Welcome to The Story Scrapbook, a fiction newsletter by E.B. Howard. If you’re new in town, check out my Fiction Directory for navigation.
Mirai, Mirai is a bite-sized speculative serial drama, posting weekly. This time, Lady Radiance and her friends must fend off the attacks of multiversal megalomaniac Mheksos the Mighty—with the help of their children from alternate futures far worse than their own.
Returning to the main timeline, where Baz and Marissa are trying to get answers out of The Matrix (Nick Harper), Titan Beetle (Jonathan Jones), and Ignis (Cade Grimes—not that they know that…) The Matrix has just explained that the multiversal rescue mission had been not just his life’s work, but his Marissa’s.
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Marissa clapped her hands together. “You’re Clare’s. Of course.”
“Refresh my memory?” Sebastian said.
“Clare was one of our research subjects, back when we were on the epigenetics project,” she said. “She’s still the most powerful psychic I’ve ever tested. How is your mom?”
“In your timeline, currently, great.” Nick’s tone recommended against pushing further. “Before you ask, it’s my older sister who got the psychovariance, not me. I’m actually a type-four hypercognitive. …by the blank look, that’s not in your diagnostic manual yet, is it?”
“Aw, you have a manual?” She sighed. “Welcome back to the Stone Age. It’s been five years, and Lautaro just finished his part of a preliminary paper for the AMA subcommittee that’s working on diagnostic definitions. So, hit me with your future wisdom. Please.”
He shook his head. “I’ll give you the short version. Hypercognition can mimic a number of psychovariant subtypes, but they have entirely different mechanisms. Psychics draw their abilities from the psyche—or soul, or power of will, whichever you want to call it—but hypercogs use physical brainpower to get things done, so my classification is biovariant. Type-four is a specific ability cluster indicating a preference for large system models. I’m capable of telekinesis and the like, but I’m much better at predictive processing.”
“Woah. So, is—” Marissa was trying to find a pen to take notes, but they all seemed to have escaped across the floor. Ignis leaned over and handed her one. “—thanks. Look, you can’t just tell me that. Is it, like, a binary taxonomy, psychic and biological? What’s the differential criteria there? Is variance the technical term—oh, man, I bet atypical is the new mutant. Some intern is probably cringing reading my white papers—”
“Rissa. Focus,” Sebastian said firmly. “Will this help us against the bad guy?”
“Uh…” She was mentally stalled out, tapping the pen on the desk. It was hard to gather her thoughts while watching Jonathan try to scoot away discreetly, like Sebastian had just pushed the proverbial big red button on the side of the Doom-O-Matic. Sure, normally she wouldn’t scruple to lob an eraser past his head or something, just so he knew he couldn’t push her around, but he looked perfectly serious. She could respect that. “Well,” she said, trying again. “Yes, it will. We have to know what resources we have, and apparently that requires defining terms.”
“I can simplify,” Nick said. He was glancing uncertainly between her and Sebastian. Had she missed something? She hated feeling like she’d missed something. “I diverted almost all my capacity to data analytics years ago; I won’t be much good in battle. On our side, Makaria is probably the most powerful at the moment. She has her own form of psychic pyrokinesis, and slightly more practical access to Minkowski spacetime than I do, in the form of portal travel. She could theoretically handle very limited time travel as well, but that’s a can of worms that nobody wants to open up. Trust me.”
Marissa was already adding ‘dont forget ask NH re time travel worm can!!’ to her notes. “Portals are good. So far we’ve only had Spacewalker, and—well, that’s all he can do. Christa won’t let me run any analysis on Lady Radiance, but I think she’s our strongest fighter without pulling in outside help, or talking to our other test subjects. Given that she can do whatever she wants with the solid light, or use the energy-to-matter conversion for super-strength and flying, plus if she’s learned any spells…no offense, Sebastian. It’s just physics.”
“Takes a lot more’n that for you to offend me,” he said. “You, though.” Ignis suddenly sat up very straight against the back of his chair, the visible slice of his face taut under Sebastian’s searching look. “You said, ‘practically no Chained Lightning.’ What was that about?”
“So,” Nick said, breaking in quickly, “there are timelines where your powers are increased by artificial means, but the strength and stability of the results vary. The enhanced healing usually gives out without much warning, hence, ah…”
“The bein’ KIA every time thing,” Sebastian said. Marissa’s stomach twisted.
This was entirely backwards, all of it. Baz wasn’t the cape type; Chained Lightning was just that one last fling before he got the normal life he swore he wanted. Formula 83 had made some less than desirable changes in the “superhero” direction, true, but that was a temporary setback. He was her pet project, and she was fixing him. At the very least, she was kicking fate in the shins. The point was, he wasn’t supposed to be out dying anywhere.
Why didn’t he look upset about this?
“What do you mean, ‘artificial means’?” she said.
“That is a tangent that I’d rather not get into without Christa, as there was—will be—quite a complex sequence of events involved in your original timeline. But you did give me a formula that should mostly replicate the effects, in case we needed it.”
Sebastian shrugged. “Shoot me up, then.”
“No.” Four faces turned on her curiously. “I mean. You need to talk to Dr. Marcos, but—he’ll say no. We’re in the middle of a two-week protocol to integrate the most recent experimental dose. Best-case scenario, you ruin my data. Worst case, you ruin my data and there’s some kind of horrible interaction.”
“You thought about that already,” Nick said. “Don’t worry. There are tradeoffs, but I’ll have to recalculate to be sure…” He was looking uncertainly again at Marissa. “I didn’t pin down much in your timeline before 2015. The nature of statistical prediction only allows for peeking through quantum keyholes, so to speak. The more I learn about one area, the blurrier its immediate surroundings get. Are you still—do you—sorry, this is just the fastest way to establish which probability set we’re in. Are you seeing anyone right now?”
“Uh, no. Very single.” She was too confused to be bothered. “Wait, there are timelines where I’m not? What does that have to do with—”
“As I said, just some obscure dependencies at play. I am not getting in the middle of any of that. …but if that’s the track we’re on, that does change some things. We might need to talk about the NIH hostage crisis.”
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Thanks for reading! For more stories set in this universe, see my superverse directory.
Since this is a busy week for me, I’ll be taking a full week off posting. The second part of The Sonic Vorpal Incident is projected to drop September 11, and Mirai, Mirai will return on September 15. See you then!
(A rabbit hole to tide you nerds over: Minkowski space is an established thing in physics, and something that I researched once because I had a character interested in the other Minkowski space in algebraic number theory. Really super cool stuff. Free pdf link to Minkowski’s papers here.)
FINALLY WE ARE GETTING SOMEWHERE AND YET ALSO NOWHERE
I see Nick is not into the "will they, won't they?" trope, lol.