Expelled: Explanted (Part I)

< > Entire Story

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2, and by Pixlr AI image editor

Elder Caverness was being blackmailed. He didn’t know how, but this stranger knew everything about his past. They knew where he had been. They knew what he had done. He was a war criminal, on the run from an authority who may not even exist. The Extremus was the best place for him to hide, because it was so random and inconsequential. That was the whole purpose of the mission, to travel so far from civilization that it no longer interacted with anyone else. He would die on this ship, safe from his past. But the stranger could ruin that. He wasn’t afraid of being found out by someone on this ship per se, but if the truth came out, it could get back to someone who really could get him in trouble. The blackmailer wanted him to do something that he shouldn’t. The Captain asked him to create a device that could transport any passenger back to the launch point, on the day of launch. There were those here who wished they had never come aboard, and this was their chance to undo that mistake. Unfortunately, that wasn’t what this device would do. It would instead banish them to the nearest sufficiently massive terrestrial planet. It didn’t even need to have an atmosphere. The blackmailer just wanted Captain Yenant to be on it. They must have had plans for him, though, because if they just wanted the Captain dead, it would be much easier to program the device to teleport him to interstellar space. Why did it have to be a planet?

There was a knock on the door. Elder didn’t use any cameras, or anything. He was the smartest engineer on the whole vessel, but he still liked to do some things the old school ways. He opened it to find a stranger. Whether it was the same person who was coercing him to do all this was still in question. They never met face to face.

“I’m your blackmailer.” Well, that answered that question. “Did you do what I asked? The Captain will be getting impatient. I calculated an 83% chance that he reaches his breaking point with you today, and that could result in him giving up on this project entirely. That cannot happen.”

Elder slipped his gloves back on, and showed the stranger what he had created. He couldn’t touch it with his bare hands, or he would become one of its victims. Pulling the string, and pressing the button activated it, but anyone who ever came into contact with it would succumb to it. “No, don’t,” he cried when the stranger reached for it.

“Oh, did you think that I wasn’t going on the trip?” He smirked, and took the transporter from Elder. “That’s the whole point, my friend.” He twirled it in his hands, and then handed it back. I calculate a 97% chance that he will use this between forty and fifty-five minutes after receiving it. Please message me when he takes it.”

“What if I can’t get him to touch it?” Elder asked.

“Do whatever you can.” That was odd. Getting rid of Halan Yenant seemed to be this man’s entire motivation. If that wasn’t actually the case, what was he really after?

Shortly after the blackmailer left the room, the Captain did come to check on his progress, and he did retrieve what he believed to be the recall device, but he did not touch it personally. He instead ordered his lieutenant, Rita Suárez to take hold of it. They were suspicious of him right away. Elder should have been cooler about it. He was a pretty good actor. This was absolutely not the first time he had gone undercover. It used to be his entire job. But maybe that was okay, because again, the man who made him do this didn’t seem to care one way or the other anymore. He appeared to be obsessed with probability, so maybe he knew that Halan would touch it eventually, or maybe he wanted Rita to be transported all along, and the best way to make that happen was to pretend that Halan was his target. Elder was pretty smart, but he had no illusions about whether it was possible for someone to outthink or outshine him. He was too old for that, though perhaps not as old as everyone believed. They all called him Old Man because he wanted them to; because it was easier to hide this way.

Rita wasn’t the only one who touched the device, though. Due to their suspicion, they forced Elder himself to place hands upon it as well. He had to find a way to take himself out of the queue. After the Captain and Lieutenant were gone, he got back to work. He ran over to the sink, and started scrubbing his hands vigorously with soap and water. There was a coating on the device, which left a residue on any holder’s skin. Elder had created it, but using a formula that the blackmailer provided. Surely it would come off if you knew that it was there, and worked hard to get rid of it. Right? Maybe not. He kept scrubbing and scrubbing, but his autodermatologist kept detecting a foreign substance. It was still there. He kept scrubbing, but it was just wasting time. The transporter was going to spirit—or maybe it wouldn’t. He threw his watch around his wrist, and activated the regular teleporter. He kept jumping all over the room. Maybe flooding his skin with temporal energy would get rid of the residue. After all, this energy didn’t usually just stay on you forever. It would dissipate, and in this case, hopefully remove anything related from his hands. No, the autoderma still read positive. Shit. There really was no hope. He only had one choice left.

He grabbed his emergency evacuation bag. It was called a Harsh Environment Survival Kit, and they were standardized in this time period in Earth’s stellar neighborhood. Once people started traveling to the stars, researchers came up with something called SCR&M, which stood for Safety, Compartmentalization, Redundancy, & Modularization. Bags like this one were designed to protect against any eventuality, such as having to abandon ship. Older time periods referred to it as a go-bag. Obviously, it could be tailored to one’s specific needs, but there were some strong recommendations, like shelter, air, water, and food. The one that Elder built for himself was unique, and filled with technology that not everyone in the universe even knew existed, like this teleporter gun, which...didn’t have much charge left, but it would do. And most Heskits had collapsible toilets, but this one here led to a pocket dimension, which was of vital importance to Elder’s sanity. He quickly checked inventory, and then disappeared.

His personal teleporter wasn’t able to send him directly into the Hock section, but he was able to get close, and then break in using more traditional means. They were just in an interrogation room, so it wasn’t like he had to make it deep into the belly of the beast. The problem was, he didn’t really know how much time he had left. He reached the door, and could see them through the little window. It was Captain Yenant, Lieutenant Suárez, a fellow genius named Omega Parker, and an awful woman who everyone hated so much, they just called her Airlock Karen. There was no telling how many of them had touched the device. The entire crew could have played a sports game with it by now. Elder would not be able to save the lives of all those people, but he might be able to protect this small group here. That was assuming he couldn’t just stop them from activating it in the first place, which was the ultimate goal. He started banging on the glass. “Stop! I couldn’t wash my hands! It’s not good enough! Don’t push the button, button is bad!”

The group noticed him, but didn’t get up to open the door for more information.

“Don’t push that button!” he urged desperately.

While Halan and Rita were talking, probably trying to decide how to react to this development, Airlock Karen snatched the device from the table, and gave herself some room. Before anyone could stop her, she pulled the string, and pressed the button.

Elder had thought about putting on his suit and helmet, but there was no time. Luckily, the vacuum tent was designed to open and reseal quite quickly. He could have saved himself with little issue, but he wasn’t the only one in danger here. Of course, Airlock Karen came with him, as did Rita. No one else did, though, so Halan had never touched it, and neither had Omega. It was just the three of them. He pointed his teleporter gun at the both of them, calibrated it for the mass of two bodies, and summoned them to his position. He tugged on the string to expel the tent, which enveloped them like a Venus flytrap, wrapping them up completely. The valve on the emergency air tank opened on its own as well, and began to fill the space with a breathable atmosphere. They weren’t out of the woods yet, though. The ladies had passed out already, because they did not expect any of this to happen, but Elder was about to suffer from the same fate. He retrieved the dermal wand from the pack, and flashed it against his neck. He felt immediate relief, but his body still needed time to absorb the nanococktail. He gave Rita and Airlock Karen their own flashes, then let himself pass out next to them.

He awoke later to someone shaking him at the shoulders. He blinked, coughed, and checked his watch. It hadn’t been that long, so the tank had plenty left in it to keep them alive until he could get the carbon scrubber working. “Report,” Rita demanded.

“I screwed up,” Elder answered.

“Ya think?” Karen asked sarcastically.

“I’ll explain everything. Right now, we need to solve our immediate issue, which is air.” He reached into his bag to take out the scrubber, and the tablet. He handed Rita the latter. “Here, interface with the tent. Make sure there are no leaks or vulnerabilities.”

“Wait, where are we?” she pressed. When Elder just gave her a harsh look, she sighed, and did as she was told, because it was the only logical next step. They could talk and work at the same time.

“I don’t know where we are. We’re wherever the Extremus was when she pushed that blasted button.”

“Oh this is my fault?”

“Partially, yeah. I literally told you to not do it. Did you think that maybe there was some reason for that, and that I wasn’t just high and confused?”

“I don’t know who you are, or what power you yield. Maybe you were the admiral, who could have stopped Halan from letting me go home.”

“Vice Admiral Perran Thatch isn’t Halan’s boss. He’s an advisor.”

“Well, whatever.”

“Old Man,” Rita began, “why are we here?”

“Someone made me do this. I thought he was trying to remove Yenant from the equation, but now I’m thinking that he wanted all three of us to be here instead. He’s smart. He’s real smart. He knew things that he shouldn’t have known. About me.”

“Halan was always suspicious of you. No one knows where you come from, or who gave you the job that you had.”

“I gave it to myself. I’m good with computers.”

“How do we get back to the ship?” Rita asked him.

“We’ll worry about that later,” Elder insisted.

“Later is too late,” Karen argued. “The ship will be out of range by then.”

“Extremus travels two light years every day,” Elder volleyed. “It’s well out of range already. I didn’t want to put the horse before the cart by explaining the long-term goal so soon, but our only hope of returning is to go back in time, which will...take time.”

“I never understood that,” Rita said, almost getting comfortable here, but still checking for leaks. “Why does it seem like it’s easier to go back in time than to go faster than light? The reframe engine has a maximum speed, but couldn’t someone build something that surpasses it? Aren’t they basically the same thing?”

“The difference is that the power required to travel through time scales linearly with mass, and distance from egress to ingress. Faster-than-light travel, on the other hand, scales exponentially from a high starting value. All current theoretical designs demand types of power generation that we do not yet have. A hypothetical ship with true FTL would probably have to be gigantic from the onset, and the more you want to pack on it, the more powerful the power source has to be. It suffers from similar downsides as the rocket equation. You want more payload, you need more fuel. To add more fuel, you need a bigger ship. You got a bigger ship, you need more fuel. It’s a vicious cycle that a time machine would have no trouble with. That’s not to say that building one will be easy. Back on Extremus, I had resources. Here, we’re tied to what I was able to carry in my bag, and whatever is here on this world.”

“I don’t suppose there’s enough for all three of us,” Rita reasoned.

He looked between the two of them. “The pack is made with one survivor in mind, but we can stretch it out if we’re careful.” He finished engaging the carbon scrubber, so he hung it up near the ceiling, and took the tablet back to interface with it too. “We’ll have to ration food, and really be careful about how we recycle our waste, but we should be okay. Water is our main concern as it’s the most difficult to insulate from leakage. We will be drinking our own urine for a while.”

“We do that anyway,” Airlock Karen said dismissively.

“Not like this,” Elder said with a heavy sigh. “The miniature filters we’re limited to don’t do much for the taste. But I think I can program the dayfruit seeds to produce extra sugar to mask the taste a little.” Dayfruit was a genetically engineered food that someone came up with centuries ago. It weighed about five pounds, and could provide a single person’s entire nutritional needs for one day. Under ideal circumstances, one took about a week to grow, but to conserve water, they would have to lengthen the growing period intentionally.

Rita sighed and looked around at their new prison. A lone survivor could go a bit crazy in the limited space, so the three of them should be total maniacs within only a few weeks. “I need an inventory of everything that we have on hand. After that, you’ll need to come up with a survival plan with extension contingencies. Once you’re done with those, start working on the escape plan. I’m not going to give you a time limit for when we need to be back on Extremus, but I will tell you that the answer is not never. Debra, I see you. It’s not his job to get you home. Gatewood is far too far away to worry about right now. So while he’s working on his assignments, and I’m setting up the dayfruit grower hourglasses, it will be your job to shut up. Do you think you can handle that?”

There was a knock on the tent.

< > Entire Story

Microstory 2175: Belly in the Saucer

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2, and by Pixlr AI image editor

A few weeks ago, I had a bird problem. House sparrows were nesting above my balcony, and a few of the baby birds almost died, so I first had to save them so they could grow up and fledge away. Once they were gone, I sealed up the gap underneath the next ceiling to prevent them from nesting there again. Today, an adolescent sparrow perched on the railing of my balcony. It sat there for a pretty long time, jerking its little neck around, looking for either food or danger. There’s no way to know this, but I felt like it was one of the nestlings that I stuck back up with their brothers and sisters, come home to see the old place. I know that birds can’t feel nostalgic. At least, I think I know that, I don’t know for sure. Do they? In all likelihood, it was a completely unrelated bird who just wanted to be there in that moment. But perhaps not. Perhaps it could remember my scent (even though I wore gloves) and knew that I was not a threat to it. I opened the door to see how close I could get, pretty confident that just the sound of the latch would be enough to scare it off, but I was wrong. It stuck around, and just watched me. I shut the door, once again sure that it would be too startled by the noise, but when I turned back around, it was still there. It might have hopped over a few centimeters, but other than that, it was totally chill. I sat down at my little table, and took out my phone to catch up on the headlines. That’s pretty much all I do, just skim the news stories without reading any of the stories in depth. If it’s a good headline, it tells you all you need to know, and if it’s not, the full story probably isn’t worth reading anyway. If it’s a topic that I’m particularly interested in, then I will tap on it, though. The bird, meanwhile, stayed there. At one point, I reached behind myself to the corner where I keep one of my plants, and removed the drip saucer from underneath. It was totally dry, which probably means that I should water the plant, even though it looked fine. I set the saucer on the table, and scooted it away from me, closer to the bird. I don’t know what it’s like to be a bird, but their legs and feet are so tiny. I would think that they would get tired of standing on them, and even more tired of perching. I thought maybe it could rest on its belly in the saucer. It was a stupid idea. It didn’t understand that that’s what I intended, so it didn’t get in, but that would have made for a cooler story, wouldn’t it have? There’s really no point to anything I’m saying. I thought that it was just a nice little innocuous anecdote to tell you while I’m on my mini-vacation. If you didn’t like it, maybe my next post will be more interesting. Oh, and speaking of which, I now have a million subscribers to my blog, so there’s that too. Okay, talk later!

Microstory 2174: To Be Distributed

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2

I had my last official meeting with my parole officer today. Since my sentence has been commuted, it’s no longer a legal requirement. You’ll recall that I was only assigned one in the first place because on paper, I went to prison, I just didn’t have to literally step foot inside of the facility. Well...I mean, I did later while I was staying in the infirmary section for my fungal infection a couple of months ago, but you know what I meant by that. I still have my community service left to do, but lots of people complete their hours without a PO at all, so the judge decided that I didn’t need one either. I hope that we can still be friends, though I recognize that this may not be appropriate, nor even possible. He’s a great guy who I think goes above and beyond in his job. He’s helped me out in a number of ways that I don’t think he was ever expected to. I’ve actually met a couple of his other parolees, and he wasn’t giving me any special treatment. That’s just who he is. He actually cares about us, and wants us to succeed, and isn’t just waiting for us to screw up. He derives no joy from putting people back in jail, though it has reportedly happened a few times over his career. I dunno, maybe I’ll just never see the man again. That would be all right too. I’m starting a new chapter in my life. I have a new job, and I still have to figure out what to do with all this money that y’all donated to me. It’s processing to my account. It could be a few days until it’s fully ready to be distributed.

I have some ideas of where it’s going to go, but I still need to do the math, because it’s going to be split amongst a number of different charitable organizations. They all involve the previously incarcerated. They need jobs, homes, and therapy to help them cope with being back in a world where their daily routines are no longer being controlled by someone else. Having been in intermittent jail, I didn’t experience much of this, I only got a taste. But it’s an overlooked characteristic of prison life. Yeah, for the most part, you’re not stuck in your cell 24/7, only eating slop, and drinking contaminated water. You usually get to go outside. But only at certain times, and for a certain duration. And it can be taken away from you if you do something that they don’t like. You can’t see your friends whenever you want, you can’t even choose your sleep schedule. That’s a hard life, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to go back to the way it was before you were placed in there. I feel compelled to give back, so I suppose I should thank you for contributing to my unauthorized CauseTogether campaign. Do not take that as an invitation to start a new one in my name. I won’t tolerate that a second time, I’ll seek legal action, and if nothing else, make you look bad for not respecting my wishes. If you want to do some good for the world, then that website has a number of other campaigns that will be more than willing to take your money. Or you can start your own that doesn’t have anything to do with me. That site also has other features besides just temporary campaigns, so check those out. I’ll post the complete list of the organizations that I choose for the 50K later, so you can give directly to them too. You could perform community service too. When I’m better, I’ll be going back to Homes for Humankind, which actually has a special program that focuses on halfway homes, which have more specific needs. I’ll probably be giving them some money too. I know that it’s not an either-or situation, where you either donate or volunteer, but it does feel like I should kind of share the wealth a little more, doesn’t it?

Microstory 2173: Fighting the Cause Captain

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2, and by Pixlr AI image editor

Today was meant to be a day of chilling. I’m done with my last job, and I’ve not yet officially started my new job. I was trying to have a short vacation, because I don’t know how crazy and hectic things are going to be. The facilities staff at the jail are working to get a workspace available to me for Monday. Hopefully they will not have worked too hard at it, because I’m sure I’ll be recovered enough to handle much of it myself. I really wanna get in there, and find and execute my own vision, since I know they have plenty of other work that they need to be worried about. That’s why I wanted to rest for the rest of the week, so I could be prepared for that. Unfortunately, my stress levels are through the roof. When you set up a charity campaign in CauseTogether.hope, there are a number of ways that you can format it. There can be an end date, or not. You can target a specific figure, and refund everyone’s money if it’s not reached, or only refund them if a given percentage of the goal isn’t received, which could be as low as 0%. They can even place a maximum amount, which when reached, will instantly close off all further donations. This should all be told to you upfront on the campaign’s page, so if you run across one that doesn’t divulge what they’ll be doing with your money, or under what circumstances they’ll charge you, report that to the administrators, because that goes against their policy. Anyway, for the campaign that an anonymous stranger set up to pay for my medical bills, they set a min/max of $50,000 with no target date in mind. Why is that number so high? Gee, maybe it has something to do with the fact that the person who did this “on my behalf” doesn’t know me, nor my financial situation. They don’t even know how much my total medical bills are. I wasn’t planning on telling you this, but after insurance, I was only going to have to pay roughly $14,000. I have really good insurance, because the company I work for has really good insurance options.

The CT campaign has ended, because they reached their goal in a matter of days, but I don’t plan on taking a single cent from it for myself. The only reason they reached this absurdly high goal was because I threatened to give the money to an incarcerated serial killer. I don’t think I was ever going to do that. I’ve not even researched who that might be, because I hoped that this remark would spell the end of it. It didn’t occur to me that some donors might give specifically to see that happen. What can a person serving life in prison do with all that money? Give it to corrupt guards so he can get a flatscreen TV, and a king-size bed in his own private cell? I really don’t know, and I don’t want to think about it anymore. I’m fighting the Cause Captain who is still anonymous, and asking for—nay, demanding—my banking information so that they can transfer the money to me. My lawyer says that they would have ways of sneaking me the funds even without my permission. Even though I could theoretically just leave that 50K sitting there in whatever account they ended up creating, people did sacrifice their money, even if it was for all the wrong reasons, so something should probably be done with it. I don’t know what. All I know is that I’m not taking it. My therapist advised me to not get so worked up about it. The deed is done, and I don’t have the power to refund the Cause Champions. I really should donate it to some other charity. Hit me up if you have ideas, I guess. Again, it’s 50,000, so it doesn’t have to only be one charity, if you guys send me multiple good ideas.

Microstory 2172: Better If I’m Flexible

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2, and by Pixlr AI image editor

I had an appointment at the hospital today. I was going to see the doctor, but he was busy, so a couple of nurses just took care of it. They measured my vitals, and took notes. They also took images to have analyzed by a radiologist. I’m recuperating about as well as should be expected given the extent of my injuries. There’s nothing that I should be particularly worried about. They want to see me again in a few weeks just to be sure my x-rays continue to follow the healing pattern. While I was still in the appointment, I got an email back from CauseTogether.hope. They say that the campaign to raise funds for my bills doesn’t violate any of their policies, so they’re unable to take it down for me. If I want, I can further appeal the decision, but I shot off a quick text to my lawyer, who thinks that probably nothing will come of it. I’m actively advertising my medical condition to the general public. My only legal argument could have been that the page interferes with my sense of privacy, but I’ve already let that ship sail. My therapist told me that my decision to be brutally honest here would come back to bite me in the ass. Well, not in so many words, she said it. Anyway, my lawyer said that we could try to take legal action against them, but I’m still on the other side of a completely different legal battle, though one which is also about the transparency of my posts. Do I have a problem? Am I just making my own life worse? Should I be changing every thing about what I do with my time, and how I do it? No, that’s crazy. This site saved a kidnapped girl, and gave me a job. I can’t just ignore those benefits because it has also come with consequences. As they would say back on my world, the invention of the ship was the invention of the shipwreck. That doesn’t mean they should never have invented the ship. Where would we be without them? Isolated, monolithic, or maybe even wiped out.

I did receive some good news, though. A subscriber slid into my DMs with an idea for a position that could be on my new consulting team for the jail. They think that we should hire a Reentry Specialist. While our work will mostly focus on what to do with the guests while they’re staying with us—and for this first job, for people who only come in intermittently—we would still benefit from hearing from someone with experience in helping the formerly incarcerated adapt to life on the outside. And anyway, we’re hoping that this is more of a pilot program, and less of a one-time thing. We may branch out to other facilities if we can prove the method effective, or even inspire others to come up with their own ideas around the country, or perhaps the world. The subscriber who suggested this job says that she has experience in this sort of thing, and she would be willing to move here from Wyoming if we offered it to her. Of course, we’re not there yet. I’m still doing a little work for my original job at this company, but I’ve written it down, and we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Speaking of my current job, it will probably be over tomorrow. I’m just putting the finishing touches on the transition, and won’t need to be involved with any of that stuff for much longer. I think I’m just going to take a few days off of work, both to continue recovering physically, and to sort of reset my brain. My new friends for Homes for Humankind want to get together for a meal if I’m up for it, so I may do that. Their schedule is ever-shifting, but immovable once it does shift, so it will be better if I’m the flexible one. Hopefully we can get something on the books before I get back to the grind.

Microstory 2171: Not Gonna Happen, Buddy

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2

I’m feeling a lot better today, but I’m still taking it easy. It doesn’t take me five minutes to get from the bed to the bathroom anymore, so I call that a win. I have a follow-up appointment with the doctor tomorrow. They don’t technically have to sign off on me going back to work fulltime, but my employer will expect me to heed their advice, whatever it is. I won’t be starting my new contract work for the jail until next week either way. I’m currently in the middle of making sure that all of my work is being done by others on my team. They already had the pick up the slack while I was hurt and completely unable to, so it’s not like I have to spend hours training them. It’s protocol for us to share accounts so that we can fill in for each other as the need arises. We go on vacation, and it’s not like I was the first person in the company to take sick leave. So they know what they’re doing, and they’ll be fine without me until management can find a replacement. They’re probably going to be hiring a lot of people, both to fill out this new department that we’re building, and to backfill the jobs that become vacant from internal movements. They’re talking about hiring an assistant for me. They may only be a temp while I’m having trouble moving around in a physical sense. I don’t think that I need that, but at the same time, if they are willing to pay for it, who am I to say that this hypothetical future person doesn’t deserve the work? Back home, my sister was an international music teacher, who lived all over the world. It was often customary for her to have a housekeeper of some kind, not because she was suddenly in the one-percent, but because people needed jobs, and she could spare the money.

In my free time, I’m trying to come up with some initial ideas for how my new team will work. We’ll all meet together in one room, but I’ve broken them into four categories. The biggest one is for the counselors, like the behavior psychologist, and an experienced jail counselor. We need people on the technical side, like a computer expert, and a logistician. We’ll have legal too, like a criminal lawyer, and even a correctional officer. I’m thinking about including an immigration lawyer, because it may be necessary for some of the guests, but I don’t know about that yet. I don’t believe I’ll be putting a law enforcement officer on the team, though that could change in the future. Nothing has happened yet, and it’s not like we can’t hire new team members after the initial team is established. Lastly, there’s the social aspect, like a social worker. That might sound like it should be in the Psychology subdepartment, but I feel like there are more I can put in there who will deal more with community involvement than mental and emotional support. Obviously, all of this has to be approved by whoever my new boss ends up being, and the jail. Well, the jail can’t be involved in the hiring of the specific people, because that would constitute co-employment, and that is illegal. But they can give their input for what kind of positions will be on the team. After all, they’re the ones paying for the consulting. If we try to hire, say, an investment banker, or a surgeon, well...we may somehow find value in their contributions, but they get paid too much, so the jail would have the right to say, “not gonna happen, buddy.” They may decide that they only want one psychologist, or ask us to not hire a correctional officer, but let a current employee join our meetings. We’ll see. Let me know in the comments if you have any other ideas. I can’t spare the money for you, though.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 31, 2452

« < » > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2, and by Pixlr AI image editor

One of the crew members started counting down the distance. The physics of extradimensional space weren’t very intuitive. The equilibrium was proof that the membrane was all around. It wasn’t like one would have to travel a certain distance to reach it. They should be able to break free from anywhere. The fact that the Transit moved so quickly was just its way of accomplishing this, as opposed to other methods, like temperature and pressure, or surgical strikes. Still, there was a physical boundary, which would kill them if they collided with it, and it was approaching fast. Or rather, they were approaching it. In order to combat this, they needed Olimpia’s umbrella.

“Eleven units!” the engineer called out about a second or two after saying that it was thirteen. “Nine! Seven! Sir, we need to abort!”

“There’s no time, Dawn,” Freya reminded her. “We have to trust in magic.”

“This will work!” Olimpia insisted. “We just have to get closer before it actually starts...w—w—working.” She wasn’t super confident in this.

“Three! One!”

They held their breaths again.

“Two! Four! Six. Eight. Ten.” Dawn was beginning to relax.

“It is working, Olimpia, keep holding!”

“For how long!” Olimpia questioned. Increasing the length of the kasma itself was proving to be far harder than simply holding back the Lucius bomb back on Ex-467. And this time, she probably couldn’t ask someone else to give her a break, or they would be destroyed during the hand-off.

Dawn’s numbers kept going up and up and up as the walls of the universe cleaved for them. For Olimpia. “Fifty-five, fifty-six...infinite.”

“Infinite?” Freya asked.

“Infinite,” she repeated. “We’re not in the kasma anymore. We’re in the outer bulk. She just built a canal for us.”

Marie started to massage Olimpia’s back. “Ya done good, kid.”

Olimpia was breathing heavily, and hanging her head low. “I think I need to go to the med car too.”

Marie caught her when she keeled over, and teleported her away.

Leona held one finger up when Azura tried to say something to her. She and Angela were listening to the state of their teammates. Both Olimpia and Ramses were probably going to be all right eventually. “Okay. What was that?”

“Are you talking to me now?” Azura asked.

“Yes, Azura, go ahead.”

“I don’t have the coordinates for very many universes. I’ve sort of...burned bridges in most of them, and I don’t know how the Maramon in Providenciaverse would react to you, since your history with their species is...complicated.”

“Can we get back into Salmonverse from here?” Angela asked.

“The membrane is too thick,” Dawn explained as she was looking at her computer. I can get you back in, but...”

“But what?” Freya encouraged.

“Not in your present day,” Dawn clarified. “The part of the barrier that runs throughout the entire time period is thicker. It’s like if you sealed a box with tape, and then wrapped a whole bunch of tape around the middle until the whole roll was gone.”

Azura looked at her like she was crazy. “You’ve heard of adhesive tape?”

“I grew up on a fairly primitive planet. Yes, I’ve heard of tape.”

“Where can we go?” Leona pressed.

“Where’s Treasure?” Freya asked, knowing that no one here knew the answer, or they never would have been in the kasma in the first place.

Leona sighed in the middle of the silence. “Matt, get back here, please,” she said into her comms. “I know, but you’re not a doctor. Trust whoever’s there to take care of them, and come back. You’re the only one who can do this.”

Mateo reluctantly jumped back to the executive car. “What is it?”

“I need you to reach out to Amber. We’re looking for someone in the bulk, and she’s the only one we can communicate with from presumably anywhere.”

Mateo looked at everyone in the group. All of the delegates from the Sixth Key were still here, watching him like eagles over a river. “I could use some space.”

“Olkan, take our guests to...” Azura grumbled, and massaged her face with both of her hands. “I dunno, nothing is ready here yet. I guess use car six. It would not be a bad idea to remodel some VIP living compartments at some point.”

A guy apparently named Olkan led the delegates away. Besides Leona, Mateo, Angela, Freya, and Azura, only Carlin stayed behind, which was fine. Mateo found a seat to relax in. Amber appeared to be able to reach out to him psychically whenever she wanted, and with very little effort, but it was a lot harder for him since he wasn’t a psychic himself; he was just bonded to her. He closed his eyes, and let himself drift away from this plane of existence. A few minutes later, he reopened them. But it wasn’t actually him. His consciousness was being suppressed. Amber smiled his lips, and looked amongst the small group, settling on Azura. “You must be Azura. I’ve met your brothers and sisters.”

“How are they doing?” Azura asked.

Amber shrugged Mateo’s shoulders. “They were all right, last I saw them. They left in their little grenade thing. Said something about a different war.”

“We need to talk to Thack Natalie Collins,” Azura went on. “You can do that?”

“No, we are not bonded,” Amber answered. “I can talk to Sanaa Karimi, though, and there is a point in the metaphysical history of the bulkverse when those two cross paths. Would you like me to call her?”

“That would be great,” Freya said in Azura’s stead.

Amber shifted her gaze over to Freya. “One moment, please.” Mateo’s eyes glazed over, quite literally. The irises and pupils were all but gone. Another few minutes later, the trance was broken again. Mateo looked over at Leona. “Hey, bitch.”

“Sanaa?” Leona questioned.

“Now with one hundred percent more penis. How the heck are ya?”

“Where are you?” Leona asked. “Is Thack there? Can you ask her where Treasure is for us?”

“Treasure’s here too, dum-dum.”

“Where?” Freya asked frantically. “Where are you?”

“Thack called it Stoutverse. We’re havin’ a picnic. Whole gang’s here.”

“Stoutverse,” Freya echoed. “Have you heard of that, Azura?”

“No,” Azura answered, shaking her head.

“Is this the Transit?” Sanaa questioned.

“Yeah.”

“She’s expecting you,” Sanaa said like it was no big deal. “ So you must figure out how to get here at some point.”

“What did you mean by the whole gang?” Azura asked Sanaa. “Who is that? Is anyone else there who might have the coordinates?”

“Well, sure,” Sanaa began. “The Crossover, the Prototype, some chick in a sexy spacesuit, a dude in a very colorful coat.”

“Dawn,” Azura said quickly. “Remember I told you about the Crossover. We’ve never formed a link before, because there’s no way to know who’s in control of it, but now we have a baseline. Piggyback off of Mateo’s psychic connection, and send a ping. We’ll have our coordinates.”

“Later, sluts!” Mateo blinked. “It was nice to meet you all.” That was probably Amber. He blinked again. “You’re all gonna die.” he said in a darker tone, and with furrowed brows. He blinked again, and widened his eyes in horror. “Help!” he cried, in a higher pitched voice, but quietly, like someone might do if mimicking a cheering crowd without raising their voice too much. One more blink, and suddenly the Time Shriek started to echo throughout the car, and reportedly in other cars down the line. It wasn’t coming from Mateo’s mouth, but it was probably triggered by the multiversal link. They covered their ears in pain, as it was far louder than it usually was.

Azura reached over to the controls, and somehow figured out how to shut it off. “Jesus. What the hell was that?”

“You’ve never heard that before?” Angela asked, shocked.

“No, I’ve heard it before, of course, everyone has. I just mean why here, why now, why that frickin’ bad?”

“Mateo, what do you remember?” Leona asked.

“I remember how it felt,” he told her. It was fine when Amber and Sanaa were in my head, but not after that. It was...disturbing in a way that was all too familiar.”

“You know who that was,” Angela said, not as a question.

“It was Meredarchos. He’s not happy with us.”

Everyone exchanged looks.

“If he’s not where Treasure is, then I don’t care,” Freya determined. “If he is, then we have to go. We have to go either way.”

“Dawn?” Azura posed.

“I have the coordinates. Well, I have a trail of breadcrumbs anyway.”

“Then let’s go.”

The trip took them most of the rest of the day, though their aging and metabolisms were halted. Ramses and Olimpia recovered fully in this time, thanks to their superior substrates, and the work of the medic, Spectra. She checked Mateo out too, though they weren’t exactly equipped to detect issues that resulted from psychic connections, or psychic intrusions. One thing that Mateo was able to tell was that the person who cried for help at the end was not Meredarchos, but a fourth consciousness, and he didn’t know who it was, or where they were. He offered to reach out to Amber again, or even try to contact Sanaa, but Leona forbade it. It was not safe; what happened before could be repeated, and Meredarchos might be able to find a full foothold next time. They just all sat there and waited until the journey was over.

Finally, they pierced the membrane of what was evidently called Stoutverse. They could hear the train horn blare, which Dawn said they were unable to figure out how to disable. The viewscreens showed confirmation of Sanaa’s claims. The Prototype and Crossover were sitting next to each other in a wide open field. Several picnic tables were a few dozen meters away, but only a handful of people were there, watching them until the spacetrain came to a complete stop. Azura and Team Matic followed after Freya ran out. “Where’s my daughter?” she demanded to know

Thack pointed towards the sky, and looked up. “On the frontlines. The Darning Wars have begun.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Freya said angrily.

“It means the Transit needs to get up there, and start defending this planet,” Thack replied. “Anyone who doesn’t want to participate should disembark now. They’ll be safe here on the ground.”

Azura lifted her watch up to her mouth. “Evacuate the passengers. We’re going into battle. This is not a drill.”

“Get her back right now,” Freya ordered. She was also talking to a man standing next to Thack. “This is not what we talked about. We agreed to let her be more independent, not a soldier.”

“Zek made the decision to pull her up there,” another woman explained.

Freya gave her a dirty look, and then turned her face away again. “I don’t care that she asked to watch. Send her back down to me this instant.”

A teenage girl, a twentysomething guy, and a thirtysomething woman appeared on the ground. “Mom, why did you do that? We could talk later.”

“Are you fighting the Ochivari up there?”

“The Cormanu is the safest place I could be right now. And I need to learn.”

“That’s not true, young lady,” the man said, the implication being that he was her father. “The Primus has a bunker. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that she went up too,” he loud whispered to Freya. “It was only for a couple of minutes, though.”

They hadn’t realized that Azura had run back to the Transit. “Fray, are you coming?” She wasn’t urging her, just asking.

“Do what you gotta do!” Freya yelled back.

“Hi, I’m Primus Naraschone Mihajlović. This is my lieutenant, Kineret McArthur.” The other stranger reached out, and started shaking hands, but she kept messing it up, as if she were still learning how.

Leona showed her Mario Matic’s special watch, which recalibrated itself to every new destination’s timekeeping standards. “Is this the date and year right now?”

“May 31, 2452,” Primus Mihajlović recited with a nod. “It is.”

All of Team Matic were surprised. It was quite the coincidence, that the time period was close to what it was when they left home. Perhaps it was done intentionally, and the plan was for them to come here all along, but whoever was pulling the strings was waiting for the right moment. They may have let it go, but if they had broken the accelerated time bubble early enough, and returned to their regular pattern, this was bound to be one of the days that they were in the timestream. Did their pattern follow them here? Before they could dwell on it, though, most people there suddenly disappeared. Other than the team, only Carlin, Thack, the Primus, and her lieutenant remained. “Uhh...can any of you teleport? Please say yes.”

« < » > Table of Contents

Orthogradient: People of Stoutverse (Part VI)

< > Entire Story

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2

Primus Naraschone Mihajlović sat at the edge of her desk, body bent forwards at her waist, hands braced tightly against the wood. Splinters dug in underneath her fingernails, but she didn’t pay them any mind. She barely noticed, and she almost felt like she deserved it. The war was not going in her favor. The enemy just kept coming, and they couldn’t keep up with it. The aliens seemingly had an infinite supply of fighters, and there was no competing with that tactic. The home field advantage could only take them so far. If they could only figure out where these portals were going to form, she might be able to bottleneck them, or something, but they appeared to be random. Random or intentional. Or both. There was a knock on the door. “Enter.”

Her assistant and Head Bodyguard, Kineret McArthur walked in. “There’s another one.”

“Send a squadron. I’ll watch them all die from here.”

“The ship,” Kineret began to explain, “it’s different. It looks different, and as soon as the squadron responded tactically, it retreated.”

Naraschone perked up. “They’re adapting. Send a second squadron. Overwhelm them with everything we got.”

Kineret held her finger against her earpiece. “They don’t think it’s the Zippers. They sent a message in binary, so the scientists need time to convert it. The alien ship is projecting the golden spiral on the front. That’s a symbol of balance for us. Maybe it means the same thing to them.” She jerked her chin as she listened more. “More holographic images are coming in. Smiling humans. The vierkam heart. A...sort of half vierkam heart. They’re interpreting the next one as an olive branch.”

“What, are they surrendering?”

Kineret kept listening. “They converted the binary code. It’s just text. It says, we come in peace. Take us to your leader.”

“Have the General send them my coordinates.”

“Sir, I would strongly advise—”

“I’m not going to last another week in office, Kin. They’re this close to voting me out. Egypt and Holland are prepared to back my replacement now, which means he officially has enough votes. Dying at the direct hands of an enemy would at least make my biography read less pathetic. Give them my coordinates.”

Kineret turned away, and whispered the orders into her mouthpiece.

A couple of minutes later, as Naraschone was putting her blazer back on, a woman suddenly appeared in the office. “How did you do that?”

“I was born with it,” the stranger replied. “Are you this world’s prime leader?”

“Yes, I’m Primus Naraschone Mihajlović.” She held her hand out, palm up, as was the custom.

The woman looked down at it. “I don’t know what to do with that. Where I’m from, we hug upon first meeting. Most of my crew shakes hands like this.” She pantomimed moving her hand up and down, palm facing the side.

“We do it like this.” Naraschone swung her arm over, and palm circled Kineret, but Naraschone’s hand was on top, since she was the superior.

The stranger smiled, and reached out to mimic Kineret, but as an honored guest, it was her hand that should be on top. “Eliana Prime.” That’s just a coincidence. It’s literally my surname.”

Nararschone carefully turned her hand over for her, and performed the ritual. “So, you’re not from our world either? Humans evolved on other planets, or did you simply arrive in a form that I am supposedly more comfortable with?”

“It’s more complicated than that. I’m from a different universe. My crew all hail from different universes beyond that. We came together to fight the Ochivari.”

“Is that what they’re called?” Kineret questioned. She took out her handheld device to write that down, and take any other necessary notes.

Eliana lifted her chin as if to watch her type, but couldn’t really see, and didn’t care to. “Ochivari is plural. Singular is Ochivar. They originated on a planet called Worlon in Salmonverse. They evolved from semiparasitic insectoids which were accidentally introduced to human DNA millions of years prior. We don’t understand the mechanism by which the foreign code was integrated into their systems, but we hypothesize that it gave their ancestors a survival advantage over their cousins  who did not receive it.”

“This is good stuff, keep going,” Kineret encouraged.

“I’m no expert,” Eliana clarified. “I’m just the teleporter on the team. I’m not even the main teleporter. If you would like to speak with our captain, I could take you to her, but be warned, she is decidedly not human. Her form can be alarming to some.”

“I can handle it,” Naraschone insisted. “I’ve seen plenty of Zippers first hand.”

“Hold on,” Kineret interrupted, holding her earpiece again. “Another one just appeared. Very different form too. It’s...quite large.”

Eliana looked pleased. “Azura and the Transit found us. Thank God, we could use their help. Have you been at war for a long time? Ochivari don’t usually fight physically. They generally release this virus—”

Kineret interrupted again, “it’s a giant cube. It just appeared in the middle of Plangol Field.”

“A cube?” Eliana asked. “That would be the Crossover. There’s no telling who’s in it right now. It changes hands, and I’ve not even begun to explain to you how time works for people who traverse the bulk.”

“If you’re a teleporter, that means you can get me there?” Naraschone asked. “It’s on the other side of the planet.”

“Sir, please,” Kineret urged.

Eliana held out both of her hands. “All aboard who’s coming aboard.”

Naraschone grasped one hand while Kineret hesitated. “I guess I have to go to protect you,” she lamented before taking Eliana’s other hand.

The three of them were standing before the large Crossover cube. A ship was just landing next to it at the same time. Eliana looked upon it with a sense of familiarity that she did not show the cube. A second...building maybe, appeared as well. It was much smaller, fit for only a handful of people. Humans started coming out of all three structures, but more were coming from their own portals, each of which sparkled and shined with two or three dozen brilliant colors. A small group appeared, releasing a blast of energy that was enough to blow everyone’s hair back, but not enough to knock them over. A spacewoman appeared to be literally tearing through the colorful fabric of spacetime. More of this sort of fabric rippled and waved next to her as a coat formed from the aether. The man wearing it pulled the hood back, and smiled. Glass cracked and shattered as another man forced himself through his breach. He reached back through, and helped a companion of his across. A woman slowly faded into view to their left, sitting cross-legged on the ground. Yet another woman burst out of nothing, and crash landed next to her, but she seemed to be okay.

Eliana recognized some of them, but not everyone. She walked over to greet the others from her ship as they were descending the ramp. It was hard to tell who was in charge at first. Unless they came in together, they expressed surprise at being there together. Naraschone would think that the small group from the giant cube would be the leaders, but they looked just as out of the loop as everyone else. It was the woman escorted by the man who literally punched his way here who stepped away from the forming crowd, towards Kiteran and Primus Mihajlović. “Hello Primus. I’m Thack Natalie Collins, temporary coordinator of the vanguard. I wanted everyone to come here so they could see what happens when the natives of a given world fight back. You may feel distress, but you are faring better than you realize. When the Ochivari come to a universe, they usually only do one of two things. They leave it alone, or they sterilize the entire population, and then bug out. You’re proof that they do not get to decide everything.”

“I don’t understand,” Naraschone admitted.

“We’ll talk more about it.” Thack turned to the crowd, which quieted down for her. “Travelers of the bulk, welcome to Stoutverse. The fighting has only begun here. What the Ochivari do not realize is that everything they’ve been doing so far have been only minor skirmishes. The first battle in a multiversal war is coming, and you are all here to bear witness.” She consulted her watch. “The Transit will be arriving within the hour. Until then, I’ll ask the current operators of the Crossover—specifically the managers of Kingdom Hotel—to prepare a meal for us all. Khuweka, if you will, please take the Cormanu back into orbit, scan for breaches, and protect this world until the Transit Army arrives. Your crew will stay with us.”

“I would be honored to, Miss Collins.” This must have been who Eliana was talking about. While everyone else here looked human, Khuweka was tall, white, and almost monstrous. She could be intimidating if she wanted to be, but her voice was soft and unimposing. There was only one other like her. He was originally in the small building, but he followed his brethren up the ramp into the Cormanu without asking for permission, or even saying a word at all. Naraschone didn’t even know if he was a man. He just looked more masculine to her.

There were more in the Crossover cube than the small group that came out of it at first, but Naraschone didn’t get the impression that it was anywhere near full capacity. Picnic tables appeared out of nowhere, but Eliana wasn’t the one who did it. Her ship, the Cormanu itself appeared to be a conscious entity, capable of transporting anything from anywhere on the planet. Probably no one was missing all this stuff right now since most people were trying to survive in the bunkers. Well, not most. They had yet to build sufficient facilities for the entire population of the planet. They never thought they would need anything like that. They should have been better prepared. Lives would have been spared.

Kineret was uncomfortable taking this time away from the chaos of war that they had been in the midst of for the last few years, but Thack Collins was confident that the two Maramon, as they were called, were capable of defending them from orbit. Some of the others who came here were not soldiers, but a lot of them were, so they could jump into action if another wave showed up. Eliana’s remark that they were from all different sorts of universes was true of those who did not arrive in the Cormanu. The man who escorted Miss Collins was father to a young woman on the Cormanu. Her mother was supposed to be coming next on the fabled Transit, which would reportedly mark the whole world’s salvation as it was the only thing actually designed for a war like this one. Naraschone was holding off on judgment until later. For now, they just enjoyed the food that a man named Bell prepared, and talked. The two locals stayed quiet at first to let the others catch up with each other. This was evidently a pretty big deal. They had never all come together like this. There were supposed to be an infinite number of universes out there, but there must be something special about this one. Thack called it Stoutverse, a term that the natives had never used for themselves, but if Naraschone had anything to do with it, they would start now.

Naraschone was laughing with a new friend she met named Curtis, who had an endless supply of interesting stories about his time in an unnamed universe where he was part of a group of superheroes. He was part of The Grenadiers now. But Kineret wasn’t listening to him anymore. She was instead listening to her earpiece, which kept a constant consolidated stream of battle chatter. She was genetically engineered to be able to comprehend multiple voices at once, allowing her to keep apprised on the situation from many sources at once. It was called the Unified Tactical Awareness System, and while a lot of key players around the world could use it effectively to some degree, she could parse the highest number of distinct channels of anyone, which was why she worked directly for the Primus of Earth. “What is it?”

Kineret looked up at the crew of the Cormanu, who appeared to be listening to their own radio system. “They know. Breaches all over the place. It’s a full tactical assault.” The whole crowd stopped talking as she faced her superior. “We need to get you to the bunker. Eliana, it’s back on the other side of the world.”

“The mass incursion,” Thack Natalie Collins said, standing up. “I predicted this, but timekeeping is difficult to measure for me. You have so many time zones.”

Ecrin, the Captain of the Prototype—the small building that only a handful of people crewed—stood up. “What do we do?”

“I’m not a military leader,” Thack replied. “I can’t tell you what to do. But given the low maneuverability of your respective machines...I suggest everyone convene on the Cormanu.”

“Diamond Zek,” Kivi said, “beam us all up.”

They nearly all disappeared, leaving behind only Naraschone, Kineret, Thack, Thack’s bodyguard and universe puncher, Limerick, and Eliana. “Where’s this bunker?” Eliana asked.

“Right underneath the International Assembly House,” Kineret answered as she was tapping on her handheld device. “I’ll get you the coordinates.” Before she could recite them, a loud horn blared in the distance. A giant, and particularly long, object raced towards them. It stopped suddenly, right between all of the other machines and the picnic tables.

A woman stepped out of it, and approached the small group. Others followed behind her. “Where’s my daughter?” she asked Thack.

Thack pointed towards the sky, and looked up. “On the frontlines. The Darning Wars have begun.”

< > Entire Story