Mom's Cookies

There are three kinds of cookies in this world.  Good.  Burned.  And Mom’s.  And Mom’s are in short supply.  Anyone can make good cookies, but only a Mom can make Mom’s cookies, and they are to good what sprouts are to trees.  Thats why I decided it was time to solve the Mom’s cookie shortage.

It was a simple matter really.  Everything has a particular chemical makeup, a set of compounds put together in just the right way to make matter.  If you can figure out the exact chemical makeup of a cookie, you could build it from scratch.  And I mean really from scratch.  Raw energy turned into the basic building blocks of matter, reassembled through painstaking calculation to reproduce with perfect accuracy… a Mom’s Cookie.

Now, you might think that this was an egregious waste of technological power.  You may even say that it was an abuse of opportunity.  That I should have turned my sights towards creating medicine or nanotechnology to change the world.  But let me tell you.  If I could just give everyone one of those cookies, and let them know that there were as many as they wanted…. we would have world peace.  From there, everything else would be easy.

So that is the inspiration behind creating the Dematterialreimaginatiotron.  Its simple, give it one cookie.  And it makes two.  It of course needs to work in a total vacuum, can’t create matter where there already is some.  Well, not without risking some sort of violent explosion.  We couldn’t have that.  So here we are, at the Dematterialreimaginatiotron factory.  Its been running for the last eight hours.  The first batch should be ready to ship out.  But you and I will get to be the first to taste test them.

See those two huge clear containers?  Those are energetically sealed with proprietary force field technology in order to keep them in perfect vacuums.  And as you can see, they are nearly filled with chocolate chip and cherry cookies.  Yeah, the cherries are awesome.  Ready to try one?  Go ahead.  Its perfectly safe.

I’ll have one from this batch first to show you.  Mmm, its good.  Its chewy, and soft, and slightly warm to the touch.  Perfect.  You can almost taste the scientifically engineered and exactly duplicated love in each one.  Go ahead and try yours.

….

….

…..

Oh.  Oh thats not good at all.  This might have been a huge mistake.  I’ve never seen a person explode that…. well… completely.  Anyone know what happened?  The cookie is gone too.  Oh… ohhhh…. Of course.  I should have thought about this.  We created the cookies from energy, and energy splits off into matter and anti-matter.  Guess all of those cookies in that batch must be anti-matter.  Thats probably not safe.  Its an awful lot of anti-matter.  This was the first shipment right?  This was the third?  Who got the first two?  Yeah…. thats not going to be good.  They weren’t even at peace before.  Any chance that they might think someone else sent it?  No?

I’m going to need a couple more of these Mom’s cookies while I think about this.  Maybe we should shut off the machine...

Shadows on the Skyveil

Living near the skyveil has been dangerous for all of our tribes memory.  As long back as anyone knew the great shadows had been there.  They had been few and far between at first, staying mostly near the edges of the habitable world.  But soon they grew bigger, harder, and roared like mighty beasts.  They were rendered from material unlike any flesh we knew, and when they died they drifted slowly down from the edge of the skyveil to rest in the deep dark.  Never eroding away, remaining huge jagged reminders of the dangers that awaited those who lived under the veil.

We tried to befriend them, they ignored us.  We tried to communicate, they took to violence.  Spearing us from the air and abducting our bodies.  That was when they declared war on us and the waters ran red.  We barely survived, and then there were more of them.  The shadows multiplied, but the violence stopped.  As though they had taught us our lesson and didn’t need to bother with us any longer.

But as time went on, for many generations, the shadows grew larger, spreading over more and more of the skyveil.  Places they had never been seen before became blotted out with their tremendous thundering forms.  Everyone had encountered them, they were no longer stories but a fact of life.  Sometimes they seemed benevolent, sometimes ignorant, sometimes sinister.  Their songs made no sense to us, but were deafening.

The had always roamed.  Now they started to pack solidly over the veil.  Blocking out the sky and the light.  They encroached further with every season deeper into the free waves.  The seal like creatures watched us struggle from clear domes underneath the shadows.  As they spread everything that fell under their darkness started to die… nothing could live without the sun and they had blocked it out.  We could not even breach the veil for air.

Now we gather, in the last cold reaches of free waves.  Surrounded by the ice that the shadows find so unpleasant.  We are planning.  Its time for us to fight back.  Today the whales will take back their oceans.

Forgetting

It promised perfect recall of all events.  Humanity would finally be able to move past their biases and perceptions and the failings of an imperfect memory.  Recall was a cocktail of chemicals that locked down memories as they were created.  People revise memories every time they bring them to mind, reliving the events in their head and creating a new memory based on the relived event as they recalled it.  Like a xerox machine copying the copy of something over and over again.  Eventually the memories become what we want them to be, or what we fear them to be, rather than what they are.

Recall would put a stop to that.  Memories would be accurate permanently.  For the first time eyewitness accounts would be as accurate as video tape.  Learning would be a breeze, read something once and you can instantly bring to mind whatever fact or passage you want.  And never miss a birthday or anniversary again.  These were the promises.  These were delivered.

Agnes was one of the first people to receive Recall from an early age.  It wasn't approved for everyone yet, she would be one of the pioneers of the technology.  The first in an age of geniuses.  She wasn't alone, almost two hundred children were admitted to the trial.  The drug had no harmful biological side effects whatsoever, if anything it improved health.  So parents were eager for their children to be the first.  Agnes' parents were both educated and relatively brilliant people in their own right, but they had gotten there the hard way.  With both of them raising Agnes it was no surprise that by the age of five, while she was still learning how to use her changing and growing body, she could speak in detail about more than a dozen sciences, had the vocabulary of fluent speakers in eight of the world's major languages, and never misplaced her toys.

She was a prodigy outside of being a Recall Baby.  And although her identity was meant to remain secret for the trial, her accomplishments by the time she was eight were hard to keep under wraps.  She had been published under a pseudenym in a few scientific journals, using different names and home languages for each publication.  But savvy people started to notice and put the dots together.  Her celebrity accelerated as much as her academic capability.  But with fame come detractors, and in her case, there came danger.  The idea of superhuman intellect was startling to many.  A threat to others.  What of the people who could not afford Recall?  Were they left to become simpletons in a world of savants?  Where economic success had always been a bit unfair and weighted towards the wealthy, the emergence of a real possibility that the rich could BUY being better than the rest of humanity was terrifying.

Although the bullet was meant for her, Agnes, at the age of eleven was spared.  Her father however was not.  While spending time in their country home, enjoying sitting by the stream that passed through their property a sharp crack rumbled and echoed through the air.  Everything was still for a moment.  Then a series of deafening blasts filled the silence, and then nothing.

Agnes looked up to see her father, her simple sweet father.  A man with only two PhDs to his name who despite his intellectual shortcoming had never once shown anything but love for Agnes.  She knew this... she could recall every last interaction he had with her.  Even the times, the many times, she corrected him and he was frustrated with being bested by a child.  He still only had love for her, and she knew it.  The evidence was there for her in every last one of his actions.  Including his last action.  Falling towards her, wraping his body against her to sheild her.  He had seen a flash and splatter of red and dove to protect her.  He didn't even realize the red was from his own blood as he leapt to protect Agnes.  He collapsed onto her, and although she was an intellectual giant, she was physically an eleven year old girl.  She was covered and pinned down by her father as the life drained out of him, crimson soaking his shirt, and then her own.  They both cried as he held her.  It was less than a minute before her security detail ran over to pull him away and try to revive him.  She couldn't forget that.  She couldn't forget any of it.

The assassin had been part of a 'Humble Humans' splinter group.  After he fired his first shot, somehow having snuck onto the property, the security that came with Agnes' celebrity status had riddled him with bullets.  The trial that followed was swift.  While eyewitness accounts vary... Agnes' did not.  She told the court in exacting detail what had happened.  Her voice still tiny and soft, that of a child, even though she spoke with a cadence and certainty that was offputtingly authoritative.

Agnes was told that she was lucky.  Many people who suffer a traumatic event will make it worse every time they remember it.  It will grow for them like a nightmare.  Becoming more and more traumatic after the fact.  For her, she would never have that.  They told her.  What they did not tell her is that it would never be able to leave her mind.  That when any little thing reminded her of her father every memory of him would come flooding to her in perfect crisp recall.  The annoying moments, the tiresome moments, the loving but imperfect moments.  And the details, every detail, of the day out by the creek.  It was paralytic to her.  She would sit for hours remembering her father.  Never letting any part of him fade away, and never distilling down what he meant to her.  He was always everything he had been.  He was complete.  But sometimes its the incomplete that we need.  Agnes was one of the first with Recall.  But her inability to escape her past was what no one would ever forget.

Fancy Dress Parties

Men have always disliked dressing up for fancy events.  Ever since the establishment of patriarchy the first thing men did was remove the need for them to look fancy and dressy and put it on the women to be flashy and well plumaged.  Now, technology has finally reached it ultimate goal, to allow man to wear a greasy t-shirt and boxer shorts when going to a fancy dress party, but without anyone minding.

With the advent of remote robotic telepresence, or Rerote, man was finally free of the burden of dressing nicely.  Matthew was one of the first to get his own Rerote.  As he watched the time tick down until he knew he needed to get ready for the awards ceremony he simply reclined.  A satisfied grin spread across his face and he depressed a satisfying red button on a small remote control.  Behind him a skeleton of wires, cables, and titanium architecture unfurled itself and came to life.  It extended two simple legs, a torso, arms, and a hollow sphere for a head.

“Get my tux, and be me for the night.  I’m staying home.”  Matt put his feet up as the Rerote quietly whirred and began to get to work.  Taking out the tuxedo from the closet and inspecting it.  It removed a few errant bits of fluff and laid it out.  Without uttering a word it got an iron and flattened out a few tiny creases left from the last classy event.  Within a few minutes the wire frame automaton was dressed in the tuxedo and filling it nicely.  Only one thing remained, Matt would need to control it.  With a sigh he turned off the TV and got into what looked not unlike a spherical treadmill.  He could move in any direction inside of it, and the Rerote would emulate it.  Vidscreens lit up in all directions around Matt and he had a 360 degree view of what his Rerote was seeing.

He looked down and saw painted onto his own body in light the appearance of his tuxedo overlaying his t-shirt and boxers.  The Rerote was now his to control, he and it were basically one in the same.  After a short scan of Matt’s body inside of the sphere, a nearly perfect digital display hologram appeared over the robot’s frame.  To almost anyone it was a perfect replica of Matt’s features.  The Rerote, under Matt’s control, walked to a mirror and inspected himself.

Hitting a little button a green light indicated that the Rerote was in ‘Corrective Mode’.  “Cleanshaven please.”  The hologram’s 5 o’clock stubble vanished.  “Hair trim also.”  Again, the holographic presentation of Matt adapted and his hair was nicely trimmed.  With a smile the double headed out the door.

He got to the awards and not a person detected the ruse.  Rerotes were not in common useage yet, so no one even suspected.  Matthew for his part was happily at home standing in the control sphere.  He greeted people as they saw him, and smiled to the people he saw across the way but couldn’t remember the names of.  There are always plenty of them at fancy dress parties.  His expressions in the sphere reproduced exactly by the Rerote walking through the crowds.

“Good to see you!” Matt called out to a taller gentleman with a dark red beard.  The two clasped hands and smiled.

“Its been a while, how are you Matt?” the man had no idea it was a robot he was addressing.

“It has, nice beard.”  The taller gentleman suddenly looked at Matthew with shock and walked away shaking his head.  Not knowing entirely why his whiskered friend was so offended, he didn't want to exacerbate the issue by pressing him, so Matt walked on.  A few other colleagues greeted him before he took his seat for the awards.

When the ceremony began a beautiful shapely woman walked onto the stage and went up to the mic.  Jokingly he elbowed the guy beside him. "If I had a body like that I'd host award shows too."  He laughed a bit, as did the gentleman beside him.  Until he looked in Matt's direction.  In an awkward moment he just smiled and looked forward again, avoiding eye contact with Matt.

Dejected, Matt settled in his seat, and muttered to himself.  "Its like I have a third eye in the middle of my forehead or something."  He noticed a few people staring at him, but as soon as he glanced in their direction they pretended not to be looking abruptly.  He was starting to get a bit paranoid when he heard his name over the speaker system.  He had won!

Beaming with a wide grin he stood up and all eyes fell on him.  The applause started thunderous, but became slightly tepid as he stood up.  Music played and he walked onto the stage to accept his award and clutching it he spoke into the microphone.

"Thank you, this means a lot to me.  For years I have been green with envy when I watch other people walk onto this stage."  The crowd was silently watching him.  "And I couldn't be more excited to be standing here today.  I've never stood so tall."  Eyes went slightly wide in the audience, they must be really interested Matt thought.  "I can't really explain how thrilled I am, my heart is beating out of my chest."  Suddenly the crowd erupted into gasps and at least a few people began screaming.  Matt was perplexed.  He looked around and his eyes fell onto a big display screen that showed him standing at the podium in his tux.  He had a full beard, a shapely curve to his unusually tall body, a third eye right in the middle of his head... and with each beat of his heart the bloody organ was literally bursting out the front of his tux before shlurping back inside.

Back inside of his sphere, wearing boxers and a t-shirt he looked down.  A little green light informed him that he had left the Rerote in 'Corrective Mode'.  He looked up and saw the crowd of people hysterical.  Maybe he should have just gone to the awards show himself after all.

Loving by Remote

When we learned to speak through radio waves, we forgot how to speak through our eyes.  When we learned how to arrive places digitally, we forgot to arrive to them physically.
And when we learned to love by remote…

Jackson Rhuber was like most people.  He had a job, a family, and an extensive network of friends and acquaintances.  Today on his birthday he received an endless stream of messages from everyone he knew wishing him well.  While he went for a relaxing hike in the gentle hills of the Appalachians, he received each message directly to his mind and responded to it in an instant.  His wetware brain was seamlessly integrated with a metalware electronic one.  The bone plates of the human skull serve the purpose of protecting the squishy brain beneath, but the task can be done just as well by titanium alloys with integrated circuitry.  Then the space that was just a bony plate tasked with a single goal can also serve the function of processing.  Jackson, like everyone who could afford it, had replaced his bony single purpose skull with a more dynamic and effective cybernetic one.  

He, and everyone he knew, was able to send a missive to each other with just a thought.  At the speed of light it would travel around the world through the meshnet and be instantly read, acknowledged and responded to.  The metalware side of Jackson’s brain processed everything that was formulaic, saving his wetware side to be creative or indulge itself in experiences of the physical world.  At that very moment he was at work, doing his job.  But also quietly strolling through pine and oak trees, crunching recently fallen leaves underfoot in the autumn afternoon.  Such was the privilege of the future.  Not just working from home, but working from your head.  You could go anywhere, be doing anything, and yet the whole time you could be working.  True human multitasking.  Anything uncomfortable or particularly tiresome would slowly become the domain of the metalware, trained by your thoughts to respond how you would… but more efficiently, and aware of the mistakes you want to avoid.  Do you often forget to include relevant details in messages to people?  Your metalware will keep track and correct it.  Do you have a propensity for over eloquentizing your missives to the point of obfuscating your message?  Your metalware will get to the point.  But every message will still have your personality, your particular voice to it.  It is you, just an expanded and improved you.

For Jackson, his birthday was the most isolating day of the year.  More than a thousand people wished him well throughout the day, sending greeting to him from all corners of the world.  And he thanked them profusely and individually.  But it was all automatic to him.  It barely registered to him while he carefully picked his way through some moss covered rocks and perched at the top.  He knew that most of the messages were automatically generated by the metalware of other people, that they had intellectually known to send him a message and determined what it should sound like.  But that none of them felt a need to send him a greeting.  They were reminded by their calendars, they crafted a note, maybe included a picture or short generated video, and away it went.  Jackson heard the rushing of water from the nearby river. He cut through a stand of birch trees following the sound.  He was far enough from the city that the crisply flowing river was the only sound besides the hum of bird calls and insect activity.  He could just enjoy nature and the feel of a breeze.  He sat down and watched leaves glide on the surface of the water down the river, get caught in an eddy and eventually escape.  He was so alone.  With all of those people messaging him, he was still alone.  Damn the technology that cut him off like this.  Damn that he felt so pushed aside by his own mind.

But then it dawned on him.  He was alone.  It hadn’t been the technology that did it.  It was him.  He was walking through the woods isolated because HE had chosen to do that.  That when he was freed from a pattern where he had to see people, he had chosen solitude.  His metalware just did what he made it do, and did it effectively.  He had pushed people away, and it just let him.  He threw a stick into the river and got up.  Walking back the way he came, he broke into a run.  Ducking beneath branches, scrambling over logs.  He was pissed at himself.  Technology hadn’t done a thing to him.  It just him better at making mistakes.  But he realized now.  He thought of all the people he wished he could see, to really see in person to connect with properly.  Each thought bringing an image of them to mind in his metalware mind.

The sun had already started going down when Jackson burst in through the door to his home.  He was out of breath and bent over as he turned on the light, putting his hands on his knees to support himself.  Before he could stand he heard movement.  The lights in the whole house went on and a dozen people came rushing towards him.  His wife, his children, his best friends, old friends he hadn’t seen in years.  People who had always been nearby but that he hadn’t physically touched in years, but always been in automated contact.

“SURPRISE!” they shouted at him, while tears welled up in his eyes.  He didn’t say anything, he didn’t think anything.  He just felt.  And he embraced his family and held them close.  He didn’t need to say anything.  His smile said it all.



When we learned to speak through radio waves, we forgot how to speak through our eyes.  When we learned how to arrive places digitally, we forgot to arrive to them physically.
And when we learned to love by remote… we remembered that we make the choices.

Reboot

His funeral was well attended.  Not a surprise Gannon McDowlde was an extremely wealthy and influential man.  He was one of the co-founders of the most advanced data management company in the northern hemisphere.  They had been making headlines for the last few years with their neural emulative systems and rumors that they would be able to create a working electronic human complexity brain had been circling for weeks.  His death seemed to come at the apex of his fame.  A sudden heart attack.  His passing left the company in the able hands of his partner Craig Enston.  While Craig was a fearless businessman, it was Gannon who was the real innovator.  Together they made a formidable team, but stock prices dropped sharply when Gannon passed.  Craig would keep the company afloat, but it was destined to drop back to mediocrity without Gannon creating new things.  He would sorely be missed.

………..

“Gannon”  The voice was disembodied, but definitely the husky tone of Craig Enston.  “Gannon, can you hear me?  Everything says you are in there.  Run a diagnostic, see if the microphone is working”

Nothing, the world was black… it wasn’t even black.  It was blank.  And sluggish.  Two loud thuds.  Like someone tapping on a microphone.  A second voice, younger “Its working Mr Enston, maybe he is just confused?”

“He shouldn’t be confused, he helped design this technology.  Gannon!  Do you hear me Gannon?  Say something so I can help you wake up.”

He wanted to speak.  He remembered speaking, and how it was done, but didn’t have the muscle memory.  He didn’t feel muscles at all.  But he remembered having them, he remembered being Gannon McDowlde.  He remembered being in a scanner.  But how did he get here?  Had something happened?  He couldn’t be sure.  He tried to talk, despite feeling no lips or tongue, the experience of talking he remembered.  He tried to reproduce it.  “Craig?”

He heard his ‘own’ voice echo back to him.  It was mechanical, similar to a text to type program, except a little bit more on point with tone.

“Thats it!  He is in there!  Help him out.  Gannon, I’m here, its Craig.  You are ok.  You are inside of the mainframe.  Don’t panic, everything is working the way it is supposed to.  You were uploaded.”

“Uploaded?”  He could remember more clearly now, and speaking was easier.  His hearing was clearer as well.  He could make out the sounds of someone typing nearby, it must be the younger man who spoke earlier.  If he was in the mainframe, if he was uploaded… he would be guiding the program to engage with Gannon’s thoughts, thats why things were becoming easier and clearer.  “Into the mainframe?  But we agreed not to do that unless….”

There was a pause.  Then a sigh.  “Yeah, I’m sorry Gannon.  It was a heart attack.  But don’t get caught up in that, we saved you.  You just need to help us finish making all the connections so we don’t lose any of you.  Alright, just some question and answer things, you know the drill.  Hell man, you invented it.”  Craig laughed a bit, but there was still concern in his voice.

Gannon, or the uploaded consciousness of Gannon went along with the protocol.  As he answered questions about his past, about his senses, about his emotions, the technician was slowly able to establish a functioning map of Gannon’s mind and give him access to the computer system was uploaded to.  Soon he could see through the webcam, hear clearly through the microphone, and when he spoke it sounded like he should rather than like a machine.  His face displayed on the monitor and he could finally express himself, mostly, again.  Craig explained his death, all of the people who made it to the funeral, and read him a few of the letters his family received.

There was a period of adjustment, to being a computer instead of a man.  And to being dead.  Craig reminded him that if they went forward now with this, there was every chance that there would be legal reason to shut him down, and they didn’t know what that would do yet.  It would need to wait until the system was refined.

In the meantime Gannon found himself left alone much of the time.  Craig would visit with him for an hour or so every day, and there was often a technician on hand who would add hardware at Gannon’s request.  Slowly under his guidance he was able to advance the system and give himself many of the capabilities he had while a person.  At least, he could access computer systems and work.  Working had always helped keep him even keeled.  And now, he never tired.  He could work straight through the day and night without even flinching.  More often than not he failed to notice that an entire night had gone by while he was alone.

He worked on determining the best ways to improve the system he was now integrated into.  It definitely had some shortcomings and little by little he tried to correct them.  But his mind was never able to completely focus.  Not when he was alive and not now.  That is what made him a great innovator.  He would be distracted with different ideas and just to busy himself he would create blueprints and specs for his new ideas.  It felt like he was creating things in overdrive now.  Always thinking and devising.  Somehow, he didn’t even realize how little he missed being alive.

It was months since he had died now.  Suddenly he was struck with that realization when one of the technicians who basically babysat him during the day brought in a newspaper and he got a look at the date.  He hadn’t realized it.  He stopped working to think about it.  To remember what he was missing.  But for some reason, his memories of life were hazy at best.  Come to think of it, he couldn’t actually remember large chunks of his life.  When he tried to go back chronologically, entire decades seemed to be missing.  He was now capable enough, he could run his own diagnostics.

What he found surprised him.  Immediately he spoke to the technician.  “Where is Craig?  Get Craig down here, tell him there is something very important I need to talk to him about immediately.”  The digital face on the screen was stern, and his digitized voice carried a certain note of anger in it.

“What?  Umm, Mr Enston is in a meeting, I don’t think I can get him right now.”  The nervous twenty something retorted.  A bead of sweat dripped down his brow.

“I built this company with him, if I want him he can step out of a meeting, go get him”  There was no arguing with Gannon McDowlde, it wasn’t just his innovation that made him a leader.  He knew how to scare the pants off with a word if he needed to.  “Now”

The kid nearly fell out of his seat scrambling to get out the door.  But it didn’t take more than ten minutes for Craig to come into the room, composed and followed by the worried young man.

“Gannon, what seems to be the problem, I was just talking to our investors but I was told you needed to speak with me.  Whats wrong?”  Craig calmly pulled a chair over to sit in front of the computer Gannon now lived inside of.

“You know what is wrong.  Someone has been messing with my program.  I’m missing my life, I know I remembered it before.  I remember you asking me about it when you first brought me online.  But now I can’t find it anywhere.  There is clear evidence in my program of alterations from an outside source.”  The voice would have resonated if Gannon still had a body, instead the volume was just reasonably high on his speakers.

“I’ll look into it, I wouldn’t want anyone to be toying with your system, but are you sure you are seeing what you think you are?  This is a new technology, to be able to diagnose the problems from the inside is-”

“I thought that too.  And I thought what reason could someone possibly have for doing that.  But I’m not totally daft Craig.  I realized what you are doing.  How many little inventions and doodads I was able to create without the distraction of missing my family.  I would miss them if I remembered them wouldn’t I?  How much more is it worth to you to keep me running 24/7 than needing to split my time between my desires and your profits.  You were always shrewd Craig, but a little bit too ruthless.”  

Craig’s demeanor changed, he dropped his shoulders and sulked into the chair.  “Yeah, well.  I guess I knew I couldn’t ride this free train forever.”

“So you will restore my excised programming?  Let me have my whole self back so I can make my own decisions.  And let me contact my family to let them know I am still around.”

Craig looked to the technician and nodded.  The technician went over to a computer terminal and began typing.  “Of course, its just going to feel funny for a moment while we fix your program.”  Everything went black and numb for Gannon.

…

…

…

“Gannon”  The voice was disembodied, but definitely the husky tone of Craig Enston.  “Gannon, can you hear me?  Everything says you are in there.  Run a diagnostic, see if the microphone is working”

He wanted to speak.  He remembered speaking, and how it was done, but didn’t have the muscle memory.  He didn’t feel muscles at all.  But he remembered having them, he remembered being Gannon McDowlde.  He remembered being in a scanner.  But how did he get here?  Had something happened?  He couldn’t be sure.  He tried to talk, despite feeling no lips or tongue, the experience of talking he remembered.  He tried to reproduce it.  “Craig?”

Yo-Yo

Lieutenant Samara Higgs tightened the straps keeping her in the seat of the spherical craft.  All around her there was a buzz of activity.  Mission control was in overdrive prepping for her launch.  The sphere she was in was perhaps 10 feet in diameter, the outside made of a nearly perfectly smooth surface of ground silicon, polished to a mirror finish.  There was only one way in or out of the sphere, a small port on the very top, just big enough for a person to slide through.  After Samara gave a thumbs up to a crewman looking down to her, he sealed the sphere.

Inside Samara was more or less cut off.  For the moment she still had radio communication with Mission Control and had access to a video feed of the big reflective marble she was currently inside.  She watched as a team armed with heavy hoses and cold weather gear began to douse the ship with liquid nitrogen.  The display turned to white clouds as they froze the entire outside of her ship, causing it to contract and seal the port above her so tight that it was barely worth considering it an opening anymore.

“Activating the magnetic sheilding.  Talk to you in ten minutes.”  She smiled as she flicked a switch and the sphere began to rumble.  A layer inside of the wall began to spin as it powered up.  An electrical current running through it created an intense magnetic field.  She could feel it, but couldn’t quite put into words how.  The radio communication cut out, they wouldn’t be able to talk to her as long as the field was active.  Without the field she would be unprotected as she crossed over.  It was strong enough to block out any known kind of harmful radiation, but also isolated her.  The time for launch was almost upon them.  She would be the first person to visit another universe.  Once there she would have five minutes to deactivate the field, open the sphere, take a few measurements and pictures, and get back in before it automatically resealed and took its return trip.

With less than a minute to go she checked and rechecked her environmental suit, and any system she could see.  They were all fine, but she felt powerless just waiting.  “Here we go” she whispered as she could feel herself pulled, as thought from inside and yet every direction.  Everything went black and she felt immense pressure.  It didn’t hurt her, it just held her in place, she couldn’t move a muscle, she could barely think.  It was overwhelming, heavy, solid, and everywhere.  And over with a flash of blinding green light.  She was supposedly in another universe now, if it worked.

Nothing seemed different so far.  She flicked the switch and deactivated the magnetic field, she unhooked the straps to her seat, and she ascended the little ladder to the exit port.  It opened and light poured in.  In the light pouring in was a strange figure already waiting for her waving suction cup tipped flaps of flesh as its skin glimmered.  It intoned with a watery sounding voice “Ara Mas Eyb”  Before she could react the three flaps reached down and the suction cups gripped her helmet, pulling her directly up with seeming ease and wrapping its apparent arms around her.  Certainly, this mission was a mistake and this is how she died.  She struggled to push it away and the large, it must have been at least 18 feet tall, being abruptly put her down and retreated backwards from her.  Samara was unharmed after all that, but it would be hard to shake the memory of the huge purple and red beast from her mind.  Right now she had to get back into her ship, she could wait out the last couple of minutes before jumping back in safety.

She turned around, surveying the world she was on.  It was not terribly unlike her own Earth.  Gravity was similar, there was sunlight, of a slightly different spectrum, but it clearly provided energy for the large swaying blue and orange fronds that towered above her in all directions.  When she turned back to her sphere she realized a rather significant problem.  It was perfectly smooth on the outside, and there was no way she would be able to get into it.  She had just under four minutes to do so or it would automatically close and go back, leaving her behind.  Unfortunately for her, at that particular moment another strange creature came charging towards her.  The sounds it made were entirely foreign to her, even moreso than the huge purple people eater she had scared away already.  It looked like a starfish, walking on the tips of its legs as it carthwheeled towards her screeching.

Samara didn’t know what it wanted, but it didn’t seem happy, and it didn’t seem like a good idea for her to wait to find out so she decided run.  But it wouldn’t relent.  Every turn she made it took just as easily, following her exactly as she kept looking over her shoulder to see where it was.  The jungle of colors was confusing when she was standing still, running through it while being pursued was an altogether terrifying experience.  While looking backwards, her foot went through what she thought was solid ground and she found herself tumbling down into some sort of burrow.  The starbeast rolled past it and kept going.  But she was out of time.  The sphere would be sealing itself up now for its return trip.  Going to stand, she found that she had broken her ankle in the fall and collapsed back down to the ground.  She looked up through the foliage and saw a bright green flash of light ripple across the sky.  That was it, that was the sphere going back to Earth.  Without her.  She lay out on the ground, wondering if they would send someone to look for her, or if they would determine it was too dangerous, or what.

She started to sob, unable to wipe away the tears because she was inside of an environment suit and the glass visor over her face prevented her.  It dawned on her, that she only had a few hours before the carbon dioxide scrubbers in her suit would expire.  It wasn’t just a matter of waiting for rescue… it had taken months to prepare the first sphere for its trip.  Could they send it back in only a few hours?  Probably not.  While she thought about the agony of how she was probably going to die in a different universe a small tripedal creature peered out at her.  Big round eyes, and soft yellow fur with some sort of striping pattern.  It couldn’t be much more than three feet tall.  She stopped and looked at it, everything so far had attacked her, would this be any different?  As it slowly approached she held her breath, she couldn’t get away, not with a broken ankle.  But it seemed friendly.  When it got near it stopped and looked at her.  She sat up and it retreated a few steps.

In a whisper she called to it “Hey there, don’t be afraid… unless you want to eat me, then it’d be nice if you ran away”  She smiled despite her situation.

It blinked and turned to look back where it had come and called out “I think its safe, it looks like it is hurt.”  He looked back to her as a half dozen more little yellow beings emerged from behind rocks and came closer.  “Hello”  He looked right at her.

“You speak English?”  It had to be, although she had a translation unit in her environmental suit, it would take days of hearing a language for it to be able to communicate it to her properly.

“No, you are speaking our language.  You must be confused.”  It stepped closer to her, but kept one of its three feet back, as though ready to sprint away.  “You are hurt?”

She nodded.  But that didn’t seem to mean anything to the yellow creature.  “Yes, I fell.  Can you help me?”

The small creatures surrounded her without any apparent menace. Another one spoke “It is new, I’ve never seen something new.”  Others chimed in “It shouldn’t be possible to have new things, not like this”  “What do we do with it?”

The first silenced them “We help it.  And if we are wrong, we will kill it next time”  The small furred creatures nodded in agreement.  Somehow it didn’t comfort Samara.  Still, she was at their mercy and if they were going to help her she would have to accept it.

With their help she was able to make it to one of their rather primitive settlements where they laid her down and elevated her ankle.  They couldn’t do much for her without taking off her environmental suit, and that would likely kill her.  She explained to them that she was from another universe, that the green flashes in the sky had been because of her, and that she only had a few scant hours to be rescued or she would die.

“I don’t understand what makes you so worried Samara.  Maybe next time you will do a better job.”  The one who had approached her first, who she learned was called Nan, seemed genuinely unable to grasp what worried her.

“What do you mean next time?  If I die I am gone!  This isn’t some sort of game with extra lives or something”  Samara snapped back.

“During your next cistemporal phase.”

“My what?”

“The next time you are going forward with the flow of time?”  He offered the answer much like one would to a child, a simple statement of the obvious.

“When wouldn’t I be going with the flow of time?” The lieutenant was getting impatient, not only because she had less than two hours before her air ran out and the technology here was certainly not going to be capable of helping with that.

“During your transtemporal phase.”  Nan offered, the obvious answer of course.  “You do have a progression of time in your universe don’t you?  A cycle of cause and effect and cause?”

“We have cause and effect… but its not a cycle.”

Nan’s eyes went wide.  “What?  Impossible. If it weren’t a cycle how could you correct mistakes?”

“You can’t, you just keep going.”  Now Samara gave the obvious answer.

While Nan tried to cope with the thought of a world where your mistakes are permanent a huge creature slowly lumbered backwards towards Samara, she recognized its purple and red shape right away.

“Nan!  Its that thing that attacked me!  We have to get out of here, how did it find me?”  She tried to stand up in a panic, hurting her ankle more as it slammed down onto the ground.  Nan ran to her side to push her leg back where it was.

“Stop, thats not a thing, thats Otto.  He lives lives here with us.  He just gets overly excited sometimes.”  Nan moved out of the way as Otto backed up and curled around Samara “Oh and he liked you!”  He walked back “That is a very good sign.”

The huge slick bodied giant of a creature curled around Samara not unlike a puppy it let out a sound “Thgir Seh.” She started to stroke its back from head towards his tail, it seemed like the right thing to do.  Its tensed muscles relaxed

Nan whispered to her “Pet him the other way, he doesn’t like that”

“But he is relaxing I can feel it”  Samara was certain the big beast was happier now that she started petting him.

“He is in his transtemporal phase.  Didn’t you see how he walked in?”  Nan began to pet Otto towards his head, guiding Samara who followed suit.

“You said that before, transtemporal phase, I really don’t know what you are talking about.”  It was awkward to pet something so huge in the way she was, but she continued.  “You can only go one direction through time, forward, just like everything else.”

“When you are going forward with time, thats cistemporal, when you are going the opposite direction as time thats transtemporal.  Pretty simple really.”  He could see that he was confusing Samara and scooped up some water with a leaf.  “So… when we are cistemporal if I were to drop turn this leaf over all the water would splash to the ground right?”  The water indeed splashed to the ground as he spoke.

“Of course”

“Well, when we are transtemporal that water will come back into the leaf.  I am sure you have seen that plenty of times before.  What do you call it?”

She blinked.  That was ridiculous.  “I have never seen something like that before.  Thats the effect coming before the cause thats impossible.”

“Where you are from that doesn’t happen?  You said mistakes cannot be undone… do you really life in a universe with unidirectional time?”  Nan almost had pity in his eyes at the thought.

“Yes, of course I do.”  Samara took a moment.  “But you don’t?  Here time does not always go in the same direction?”

“Here it reaches an end, then reverses, then reaches the other end and reverses again.  But some of us live forward through it, some of us backward.  Then we switch.  You are living it forward, with us.  Otto is living it backwards.”  Nan hopped up onto Otto and gave him a big backwards rub.  “Thats why it is a good sign that he liked you, because he liked something about you that you haven’t done yet.”

The reality was slowly dawning on Samara.  This universe must yo-yo through time backwards and forwards.  Which meant, Nan was right, she could save herself on the next go through.  Just a question of how long it would be until time would reverse.  She relaxed a bit realizing she would have a chance to go home.  She relaxed against Otto and continued to pet him.  He didn’t seem so scary while he was laying nuzzled against her.

Her last hour of oxygen was somehow calm.  She spent almost the whole time with Otto who refused to let her up.  He seemed to know she was going to go soon.  Otto rarely got the kind of attention that she gave him, both of them were extremely interested in the other, new things were so rare in this world.  But Samara started to get worried.  When would time reverse?

It was when her oxygen reached a critical low level and the silenced the alarm that it dawned on her.  Her translator could understand Nan’s language.  That would take days of hearing it regularly.  She had only been here for a few scant hours.  The translator somehow remembered what it would learn, after her death.  She was afraid.  She was going to die before time snapped back the other way.  She held onto Otto and sobbed against him.  He wrapped a limb around her and held her as she slowly drifted into unconsciousness when her oxygen was too thin.  And she ultimately expired.

The last thing she heard was Otto rumbling “Oll Eh”  Then nothing.


“Hello” came a rumbling voice as Samara woke up and looked to see the purple and red giant holding her.  She felt like she was falling backward, she couldn’t control what she did, as she slowly undid everything.  She rested with Otto who seemed normal now, moving forward instead of backwards.  Nan and his people on the other hand were just the opposite.  Soon she way wrapped in a nuzzling Otto and she pet him.

Nan interrupted her saying “Taht Ekil Tn Seod Eh Yaw Rehto Eht Mih Tep” and she began to pet him backwards, she could feel Otto getting less and less comfortable until he ultimately got up and walked away letting out a “He’s right”

It was strange to be pulled back into the burrow and carried backwards by a half dozen of Nan’s people, every conversation they had playing in reverse.  They eventually let her down and retreated, leaving her in excruciating pain as she was particularly aware of her broken ankle.  She stared up to the sky for a few moments before a flash of green light rippled against it.

Now she was worried, what if she somehow did this wrong, took the wrong way or otherwise broke from backing up properly.  But she didn’t have much time to think about it before she felt herself lifting up off the ground, her ankle snapping back together and she was running backwards, looking over her shoulder at a strange starbeast.  Only now, she was chasing it, following it back through a whir of color in the alien jungle.  She didn’t remember these twists and turns, but the starbeast unerringly led her back to the gleaming reflective giant marble she had come in.  But as she stood there, she realized, she again had the problem she had when she arrived.  How was she supposed to get inside of it?  It was ten feet up of smooth silicon, she was as trapped as ever.

Suddenly a rumble between the huge swaying fronds and the familiar red and purple giant of Otto came crashing out to her, wrapping its slimy arms around her and lifting her up.  She struggled awkwardly until Otto’s suction cupped flaps held her helmet and slowly dropped her back inside of the open sphere until she grabbed hold of the ladder herself.

“Bye Samara”  The giant gently waved down to her as the port closed.  Her finger automatically unflipping the switch to turn the magnetic field back on.  In a few more moments she was back home in a flash of green light.

She had arrived in the same instant she had left.  It would take a lot of explaining to convince the higher ups that the project had not simply failed.  And unfortunately, she wouldn’t get a do over for that.