted. I blame him,” she said, implying The Superintendent.

Like Saga and Vearden, the way back to the man’s home was through a doorway. Evidently, the system was designed to prevent people from even realizing that they had traveled the bulkverse at all. The target left their house that day, was spirited away to another brane, and continued down the street, under the impression that nothing special had happened. Perhaps that was where the doorwalkers’ power came from, as some kind of extension of Westfall.

The man threw his keys in the bowl by the door, and plopped down on the couch. “I suppose you’ll be wanting me to offer you drinks?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Angela said. “Could you just take us to who might be able to help us?”

He leaned his head back all the way, farther than was medically wise. “I’m so tired. Can you just go yourself? Call a RideSauce.”

“We don’t have cell phones,” Marie explained.

He whined some more, and muttered unintelligibly. Now they could see the strings that Thack pulled. He wasn’t witness to the birth of a Boltzmann Brane material.

“That’s quite all right,” Leona said, pulling Marie away. “We’ll figure it out. Thank you for letting us hitch a ride back, Mister Mystery Man.”

They left his house, and stepped down to the sidewalk. Leona squinted her eyes in the sun, and got her bearings. “I can see downtown from here. We’ll just walk, it’ll be fine.”

“Do we get tired?” Olimpia asked Ramses.

“Yes, but after longer,” he answered. “Plus, we can teleport.”

“I keep forgetting about that,” Marie noted.

“I would rather just walk, though,” Angela said. “Despite the fact that the outer bulkverse is the greatest expanse than even a whole universe, it feels so claustrophobic, with all those lights swirling around.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” Leona concurred.

“Walking it is,” Mateo said cheerfully.

The Fourth Quadrant looked mighty different than it had before. While the main sequence chose to tighten themselves up into fewer and fewer megastructure habitats, this was more like what science fiction writers proposed for their stories set in the future. The buildings were sleek and shiny; more rounded, and less straight up and down. Each one was made of wildly different design, but they were seemingly constructed of the same materials. They fit together like a puzzle, as if someone had planned the entire thing from the start, and hadn’t begun until they knew exactly what they wanted it to be in the end. All of the cars that passed them were hovering half a meter over the road, while others flew overhead, possibly as drones, or maybe automated taxis. It was beautiful, and sprawling; clean and environmentally conscious.

Night had fallen by the time they reached The Capitol. It looked pretty much as it had the last time they were in this reality, though now with that new, advanced metamaterial. Two guards were standing at the entrance. They stepped forwards as they approached, and made it clear that they weren’t so much as allowed to enter the building.

“Hello,” Leona began. “My name is Captain Leona Matic. We are here to speak with someone who can help us return to the main sequence. Is President Natasha Orlova still in power? We’ve worked directly with her before.”

The guards looked at each other. “President Orlova is dead,” one of them answered in some kind of slavic accent. “Long live President Orlov.”

Mateo turtled his head towards them. “Like, a relative?”

“Her brother,” the other one answered. He checked his watch. “He’s the daytime president, at least.”

“And who runs the show at night.”

“That would be my brother,” came a voice from behind them. It was a woman, surrounded by her own posse of bodyguards. “Thank you, Arsenio, Stan. I’ll take it from here. Hi,” she said to the team. “My name is Skylar Spout, and we have all been expecting you.”

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Extremus: Year 43

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Finally finished with her regular duties for the day, Kaiora leaves the bridge, and heads for a secret section of the ship that almost no one has access to. It’s not technically part of the Bridger Section, but it’s close, and just as hidden. Temporal engineers, Kumara and Greenley are already there, along with Kumara’s husband, and the current Head of Security, Errol. This is the braintrust at the moment. No one else knows what they’re doing, and no one else has been in here for the last six months. They rebuilt their time machine from scratch, believing that to be the better choice than to try to figure out how the first one was sabotaged. The secondary mission is to investigate the origins of Fake!Rita Suárez, but the primary is to rescue the people who were sent to the reverse time dimension without their consent or foreknowledge. They will starve to death unless someone enters the dimension now, and goes back with supplies. Everyone has their fingers crossed, hoping that nothing goes wrong this time, because if it does, all will probably be lost, and whoever was responsible for the sabotage in the first place will likely destroy everything.

Speaking of which, Kaiora’s been quite busy with other things. The executive civilian government package had to be replaced, but as Captain, she had to decide not to tell anyone exactly what happened. This proved to be a very unpopular decision, but there was nothing she could do. The saboteurs placed her in such an awkward position. Either she was honest, and caused a shipwide panic, or she kept quiet, and risked losing their confidence. There was every chance that her shift would end prematurely because of this, just like Halan before her. Maybe no captain would be destined to serve as long as they were supposed to. Maybe this whole experiment was a failure, and it was only a matter of time before the consequences reached critical mass. It seemed like such an easy concept. Take a generation ship to the other side of the galaxy. Everyone here volunteered to come, even the children. Why have there been so many obstacles? Why have they accumulated so many enemies?

“We’re ready, sir,” Greenley says.

Kaiora sighs, and stares at the new machine. She looks around, in the direction the observation room would be if they were doing this in the same lab as before. There’s nothing there. That doesn’t mean that nothing can go wrong, though, and she’s been fending off her paranoia since August; perhaps even longer. “Are you two ready?”

“Operation Tenet is a go,” Kumara confirms. It wasn’t until after the first attempt at this that someone pointed out that the reverse time dimension is very similar to a plot point in an ancient movie from Earth Apparently, the idea of moving backwards in time isn’t the main point of the story, but rather what would happen if you were shot with a bullet going in the wrong direction. Obviously the real answer is, just like a regular bullet if you happened to be facing the other direction yourself, but whatever.

“Don’t call it that,” Kaiora orders.

“Sir.”

“Proceed when ready,” Kaiora says. “Take your time.”

“We know you have other places to be,” Errol says as he’s checking his inventory one last time, and stepping into the chamber.

“I appreciate that.”

Kumara shuts the door behind them, and returns the a-okay gesture when Greenley queries him with it. Greenley then looks over at the Captain.

“I’m fine,” Kaiora assures her. “If it’s sabotaged a second time, then nothing matters. Just do it.”

Greenley casually salutes her boss, then presses the button. The two rescuers disappear. And they don’t come back.

“Shouldn’t they have returned by now?” Kaiora questions. “I mean, it’s time travel. Nothing should be able to hold them up, except for death.

“That is the most likely explanation,” Greenley agrees.

“So, they are dead?”

“Probably.”

“Corinna, and the rest of them; they’re dead too?”

“Probably,” Greenley repeats.

The Captain sighs again, and pinches her nose. “Congratulations, Greenley Atkinson. You are now Head Temporal Engineer for the failed interstellar mission known as Project Extremus.”

“Thank you, sir,” she answers just as unenthusiastically. “I’ll try to hold it all together for as long as I can before the walls come crumbling down around us.”

Kaiora starts to walk out. “Yeah, unless you find something better to do, in which case, I say go follow your bliss. I have to see if we can detect impostor clones...for all that that’s worth at this point.” She exits, and heads for another secret room.

Dr. Malone has clearly been waiting at the interior entrance impatiently. “Captain, please, I need to talk to you.”

“You’re not why I’m here today,” Kaiora warns him. “Don’t linger by the door either. It’s not protocol.” She keeps walking down the hallway.

“I’m sorry, and I understand that, but it’s really important.”

“Has one of the subjects come to you with some specific issue?”

“Well, no, but that doesn’t mean they’re doing okay.”

“Of course not, but it’s not your job to break them out of here. It’s your job to make them comfortable during their stay on a psycho-emotional level. I have given you more than enough resources to help them. What could you possibly need beyond that?”

“I think if they just got a few minutes on the outside, it—”

Kaiora stops shortly. “No. The point is to keep you inside, and isolated. You take one step out that door, and you’re compromised. I can’t be sure that the person who walks back through is the same one that left. Now. Is this about the other guests, or is this about you?”

“We’re all in this together.”

“No, Dr. Malone. I’m in this alone. You’re all here to help me get through it. Where’s Miss Seabrooke?”

“Where she always is,” Dr. Malone answers. “I still wanna talk,” he adds as she’s leaving him behind.

She ignores him, and enters the Seabrooke Lab. It’s an absolute mess. Meal bar wrappers all over the place, cans of civilian grade soft drinks at varying degrees of crushedness piled in the corner. There’s a smell. “How’s it coming?”

“Slow,” Elodie Seabrooke replies. She doesn’t turn away from her screen.

“That’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. I’m doing my best, it’s just not good enough.”

Kaiora sits down in the other chair, and turns Elodie by the shoulders. She has to wave her gaze forwards to make eye contact too. “I didn’t want to say this before, because I didn’t want to make any of you feel bad, but judging by the looks of this place, it may be time for the last resort.”

“What last resort?” Elodie tries to look back at her computer, but accepts it when her Captain pulls her back into the conversation by the chin.

“Do you know why I selected this team? The researchers, the second level research subjects?”

“No, I’ve been wondering why. None of us isssssssssss...particular good.”

Kaiora lets out an unfortunate sigh, like she always does. She once caught a crew member calling her Captain Sighmaster. “That’s why I chose you. The imposters are taking on the forms of people at high levels. They want to be captain, and first chair, famous scientists, engineers with high clearance. You’re not unimportant, Elodie, but you’re not the best computer engineer this ship has, and that’s what makes you perfect for the job. I don’t know how long it’s going to take you to figure this out, but I’m patient, because if I chose a colleague of yours who graduated top of their class, they may already be compromised. Again, I didn’t want to say this, but look at it this way; there are advantages to living under the radar. If this team solves this problem, your mediocrity will drain away, and no one will ever forget the name Elodie Seabrooke.”

Elodie holds her breath, then spits it all out at once. “Oh, that is such a relief. Oh my God, it’s like the anxiety squeezing me has finally let go. I thought you had just made a terrible, terrible mistake, and I was desperately trying not to disappoint you.”

“I don’t want you to worry.”

Elodie leans the back of her leg against her chair, and stares up at the ceiling. “Now it all makes sense. Have you met Malone? Man, he’s terrible. He never makes us feel at ease. He’s the most maladjusted, neurotic, disquieting therapist I’ve ever met.”

“You’re gonna have to cut him some slack. He has a job to do here too.”

“Yeah, I get it.”

They sit in silence for some time.

“What do you have for me so far?”

“Well, the facial recognition software is fine,” Elodie begins. “I mean, it’s as good as I can get without access to the real cameras. It successfully flags our two sets of twins, even when we dress them up differently. I’m still struggling with matching across time. If it captures one twin at 19:00, and then another at 19:05 on the other side of the section, it thinks that’s all right, because it’s entirely plausible that the same person simply walked over there. I haven’t even begun to think about how we might incorporate teleportation.”

“Don’t factor that in,” Kaiora says. “I’m going to ban teleportation for the next several years.”

Elodie is surprised. “Really?”

“Yeah, for this very reason. It’s just...there’s just too much data.”

“It shouldn’t be the hardest thing in the world. The impostor would probably be wearing the same clothes as the person they’re impersonating.”

“But they might, because they might have that data. We still don’t know who they are, or where they came from. Hell, they could be some kind of pure energy-based alien race who are just trying to study us.”

“Still haven’t captured one yet?” Elodie asks.

“Not a live one, no. The genetics team can’t move forward without them, so our control group has nothing to do. I need to find a way to draw them out.”

“I may have your solution to that problem.” They turn to find Daley McKee in the doorway. He’s a nurse in charge of caring for the genetic subjects in that capacity. Or rather, he would be doing that if they had any impostor subjects to compare to the control group. “I volunteer as tribute.”

“You what?”

“We’re looking for impostors, right? We’re looking for people who are so convincing that the alien contaminant detectors on this ship can’t...detect them. We think they’re clones, using DNA stolen from their victims in various ways. So why don’t we play their game.”

Kaiora finds herself looking back over to Elodie, who says, “don’t let him make you think he came up with this plan on his own. We talk about this over lunch all the time. If we were to create our own impostor, and then fabricate a situation where that impostor is outed, it might draw out one of the evil impostors.”

“Yeah,” Daley continues, “the evil impostor may try to help our plant—a.k.a. me—or they may be like, why the hell are you pretending to be the Captain? We never assigned you that role. Who are you really?”

“You want to impersonate me?” Kaiora questions.

“Or whatever.” Daley shrugs. “Probably not, actually, because then we risk the mob deciding that you might be the impostor instead. We should choose someone important, who you don’t like all that much, so if both the impostor, and the real person, are killed, no big deal.”

“In this scenario, are you still the good impostor?”

“Yes, but don’t you worry none about me. It’s like you were telling her, we’re not important.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Okay...but we’re not.” Daley crosses his arms. “Look, Cap...”

“Don’t call me that.”

Daley goes on without missing a beat, “...I would be honored to die for my ship...for the mission. Then I really would be important. We have to figure out who these people are, and if I don’t survive, at least I’ll know I did everything I could. It’s a good plan.”

“It’s not a plan,” Kaiora contends. “It’s an idea.”

“I’ve heard it both ways.”

Kaiora looks at Elodie again, who widens into a very fake and unconvincing smile.

“All right, I’ll authorize preliminary discussions into this potential plan. I make no further promises, though.”

“Great!” Daley says, legitimately excited. “I’ll go talk to the Clone and Consciousness Transference teams.”

“Preliminary!” Kaiora shouts to him as he’s running away.

“Are you really gonna do this?” Elodie asks.

“I think we both know that it’s gonna happen, and that it’s gonna end up being me, because I can’t risk anyone else’s life.”

“You would still be risking Daley’s,” Elodie points out.

Kaiora shakes her head. “No, I won’t. Nobody’s going to be transferring their mind into a clone of me. I’m going to be duplicating myself.”

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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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