The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 3, 2180

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Once again, Vitalie was already there when Leona returned to the timeline in pocket six, on September 3, 2180. She was still not an adult, even by Durune standards, which meant she was still going against her father’s wishes. “What do you have for me?” Leona asked, not bothering to chastise her.

“I’ll only be here for a minute. I just wanted to make sure you got in all right.” She pointed to a girl a few years older than her, who was walking towards them from the housing units.

“That’s Ecrin. She’s been assigned your guide in this pocket, and she’ll assist you with anything you need from here on out. Good luck, call me if you need me.”

“Leona Matic?” Ecrin asked, as if she could be anyone but. “Ecrin Cabral. Welcome to pocket six. I imagine you’ll want to start with Annora’s quarters.”

“Annora’s quarters?” Leona asked.

“Yes. This was her pocket. Did you not know that?”

“No, but now that I do I realize why what I’m looking for is likely here.” It made since. This dimension seemed a little bit larger than the others, with what appeared to be a more floriferous garden. “I should have known. Forgive me, my girlfriend was the investigator.”

“I understand.” They started to walk and talk. “Of course, her place is nicer than everyone else’s, but a few of us have been making sure no one squats in there. Besides not wanting to disturb any evidence for someone like you, it didn’t seem respectful to take over just because she wasn’t here. We actually figured she was dead, since the entrance was closed. Held a funeral, and everything.”

“You did?”

“Everyone here either knew her personally, or knows someone who did. She chose to surround herself with friends, which might have thrown off the compatibility math that’s causing all those problems in pocket one. I’m sorry about what happened to you in there.”

“It’s not your fault. Even the best of us can turn when put in a desperate situation. They’re just trying to survive.”

“Well, it’s not that hard,” Ecrin noted. “We have everything we need in here. Hell, we could all live and die here, and it would still be all right. You just need the right attitude.”

“Too true.” She looked at the stairway window as they were approaching Annora’s unit. “Hey, do you need help turning the sun back off? I’ve learned how to do it.”

“Everyone here has had enough sleep. We’re leaving it on for you. No one knows what’s gonna happen when you find that secret dimension.”

Leona’s temporal anomaly detector started beeping as soon as Ecrin opened Annora’s door. “Found it,” she declared.

Ecrin took a small radio transceiver, and spoke into it, “it is here. Move in.”

Leona could hear footsteps race up the stairs, reminding her of the horde of angry pocketers in pocket one. A group of people in tactical uniforms, carrying various and sundry weapons, marched into the apartment, and began to clear every room. “What the hell is this?”

“There’s a killer in here somewhere,” Ecrin explained. “We’re not gonna let him get away again.”

“That’s what I’m doing here,” Leona argued. “I’ll take him back with my emergency teleporter.”

“With all do respect, sir,” one of the tactical agents who appeared to be in charge of protecting Ecrin personally said, “we do not know what we’re up against. We don’t know what powers he has, or whether he has accomplices. We’ve been training for this for years.”

“Trained by who?”

“Whom,” Ecrin corrected.

“Trained by who?” Leona repeated.

“By me,” Ecrin answered.

“You? And where did you receive your training? Movies?”

“I was a mage protector for sixty years. Then after spending sixty years in a phallocratic prison, I joined the provisional government, serving as a guardsman for diplomatic leaders for five years. I trained under the salmon battalion during the temporary military state, then became an officer in the Intercity Police Department, operating primarily at the temporal anomaly division. I did that for five more years, until The Warren left. Now I’m going back to Earth to retire.”

“Oh,” was all Leona said.

“Yeah.”

“Well, you don’t look a day over—”

“Don’t do that joke,” she pleaded. “I’m ageless, but I can still blow my brains out after hearing the same cliché for the upteenth time. It’s been hard, looking this young, expecting people to take me seriously, but I’m used to the judgments.”

“No judgment here, I just didn’t know.” Without looking, Leona pointed to the back room. “The entrance to the seventh pocket is in there. How should we proceed?”

“This is your operation,” Ecrin said. “I’ll be going in with you, but you will run point, and my people will be out here to protect the civilians.”

Leona looked at the team of many agents, still maintaining their posts around the unit. “Are there any civilians?”

“We’re not on the manifest you have access to. There are more people in here than you can see.”

“What? My investigation relied on—”

“This is what Annora wanted. She wanted her own police force, and we obliged. Take it up with her.”

Leona sighed. “Let’s go.”

Ecrin turned towards her number two. “Lieutenant, you have the field.”

“Yes, sir.”

Leona and Ecrin entered the room alone together, and closed the door behind them. Leona took the detector out, and started waving it in front of the wall, which acted to materialize a portal. It was pink and sparkly, like a vertical puddle of toothpaste.

“Remember, you have point.”

“Yes, sir,” Leona replied. She cautiously walked through the puddle, only to find herself in a jail cell, completely naked. A second portal opened in the cell across from her, through which Ecrin exited, also naked. No, it wasn’t a second portal, but the same one moved.

“What is this? Where are we?” she demanded to know.

They heard a man laugh next to Leona’s cell, which was but one of a whole block. Across from him, Leona could see another man, who was not so joyful. He nodded towards Leona. “Your new clothes are on the bed. There’s a privacy switch on that wall.”

So Leona was locked up yet again. No biggie. She had escaped every time, so this would surely be no different. She didn’t bother using the privacy switch, but Ecrin did as she changed her clothes. It created a full wall in front of the bars.

“What is this place?” Leona asked.

“Passenger jail,” the man Leona couldn’t see responded. “What are you in for?”

“Nothing,” Leona said. “I came in here looking for Annora Ubiña’s killer.”

He laughed again. “Well, ya found him. Forgive me if I don’t let you handcuff me. My arms don’t bend that way.”

“You’ve been stuck here all these years?”

“I thought I had figured out how to get in here without going through one of the cells. I was wrong.”

“Why did you do it?” she questioned.

“If you’re a cop, then I’m sure you’ve heard this a million times, but it really was an accident. I was planning to turn myself in. I just...needed to get him out of here before the dimensions were sealed off. I failed.”

“So you knew she was alive when you left her in microponics, and that her death would close the entrances,” she scolded.

“There was nothing I could do. I hit her too hard.”

“My girlfriend has the power to heal people, even from the brink of death!” Leona yelled.

“Well, I didn’t know that!” he yelled back. “My cousin was locked in here, so all I could think about was getting him free! If I had known that, I would have tried to save her. I don’t wanna be in here any more than you do.”

“I came in here with an emergency teleporter. What happened to it?”

“Shoot, I don’t know,” he said. “If you didn’t see a pile of my clothes in front of the entrance, the things we’re wearing or carrying are probably destroyed during transit.”

“Leona,” Ecrin began. “What about Vitalie? She can go get help.”

“She’s already said she can’t project into here. Besides, my lucky penny was apparently destroyed en route. I have no way of contacting her, even if I thought that might work.” She took a beat to think things over. “At least the murderer is locked in here too, which was everything I was trying to do.”

“I spent half my life in prison,” Ecrin lamented. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

“It’s not ideal, but Hokusai will realize something’s wrong, and she’ll find a way in here. Even if we have to wait until the Warren lands on Earth, we’ll get out.”

“Easy for you to say,” Ecrin contended. “You’ll only have to be here for a few days.”

“What?” the killer’s cousin asked.

“You asked to come,” Leona volleyed. “Rather, you insisted on coming. I would have been perfectly fine coming in by myself. We both knew that we didn’t know what this place was.”

Ecrin massaged her eyes. “I know.”

“How do we eat?” Leona asked the men.

“Food appears on that ledge three times a day,” the cousin explained. “It’s not bad. There’s sewage, drinking water, and a sonic shower that activates once a week. The music will start back up before too long. It turns off so new inmates can go through orientation, which...of course, you can’t actually do.”

“What did you do?” Leona asked him. “What made your cousin desperate enough to kill a woman to get you out?”

“I wasn’t chosen,” he said to her. “I’m a stowaway. Annora found out, and put me in here.”

“I don’t understand why she didn’t tell me about this place,” Ecrin wondered.

“She was going to, actually,” the stowaway said. “You were going to be head guard here. I guess she didn’t get a chance.” He looked over to his cousin with mixed feelings.

He wasn’t laughing now. “I apologize again for that. My name is—”

“Vito Bulgari and Jarrett Grier,” Leona interrupted.

“Uhh...right on the second one, but I don’t know who Vito is. Hadron here isn’t on the manifest, remember?”

“Right.” So where was Vito Bulgari?

Vito Bulgari was staring up at the moon, which had begun appearing in the night sky over the last month. It appeared to be complete tonight, Adamina’s power having increased the size of this dimension enough to include the whole thing. It was cloudy and ominous, though.

Serif and Camden came up to him. “Ever seen anything like that before?” she asked of him.

“Durus didn’t have a moon. Not even a simulated one. Never seemed necessary, I guess. Not without oceans. It’s beautiful.”

“How did you last in this pocket so long without being detected?” Camden asked, doubting his own skills as an intelligence-gathering agent.

He never stopped looking at the moon. “I can be invisible. Literally. Just...make it look like the space I’m occupying is as empty as it is when I’m not in it.”

“Did you kill Annora Ubiña?” Serif interrogated.

He shook his head slowly. “No, but I was scared of getting in trouble. I know it wasn’t illegal for me to travel between the pockets, but when the entrance closed up, I thought maybe I had made some mistake. By the time I realized it had nothing to do with me, you had already taken attendance, and I was then scared about coming forward with the truth. You might have caught me had this place not been growing, but everyday it gets easier and easier to avoid people.”

“It’s still dangerous for you in here, as a human,” Serif warned him. “You should come with us.”

“I thought the Maramon think of us as gods?”

“If we’re gods, they’re Titans, and they want us dead. I don’t suppose you can make other people invisible.”

Vito smiled, and finally looked down from the heavens. “I can make anything invisible.”

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Missy’s Mission: Hazytown (Part VII)

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“How did this happen?” Missy questioned. She wasn’t shocked that it had been two years since they had stepped into the haze. After living in the world of salmon and choosers, nothing could really surprise her. She just literally wanted to know what had happened, so she could prevent it from happening again. “Did the haze alter time?”

“I don’t think that’s what happened,” Dar’cy said. “I think you did it.”

“Me?”

“I think you were in your own temporal bubble.”

“Oh. What makes you think that?”

“I think the haze causes your time powers to go haywire. I wasn’t always in there. I spent at least a day uncontrollably jumping through time and space before I made it out to this clearing.”

“But that’s not your power. You can’t just jump anywhere. You have to thread an object.”

“I think I was threading myself. Which makes sense, because...” She faltered.

“Because what?”

“Because I’ve known what I was going to look like as an adult since I was a child. I’ve been sliding across my own timeline, revisiting past events in my life. Greatest hits.”

Missy was silent for a moment. “You never told me that. Do your parents know?”

“I told no one. Ever.”

“Why?”

“It’s kind of a combination of all, or most, of Leona’s time traveling rules. Obviously I’m meant to avoid alternate versions of myself, but I also needed to never be surprised, but never assume I already had the whole story. It just seemed prudent to keep it to myself, and trust Future!Me would understand. She only ever showed up when I was alone. She never hurt me, and never said a word, so whenever she appeared, I just made like Elsa, and let it go.”

“Well, now that you’ve closed your loop—”

“I can die?” Dar’cy interrupted. It was true, now that everything she knew about her future had become the past, death was now back on the table.

“That’s not what I was going to say. Now that you’ve closed your loop, you understand why it happened, and it isn’t likely to happen again.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

“Why? Did you accidentally thread into the future too?”

“Once, right at the end. Four, three, two...”

A different version of Dar’cy suddenly appeared next to Present!Dar’cy. Past!Dar’cy looked at Missy with relief. “Thank God you make it eventually,” she declared. Then she disappeared.

Present!Dar’cy smiled. “See? I always knew you’d find your way out of there.”

Missy nodded. “Not to sound ungrateful...” she hesitated.

“Why didn’t I go look for you? Once I made it out of the haze, I tried going back. It’s like walking through tar. If you try to escape, it’ll just tug on you until you get too tired to resist.” She looked up at the dome of haze above them. “I’ve not been able to go anywhere beyond the eye, as I’m calling it. I can’t even thread an object to my past again.”

“Does that mean this is it? This is the cure?”

“I dunno, man. I think it’s just a power dampener. If we found a way out, our powers would probably come back. Besides, if getting here is all it takes, we would see evidence of other people; other residents, or even bodies. But I’ve been alone the whole time. It hardly looks like anyone has ever lived here.”

“I’m so sorry. It must have been dreadfully boring.”

She shrugged. “Not as bad as you’d think. We packed enough food for a year, thank God. Since I had already seen myself with you in the future, I could reasonably believe you would return before my rations ran out. Knowing a sort of maximum ETA made it easier. It’s a good thing you came when you did, though. The food I had left would have lasted me another week. Then it’s another three weeks of slowly starving to death. As far as boredom went, there’s a decent library of books in there. I only had to reread two and a half books before today. I admit I did, uh...act out a few key scenes, to pass even more time.”

“Oh my God, I can’t apologize enough. Whatever you say, it is my fault. My powers slew me down, and you’re only here to help me.”

“I don’t wanna hear any further complaining or self-pity about it. I made my choices, and I don’t regret them. Being on The Warren wasn’t all that fun before, and I doubt it’s any more interesting now. At least here I’m on an adventure.”

“I don’t suppose you know what the next step might be. Is there a secret portal, or a special knock to summon one of the powers that be?”

“Oh, I know what the next step is. I found it my first week here. I couldn’t go through, because I didn’t know if I would be able to get back out. We can go together. You might wanna shower first, though. There’s running water.”

Missy took her up on that offer to clean herself up. She couldn’t even be bothered to get dressed afterwards. The relaxing water had reminded her how terribly tired she was, so she sent her face right towards the bed. She was unconscious before hitting the pillow.

Dar’cy was sleeping next to her when she woke up hours later, so she snuck out of the bed, and tiptoed downstairs. Feeling the need to contribute positively to this endeavor, she lifted the bag of holding, and began to empty it out in the living room, so she could take inventory. They had a few days of food between the two of them, and as much water as they had before, since Dar’cy was able to drink from the indoor plumbing. Their tent was still in good condition, as were their sleeping bags. Fire kit, extra clothes, duct tape, med kit, some random objects Dar’cy could thread to her past in an emergency, and everything else you would find in a doomsday prepper’s go-bag. She even packed two—

“What are you doing?” Dar’cy asked, having come downstairs unheard.

“What are these things?” Missy asked her.

“Tactical uniforms.”

“For, like, war?”

“If it comes to that. The pockets are microdimensions.”

“I though that’s what the bag was.”

“That’s a minidimension. But I’m glad you found those. We should put them on. Could come in handy.”

Missy just sat there.

“I’m not asking you to carry a gun, just put on a uniform. It’s rocketproof too, in a way that means anyone who tries to shoot you will only find the projectile being reflected back at them. We should have been wearing them the whole time.”

“How much did these cost?”

“Let’s just say I bought them on credit.”

“Dar’cy,” she scolded.

“Missy,” she exaggeratedly mimicked. “That’s what you sound like.”

“Fine, I’ll do it. But only because you look sexy when you wear your shirt backwards.”

“Oh, shit. I thought it felt tight around the neck.”

They changed their clothes, and stepped outside.

“The portal’s out here?” Missy asked.

“It’s not really a portal.” She walked over to the side of the house, and lifted up one of the vinyl panels. Inside was a flashlight.

“Is that the flashlight that Hokusai used to stop Durus from colliding into Earth?”

“No. That one was destroyed. This is a second Rothko Torch. We only have a few minutes before it snaps back in place. But that should be long enough to complete the show.”

“The what?”

Dar’cy gathered her bearings, and found the spot she was looking for several meters in front of the house. Then she flipped on the flashlight, and shone it in front of her. Three people appeared, like translucent ghosts, fading in and out as Dar’cy moved the light around. They paid the two of them no mind, so Missy didn’t think they had been transported to the past. This was like watching a three-dimensional movie. One woman was aggressively holding onto the other, while the man watched them, unrelenting to the victim, who seemed to be begging for him to help. Since the flashlight did not come with any sound, Missy had to guess what they were saying. The attacking woman overcame her victim with a powerful energy, that eventually consumed her entirely, until she was gone. Now apparently equipped with more power than she could handle, the surviving woman grasped her head, and started yelling at the man to run away, which he agreed.

“We’re reaching the point of no return,” Dar’cy explained. “I always stop watching after this, because I can feel it happening.”

“Yeah, I feel it too.”

The energy was too much for the woman from the past. She exploded, sending that energy in a wave in all directions, thereby creating the haze that Missy had been trapped in for two years. Once it had reached some limit, the wave started pulling itself back in towards the center. The flashlight disappeared from Dar’cy’s hand, presumably having been called back to its home in the wall, but the images remained. The two of them braced themselves against each other as the portalcane came rushing back towards them, bringing with it what looked like the man, who had not run fast or far enough. Light filled Missy’s eyes, forcing them closed.

When she was able to open them again, they were standing in the middle of a crowd of white monsters. The man was now being held up by one of the monsters, while another spoke to him. “Dwesben ke Ansutah,” it said.

“Ansutah?” the man asked.

“Ansutah,” it repeated as it presented the world to him. Then it laughed—as did everyone else—before punching him in the face, and knocking him unconscious.

As its friend was carrying the man away, someone in the crowd pointed to Missy and Dar’cy, who had been assuming they were still invisible. “Ondi dwesben foa laidi bim!” it cried to the leader.

“Universal translator,” Dar’cy advised under her breath. “Left breast pocket.”

Missy took out what looked like a very involved surgical mask, and placed it over her mouth and ears as the monster leader was walking towards them with a grin. Only then did Missy realize that there were other humans, scattered around the open area. They were still teleporting in randomly. These must be the ones who were seeking an end to their powers. The portal must have taken everybody to the same moment in time, no matter when they left.

“Do those things help you understand my language?” the monster leader asked in what sounded like English. His mouth still moved as if speaking his native language, though, which fictional stories about automatic translators never seemed to account for. Remember, subs, not dubs.

“They do,” Dar’cy answered through her own translator mask.

A guardsman came up, and reached for Missy, which forced Dar’cy into fight mode. She made quick work of him, getting him to the ground in a matter of seconds. The leader was surprised and impressed. A second guardsman came up to take the first one’s place, but the leader stopped him with a mere gesture. “Lock the others up!” he ordered his people. “I’ll speak with these two first! Please come with me,” he requested of them.

“Only if you don’t hurt the other humans.”

“Humans?” he asked with another laugh. “You mean the gods?”

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Microstory 845: Trapdoors Galore

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The Legend of Trapdoors Galore is something everyone in the county knows, but I’m not from around here. I found out because haunted houses, and other location-based mysteries are a passion of mind. I don’t believe in ghosts, or other supernatural occurrences, but I don’t go around debunking myths either. I just love researching the history behind these stories, and the superstitious beliefs people have for them. I’ve been wanting to come here for awhile now, but I only make so much money, and only have so much vacation time, so I have to be very choosy with every trip. Built in 1813, the mansion first served the wealthy family who founded the town of Rower, appropriately named for them. The Rowers were famous for being kind and compassionate people, even going so far as to purchase an abundance of slaves, for the express purpose of housing them. They used them as labor, but treated them well (read: equally), provided them gourmet food, and paid them competitive wages. Slaves technically built Rower, Missouri, but they did it while secretly independent. Townspeople today claim Rower was designed to become a haven for former slaves; fortified from foreign threats, and autonomous from the rest of the U.S. While this is a questionable assertion, the fact that the Rowers were abolitionists is undisputed. Whenever an employee wanted to quit their job, the Rowers gave them a handsome severance package, and helped them travel farther northwards, to avoid southern backlash. After the end of the war, the entire project was abandoned, and Rower eventually began to suffer from the same population decline as any other small town. No longer with the need for so much space, the family downsized to a smaller house, and later generations started flocking to the big cities with everybody else. No Rower lives anywhere near the area. Decades later, in order to revitalize the town, and try to attract some tourism, a descendant returned to her roots, and started a massive remodeling effort on Rower Manor, hoping to establish Trapdoors Galore as what would have surely been the world’s first ever escape room. Unfortunately, the spending ran a bit too much higher than the budget, and the building was once again left to rot. Her daughter grew up and attempted to convert it to a museum to showcase its history, but she grew tired of the work, and gave up too.

Now it remains alone on the hill, cordoned off, and forbidden to be entered by trespassers. I’m pretty determined, though, so I recruit a horde of crazy townies, and sneak in under cover of darkness. It’s even larger and harder to navigate than I thought it was. I’m even considering the possibility that it exists in another dimension, like some kind of 1940s police box, and it’s literally bigger on the inside. We quickly find ourselves lost, and soon after that, we’re separated. While Trapdoors Galore never opened, it was meant to be self-sufficient, requiring little setup from any staff members. Apparently the Rower descendant was further along with the engineering than anyone knew, because walls would move, and actual trapdoors would drop us to dark windowless rooms. The few brave souls I managed to stick with and I just keep going, trying not to panic. We have no doubt we’ll find an exit before we die of starvation, so we’re even trying to have a little fun. There’s never been any gossip about ghosts, or demons, but it still feels creepy, and then we start hearing someone come after us. None of us can agree what the sound sounds like, or where exactly it’s coming from, and this only reinforces some of our concerns that it’s not human. We start running through the rooms, desperate to get out of there, all the while fairly certain that what we’re worried about is completely in our imaginations. We meet up with a couple other people experiencing the same fears of being chased, so we decide to circle the wagons, and fight, if it comes to that. They’re standing in a circle, insisting on keeping me as safe as possible in the center, since I’m a visitor. A woman none of us recognizes casually bursts into the room from a trapdoor no one noticed, holding a candle. She’s wearing an anachronistic outfit, and just has this look about her that screams she’s from the past. She also looks exactly like the famed matriarch of the founding Rower family, Marthanna. She looks directly at me and says, “Lois Vivianne Rower.” My name is Lois Vivianne, but I am not a Rower, as far as I know. “We have been waiting for an heir to show up ever since King Dumpster was elected president. We think it may be time to start the Rower Haven Project. Your friends can help us too.” As we’re standing there, stunned, people begin to materialize around the room, wearing similar outdated garb, and smiling. Most of them are black. “Meet the rest of your family.”

Microstory 844: Remake a Killing

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In the old days, there were virtually no rules when it came to what you were allowed to do when it came to art, and what you couldn’t. Basically, the only things prohibited were things that were illegal anyway. One guy tried to film a dog literally starving to death once, but his local law enforcement put a quick end to that experiment. In the film industry’s heyday, there was almost no originality. Nearly everything released was a remake, reboot, sequel, or adaptation. When you thought you were watching something you hadn’t seen before, there was often a small article that proved it was actually ultimately based on something prior. When the New Rule came to power, they made a lot of decisions that harmed people’s ways of life. They created inequality, and made it harder for some to find steady work. While rebels were fighting against these atrocious conditions, they largely ignored the smaller changes the New Rule made, because they didn’t threaten anybody’s life, or livelihood. Though one could argue that hindering what type of art an artist is allowed to make does indeed damage our freedoms, their reasoning was not completely absurd. There is something to be said for requiring every new entry in the pantheon of films to be fresh and new. Once the rebellion successfully put an end to the New Rule administration, the Originality Clause was left in the revised Constitution, because there wasn’t enough outcry against it, and we were already changing too much of the document, which has been through oh so many iterations throughout our entire history. So now we live in a world without remakes, except for one...well, seven.

A Killer Remade was the last remake to be released before the New Rule instituted their laws, its fitting title a mere coincidence. Its predecessor was created only one year prior, but audiences and critics were disappointed in it, so the filmmakers hastily shot a new version that was even worse than the last. It involved an all new cast, save for the actor who played The Rainbleeder; a chiefly ad-libbed script, built from what the new actors simply recalled by having seen the original a few times; and a wildly different ending. At the time, this debacle was ignored by most the majority of moviegoers, because they were too busy being oppressed to worry about it. Shortly after the government stabilized, though, a particular fan decided to remake it for a second time, even though this was still against the law. In a surprising turn of events, our interim leaders decided to not prosecute the filmmaker, but instead declared that this would be the only legal remake in existence, and that it would continue to be remade year after year, until there was no longer anyone interested in being part of it. The same actor still plays The Rainbleeder, but that’s not part of the agreement; it’s just an interesting bit of trivia. And so this is how it started, the Curse of A Killer Remade. A new version is made every single year, and every single year, at least three people are killed in parts surrounding the annual festival where the film is screened. No matter how much security, or how many cops, are placed at the scene, a serial killer will always find his targets, and never be caught. Some call him a maniac, others a genius...but we just call ourselves The Council of Killers. We’re not sure why no one has figured out that there’s a whole group of us yet, since that was the twist ending from the second version, but we’ll keep doing this until someone stops us.

Microstory 843: Defenestrated

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To be fair, everything that happened was ultimately my fault. I am not the easiest person to be around, or to work with, and it’s a character flaw that I’m constantly working on. Still, he chose to escalate our disagreement to physical violence, which I never would have wanted. All I can do is defend myself. Unfortunately for him, I’m a lot better at that than I look. I’m not muscular, and I in no way intimidate people, but I can take a punch, and I know how to avoid a punch. But this guy; damn is he fast. He throws his weight into ever blow he sends, and I’m starting to get tired. I’m thinking this might be it, I’m going to die. The more he goes at me, the less I can remember how this all started. I know I disrespected his heritage, and my remark was completely out of line, but I can't recall exactly what I said, or even what his background is. Not that it matters, I keep trying to get a moment to say something to defuse this situation, but he has no plans to give me that opportunity. All I can hope for is that someone happens to walk into auxiliary engineering, and distracts him long enough to let me escape. As angry as he is, he’s being pretty careful with the equipment and instruments. In an action movie, all this stuff would be completely destroyed by now, then magically returned to working order before they needed it again. He doesn’t want to lose his commission on this vessel, I guess, and I assume if there’s no lasting evidence that the fight occurred, he won’t have to worry about it. A smarter opponent would somehow use this weakness against him, but I don’t know what that would look like. I can’t think straight, of course, and if this goes on much longer, I may stop thinking forever. In a desperate final move, I bolt for the exit, but he takes my arm in both his hands, like he was just waiting for me to try this. He lifts me right up off the floor, and swings me over towards the viewport, which is half the size of a standard adult human. Now, I’m not saying I’m an expert in xenobiology, but I was fairly certain his species was not strong enough to break a polycarbonate window. Maybe that’s not the point, because whether he’s supposed to be strong enough or not, my body shouldn’t be able to survive striking the window that hard. But I just crash right through it, sure I’m on my way to dying in the vacuum of space. Yet I land on the cold, hard floor of the hangar bay. I just lie there for several minutes, bleeding and broken, thankful that we hadn’t actually launched yet. A man hobbles over with a bottle in his hand, and lifts up my arm to check for a pulse, spilling some of his bourbon on my face, burning the cuts under my eyes. The only reason we never left is because the pilot is drunk. My lucky day. I wake up in the hospital hours later, and the Admiral is standing over me. “I’m here to thank you, Ensign,” she says to me. “Had you not let yourself be thrown through that window, we would not have learned how deficient it was...until it was too late. You saved the lives of everyone on your ship.”

Microstory 842: Band Together

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I’ve seen enough weird stuff in my career in the agency that it’s pretty hard to surprise me. I’ve encountered ghosts, monsters, aliens, and people with special powers. Everything has a logical explanation, whether it follows the public’s understanding of science, or not. Even time travel has its set of rules, and by the time the first temporal anomaly was discovered, my division had already come up with protocols to deal with it. This last assignment I’m working on has me all confused, though, because while it seemed a classic case of past life resurgence, there appears to be a time component as well. My subjects can’t explain what happened to them, but from what I gather, they were first born a few decades ago, but die in a bus crash a few decades from now. This means that a version of each of them is already out in the world, living their lives as thirtysomethings in a local band, still trying to get a record deal. Somehow they die in the future, and instead of being reincarnated sometime later, their souls were transported back into the past, and now they’re teenagers. Nothing like this has ever been recorded before. Our researchers have been looking into it since they first started claiming to remember their past lives, but they can’t come to any sound conclusion on how this happened. What’s clear is that there is definitely a still-living band, and that these teens are genetically identical to its members. Now, like I said, we have protocols for this. Normally, we would send any traveler from the future incapable of returning home to pocket dimension that a race of friendly aliens designed for this very thing. Theoretically, they’re meant to live out the rest of their days in there, and leave the timeline undisturbed. But my superiors don’t think this is fair to do to the band, because they didn’t ask for this, and returning them to their original point in time would be just as dangerous to the timeline as leaving them here. Besides, since they were born and spent the majority of their new lives totally oblivious to the fact that they were reincarnations, we don’t really have the right. So the agency made a decision to use them positively. Recruiting people who have information on the future is not unheard of, but it requires special permission, from a very picky committee. They approved a program, however, that would allow these children to continue learning music, while also training to become agency assets. They chose me for this, because I have considerable experience in both fields, and they felt I would be a good influence on the youngsters. I hope they’re right about me, because I’m not totally convinced I can do this.

Microstory 841: Subtweets

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Birds. They have language. Most people think that animals aren’t really saying much when they make their noises, and for the most part, they’re right. Birds, on the other hand, are the second most intelligent species on the planet. Since Douglas Adams already took the joke about humans not being the first, I’ll just go ahead and confess that we actually are. It’s important to note that birds are in a fairly distance second place to us, but it’s possible to learn their words, and communicate with them. My mother, for instance,  is fully fluent in no less than twenty-seven avian dialects, of which she has attempted to teach me maybe half. As a normal child, with plans to only interact with other humans, I never paid attention to her lessons. There without the grace of God goes my brother, who listened intently, and now knows more bird dialects than mom, as well as squirrel sign language. Despite my reluctance to communicate with our feathered friends, I ended up learning more than I realized. Earlier this morning, I was walking through the woods, as I do, when I heard some chirping. I thought little of it, because that’s where those things live, so it wasn’t weird yet. I wasn’t even trying to translate what they were saying, because who cares? I admit that the songs they were singing drew me in, and I felt warm inside. It almost seemed like they were directed towards me, a possibility only reinforced by the fact that the songs never wavered, no matter how far I walked. Though it was hard to make them out through the branches, I started thinking they were following me around, like maybe they knew I was related to a birdspeaker. I decided that whatever they know, or think they know about me, I needed to find out what they were saying, just in case. I closed my eyes and harkened back to my school days, concentrating on remembering everything my mother tried to teach me. I was surprised to learn how much I had retained from that period in my life, and soon I didn’t have to try to so hard to interpret them. They were saying horrible, nasty things to me. I can’t even repeat them here, they were so bad. The closer I focused, the more I understood how angry they were with me, for no apparent reason. They were actually threatening my life if I didn’t get out of their territory right quick. Is this what birds are saying when we’re around? I thought they just talked about how pretty each other’s ultraviolet wing designs were, and reminded each other that they were related, so they wouldn’t accidentally mate. But if this is the truth, why did my mom not warn me about it? And if she did, why did she not make sure my mind was wandering. Anyway, long story short, I didn’t run out of their fast enough, so you tell me, Doctor; can Baltimore orioles carry rabies?

The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 2, 2179

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Vitalie was waiting for Leona when she arrived in pocket five in 2179. “This area has been cleared, madam,” she said like a law enforcement subordinate.

“What are you doing here? I thought your fathers weren’t going to let you interview people, or go anywhere alone.”

“I’m a rebel,” Vitalie answered in a British accent, “I rebel.”

“Vitalie...”

“I realized that it doesn’t really matter whether my dads are okay with me doing this or not. I’m capable of it, so I’ma gonna.”

“Typical teenager,” Leona said.

“I am Groot,” she said in feigned mockery. Leona had provided the pockets with a decent library of entertainment choices, which Vitalie was clearly making good use of.

“Well, I assume you’ve already cleared pocket six too,” Leona guessed.

“I have,” Vitalie confirmed.

“So...who done it?”

“The killer is not on the ship, or one of the six pockets.”

Leona just stared at her, knowing that Vitalie was just dying to reveal the truth.

She finally broke down and continued, “you would have never found him.”

“He’s in a seventh pocket dimension, isn’t he?”

“That’s right,” Vitalie said, impressed.

“And you’re sure?”

“I can’t actually get into said dimension, but I can feel that it’s there. It’s been eating at me since last year when we went to visit Serif and Saga. Like...interference. I have to pass it in order to get from my pocket to any other. I guess it’s something I’ve always been able to sense, but now I really notice it.”

“Well, looks like this has all been a waste of my time. I should have just asked for your help in the beginning. I even studied the manifest. I knew about everyone’s paramount powers before I went in.”

“I was too young to do any good back then, so it likely wouldn’t have helped. But it’s done now, and I assure you that he has not been able to hurt anyone else. He’s trapped there, just like everyone else.”

“Why did Annora create it?”

“That I do not know, but the ship’s sensors would have picked him up if he had left. He’s been there the whole time, and I’m fairly confident that he’s alone, but maybe that’s just because it feels pretty small.”

“Do you know how to get to it? Where exactly on the ship is the access point?”

“I don’t know that either, but I’m also fairly confident in your ability to figure it out.”

“Just...” Leona hesitated. “If I leave here, and you, umm—”

“Made a mistake?” Vitalie offered. “You will have wasted an opportunity to interview all these people, yes. You’re just gonna have to trust that I watched every single episode in the Law and Order Franchise, as well as 24, Homeland, Without a Trace, and of course, The Closer.”

That would have to do. “I guess I’ll go back and try to find this secret dimension, eh?”

“Call me if you need me. I figured out how to make one of those phone numbers that some choosers use to communicate across space and time. All you do is find one of those ancient Earthan one cent coins, and say, be the penny.”

Leona smiled. “Okay, I’ll remember that, and see if I can find one of those things lying around.”

Just after the sun turned back off, Leona activated her emergency teleporter, and went back to the ship.

The first thing she did was debrief her captain, Paige. Then she went to find Hokusai in her lab, hoping to recruit her to find the seventh dimension. Unfortunately, she was very not happy about being interrupted. Loa came from down the hallway, and pulled Leona out of the line of fire.

“She’s in the zone,” Loa said. “You can’t bother her when she’s like this. Believe you me, I tried many times back on Durus, which is why our relationship started falling apart. It took years for us to find each other again.”

“I need her help,” Leona explained.

“She’s already helping you, trying to get Serif and the other humans out of pocket four. She thinks she may be able to reopen the entrances to the pockets, using Annora’s DNA, but she wouldn’t be able to open only one at a time, or close them again afterwards. Until we find this murderer, she can’t risk that, so she’s frustrated.”

“That’s what I need her help with. Vitalie found the murderer. He’s in an unregistered dimension, that can be accessed on this ship somehow, so I need her to find it.”

“Oh, well if that exists, then it’s not on the ship.”

“How do you know?”

“That was one of the first things we did. Hokusai built a temporal anomaly detector, based on what little data Missy left for her regarding Ida Reyer’s Compass of Disturbance. We were looking for anyone who was invisible, or moving at superspeed, or, yes, even a dimension we didn’t know about. We found absolutely nothing.”

“Well, shit,” Leona said. “Vitalie was pretty sure of herself.”

“Well, there are six places on this ship that we couldn’t scan with the detector. It’s possible to attach a pocket dimension to another pocket dimension. Hindsight 20/20, we should have given you the detector.”

“So I’m going to have to go to every other pocket and scan them now? That’ll take too long, we’ll land before I’m done anyway.”

Loa thought about this. “Not necessarily. If the secret pocket can be accessed from another pocket, it was probably discovered by someone in that pocket; someone who lives there.”

“Okay...”

“Thankfully, we have someone who can transport herself to any pocket, without waiting a whole year in between.”

“I don’t know that I could ask her to do that for us.”

“I don’t know that you can afford not to,” Loa noted. “We have the full manifest, so all she has to do is run a roll call in each dimension. That should tell us who’s missing, which should tell us where they escaped. Now, as far as what you need to do to get to them, and get them out, I couldn’t tell ya.”

“So I do need Hokusai’s help.”

“I suppose you’ll need that done before midnight central, so you can use whatever she invents next year. And I suppose she can take a break from the pocket four problem to work on that.”

“So you’ll talk to her for me.”

Loa sighed. “I’ll do anything, just to be done with this horror film.”

Paige agreed to let Leona use the fabricator to create one tiny little penny, so they could make contact with Vitalie. After joking about how quickly after speaking that Leona needed her again, Vitalie agreed to do what they needed of her. Since there was no way to send even data between the dimension, she kept having to return to an interface terminal in the ship to memorize as many names on each manifest as she could at one time. She found two names missing; one from pocket six, and another from pocket three. Leona and Serif should have thought to do a roll call back when this began. That was a stupid error; one of many. Just to make sure they covered their bases, they continued with the head count in the other pockets. Since pocket four was so incredibly large by now—existing at the scope of an entire Earth-sized planet—Camden had to feed them the information. He had long ago memorized the entire list of original residents, who were now outnumbered by Maramon almost 600,000 to one. He had no reason to believe anyone had survived undetected at the earlier stages of development. Pocket two was so dangerous for Vitalie, even while supposedly protected by the astral barrier, so she never spoke to a single soul. Instead she was provided with profile images of all the residents, and checked them off one by one.

So it seemed the two missing persons could be found in either pocket six, or pocket three. They had always considered the chance that the killer was not working alone, which was a possibility they were clinging to now. Because if only one was the killer, then the other could be in grave danger, or already dead. Leona decided to enter pocket six, because neither suspect carried a dossier that made them sound more dangerous to the other. They were both big strong men who, while not leaders of the passenger rebellion that started this whole mess, were also not the caring and peaceful type like the kind Vitalie lived with in pocket two. It was really just a crapshoot, but as long as Hokusai found a way to detect and open the secret dimension before midnight, this issue would be resolved in at most a matter of two years.

Once this was all finished, Leona asked Vitalie for one last favor; to astrally project her fathers to the ship, so she could personally apologize to them. She then assured them both that Vitalie’s part in this ordeal was officially over, and that she would no longer accept any further help she tried to give. She was still a fourteen year old girl, who likely had a hard road ahead of her growing up on a planet she wasn’t born on. Wayne and Raphael wanted her to have a safer life, which was why they were bringing her home, but that didn’t mean it was going to be easy on her. She had already done so much, and it was now time for her to focus on her own mental health. They were appreciative of Leona’s words, but could not express happiness for how things went down, and they certainly weren’t planning any dinner parties with Leona and Serif once they arrived on Earth. That was fair.

With an hour to spare, Hokusai was finished retrofitting the temporal anomaly detector with an access feature. She couldn’t begin to guess what Leona would find in the secret dimension, or provide any way for her to prepare for it herself, but this was just going to have to do. Paige tried to give Leona a gun for her protection, but she had just spent the last several days without one, fully believing the culprit could be on the other side of every day. A weapon never occurred to her then, so it shouldn’t be necessary now. Still, she felt more comfortable with a little defense, so Brooke fabricated a graphene bullet-proof uniform, which Paige was completely happy to authorize. She also made it so that it would be nearly impossible to remove the emergency teleporter from Leona’s person. They didn’t want a repeat of the pocket one incident. Leona sat at the entrance to pocket six, passing the time before midnight struck by performing some meditative breathing techniques that Dar’cy had taught her. Then it was time to go back to work, and finish this.

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