Fluence: Mirage (Part III)

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Goswin wiped the rain from his eyes, and was able to see that this Irene de Vries woman was not alone. A very young child was huddled against her hip. All signs pointed to the fact that this was Briar, but it could also be his son, or his great grandfather, or his eleventh cousin, forty-two times removed. “What year are you from?” Goswin asked. “Oh wait, no. Sorry. I mean, uhh...report.”

Irene smiled. “Trinity used to say that to me all the time. Is that in the time traveler’s handbook, or something?”

“If there’s an actual handbook, I’ve not actually seen it. That’s just what I’ve heard others say. May I ask the boy’s name?”

“It’s Briar.” Confirmed. “Hey, do I know you from somewhere? You look familiar. Have you ever been to the 21st century?”

“Captain!” Behind him, Weaver was power walking up, followed by Eight Point Seven, and Harrison.

“Is Madam Sriav with you?” Goswin asked.

Weaver shook her head. “She didn’t come. We assume she’s still on Lorania.”

“That’s not good,” Goswin mused. “We’ll try to get back to her. Crew, I would like you to meet Irene de Vries, and her son...Briar.”

Eight Point Seven didn’t react, and of course, neither did Harrison. Weaver flinched, but kept it together. Briar was in very, very big trouble, but not yet. Warning Irene that her son would one day become a killer was not going to help. Things could conceivably get better, but they could also get worse. She may decide that the only way to stop this would be to murder her son, and that would not be an okay decision. It wouldn’t work anyway. Briar killed Mateo while he was wearing the hundemarke, which was a special temporal object that created fixed moments in time. No matter how you try to change the past, this will always happen, as will anything inherently necessary to lead up to it. “It’s nice to meet you.” She pulled Goswin towards her, and did her best to whisper in his ear while still being heard through the rain. “We need to get out of here.”

“I know,” he replied.

“If you have to go back to the Middle Way, or whatever it is you did to make this happen a fourth time, then do it again. I don’t care if we end up on the moon. Just get us out of this paradox.”

“Fourth?” Goswin questioned incredulously. “You think I’m the one who took us to Achernar in the first place? You think that this was just something I’ve always been able to do, but the first time I tried was when I was in my 80s?”

“The thought crossed my mind. Maybe you’re salmon.”

“Excuse me?” Irene interjected. “The rain’s starting to come down harder. I really could use some shelter. There’s a cave nearby that we can hide in temporarily.”

“Hey!” a voice shouted to them. “Get the hell away from my mother!” Briar was running towards Goswin as fast as he could, and unlikely preparing to come to a complete stop just to exchange a few choice words. He was in a tackle posture. Fortunately, he didn’t make it that far. Harrison reached out, and lifted him up by his underarms, holding him in the air effortlessly as Briar continued to paddle his feet to no avail. “Let me go!”

“Did he just say mother?” Irene asked, confused and scared.

Goswin waggled his finger at the still struggling Briar. “Stop. Stop! We’re not going to hurt anyone. If you want to protect her, then you will stop moving, and listen to me very carefully.”

Briar went limp, and started to pant.

“Everyone gather around. Not you, Madam de Vries. Please go protect your son.” Once everyone else was in a huddle, Goswin went on. “I have a theory. Briar, are you familiar with any landmark on Earth; anything at all?”

“No, nothing.” Yeah, he had only ever remembered living on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. “Well, except for this.” He held up a photo of Irene in her younger days, smiling in front of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. “It was her favorite place in the world.”

Goswin closed his eyes and sighed. “Okay, I’ve been there too. That’ll work. Think about that place. Think about trying to go there.”

“Why?”

“Would you just do it? The National Museum of Natural History. Think about the museum. Think about visiting there. Don’t think about anything else.”

“Okay, I guess.”

The rain suddenly stopped. They were now in the middle of a grassy park. To one side of them was a giant bosom, and to the other a giant phallus. Behind them stood a red castle, and before them was the target museum, which was the second bosom. This was Washington D.C. all right. They were soaking wet on a bright, sunny day. The tourists around them were confused, and a few of them looked really nervous.

“Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea,” Goswin admitted. “I just didn’t want us to go back to Bida, and Briar doesn’t have a frame of reference for much on Earth.”

“What is your hypothesis,” Weaver asked, “that he’s the one who brought us?”

“Well, it seems like the only possibility,” Goswin determined.

“We didn’t even see him at the other locations,” Weaver pointed out.

“Excuse me?” A man in overalls had approached Briar. “Could you please step closer to your friends?”

“They’re not my friends,” Briar spit at him.

“That is very much not my point, sir,” the stranger said. “Please step closer to them.” He waited, his patience thinning. “Please,” he repeated. “Thank you,” he added when Briar finally complied.

“What is it you need?” Goswin asked, ready for a fight, even though he was not much for violence.

The stranger held up his hands like he was trying to block the sun from his eyes. He jerked them a centimeter away from each other, which served to freeze everyone around them in place. Time was stopped, or at least moving very slowly. He gradually pushed his right hand forward, and in front of his left hand, which pulled back, and moved in the opposite direction. As he did so, time began to reverse outside of the bubble he had erected for them. They watched as the tourists walked backwards. A child’s scoop of ice cream flew back up to his cone from the ground. Once the scene was back to where he wanted it, he closed his hands into fists, and snapped them against each other, pinky to thumb. The five of them felt a lurch, as if the roller coaster ride were just beginning. The man carefully placed his left fist against his nose, and looked over his hands like a sniper. His arms were shaking, but not like he was struggling, more like it was integral to the process. As he slowly moved his fists away from his face, the scene around them began to blur and fade into blackness. They flew forward, also like a roller coaster. Finally, he opened his hands back up, and separated them, stopping the ride.

They were standing in a desert, the three main pyramids of Giza rippling above a mirage a few kilometers away. The slight distortion from the bubble dissolved, and the warm wind began to blow sand into their eyes and noses. “All right. It’s done.”

“What’s done?” Eight Point Seven questioned.

“You’ve been erased from the timeline. No one who witnessed your arrival in the National Mall remembers that it ever happened, because it didn’t. They’re all going about their day, still clueless about time travelers, and the like.”

“Thank you, Repairman,” Weaver said to him as if they were old friends. Maybe they were.

“When you say, we were erased from time...” Goswin trailed off intentionally.

“You just never showed up there,” the Repairman clarified. “Instead, you transported yourselves to this random spot in the Necropolis. You’ve been here the whole time, and if anyone were to ask a lizard or cactus around here what they saw, that’s what they would say.

“I don’t see any cactuses,” Briar noted.

“Then maybe you don’t have to worry about any witnesses,” the Repairman joked. He paused a moment. “Well, bye.”

“Wait!” Goswin stopped him. “Could you help us again...maybe by telling us what’s happening to us?”

“I wouldn’t know, but I heard you blame everything on this guy,” the Repairman said. “What I’ll tell you is that the ability to transport people from a distance is rather rare. It’s not impossible but...in my experience, when multiple individuals travel together without any of them realizing how or why, it’s not because one of them is doing it on purpose, but because there’s some kind of glue that binds them together.” He made a quarter turn, reached out, and opened an invisible panel in the air. They couldn’t see anything, but they could hear the familiar creak of metal scraping against metal. He reached into it, and took hold of an equally invisible handle, which he pulled down. His figure turned into a black silhouette for a split second before disappearing completely.

They stood there in silence for a few moments. “I have another idea,” Goswin finally said, worried how they would take it.

“A new experiment?” Weaver asked him, intrigued.

“Are you up for it? We have to get a handle on this. I don’t really want to spend the rest of my life randomly jumping from point to point.”

“Let’s hear it,” Eight Point Seven encouraged.

“You can’t,” Goswin replied. “I’m going to write four places down, and keep them compartmentalized. You will each think about your own place, and only that place. If he’s right, and there’s some kind of glue between us, it won’t work, because it will be contradictory.” He pulled out his handheld device, and started writing the locations down. He showed Briar the first one.

“Really?” Briar asked incredulously.

“Don’t. Give it away,” Goswin warned. “It’s a magic trick.”

Briar sighed, upset. He was being expected to think about the cliff where he killed Mateo Matic. It was simultaneously the worst and best place for him. What happened there was probably the worst thing he had ever done, so that meant, now that he had been triggered, he wouldn’t be able to think of anything else, even if he wanted to.

The other three, on the other hand, were going to be thinking about the the west entrance to the primary research facility on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. No one ever went back there, so they shouldn’t have to worry about being seen. Goswin was the only one who knew that he, Weaver, and Eight Point Seven had the same spot in mind. If Briar were the one in charge, it didn’t matter what the others thought of, because they would always end up where he wanted to go instead. “Everyone ready?” Goswin asked. “I guess time travel works on psychic powers, so...everyone think about your respective locations, please, and really, truly, desperately try to actually go there. Don’t think about anything else. It may take a while, I really don’t know.”

They stood there in their huddle for a minute or so without anything happening, the humans struggling with the dust storm that was starting up around them. It did work, though. The sand and sun disappeared to be replaced by a dense forest at twilight. Alien bugs crawled around on a tree next to them, as wingèd ones swarmed in their faces. This was definitely Bida. But it wasn’t the cliff where Briar committed murder, and it wasn’t anywhere near the research facility.

“Whose spot was this?” Eight Point Seven asked.

“No one’s,” Goswin revealed. I don’t know that we’re right about this.”

“Don’t be so hasty,” Weaver said, taking out her own handheld. “I can connect to the satellite now.”

Goswin was worried again about how they would take it. “Briar had the...the cliff. You know the one I mean. The rest of us had the west entrance to Pryce’s lab.”

Weaver peered at him over her device. “Only two places.”

“Yes, it was like a blind study.”

Weaver nodded, and tapped on the screen. She held it in front of his face. “We’re right in the middle.”

“What?” Goswin took it from her, to see what she was talking about.

“Exactly equidistant from the cliff and the building.”

“We split the difference,” Eight Point Seven noted. “The Repairman was right. It’s all of us. Whatever each of us wants, this...force between us tries to come up with something that matches our criteria combined. If you wanted Italian food, and she wanted Chinese, and I wanted French, and he wanted Ethiopian, we would end up at a fusion restaurant.” She started pointing at the members of the group accordingly. “If we wanted to go to the years 1776, 1912, 2024, and 2100, we would show up in 1953.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Goswin said. “Briar wasn’t with us on that void planet, or on Dardius.”

“Wasn’t he?” Weaver prodded.

Briar frowned. “I was hiding. I wasn’t planning on showing myself at all, but then you attacked my mother...”

“No one was attacking her,” Goswin defended. He grunted. “We have to figure out how to get rid of this. It could cause us serious problems. If one of us wants to go to Teagarden, and the rest want to go to Glisnia, are we gonna end up somewhere in the middle of empty space?”

“We can’t do that yet. We have to go back to return Harrison and Madam Sriav to where they belong.”

“That’s true,” Goswin agreed. “Can we all come to a consensus long enough to make that work?”

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Microstory 2105: Maybe I Should Leave

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It’s been one of those days. I told you in the last post how the scheduling works at my new job. When they first explained it to me, my first question was the obvious one, which is what happens when two people have to be gone at the same time? The answer was that this never happens, so they didn’t have a protocol for that. But of course, this being my life, it happened immediately. I’m not even finished with my training, but we’re already down to three people. One of the other janitors had a family emergency, which necessitated him driving halfway across the country at a moment’s notice. He reportedly didn’t even have time to pack anything. The old man, meanwhile, has fallen ill. He’s awake and alert, but he’s in no condition to be moving around, and doing this kind of work. The bosses are actually making him stay in a special room for treatment. I guess this place has its own little health clinic? They didn’t tell me anything about it, so I don’t think it’s for just anyone to use when they need it. So now it’s just me and the girls. Their initial plan when this happened was to have one of us take a double shift, and maybe someone else takes it the next day? That’s too much math. The reason four of us work on one day is because 24 divided by 6 equals 4. But 24 can also be divided into 8, and that makes 3. To cover the time, we’re each just going to take longer shifts, but we each get a 30 minute lunch break now. This is the way things often work in other universes, and even in other places on this world, so it’s not like I’m reinventing the wheel here.

I’m glad that they’ve taken my advice, because I feel super responsible for all of this. It may sound ridiculous, but hear me out. I’m starting to really worry that I’m the cause of all these issues. Things have been changing since I showed up on the scene, everyone thinks so, even if they’re not making the connection to me. Issues are arising that were not a problem before. It’s not always obvious, like when I first came to this world, and kept getting sick. Someone went missing after I started working at the nursery, and now this? I know, it sounds self-aggrandizing to think that everything is all about me, but come on. I understand that I felt like this before, and there actually weren’t any other missing people, but I’m not making everything up. I dunno. Maybe I should leave this town, and move to another to see if something weird happens there too. Of course, I can’t just run off right away. These people are counting on me. We have to find at least one more person to fill out the roster, and maybe another person after that, and if I go, then they’ll have to look for a third. I’m in such an awkward position. I better get some sleep, and see if I come up with any better ideas in the morning. The people who set me up with my new life are asking me to work for them too, which complicates things even further. I have a feeling that my situation is about to get a lot more difficult.

Microstory 2104: People Are Animals

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My job is going well so far, but I’ve only been doing it for one day, so we’ll just have to see. This place is open 24/7, which equates to a crew of five janitors. Each of us works six hours straight with no breaks, except to use the restroom. When one leaves for the day, the next one comes in. A fifth person sleeps on location, and can fill in if someone is sick. We don’t get paid to take time off, though we can if we need to, but we have to coordinate with each other, and the fifth guy will substitute during that time too. In the meantime, he gets paid for the entire day, whether he has anything to do or not. He’s the one who trained me, because he’s been there forever. The job is simple and tedious. You start at the top floor, and work your way down. Different janitors have different methods to get the work done. Some use the carpet sweeper all the way through, and then go back up to mob the bathrooms, and other tile areas, and then go back up again to collect the trash. Others prefer to focus on one floor, and complete all of the necessary work at once before moving on to the next one. They may not do it the same way every time, and our employer doesn’t care. They want it to be as clean as possible as much as possible. The work that the regular workers do here requires concentration, which means that they require us to be quiet and out of the way, which is why we don’t use vacuum cleaners. Fortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of collaboration, at least not in person, so we’re not constantly tripping over the staff, making it easier to stay invisible.

For one hour at 11:00, they are all having lunch together upstairs. We are not allowed to go upstairs. I’ve not even seen their cafeteria yet, because we’re expected to eat on our own time, but the other janitors have caught glimpses of it over the years, so they know that that’s where everyone is going. Apparently, a sixth person handles that entire area alone, and isn’t part of my team. I suspect that, in addition to eating, they’re having some kind of building-wide meeting. I still don’t really know what exactly they do there, but it must be pretty sensitive stuff. They lock everything up in their special desks, even when they’re only leaving for the restroom. I’ve yet to see a single piece of paper that isn’t still blank. The regular workers are usually really focused on their work, and don’t pay me any mind, not in a sort of disrespectful don’t fraternize with the help sort of way, but more like they’re trying to stay out of my way just as much. I think they’re aware that I’m on a schedule of my own, and they appreciate not having to worry about the mess. And when I say mess, I don’t mean that these people are animals. Honestly, I don’t think we need to clean up as often as we do. They don’t eat at their desks, or do anything else that would make my job harder. I barely have to empty the carpet sweeper, but that’s what’s in the job description, so I’m going to keep doing it until they ask me to do something else. I was under the impression that I was going to get a lot dirtier, but the really gross places, like the boiler room, are handled by a different team too. All in all, I think I’m going to be okay here. I know what I’m supposed to do, and how I’m supposed to do it. They even let us listen to headphones at a low enough volume to hear the environment. I don’t really report to a boss. My coworkers are treating me as one more person in the collective. The woman I’m replacing worked here for 48 years before she retired with six-figure savings. I’ve never dreamed of having that much money. I’ll let you know if anything changes, but I think I’m just going to stick around for now.

Microstory 2103: My New Dirty Job

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I’ve been looking for work. Unlike when I was in Kansas City, and in my past life, I no longer have standards. I used to have certain limitations, which stopped short of cleaning, food preparation or distribution, and interacting with people too much. I think I’m going to still shy away from that last one, since I don’t need to be exposing my wanted face to a whole bunch of people every day. I’m also not good at smiling, whether it’s real or fake. I can grimace. If you need someone to grimace awkwardly, and make everyone in the room feel incredibly uncomfortable, I am your man. What I don’t like about the other two things is that my health and sanitation standards are higher than anyone else’s. That sort of stuff is hard to be around, because it will never be good enough for me, and people find that rather annoying, if you can believe it. But ya know, you don’t know how to wear gloves. You seem to think that makes you impervious to cross-contamination, but that’s not how it works. If you pick up a big piece of poop, throw it in the toilet, and then go back to fixing my sandwich, you’ve just put poop in that sandwich. I don’t really care that it didn’t get on your hands, do I? That was never my concern. Of course, this is an exaggeration, but it’s plausible, since most people seem to think that clothing is some magical barrier that prevents bacteria and viruses from being transmitted, but I’m here to tell you that it’s not. Trust me. I know pathogens. I suppose that all has more to do with food, which is why cleaning doesn’t bother me as much. I mean, it really bothers me, but I can immerse myself in it, and then come out clean on the other side. This temporary place where I’m staying has a perfect system for me, especially with my new dirty job. I’m a janitor, which is kind of always where I thought I would end up. Now all I need is to become an unarmed security guard, and I will be able to check everything off my list of jobs I either wanted, or thought I would have to take. This isn’t so bad. I can clean myself off at the end of the day in the group showers, and then step right into the tub shower. That way, I don’t have to dirty up the tub. I know that sounds like overkill to you, but I prefer it. The washer and dryer combo unit are right there too, which allows me to clean my uniform every night before I have to use it again the next day. It’s not glamorous, but it will get me by...for now.

Microstory 2102: You’re Only Hurting Yourself

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Oh my God, the coppers must think I’m preeeetty stupid if they legitimately believed that I was in Chicago. I literally told you in my last post that I wasn’t going to mention any specifics about my location, and immediately after, I claimed that I was going to be on the Chicago River? You didn’t think that I would catch that “mistake”. It was a total misdirect, meant to accomplish two objectives. First, I wanted to see if anyone who might have been looking for me was trying to use my blog as a resource. Second, I wanted to gauge the response. For my part, I think it was blown way out of proportion. They had the whole city lookin’ for me; for one little guy who hasn’t hurt anybody. You people need to get your priorities checked. A part of me wanted to continue to waste their time and money looking in the right place, but I’m not vengeful and petty like them. So this is the truth, I’m not anywhere near Chicago. I chose it, because I’m moderately familiar with it from my experiences in my home universe, and because I had already made a minor connection to someone there. He was one of the people who answered my ad that was looking for other aliens. I haven’t talked to that guy in a long time, though. Make a list of every place you think I would hide out, and then cross it all out. I would never hide where someone might think to look for me. That’s Lam 101. I never said anything about Philadelphia. Why don’t you check there? Or I know, how about the entirety of China? My advice, cut your losses, and move on to more important cases. As I said, I never hurt anybody, and I won’t. I have no reason to. I’m not dangerous, I’m not angry. I’m just trying to get home. Anyone who doesn’t understand that probably has easier access to their own home, so I’m asking for a little sympathy here. Stop looking for me! I’m not worth it! You’re only hurting yourself. I ran, and I understand that I caused a problem when I did that, but I’m telling you now that you will never find me, so if you continue the investigation, it will be all on you. I will accept no responsibility for whatever resources are expended on it, or whatever it ends up costing the taxpayers of this country. Just leave me alone, and everything will be okay. Yours truly, the ghost.

Microstory 2101: I Won’t Live a Lie

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I’m out! I’m hiding from the authorities...somewhere. For obvious reasons, I’m not going to tell anyone where I am. When I first showed up in this universe, I didn’t have any identity, so instead of finding one on the black market, I procured it through the proper channels. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, but I’ve ruined it now. I had no choice. I got a parasitic infection, which messed up my brain, and started making me act crazy. After the body doctors cleared it all up, the mind doctors came in, and tried to convince me that everything I’ve been doing and saying has been crazy, and they wanted to keep me there for psychological treatment. The little committee I had to talk to twice before I could be released from the hospital brought up the discrepancy in the timeline. If I was infected in early February, why is it that I’ve been talking about being a bulk traveler on my blog pretty much this entire time? Well, some of them argued that the viral and bacterial infections I had before that could explain all that away. Others argued that maintaining the same symptoms across three completely different infections didn’t make much medical sense, and I don’t know everything that they talked about after I left the room, but in the end, I got out of there. It wasn’t enough, though. I was living around people who didn’t believe me, and didn’t trust me, and I couldn’t stay there anymore. I’ll always be grateful to my landlord, and my boss, and I know that none of this was their fault, but I have my reasons. I spent years pretending to be someone I’m not. I pretended to not be autistic. I pretended to be straight. I pretended to like Blink-182! I won’t do that anymore. I won’t live a lie. Even if I have to sleep in squalor, I’m going to live my truth from now on. So long, Boreverse Kansas City, I’ll never forgive you for the way you treated me. Now more than ever, I know that my only goal in life should be to get the hell out of this universe. Even if I never find my friends again, at least I won’t have to deal with you people anymore. For those of you reading this who are on my side, don’t you worry about me getting caught. I’ve got that covered. Some friends helped me set up a shadow workstation. As long as I always post from the cage, I can’t be traced, and as long as I don’t mention any specifics about my location, I can’t be found. I have to go now. I booked a boat ride on the Chicago River. As I said before, don’t look for me. I’m a ghost.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 17, 2438

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When the team stepped on board to familiarize themselves with their new ship, they were surprised to find out that the holographic generator that was meant to keep it invisible while it awaited the return of its original crew was not the only nonoperational component. The reframe engine was also broken. It was literally cracked. Trying to start it up could have vaporized them all, which was why it was so important to always run a preflight check before launch. Mirage didn’t know how this could have happened since the thing was fully intact the last time she saw it. Her best guess was that the Empire had somehow detected it, even while it was all cloaked up, and engaged it in battle. How it managed to ultimately avoid capture, and rendezvous with Mirage on Ex-666, was a question that this theory could not answer, but it was designed with its own AI, which could come out of dormancy as necessary. Its flight logs did not say anything about an attack, but maybe it erased this information on purpose, which Mirage said it might do if it suspected the risk of a temporal paradox.

As far as Mirage herself went, Niobe Schur managed to convince her to stick around to help formulate this new anti-Exin army. If the Empire was going to be destroyed, they were the ones to do it. They wouldn’t necessarily be staying here to work on this revolution, and they decided that any need they had to make some noise on other worlds would help Team Matic avoid being discovered. The fact that a new group of rabble rousers showed up once a year, generally a light year away from where an apparent different group of them showed up, was always a flaw in their plan. Everyone knew what the team’s pattern was, and even if they knew nothing about holographic disguises, they would eventually start to see that pattern shine through. Perhaps if others took up the mantle at the same time, the pattern might get drowned out as just one of many rebel factions spreading throughout the Corridor.

“Vitalie!613 has sent us the information that she was able to gather on the planets that we might be going to,” Leona said to the group. “Someone from just about every planet was sent to the resort recently enough to know what we could be in for. A few worlds are missing from the data, presumably because nobody from there ever won the competition, but that’s not a problem yet. Rambo?”

“Ex-811,” he began. “You could call it FarmWorld. So far, we’ve not seen a whole lot of automation going on, but this place wouldn’t survive without it. The whole surface is covered in crops, livestock, or oceans, lakes, and rivers of creatures. The people who work there are meant to keep the machines maintained, and to make executive decisions about the work. It is they who decide where the produce is going, and how much of it. There are some incompatibility issues going on with species that didn’t evolve alongside each other, so it’s also their responsibility to figure out how to return the ecosystem to homeostasis. Apparently, the people who used to work here, who now live on Ex-612, talked Vitalie’s ear off about it. They loved to brag about how they used to live here, that it was the best planet in the Corridor, besides the luxury worlds for the elite. I don’t know if that’s true, but I also don’t know whether there’s anything we can do here. What mission could we go on, besides finding Vitalie!811?”

“We could burn the crops.” When everyone frowned at Marie like she was a serial killer, she frowned back. “There are no bad ideas in brainstorming!”

“We don’t want the...Corridorians to starve to death,” Mateo told her. “But maybe we need to look at those distribution schedules. If someone isn’t getting enough food, either unintentionally, or as some form of oppression or punishment, we could maybe alter them?”

“That’s a good idea,” Leona agreed. “Though, that would be a long-term mission, and one thing we know about this region of space—and about ourselves—is that we are not built for the long-term. If we do something like that, our only hope is to sneak down and reprogram the automated delivery ships, and somehow make it so that the supervisors don’t realize that it’s happening.”

“Well, we’ll have to leave at the end of the day,” Marie began, “but maybe we can insert a ringer into the team.”

Leona nodded. “Vitalie!811. We could set her up as a new...President of Distribution, or something. Ram, do we have the necessary intel to put someone undercover like that?”

“Yeah,” Ramses answered, consulting his tablet. “We have a pretty recent roster. There may be some discrepancies from the time lag, but Distribution President is not a preexisting position, so I believe we could justify making it up.”

“We’ll have to find Vitalie!811 first, and then hope that she’s up for it.”

“That could be tricky,” Ramses said. “Those automators have tons of sensors. They’re not designed to detect sneaky humans, but they would see us anyway.”

“Maybe it’s time for us to do something different, ya know, instead of looking like celebrities,” Olimpia suggested. “We’re supposed to be able to turn invisible.”

Leona nodded. “That’s technically an ability that we have, but it’s complicated. “Time powers are ingrained into the neurology of the person who was born with them. And the way they specialize is not well understood. There are different flavors, even among people with the same thing. One teleporter, for instance, but only be able to make a jump by literally jumping into the air, while another doesn’t have that quirk. We’ve met other people who can manipulate photons, like Vito, but Alyssa McIver is not Vito Bulgari. He’s better at invisibility, she’s better at impersonation. I don’t think any of us has time to learn something new, at least not reliably.”

Olimpia smirked knowingly. “What are you talking about? I’ve been invisible during this entire conversation.”

“What are you talking about?” Leona questioned. “I’m looking at you right now.”

“Are you?” came Olimpia’s voice from behind them.

Everyone jolted their heads to find her leaning casually against the doorframe. They looked back to see the other Olimpia, still perched next to them on the couch. Mateo reached out, swept his hand through one shoulder, out the other, and back again. Yeah, she was just made of light.

The standing Olimpia giggled, and shivered intentionally. “Oo, Mateo, you just touched my boobies.”

Leona stood up and approached what was presumably the real Olimpia, and peered into her eyes. “You can throw a perfect image of your likeness. That’s very interesting. I’ve made external holograms before, but nothing quite like that, not something that moves fluidly enough to make someone think that it’s me.”

Olimpia shrugged slightly. “You’re the Captain, and Second Engineer. I’ve had more time to practice. I’ve actually been doing it in my spare time for a while now. The other day, when you were teaching us, I was faking low proficiency until I was ready to show off this level of sophistication.”

“We might use that in the future,” Leona acknowledged. “Thanks for letting me know, Loki.”

Olimpia smiled. “It’s nice to finally be able to contribute in some small way.”

“Thanks,” Mateo said. “Now I’m back to being the only useless one around here.”

“We’re not gonna have this argument again,” Leona told him.

“Can you turn others invisible?” Angela asked Olimpia.

“I’ve never tried, because I wasn’t telling anyone about it.” Olimpia glided over to her friend, and extended a hand to help her out of the chair. “One thing I do know is that I have to initialize it with a passionate kiss.”

“I don’t really care for PDA,” Angela muttered.

“Well,” Olimpia muttered back, “if you don’t wanna turn invisible, okay...”

Angela rolled her eyes, and let Olimpia kiss her in front of the group, leading Ramses to squirm a little in his seat. “All right, enough games” Angela insisted. “Let’s get on with it.”

Olimpia looked towards the floor, and started to take a deep breath, which incidentally transformed into a yawn. “Okay, I’m ready.” She shut her eyes, and continued to breathe deliberately. Beams of light began to shoot through her body. They weren’t really going through her, but striking a spatial field that she had formed all around herself, which teleported the flux of photons to the other side, and then let them continue on their way. The beams grew and merged with each other until she was fully gone. Now she could begin to put Angela through the same thing, but it was slower, more erratic, and prone to being undone. The beams would shrink, and unmerge after they had already come together. The light flickered, and parts of Angela’s body began to appear randomly all over the room. They could hear the grunts of frustration in Olimpia’s voice.

“It’s okay,” Leona said. “Ramses and I can come up with a different way to fool the sensors. We’ll find Vitalie!811, even if we have to stay here for a couple of days. We’ve done it before. There’s no rule that says we have to leave within 24 hours.”

“No, no!” Olimpia protested. She sighed and gave up trying to make Angela disappear, but she stayed invisible herself. She started to speak again through Holo!Olimpia on the couch. “It’s true that I won’t be able to figure this out today. I need more practice holding two flux fields up simultaneously, which as I was saying, I’ve never tried before, because I was keeping this all a secret. That doesn’t mean this can’t be done. I’ll just go down to the planet on my own.”

“No,” Leona argued, “we don’t go anywhere alone. I’m pretty sure that was your idea, Oli.”

“It was? Well, great. Then I can change it. I’m going alone.”

“No, you’re not. That is an order.”

“Leona,” Olimpia said calmly.

“What?”

“I’m already gone.”

“How is that possible?”

“I can throw sound particles too. That’s part of the deal, I guess.”

“Number one, no it’s not. Number two, they’re not particles; they’re waves, which is Physics 101. It’s deeply concerning that you think you’ve mastered this technique when you don’t even understand the basics of it.”

“Well, I don’t know how my heart pumps blood throughout my body, yet I’ve never accidentally stopped doing it, have I?”

“Mateo, she listens to you. Will you please talk to her?” Leona pleaded.

He tilted his head down to the side, kept it there for a few seconds, and tilted it the other way. “Olimpia, you go, girl.”

“Goddammit, Matty!”

“You can’t do everything, Leona,” Mateo contended. “We are a team, and we have to trust each other to help in our own special ways. I don’t know if you’re just jealous that she’s the best now, but it gets kind of annoying that you are always the end-all, be-all. You’re the leader, the scientist, the computer hacker, the master schemer. You’re the whole package, which tends to sideline everyone else. I don’t know if she’s gonna succeed down there, but I’m gonna let her try. And if something goes wrong, any one of us can jump down and save her. You can find your faith in us...or you can sulk in private, but you need to remember that you’re a captain, not a king.”

Fuming, but not about to blow up, Leona stuffed her fingers in Ramses’ pocket, and pulled up his magical clicker device. She pointed it at the Holo!Olimpia, and made her disappear with the push of a button. “The guy we’re trying to stop can do exactly what she can, but he can reach across light years. Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know,” Mateo admitted.

“Me neither, and that scares the shit out of me. What we’ve learned about our friend today presents us with two possibilities. Either it’s a coincidence, or that girl down on the planet ends up giving that man out there power. Everything we’re doing right now could just be a loop that we’re closing, which leads to the greatest tyrant the timestream has ever seen gaining everything he needs to accumulate the power he has now, but in the past. I have no proof that that’s what’s happening, but it’s a possibility. It always is. It’s happened to us before. Horace Reaver terrorized you at the beginning of your journey, because you ruined his life in another timeline. Zeferino Preston moved us around like chess pieces in a game that he had all but already won. I don’t want to be the cause of my own effect.”

“That’s a good point.”

Leona tapped on her neck. “Olimpia, don’t talk, it’s not safe. Your life is first priority. Finding Vitalie is only second priority. You understand me? I mean...I know you understand me, still don’t talk. If she’s down there, she’s been asleep for centuries, and she can stay that way for another few years while we focus on the mission at large. Get back up here safely by EOD, whether The Caretaker is in pocket, or not. If you do understand...send me some love.”

They all five felt a lot of love coming from Olimpia.

Leona couldn’t help but smile from it. “I love you too.” She tapped on her comms disc to close the channel. “Now. Ramses, please look back through the data that Vitalie!613 sent you. Start working on a new food distribution plan. If this entire planet is covered in crop and livestock, there’s more than enough to go around, even if every other planet is as densely populated as Earth. An army marches on its stomach. Prepare a disc for Vitalie too, because we may have to amend the plan later.”

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Fluence: Aura (Part II)

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Briar was gone. Once Goswin felt like he knew enough about the Parallel justice system to trust that it was fair and, well...just, he returned to the X González to explain things to the suspect. Briar was not in his cabin, nor did it look like anyone had ever stayed there. The bedsheets were perfectly aligned, and the surfaces were dusty from disuse. Goswin stepped back into the hallway to see if he was just turned around, but this had to be the right cabin. Still, he checked all of the others, and Briar wasn’t anywhere else either. It wasn’t a huge ship. Eight Point Seven’s sensors were damaged, in addition to her memory, so she was unable to find his location. The researchers on this asteroid had their own security system, which could not find him either, nor detect that anyone besides Goswin and Weaver had ever stepped out of the González. It was a mystery, the answer to which almost certainly had something to do with time travel.

“There’s a database,” Pontus began to explain. “It stores the records of every single person in every reality, throughout all of time, in every timeline. It could trace Briar’s steps as long as he showed up somewhere that records such data. While it does have an unspeakable amount of data, it’s not magic. If someone went off somewhere alone, they could hide from it, just like you could slink through the blindspots of a security camera.”

“Might as well try it,” Goswin decided.

“It’s not that easy,” Pontus replied. “It’s not here. It’s hard to reach, and reportedly harder to access. Almost no one in the universe is granted permission, and even when they are, their activity is heavily monitored to prevent abuse. The Tanadama, which are sort of like our god-leaders, would be prone to letting someone like you use it, but you would still have to go there first, and there is no guarantee.”

“Can we just...call them?” Goswin asked. “I don’t need to look at this database myself. He’s a dangerous and unstable man. He was an adult before he met anyone besides his mother, and he found himself trusting the wrong person. I don’t know what he’s gonna do...and if he’s dead, I need to know that too.”

Pontus shook his head. “We can’t just call. Part of the point is making the journey to Sriav.” He looked towards the back entrance of the hollowed-out asteroid. “It’s out there, in the void, away from all others, in this tiny pocket of civilization. I couldn’t even give you the exact coordinates. I think you’re expected to intuit your vector somehow. They call it our sister outpost, but we’ve never interacted with them, and I’ve never given it much thought.”

“Well, this has to happen. Whatever you need from us, it will have to wait. Briar de Vries is our priority.” He turned away as he tapped on his comms disc to make it clear that he was starting a separate conversation. “Eight Point Seven, Weaver, we’re going to a world called Sriav.”

When he turned back to ask for permission to leave the asteroid, Pontus was gone. Beside him were Weaver and Eight Point Seven in her humanoid form. “How did you do that? Did you have that body ready and waiting?”

She was just as surprised as he was. She patted herself. “Are we all corporeal?”

“No way to test that,” Weaver acknowledged. “We could all be in a simulation.”

“Not a simulation,” came a voice behind them. “It’s Sriav.”

They turned to see a grand entrance to an expansive room. It was so wide and deep that they couldn’t see how big the room was. The walls and ceiling were ornately decorated, but it appeared to be completely unfurnished, like a shell waiting to be filled and used. “I’m sorry, I got the impression that this planet was located in the intergalactic void.”

“It is,” the woman confirmed. “It’s roughly a million light years from the edge of the Milky Way galaxy.”

“We were just on an asteroid in the Achernar system,” Weaver said.

“Well,” the woman began, “if you were going to be in one place one second, and another the next, it would be Po.”

“Po?”

“That’s the primary planet orbiting Alpha Eridani. Hi. I’m Madam Sriav. You came here for a reason, I presume?”

“Captain?” Eight Point Seven urged.

“We’re looking for a man by the name of Briar de Vries,” Goswin started to explain. “He disappeared from our ship. We don’t know exactly when, or how, and we certainly don’t know where we went. Our arrival here is the second time today we’ve jumped through spacetime inexplicably quick. I was told that you have a database?”

Madam Sriav smiled. “This world is quite remote, as I’ve said. We have true faster-than-light travel, of course, but you can’t use it to get here. If you try, you’ll slow down for no apparent reason. It’s a security feature. No, if you wanna come here, you have to do it the old fashioned way, with a simple reframe engine. That could take you upwards of 1400 years. Most barely try, and most of the rest quit. The few who have dedicated their lives to such a pursuit have ended up staying here. There is no better place to live, I believe.”

“Okay, but the database?” Goswin pressed.

She smiled again. “A mechanical rabbit lure, just to give people a reason to head in this direction.”

“So it doesn’t exist,” Weaver surmised.

“A computer that tracks everyone in every reality? What horrors could that lead to? I wouldn’t want to live in a universe that had something like that.”

Weaver faced Goswin. “There must be some reason we’re here. There’s a reason we were thrown to Achernar, and now this place. I think you’re doing it.”

Goswin shook his head with the confidence of a math professor. “No, I’m not.”

“There are only three reasons to slip timespace the way we’ve been doing it; incidentally, by one’s own hand...or by someone else’s,” Weaver went over.

“What is here?” Goswin asked Madam Sriav. “What is the purpose of this world?”

“If you have to ask, you don’t belong,” she answered.

“It would help us understand how we ended up here,” Eight Point Seven reasoned. “Perhaps Briar is already here.”

Madam Sriav sighed. “It would not be my place to say, but...”

“But what?” Goswin waved his loose hand in circles. “Go on.”

“You could always look for a tracker...assuming you can make it back to civilization.” Madam Sriav didn’t think that would ever happen. “There are people who specialize in it. Some have learned and trained, others are born with the gift. Some were imbued with power by the Tanadama themselves.”

“A tracker?” Goswin questioned. “Is there a real database of such people, like a...um...”

“The word you’re looking for is a phonebook,” Weaver helped. “Madam, I know you don’t use money for transactions, but if these people help people like businesses, there must be some central location to find them.”

Madam Sriav shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I was born on this world. I don’t have much of a practical understanding of the way they do things out there.”

Now Goswin sighed as he looked up at the high ceiling. “Well, do you have any ships? We forgot to bring ours.” Something weird happened. Did the ceiling change? Yeah, the ceiling appeared to change. It was sort of gradual, but also abrupt? He kept staring at it, and trying different angles. It looked more like a sky at dawn now.

“Captain. It happened again,” Eight Point Seven explained.

Goswin nodded, still checking different angles of the sky-ceiling. “Yeah, I know. I’m just afraid to look. Everytime I wanna go somewhere, we go.”

“It’s worse than that this time,” Weaver said.

Goswin dropped his chin. Madam Sriav was still here with them, and they were no longer in the frighteningly large room. They were outside, in the center of some kind of meadow nearish the top of a mountain. “I do apologize for...whatever is going on. With me, or with us. I just don’t know.”

“You need to get me back,” Madam Sriav insisted. “So please, figure it out.” She seemed like the kind of person who was not used to getting upset, and was desperately trying to keep her emotions in check, even though she had ever reason to be cross.

“Hey! Who are you?” A man was walking towards them from the slope.

“We are the crew of the X González,” Goswin replied, hoping that Madam Sriav would rather be lumped in with them than stand out in the presence of yet another stranger. “Can you tell us where we are?”

“You’re on Lorania, on the side of Mount Aura.”

“Lorania?” Eight Point Seven echoed, “as in, the island on Dardius?”

“That’s right,” the man said.

“Dardius only exists in the main sequence,” Madam Sriav revealed. “You brought us across realities. How are you doing this?”

“I still don’t know, but I’m worried that he’s accidentally joined us, and if I start thinking about going somewhere else, I’ll only make matters worse.”

“No,” Madam Sriav began to calculate. “Think about Sriav, and that’s where we’ll go. I don’t really care where anyone else goes. I welcomed you to my planet, because that is my job, and I can’t do it if I’m here, so I’m done humoring you.”

Wow, this situation escalated quickly. “Are you a tracker?” Goswin asked the new guy. “If you’re a tracker, that’s why I’m here.”

“No. I’m Harrison. Tracker Four is up there.”

“Great. Maybe they can help everyone get home,” Goswin hoped.

“She’s with another client,” Harrison said, stopping them from stepping forward with an imposing stance.

“You can come back for her later,” Sriav said to Goswin. “You take me back first.”

“I can’t control it,” Goswin argued. “I’m not even sure I am doing it. I don’t feel anything when it happens. Do either of you feel anything?”

Weaver and Eight Point Seven shook their heads.

“Yeah,” Goswin went on, “so let’s say it’s me. What if I accidentally send us to the inside of a volcano, or hell, just the vacuum of outer space?”

“Don’t even suggest things like that!” Sriav was raising her voice now. “Don’t put those thoughts in your own head!”

Goswin made prayer hands, with his index fingers wrapped around his nose, his middle fingers pressed up against his forehead, and his thumbs pushing up the corners of his lips. This is what he did when he was frustrated, and trying to solve a problem. “Harrison, is this region dangerous in any way.”

Harrison didn’t expect the question. “Uh, there’s a natural merge point a few kilometers that way, which will take you to prehistoric times. As long as you stay away from that, you should be good.”

“I’m not gonna try to do anything yet. Madam Sriav, I know that your life and your job are important to you, but you have a few hours to just wait, so I can get this right. I’m going to go meditate. When I get back, if you happen to have photos of where you live, there’s a chance that helps. I really couldn’t say for sure. I’m sorry if I did this to you, but this is uncharted territory, so your patience would be greatly appreciated.”

Still annoyed, Madam Sriav raised her eyebrows, and gestured for him to get on with it. Then she turned around, and started kicking at some nearby flowers.

Goswin wasn’t super into meditation, but he had done it a few times, and it was a great excuse to get away from everyone. If he really was responsible for all of this, standing around and being berated about it wasn’t going to help. He found a nice, soft patch of grass a couple hundred meters away from them. He sat down cross-legged, and closed his eyes, hoping to free his mind from all distractions. The birds were starting to chirp, but they were very consistent and melodic, so it actually helped. There was a slight breeze that cooled his face just enough to be comfortable in this tropical weather. He breathed in deeply, held it in for a few seconds, and exhaled through his mouth. This wasn’t him. It couldn’t be him. He didn’t have powers, or a pattern. He was just a normal guy who met a bunch of time travelers one day. That was why he jumped at the chance to board the X González. He wanted to know more, to meet other people. He wanted to have an adventure. He didn’t want to ruin people’s lives.

He was sitting there for several minutes when it began to rain. It was only a sprinkle at first, but then the drops began to fall harder. It didn’t stop him, though. He stayed where he was, trying to find his center. This was just another distraction that he had to let go of and ignore. Before too long, though, the rain was pouring. The grass under him was pushed away to be replaced by mud. He didn’t know how long he could stand it. It wasn’t the most discomfort he had ever experienced, but he certainly didn’t want it to worsen.

“Ēalā! Eart þu hāl!” an unfamiliar voice shouted to him.

He felt like he had no choice but to open his eyes. This was definitely not Lorania anymore. “What? Sorry, I slipped, but I’m okay.” He started to stand up. “Where am I?”

She seemed quite confused at his words. “It’s England.”

“Forgive me, but...what year?”

“Oh. You must have come through the cave.”

“What cave?”

“On Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. It’s the year 1133, on Earth. My name is Irene. Irene de Vries.”

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