Microstory 1000: Alma

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The death of high school senior, Viola Woods has a dying town with a bloated population reeling like something out of an edgy fifth network comic book adaptation that’s not about superheroes. As an unbiased new student, I feel it is my duty to get to the bottom of this mystery, and there was no better place to start than by interviewing every single one of her classmates. From the gay jock harboring a dark secret, to the random acquaintance who has no apparent connection to any of this, everyone is a suspect. Out of everybody in the whole town, only the authorities are confident that the true killer was unmasked, and put to justice. Blast City might have been founded by a gold mining company, but the history of its residents is anything but glittering. This is not the first unsolved major crime committed within its borders, like something out of an anachronistic prequel to an iconic serial killer thriller with incestuous undertones. Over the next four and a half months, I will be releasing abridged interview transcripts with each of Viola’s classmates. Some reveal other secrets, while others offer no more than red herrings. I shall come to no conclusion, instead leaving that up to you to decide for yourself. Did they get the right guy; or girl, as it were? Or is the real murderer still out there somewhere?

Microstory 999: The Unknown...

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As a budding amateur futurologist, it’s my job to understand what’s going to happen in the future. For many people in the field, they’re responsible for predicting market trends before they even happen, or understanding when the current trends will end. They know how technology is advancing, and how that will impact their employer’s business. Or maybe they’re a journalist who has to know what stories to tell, and when, in order to remain topical. Political pundits have to recognize the consequences or our leader’s decisions. I am not quite like these people. I look more at the big picture so I can tell reasonably believable stories. Just watch the Back to the Future franchise, where they grossly overestimated how advanced we would be in the future. Now of course that’s okay, no one is imprisoning Robert Zemeckis because he didn’t employ a futurologist, who might have warned him we won’t have flying cars in 2015. Part of it is that I want my stories to be as prescient as possible, but I also just really like reading predictions, and making some myself. At the same time, what’s really fascinating about the future, and many things in the present, is the mysterious unknown. The majority of the sea is unexplored, as is almost all of outer space. We still don’t know if the quantum universe is ruled by subatomic particles, or just vibrating strings. And how exactly the hell does the brain even do literally anything it does? How little we know about life, the universe, and everything is a frightening thought. Count yourself lucky if you don’t suffer from OCD, because I regularly find myself questioning my very existence, and feeling a profoundly deep fear for the possibility that I may die, and what comes after is—not even darkness—but completely nothing. Yet there is comfort in our ignorance; the same kind religious people get by believing in some higher power that’s responsible for all the good and bad. There’s a relief in the hope that things can get better, because there’s no real proof that it won’t. How difficult would it be to persist if we knew with certainty that King Dumpster would be on his throne of lies for six more years, instead of only two? The Unknown can be bad, which is why we fear the darkness, and why many people are bigoted and intolerant. If you don’t know what it is, it could be dangerous. People get hurt all the time because they stick their noses where they don’t belong. Think noodling, but in a grander capacity. One of my favorite proverbs comes from one of my least favorite countries, and was famously repeated by one of my least favorite presidents, Ronald Reagan. Doveryai, no proveryai is Russian for trust, but verify. Exercise caution, but don’t be afraid to explore, and try new things. Things could end poorly, like they did for Viola Woods in my next series, but it could also be the greatest thing ever.

Microstory 998: Turnover

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This is a really morbid one, which is why I put it near the end, in case I came up with something more positive. Believe it or not, that actually did happen with another topic. The previous installment was a last-minute replacement for something I ended up deciding I didn’t think you would like, and even then, I altered the subject matter while in the middle of writing it. For as much as I talk about how curing death can help the world, I’m not going to pretend it alone can solve all our problems, or that there isn’t potential for it to cause more. We can all surmise that immortality, without accompanied by other advancements, can lead to terrible consequences. If we don’t solve this world’s distribution problems, and move out to other worlds, we won’t be able to provide for the dramatic increase in population. Already we’re seeing the cost of better global health. Try driving from one side of town to the other without passing at least three separate postretirement facilities, of varying calibre, for varying needs. But there’s another reason death has been of benefit to us. In some of my stories, I have a race of “aliens” called Maramon. Their creator was a naive child who wasn’t interested in his creations ever dying, so he subconsciously made them immortal. What he couldn’t have realized was that meant the worst of the worst individuals were free to keep going through the centuries, unchecked. Can you imagine how awful life would be if Caligula, Jeffrey Dahmer, or Adolf Hitler were still alive? How much hope could we have if we knew that Donald Trump and Jared Fogle would always be around? We would never get through this. Turnover lets us rid ourselves of our history’s sickening mistakes, and gives rise to new ideas. Progress doesn’t happen just because a new generation wants things to change, but also because they’re eventually free from the burden of the old fogies who are incapable of that change. As wicked as it sounds, death is sometimes the only way. Maybe I’m wrong, and all those kids at the tiki torch rally who are young enough to become immortal in the future can eventually learn to become better people. Maybe if humans never died, we would all be totally fine, and living in the paradise our still-living ancestors built for us. But I doubt it.

Microstory 997: Flexibility

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When I was a child, I had certain routines that I would perform in order to get things done. I would have  a routine for getting up in the morning, and getting ready for school. I would have a routine for learning in school, one for coming home, and one for getting ready for bed. As I grew up, my routines changed, because they had to. I had different classes, with teachers who had different expectations, and I had a different schedule. I didn’t much think about how much my life was changing over the years, because it happened gradually. My family moved around a lot, and even when we were in the same house, the school district kept rezoning, so I was still moving all over the place. Thank God for all of that, because I would be an absolute mess without this training. One thing that autistic people like me often struggle with is change. We don’t like someone introducing a complication in our routines, because we haven’t had proper time to prepare for them. They must be tested, for efficiency and comfort. You can’t just spring something new on us and expect things to go smoothly. Routines are designed to be effortless, so they can alleviate stress, and allow us to focus on what’s important. If you force us to rethink something, that stress goes back up, because now we’re focusing energy on something we thought was fine as is. I’m not saying other people don’t have stress, but we have more, because the smallest thing can feel incredibly overwhelming. Though I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone, I’m ultimately glad I wasn’t diagnosed until I was an adult, because if my family had fully understood what I was going through, they would have worked hard at protecting me. They would have walked on eggshells, and tailored my environment, and that is not what I really needed, even if I would have thought so back then. It was difficult for them, dealing with me, having to figure out how to communicate with me so that I wouldn’t freak out about something they perceived to be trivial. It was difficult for me too, as it took years to learn things most people puzzle out on their own, and flexibility was never my strong suit. It was simple to me; when you say we’re leaving for church at 9:30, then I will be ready at 9:30; not 9:25. As hard as it was for us, though, I think it made us stronger people. At least, I know that’s what it did for me.

One of my biggest challenges was acknowledging the fact that no one ever says what they mean. Ever. It’s always attached to a lie, or an embellishment, or an ambiguity, or imprecision. Sometimes it’s on purpose, and sometimes it’s accidental, but nothing in this world is at face value, except for playing cards. I think I’ve brought this up, but I’m still coming across articles about very successful people who are trying to reveal the secret to their success. Do this before bed, and sleep this long, and sing your to-do list underwater, and write yourself a million dollar check, then burn it in effigy. Setting aside the fact that no secret trick can work for everybody, or even that many other people, the problem with the premise is that it’s all about meticulousness. You have to measure out your life perfectly, and do it in the same way across some arbitrary temporal pattern. So many people tell me I should write in the same place, at the same time, under the same conditions, every single day, like I’m on birth control, or something. That’s the exact opposite of what you should do. The real trick is flexibility. The freedom to accept where you are, and what you have at the moment, is so much less stressful than requiring your environment to be just so. I still have loads of stress, but I would have so much more if I didn’t train myself quite deliberately to tolerate and appreciate the inconveniences; both big and small. People spend a lot of money on making their lives easier, which is fine, to an extent. Likewise, to an extent, it’s a lot cheaper to simply adapt yourself to the complexity. When it stops bothering you that the barista keeps giving you two sugars, instead of one, you can move on with your life, and just drink a sweeter coffee in the morning. I am not the poster child for flexibility, but I am a huge proponent of it, because I know the problems that rigidity causes, better than most. Change is good. Complications are good. The biggest favor you can do for yourself is to take every problem as an opportunity to learn rather than trying to find a workaround that really just adds more work anyway.

Microstory 996: Secular Volunteerism

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First of all, I’m not saying that religious volunteerism doesn’t do any good in the world, or that it doesn’t get results, but it’s not the way we should be doing it. There are thousands of charitable organizations in the world, and the list of ones with no religious affiliation can fit on a single, easy-to-read, webpage. I seriously have that list up right now, and even though there are some great outfits on it, it’s pathetically small. Why is secular charity better than the religious kind? Well, it’s all about intention and motivation. The reason anyone volunteers for the Salvation Army, for instance, is because they want to get to heaven. The bible teaches them that if they’re good people, God will bring them into the fold, so they can serve in the kingdom for eternity. I used this quote in my Stepwisdom series, but it’s just too good, so I have to say it again. The credited writer for eighth episode of the 2012 show Alcatraz is Robert Hull, so it is he who I credit for coming up with the line, “spirituality is for those seeking understanding. Religion is for those seeking reward.” What the bible doesn’t really get into—and I use this book as an example, because I’m more familiar with it—is altruism. It is not altruistic to help someone with the expectation that you’ll gain cosmic points for it. Just because you’re not expecting the people you’re helping to be the ones to return the favor, doesn’t mean you’re not doing it for the wrong reasons. It doesn’t matter who’s meant to reward you, you’re still doing it for the purpose of that reward. I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make you a good person. To be clear, religion isn’t the only cause of egoistic charity. Those thousand dollar plates still ultimately cost hundreds of dollars, because of all the lavish decorations, in the expensive venue. You should donate money because you believe in a given cause, and want to support its efforts, and that should be enough for you. If you just want to be treated to a lovely dinner of elf food, while you schmooze with rich folk, then you’re probably also rich enough to just go out and do that. You don’t have to pretend you actually care about homeless people, or the whales, or whatever the event purports to be bolstering. In fact, I hate to break it to you, but no one believes you anyway. Always assume you’re being more transparent than you think. So I do understand that religion isn’t the only problem our society has when it comes to volunteerism and charity, but it is the most obvious and prominent. It’s great that you want to contribute, and it’s hard to argue against you, even if you’re just doing it for the recognition. I certainly can’t tell you that we would be better off if you didn’t do anything. I just want you to question, and be cognizant of, your true reasons.

The Advancement of Leona Matic: May 19, 2161

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The group said their goodbyes to Khuweka, and also to Avidan, who only Vitalie really knew. Then they went back to The Prototype, and plotted a course for their home universe. It took them about another year to travel the distance across the bulkverse. Leona stepped out and looked at the magical watch Mario Matic had given her. It was showing that present day was May 19, 2161.

Vitalie was just stepping out as well when she heard Leona announce where they were. She scrambled back inside, colliding with Kallias in her attempt.

He hugged her, and ushered her behind him before getting into a defensive position. “What? What is it?”

Leona looked around too, but didn’t see anything. They were just standing on the outskirts of some arcology somewhere. Nothing else was around.

“I’m not going out there,” Vitalie said. “May 19, 2161. I know that date. This is the day that hundreds of innocent people are forcibly pulled up to Durus as it gets this close to crashing into Earth.”

“She’s right,” Leona realized. “I skipped over it because of my pattern, but this is the Deathspring.”

“What’s going on up there?” Vito questioned. He teleported out of the machine, and landed next to Leona. “You said something about death.”

“The Deathspring,” Leona explained. “It’s what caused a second influx of unwilling people to move to Durus.”

“Oh yeah, I remember. What time is it, though? It doesn’t happen until 10:01 PM UTC.”

Kivi came to the entrance. “We’re in Kansas City.”

Leona looked back at her watch. “If Vito’s right about when the Deathspring occurs—”

“Which I am.”

Leona continued, “...then we only have a few hours to find the Escher Knob, and get the hell out of this time period.”

“I am not leaving this thing,” Vitalie said firmly. “I don’t know if it’ll protect me, but I know what happened to my fathers will happen to me if I get stuck out there.”

“That’s okay,” Leona assured her. “Someone has to stay and look after Dubravka. In fact, no one has to go but me.”

“I’m going with you,” Dubra argued.

“No, you’re not.”

“You’re my mother, and you’re meant to take care of me.”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing. Vitalie is right, this is the safest place in the world right now.”

“I’m older than I look, by two years!” Dubra cried.

“You most certainly are,” but I made your mom a promise, and I’m keeping it. We have exposed you to far too much danger already, and that stops now.”

“You can’t hold me here!” Dubra kept yelling.

“I can,” Vito said to her, then turned to Leona. “Vitalie and I will keep her safe.”

“Thank you,” Leona said to him. She pulled her sleeve back to consult her Compass of Disturbance tattoo. “I’m heading this direction.”

“I’ll go with you,” Kallias said.

“I would love the company.” She knelt down and addressed little Dubra. “I need you to stay here and be good. Do what Uncle Vito and Aunt Vitalie tell you.”

Dubra was still upset, but couldn’t fight anymore. “Fine.”

“Where did Kivi go?” Kallias asked.

“Who?”

“Kivi,” Kallias repeated.

“She’s not here. She’s never been here. How do you even know Kivi? Wait, was Kivi just here?”

“Uhh, yeah. She’s been with you this whole time.” Kallias was confused.

Leona looked around. “Kivi? Kivi! Keep shakin’ that bush!” She waited for a moment in the silence. “Hm, she’s gone now.” She looked back down at her tattoo, and started following it forwards.

“That’s it?” Kallias questioned. “She randomly disappears, and you just shrug it off? That’s cold.”

“Nobody shrugged,” Leona replied. “Disappearing is her thing. She spends more of her time gone than she does in existence. Nobody freaks out anymore when I disappear for an entire year. She’ll be back later.”

“When?”

Now Leona shrugged. “No way of knowing.”

They walked for about a kilometer before it started feeling like this was going to take too long, so they stashed their bags under a bush, and went into a light jog, picking up the pace over time. The tattoo wasn’t telling them how far it was, but it never navigated the Prototype too far away, teleportation possibilities included. As a cop, Kallias was well in shape for this, but Leona had more motivation, so she fought through the pain. They would need to call Vito for help soon, though, since the Deathspring was nearly upon them.

Finally they came across the only structure in the whole wilderness. It was fairly small, so Leona was able to walk the perimeter, which confirmed for her that this was their destination. Once she had come back around, Kallias knocked on the door. A man poked his head out and scowled at them. “You will not have them!” Then he violently slammed the door shut behind him.

“Rude,” Leona said.

“Hold my purse,” Kallias said jokingly. He took the HG Goggles out of his back pocket, and held them against his face, which was disgusting, since they had just spent years embedded in the face of a rotting corpse. He leaned down, and stared at the door handle for a few minutes, then he leaned back, and kicked the door in with his foot.

“How did you know the goggles could do that?” Leona asked him.

“When you want something to do something, you just have to try it. If it hadn’t worked, I still would have kicked in the door; it just would have hurt more.”

“Who are you?” the man inside the building spat. “What do you want from me?” He was clutching a lockbox tightly to his chest. “These are mine!”

“We only want one thing,” Leona told him.

He hissed. The man actually hissed, like some kind of mall worker.

Kallias added, “it’s about yea big, goes on a door. Opens any door.”

He hissed louder. “Don’t come any closer!”

Leona tried to step forwards, but the man held up his hand, and she was suddenly back outside of the building, looking at herself stepping forwards, and disappearing. She also saw Kallias fall back to his cop instincts, and immediately shoot at the man. But he was sent back out of the building as well, where he promptly fell to his back, and clutched his shoulder. Blood was leaking out between his fingers. Leona dove down to him. “You shot him!” she screamed back at the man.

“He shot himself!” the man hissed.

“You teleported him, and the bullet, so it’s your fault!” Leona volleyed.

“Semantics.” He opened the box as he stepped closer to the exit. “If you want me to shoot you, I will. It’s programmed to banish you outside of a several kilometer radius.”

“Is that a teleporter gun?” Leona asked him.

“You can’t have it! This is going to protect me from the Deathspring!”

“Unlikely,” Kallias said as he was struggling to get to his feet. “I’m fine,” he said to Leona. “If those are temporal objects, they are putting you in more danger. They’re going to be drawn to Durus. We have to get them out of here before that happens. You can come with us.”

Tremors started shaking the building. “It’s happening!” He scrambled to get the teleporter gun back into his box, while pulling out a rock. “Luckily, I have the Stone of Gravity.”

“I’ve never heard of that,” Leona said.

“Well, now you have.” He pointed to her body. “You can tell Durus all about it.”

She looked down at herself. She was waving and swirling, like the air above a flame. She looked back at the man, who was doing the same thing. It would seem the Stone of Gravity wasn’t working.

“What?” the man shouted. “No! He lied to me! He lied!” He started flying up towards a massive bulge in the sky, as did Leona.

She was several meters above the Earth when Kallias jumped, and caught up to her. “Save yourself!” she ordered him.

“Shut up!” Blood was still dropping out of his shoulder wound, but Kallias ignored it and took his gun back out of its holster. He straddled Leona by the stomach to free both his hands, so he could aim right above them. He fired the gun.

Leona looked up to see the lockbox fall right down to them. She lifted her own arms, and caught it. Then she rested it on her chest so she could get it open and take out the teleporter gun. She quickly programmed it to take them back down to the surface, and shot Kallias point blank.

“Mom!” Leona could hear Dubravka’s young voice scream to her.

Leona found her bearings, and looked over to the Prototype, which was only a dozen meters away. “No! Don’t!”

Dubra was already running out of the prototype, Vitalie at her tail. They were both pulled into the air. Kallias sprang into action, grabbing the teleporter gun from Leona’s hands, and aiming it towards the girls. It was clear that his wound was making it harder than normal. He fired the gun, and hit Vitalie. She appeared back at the ground. He tried to shoot Dubra as well, but nothing come out.

“It needs to charge!” Leona yelled, but it didn’t matter. It would take at least a few minutes to charge, and could take hours, depending on how efficient this particular model was.

Vito ran out out of the Prototype. “I’ll get her!” but he couldn’t do it either. Something fell right on top of his head, and started tearing at his face. It was the same kind of monster that attacked Leona and Serif when they returned to the timeline months from now. Kallias, who was now barely standing up, walked forward and empty his gun into the creature, which was more than enough to kill it. The monster was strong enough to cause quite a bit of damage to Vito. Though he was able to heal himself using the Serif-nanites that swam throughout his body, by the time he had recovered enough to try and get Dubra back, it was too late. Durus and Earth’s near-miss was over, and the former was on its way out of the solar system forever.

The group sat on the ground against the Prototype in a stupor. “I don’t know why we tried so hard to save her,” Leona said. “This was all predestined. If she didn’t go to Durus now, she couldn’t be one of the passengers on The Warren years from now, which means she couldn’t save my life. So much happened because of today. We couldn’t change it, and if we had, what would our world look like? What would theirs?”

Vito crawled over and breathed on Kallias’ shoulder to heal it. “That doesn’t mean you could have just smiled and let her go. The real question is, what would the world look like if we never tried to fight against impossible odds to protect our children?”

Hogarth suddenly appeared from one of her explosions, crashing hard into the wall of the Prototype, and falling to the ground next to Vitalie. She caught her breath, and took the Rothko Torch out of her bag. “You better keep this instead.” She tossed it over to Leona, then something in the lockbox caught her eye. “Oo, you have a home stone.”

“What?” Kallias asked. He lifted the rock from the hissing man’s box. “This thing? The guy said it was a Stone of Gravity.”

“What the hell is a Stone of Gravity? No, supposedly that will take you back to when and where you were before you started traveling through time, like a one-time reset button, except it doesn’t undo everything you changed. So, that’s not the right analogy. I do think it reverses aging, though...” She started getting lost in her own thoughts.

“You should take it,” Leona said to him.

Kallias checked for everyone else’s approval with glances.

“Don’t look at me,” Vitalie said. “I just barely escaped going back to where I was born. I belong here.”

The others smiled at him kindly. He set the box down on the ground, and placed the goggles inside. “Here’s the Escher Knob, and the HG Goggles, and some other things that should be interesting.”

They said their goodbyes to yet another compatriot, then watched him squeeze the stone, and go back home.

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Brooke’s Battles: Buffer (Part XI)

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The thing about time is that it never stops. Even the most powerful of temporal manipulators cannot stop time completely. They may be able to slow it down to a snail’s pace, but it never stops. It’s been hypothesized by some of the more studious time travelers that stopping time—since this would halt all atomic movement—would effectively destroy the universe. Even if someone attempted to create a local bubble of absolute zero, all photons heading in the direction of the bubble would also have to be frozen, thus the bubble of nothingness would expand until consuming literally everything. On a more social level, the fact that time never stops has led to a level of uncertainty that even time travelers must respect. No matter what you know about the future, or even the past, anything can change; sometimes for the better, sometimes not, and sometimes it’s a bit of a gray area. After more and more discussions, the solar system’s leadership reneged on their deal to provide the Freemarketeers with resources. Since they didn’t technically own The Sharice Davids, they couldn’t stop its crew from transporting them to Bungula, but they weren’t going to give them anything else.

Like most planets, Bungula was a nasty, inhospitable environment. Most of the people who were looking forward to migrating to exoplanets were fitted with transhumanistic upgrades that would help them survive. The Freemarketeers did not have these luxuries, because they were free, and most rejected them on principle. The ones who were fine with the contradiction would be looked down upon by their peers, so they too were just normal people. Without protective habitats, no natural human would be able to survive on Bungula’s surface for longer than a few minutes. The conundrum here was that the Freemarketeers were still a cancerous tumor that needed to be excised from the otherwise healthy body. Ecrin, Sharice, and both versions of Holly Blue held a meeting to discuss other options. They thought about calling upon the aid of people with time powers, perhaps the Trotter, or the doorwalkers, but ultimately decided against this. What little the majority of the system knew about temporal manipulation, they chalked up to some fancy molecular teleportation, which was a perfectly normal human advancement. Basically, they still didn’t know about salmon and choosers, and just thought scientists had invented stable teleportation. The most likely outcome of the Freemarketeer exodus was their self-destruction, but there was a chance they would survive, and then thousands of people had all this knowledge they weren’t meant to have.

So the crew went back to their plan to get rid of them on Bungula, but to prevent themselves from becoming mass murderers, they would need to gather life-saving resources on their own. The older Holly Blue, from the alternate timeline, who was usually just called Weaver, had an idea. “It’s called the Insulator of Life.”

“Let me guess,” the younger Holly Blue from this timeline said, “it insulates life?”

“That’s right,” Weaver answered. The two of them had just spent the last year constructing a massive machine called a cylicone, but were still only about halfway done. Not even Weaver herself seemed to know how it worked, but she had come up with it in a dream. At its most basic level, it was a cone with its tip cut off—which was referred to as a frustum—inside of a cylinder. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of embellishments and flourishes inside and out that made it far more complex, and gave it the ability to be something more than just a funny shape. They were also what was making the process take so long. Though not the only shape capable of operating as a positive feedback loop, it was the most stable form of something called an echo chamber. Alone, it possessed no power, but it would reverberate and intensify someone else’s time power for an infinite duration. Though more complicated than this, The Weaver had essentially invented a perpetual motion engine.

“How exactly does it insulate life?” Brooke asked.

“However it needs to,” Weaver replied. “It senses life around it, and provides whatever is necessary to keep it going.”

“I am centuries old,” Ecrin said, “and I have never heard of this.”

“It was a pretty well-kept secret in my reality, I imagine it’s the same here.”

“Where did it come from?” Holly Blue asked.

The Weaver said nothing.

Holly Blue squinted at her. “Where did it come from? Did you invent it?”

The Weaver still said nothing.

“What’s got you scared?” Brooke pressed. “Why wouldn’t you want to answer that.”

“I’m sorry,” Weaver stammered, “I...uhh.”

“What is it?”

Weaver took a breath and found her voice. “Sorry, no, we did not invent it. I hesitate to answer because I don’t have an answer. I should. I should know where it’s from, because I’ve studied it, but I know nothing. I asked Darko Matic to thread it to its origin, and it nearly killed him. It doesn’t have a past or a future, which doesn’t make any sense, because it’s a physical object you can hold in your hands, but it behaves like something that doesn’t exist.”

“This sounds dangerous,” Ecrin said. “Should we even be considering it?”

“It’s not dangerous,” Weaver clarified. “It’s just...mysterious. I’ve postulated that it comes from another reality, one that was earlier than mine. Or maybe it’s from a different universe entirely, I don’t know. It’s my white whale, really, even though I’ve been in possession of it.”

“Do you know where it is now?” Brooke asked of her.

“Last I saw it, I was giving it to The Horticulturalists, so they could procure samples of the earliest plants, but that was in my timeline. I’ve no clue where it is here and now.”

They all had defeatist looks on their faces.

“I may know someone, though,” Weaver added. “Darko’s mother, Catania Porter can’t thread objects like her son and granddaughter. She can, however, sense every object in the entire universe. Normally she can apport them to her location, if she wants, but the Insulator of Life is special. Hopefully she can still tell you where it is, but you’ll have to get it yourself.”

“We’re fine with that,” Ecrin said. “I just want to make sure this mission gets completed before it’s too late.”

“Too late for what?” Brooke asked her.

Ecrin didn’t answer.

Weaver cleared her throat, and blushed. “I’m going to need to do something weird to summon The Porter, so just don’t laugh.”

“Why would we laugh?”

Weaver stood up and started stumbling around the cargo bay like a drunkard. She would approach something vaguely shaped like a human, and recite a special phrase, then when she didn’t receive a response, she would move onto something else. “I am the keymaster, are you the gatekeeper?” She did this over and over again until she finally reached a door. She opened it to reveal a woman on the other side.

“Are you the keymaster?” the woman asked. “I am the gatekeeper.” Then the two of them smiled at each other and hugged.

“I hate that you make people do that,” Weaver complained. “I looked so foolish.”

“I think it’s fun. You don’t mind, do you?” she asked the rest of the group.

They were still smirking, trying to stifle laughs. “Nope, not at all.”

“I like sex jokes,” Holly Blue noted, but no one knew what she was talking about.

After exchanging pleasantries, Porter agreed to get to work. She tilted her head deeply, like she was looking through a keyhole, or knocking water out of her ear. She closed her eyes and moved her head around, trying to find a good signal. “How far are we from Earth?”

“It’s on Earth?” Brooke was excited. “We’re only a week out.”

“No, I don’t think it’s there. It’s just that I’m used to seeking out objects on Earth. It’s like the internet. I don’t just go straight to the source; I jump from node to node, until I reach my destination. Out here in space, objects are too far apart.”

“But you don’t think it’s on Earth?” Weaver asked.

Porter continued to search the cosmos with her mind. “It’s almost certainly not. No, I’m not sensing it there. It’s the opposite direction. Part of my problem is my lack of understanding of the solar system. I need a map, to get my bearings.” A holographic map of solar system appeared over the table. Sharice had been listening. Porter studied the map for a few minutes, intuitively turning it around with her hands as necessary. “This can’t be all there is,” Porter said. “I can feel it beyond what we see here.”

“Sharice,” Brooke said simply.

The map expanded to show the entire heliosphere.

“There!” Porter shouted, pointing at a spot near the edge. “Where is that?”

“That’s the Oort Cloud,” Holly Blue replied. “It will take us a year at current speeds. Fortunately I just upgraded Sharice’s drives, but it would be a whole lot faster if we had that cylicone finished.”

“By the time we finish working on it,” Weaver reminded the group, we will have made it to where Porter pointed.”

“The system leadership wants the Freemarketeers out of the system yesterday,” Ecrin said. She expanded the map manually, and drew a line from the cloud to Alpha Centauri. “It’s not exactly on our way there, but it’s not too far out of the way. You will leave within the week, pick the insulator up on your way out, and then go FTL.”

“What do you mean by that?” Brooke questioned. “Are you not coming?”

Ecrin took a deep breath. “I am relieving myself of command, and leaving the Sharice.”

“Why? I thought you said you wanted to finish this mission.”

“I wanted to see you go off on the mission, but I’m afraid I can’t be there,” Ecrin explained, still cryptically. “I have been tapped for something else.”

Holly Blue frowned. “For what?”

“I can show you,” Ecrin began, “but you have to promise to not freak out.”

“We can’t promise that,” Brooke interrupted Holly Blue, who was about to agree to something before understanding it. “We can promise to be open-minded, though.”

Ecrin considered this. “Sharice, disarm the teleporter shields. Let our guest on board.”

Ecrin surely knew lots of people who could teleport, but who would the crew not want her to be involved with? They got their answer when a white monster appeared before them. It was the same one who had kidnapped her a few years ago. Brooke stood up defensively, and pulled out a weapon.

“Guns always fall out when you open your mind!” Ecrin said to her as she was stepping between the Maramon, and Brooke’s firearm.

Brooke kept her gun trained as close to her target as possible with a friendly blocking the way. “Not if you know how to use it.”

“Crew, this is Relehir, also known as The Repudiator. He’s on our side.”

Brooke still didn’t budge. “He’s the one who was trapped on The Warren when his universe separated from ours.”

“Yes,” Ecrin confirmed. “He’s been living amongst humans all this time, and he’s more like us than them. In fact, he’s a warrior...against the Maramon.”

“And he’s indoctrinated you to his cause?” Brooke supposed.

“I would use the word recruit,” Ecrin argued.

“He’s the only Maramon I know of in this universe. Who exactly will you be fighting?”

“We’ll be leaving the universe,” Ecrin said. “There’s a machine called the Prototype—”

“I don’t need the details,” Brooke interrupted. “I just need to know you’re of sound mind and body.”

“I am,” Ecrin tried to assure her. “I’ve been thinking over his offer since he first gave it to me. We haven’t even been in contact, so it’s not like he wore me down. I’m a lifelong protector; no matter how many times I try to retire. He’s giving me an opportunity to help, and I have to take it, because I think I’ve done all I can here.”

A stranger suddenly walked up behind Brooke, and pushed her arm down to lower the weapon. “It’s okay, mother. I’ve been looking into this Maramon. He’s legit.”

“Sharice?” Brooke asked, stunned. “You’re wearing a humanoid substrate.”

“Yes. I based it on what a child born of you and Goswin would look like. Do you like it? Weaver built it for me.”

< > Entire Story

Microstory 995: Panda Neglect

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This is a quite unpopular one, and is probably too negative for this list, and I realize that. You may be asking, why would you not want to save the pandas? Well, I’m not suggesting we go out and murder a bunch of animals, but we should certainly stop wasting all of our resources on protecting them. 99% of animals that have ever lived on this planet have gone extinct, a great many of them dying out in the third mass extinction event. To be sure, humans are the cause of a lot of death, but we can’t be blamed for most of this. When it comes to evolution, there are three general outcomes. The first is that a mutation can become a positive genetic trait, leading to an advantage which allows that species to survive. The second is a neutral trait, which doesn’t have that much effect in the long run. It often leads to subspecies, because the individuals who do not possess the trait are still doing fine. The third is a negative trait, and will lead to death. If it doesn’t help the species to survive, then the mutated creature will likely die before passing on their genes, and the rest of the population won’t have to worry about it. Then you have the panda. Pandas separated from the rest of the bear family tree about three million years ago, likely due to environmental restrictions. While they were originally well-designed for an omnivorous diet, scientists believe there wasn’t enough meat around, which essentially forced them to subsist on what was available. For as little nutrition as bamboo provides, it certainly grows quickly, and would have a hard time going extinct itself. The problem is that the panda doesn’t care how quickly bamboo grows. It prefers to eat the sprouts, which are about half as nutritious, which means a panda has to eat twice as much; ultimately half of their own body weight. Can you imagine eating *cough* thirty-six kilograms *cough* of food a day? The biggest argument against panda conservation is how much we’re wasting on breeding them when they’re better off doing it in the wild. We’ve all heard how dumb these animals are, and how bad they are at sex, but the reason they’ve survived this long is they’re actually not all that bad at it in the wild. They’re only bad at it in captivity, because....well, wouldn’t you be? If we want to save the pandas, then we should leave them be. The reason we have to work so hard protecting other species, like elephants, is because other forces are working against us, but there’s not a huge market for panda meat. That’s right, all your efforts to save them are actually harming them. We can’t change what they choose to eat, but we can choose to ignore them. Set the pandas free, and leave them alone. If they die out, then that makes me a saaaad panda. But also not, because I don’t care that much; they mostly did it to themselves.