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, Lady Radiance was introduced to the existence of the multiverse, and discovered that in Makaria’s timeline, she has a dubiously consensual relationship (and child: Kari herself) with someone called Lord Hades, who doesn’t sound nearly as heroic as Kari seems to believe he is. Allegedly, he’s destined to be Christa’s true love in this timeline, but she’s never even heard of him—and how much can she trust these people, anyway…?
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When Christa woke again, the sun was bright outside. The light was her only comfort; she could see now that when she’d fallen asleep, someone had moved her into a quick-and-flimsy mockup of a hotel room without the actual purpose at all disguised. Medical equipment loomed over the head of the bed, and the burgundy-matted picture frame on the wall opposite featured a marker sketch of Futurama’s Dr. Zoidberg behind its cracked glass, prominently labeled IOU one art for sleep study lab - Benji. She shivered and rolled away from the coils of tubing, facing into the room. A wan-cheeked, violet-eyed, white-blonde young woman was looking at her expectantly.
“Kari,” Christa said, sitting up quickly under the blanket. She felt far stronger in the morning light, but she hadn’t expected to be confronted with the facts of the situation so soon. Still—Makaria was a small comfort, too. Whatever circumstances she came from, she was family, and Christa had always had precious little of that.
The other girl smiled with her whole face, something she didn’t seem to be used to doing. “Mother. Did you sleep well?”
“Well enough.” She couldn’t help a sideways glance at the oxygen mask that had been hanging beside her head. “Not that I’m not grateful…”
“Does it bother you? The doctor offered, and I didn’t think—” Kari’s pale eyelashes fluttered. “Mother never cared. She was very used to hospitals.”
“Ah…I’m not.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, frowning contritely. “…I suppose you really aren’t her, are you? Not exactly.”
“No, but I don’t mind,” Christa said. “I don’t mind you, anyway. I just want to understand better.”
The door opened, and Jacob came in balancing a carryout bag from a local breakfast spot and a drink carrier with three to-go cups in it. “Morning, sunshine,” he said. “And Makaria. The Matrix is looking for you.”
“What’s he want now?” she grumbled. “All right. I shouldn’t be too long.”
Christa started to stand up as Kari left, but Jacob was already pulling a table over and popping open a takeout box. A curve of funfetti-flecked whipped coconut cream, slightly melted, smiled up at her from the surface of a short stack of pancakes. “I brought you this, too,” he said, holding out an opaque bottle and shaking it under her nose until she accepted. “It’s the vanilla protein one you like, but Dr. Marcos fixed it up. He said if you’re going to use your powers regularly, you need to supplement with gluta…neuro…I don’t know, just drink it, okay?”
“Thank you. Um, I’ll try it, I guess.”
“Good.” Her brother sighed as he sat down. “So, Jonathan came with me to get breakfast. We had a very interesting conversation.”
Christa kept her focus on pulling the top pancake aside and cutting it into neat squares. “Oh, that sounds fun.”
“Christabel.” Jacob almost never used her full name. When she looked up, surprised, his expression was set in deeper, more serious lines than she’d seen since their father’s death. “Fun is not what I meant by ‘interesting’. I mean he told me about everything they discussed earlier this morning, and about what it was like when Mheksos came after his timeline. And I don’t see any way for this to go well for us.”
She felt her face fall. “It’s that bad?” His grimace was enough of an answer. “All right, well…you tell me, and I’ll tell you what I heard from Kari. We should at least get on the same page.”
Even funfetti pancakes were hard put to get her through breakfast conversation like this. Still, when they had both reviewed what they knew so far, Christa offered her brother a small smile. “None of that sounds great, but I don’t think it’s hopeless. The Matrix seems like he knows what he’s talking about—there’s that.”
“Talking, sure.” Jacob sighed. “What I don’t get is how he supposedly has all this precognitive knowledge, and the whole infinite multiverse to pick from, and he still brought them.”
“Ja-cob!” She looked around to make sure they were alone.
“It’s not personal,” he said, leaning in and dropping his voice more appropriately. “I like Jonathan, for somebody I’ve known all of a couple hours. But we’re about to be backed into a corner fighting, and I don’t think these guys can work with us. They certainly can’t work with each other. They’re traumatized, they’re dysfunctional—”
“They’re our children,” Christa said.
“And our other selves obviously did a terrible job with them,” Jacob said into his coffee.
She gasped and pulled her best ‘Lady Radiance Is Disappointed In You’ frown. “So we’ll fix it!”
“Oh, no. I feel like I’m going to regret saying it like this, but Chris, you can try to avert the apocalypse or you can adopt project kids. You can’t do both at once.”
“I’m not adopting anybody,” she said. “I think they’re all older than we are. It’s…more of an intervention, by a friend.”
He shook his head. “Yeah. Regrets already. Look, that wasn’t the point. If we want to win this fight, and I assume you do, then we’re going to need some serious backup besides them.”
“Well, like whom? Somebody official?”
“No. Apparently that’s what happened in The Matrix’s timeline, and the response got strangled in red tape. He doesn’t want to risk it.” Jacob swirled his coffee idly in the cup. “Of course, that was thirty years from now, plus a civil war. It might be different for us.”
“Maybe,” Christa said. She’d never cared enough to follow politics, even on atypical issues. There was always more important work to do, and she had been insulated from all that. “I think I need to talk to Hades.”
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Thanks for reading! For more stories set in this universe, see my superverse directory.
To be continued next week in Mirai, Mirai #17…
Superhero cliques: JUST TALK TO EACH OTTHEERRRRRRRRRRRR
Wait: she does mean talk to him WITH BACKUP, right? Not alone, right? Because talking to him alone would be WILDLY A BAD IDEA at this point in the timeline I feel like but then again I could be wrong.