10: The Wildcard

Mirai, Mirai #10. Serial fiction: multiverse family drama.

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.

Previously, The Matrix seemed confused by Marissa’s attitude toward Baz, and admitted that his predictions had focused too closely on one particular aspect of her life in this timeline to see the rest of it. Allegedly, the answer lies in her nearly-fatal encounter eight years ago with Sonic Vorpal…

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“You want to talk about that time in undergrad I was held at laserpoint by atypical-rights terrorists?” Marissa raised her eyebrows. “How did we get here from whether we should supercharge Chained Lightning?”

Nick held up his index fingers in a bid for her patience. “We didn’t get here from him, we got here from this complex you have—”

“Complex?”

“—about your research and relationships—”

“I don’t have a complex.”

“Look. I’ll step you through this. Let’s look at—oh, Terra-669. Makaria’s home timeline. I asked if you were single because there, you’d been married for several years at this point.”

“What—”

“And back during the hostage crisis, Brad Stevens had been captured along with you and executed by Vorpal Five.” Nick nodded in satisfaction with her surprised silence, having short-circuited her objection that there was no way in hell she’d have married Brad (her last serious boyfriend, and the only obvious option) after he got her captured in the first place. “Thank you. The result being, you couldn’t keep your involvement quiet, and you picked up when your father called you a few weeks later, instead of ignoring him.”

Her eyes widened. “How did you know…”

“Probability sets. When you don’t take his call, you don’t repair your relationship with him, and you end up developing a self-sabotaging attitude to life and an unhealthy attachment to your work.” He tipped his head towards her. “Your words, not mine. More importantly for my purposes, you don’t find out what he would have told you.”

The Marissa from his future obviously didn’t know the first thing about this timeline. She’d accepted that nobody was going to look out for her, nor did she need them to—she didn’t think that qualified as self-sabotaging. And did they really have to have this discussion now?

Ignis seemed to have found his voice. “Thought you said this was the good ending timeline, Matrix?”

“It’s the good ending, not the good way there.”

Marissa bristled. Considering her own alternate pasts and futures was rapidly becoming less and less fun, and she had to shake off the unease somehow. “Where exactly are you going with this?”

Nick sighed and pushed his glasses up. “When you were taken as a hostage, you were hit with a modified neurodisrupter and then exposed to Vorpal Six’s corona?”

“Well…yes. Why?” She tilted her head, watching the tightening of his expression. “What are you doing?”

He shifted his intense gaze a few feet sideways; Ignis flew out of his chair and hit the wall. “I was supposed to be doing that.”

“Warn me,” Ignis said from the floor. “She’s been a bad influence on you.”

“Sorry,” Nick said insincerely. “So, Marissa, your psychovariant status was one of the things you and Dr. Cotlin would have worked out. You passively block others’ powers, and that event was the most probable trigger. If you didn’t notice it before now, the range in this timeline must be very short, but you can at least protect yourself.”

“Wait…no, that’s insane. No way.” She didn’t know how else to answer. She had been totally unharmed by what should have been fatal radiation, and despite some plausible allegations that she wasn’t entirely on top of lab safety, she’d never been messed up by anything she was studying, either. She’d just always thought she was lucky. Wasn’t she? “How, even…I mean, Jake took me along on an interspace jump just last week.”

“Presumably, you were cooperating,” he said. “Psychovariant, remember. The biggest factor is your own stubbornness.”

“Y’know, when you say it like that, it doesn’t surprise me,” Sebastian said.

“Thanks a lot,” Marissa muttered. She didn’t want to think about this with him here, somehow; there had to be something she could do to change the subject. “Nick, you said…one of the things.”

The uncertain look was back. “I don’t know if the other part’s relevant right now,” he said.

“What kind of not relevant?” Ignis asked as he sat down again.

“The Wizard.” Nick frowned, turning to stare at his notes on the whiteboard. Marissa duly added The Wizard?? to the corner of hers. That’d been the callsign of one of her local heroes growing up, a physics-warping vigilante known for keeping Houston’s more dangerous capes in line. What he might have to do with her mild-mannered exochemist father was beyond her. “Of course, if we don’t have Featherweight to pair up with Beetle, we might have to call him anyway.”

Sebastian was shaking his head. “You gotta back up again, because I understood none of what you just said.”

“I recruited Titan Beetle specifically to deal with some of the more advanced Mhekanite formations,” Nick said as he returned to scribbling. “He’s optimized for gravity conditions that they can’t handle.”

Marissa looked over to him. “How?”

Jonathan clicked his tongue. “Nanites, bro. …you wouldn’t get that joke. S-sorry, Commander, please don’t—uh—” He stopped and rubbed his face in much the same way Jake tended to when he was overwhelmed. “Doctor, right. So, maybe some background. I’m with the People’s Liberation Space Force. Sonic Vorpal was one of our predecessor orgs.”

“Sonic Vorpal?” She blinked in confusion, remembering how their run-in had ended for the Vorpals. “How did they even make it that long? Were their powers more stable?”

“I don’t think so, ma’am, but they did have you,” he said. “I guess you joined up with them, instead of…whatever happened here. My buddy Titan Rhinoceros served under you back in the Asteroid Belt campaign, and he always said you were the duct tape holding the Revolution together.”

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Thanks for reading! For more stories set in this universe, see my superverse directory.

Next time…yeah, I’m doing a flashback again. Prepare yourself for Mirai, Mirai #11: Commander Cotlin and Titan Beetle, Terra-932.