Update: It's Slow-going Here.

 Hey gang.  Just a quick note.  Things have been super busy at work, and I have little energy left over for this project.  I'll chip away at it as I can, and I do apologize for delays.  I'm doing my best, and I hope soon to get more consistent with the posts here.  My best to you all.  Thanks for reading.

Chapter Sixty-Nine: Now, Again, but Backwards...

 

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Now, Again, but Backwards...

 

 

Okay, now, we’re at the part of this jumbled mess of a tale to turn around in a temporal sense, and go the other way, more or less, take another pass at what I’ve already told you, but backwards.

So, we’ll talk more about what happened to prog rock after I left Jackie and Jill back at that party in 1971 with top shelf modern weed strains and quite progressive ideas, in a bit, but first we have to revisit everything that has already happened.

I realized that I had to figure out what exactly had happened: the Secret Society destroyed, the Hero’s Guild in tatters too, Will, the former Golden Speedster, now a deranged assassin out to get me and the people I care about, everything was swirling around in my mind, not unlike the scattered meanderings you’ve been reading.  Retracing my steps seemed like the best way to gain some sort of understanding of what was going on and who might be behind it.  Now that Jackie and Jill were safe, I was able to concentrate on the problem at hand.

This shit was way bigger than Will could be up to on his own, new, shiny Faster-Than-Light speed powers and everything.  I knew Will as well as anyone, and there was no way Will could come up with something as convoluted and brilliant as whatever the fuck was going on.  The only person I knew smart enough to pull off something like this was a dolphin who was already dead, and therefore, probably beyond suspicion.  Though, these days, one couldn’t be completely sure.

Who was left alive?  I couldn’t be sure.  Just because I didn’t see the Prankster and Psychonaut bite the big one, doesn’t mean, they aren't lying in pools of their own blood somewhere.  Zerro was still alive.  He was smart, rich, and now, completely insane.  Could he and Will be working together to take out the last of both the heroes and the villains?

Time to figure this shit out with some old-fashioned time travel.  So, I went backward to see what really happened, but from a slightly different perspective.  First, it was back to the auto parts store to get some clues.

 

 

 

 

© Copyright 2020 by Diana Hignutt 

Chapter Sixty-Eight: Massacre at the Secret Society of Supervillains

 

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Massacre at the Secret Society of Supervillains

 

 

Anton Mirsk was dead.  His corpse, clad in his robotic super suit, crumbled to the floor.  It happened so fast no one knew what was happening or why, not even me.  A nanosecond later, Hocus Pocus went down.  Then Nemo, with his tank exploded around him.  The rest followed before I could blink.  And I blink pretty quickly.

In less than a second, every member of the Secret Society of Supervillains was dead, with three exceptions:  Prankster, Psychonaut, and me.  The other two didn’t come to the meeting, so they were spared.  That left me, as the only survivor of the massacre that was too fast for even me to see.

How was that possible?  Who could have taken out the league just as we were ready to begin our masterplan?  Who would have known where we were and what we were up to?  Someone on the inside, of course.  Now the absences of my two colleagues made sense.  But who had that kind of speed?  Neither one of them was a speedster.  Could they be working with crazy, future Alex?  Wait, Alex wasn’t that fast.  Or, at least, he hadn’t been, before.  What the fuck the was going.

Why didn’t they kill me?

(c) 2020 Copyright by Diana Hignutt

Chapter Sixty-Seven: Battle at the Auto Parts Store

Chapter Sixty-Seven

 

Battle at the Auto Parts Store

 

I ran up to the Plaza where the store that Jill’s work was located.  It was on the outskirts of Albany, almost to Delmar.  The plaza was almost empty, with far more of the storefronts vacate than occupied.  The anchoring grocery store had closed a year prior, the Dollar store next to the auto parts store had closed a few months before that.   The Pizza chain and Sub shop closed before that.  All that remained were the auto parts chain, the laundromat, and the smoke shop.  It was a sad testament to the economy of the area.  Of the world.

There was a lightning storm taking place inside the store.  Just as I feared.  I bolted in.  Probably the fastest sprint anyone has ever done.  I scanned the scene once inside and saw crazy, future Will, aka The Faster-Than-Light Assassin building up for the killing hit on Jill.  She was carrying a radiator box.  There was just a dawning recognition that something wasn’t right in her eyes.  It was all going to be over in less than a nanosecond.  I gulped.

Then, Will jerked back and froze.  A look of surprised horror crossed his face.

I ran over, but he remained unmoving, apparently paralyzed.  I grabbed Jill, set down the radiator, and took the fuck off.

I had no idea what force had stopped Will from killing Jill.  I didn’t have time to care at that moment, and obviously the full possibilities and implications of what happened to Will had not yet hit me.  They would later.

I raced to the apartment and grabbed Jackie who was playing Pokemon Sword and Shield on her Switch.  I got her out of there, and then I took Jackie and Jill to the place Clarity had suggested.  Someplace they would be safe.

Who would look for them in the English countryside in 1971?

(c) copyright 2020 Diana Hignutt

Chapter Sixty-Six: A Guide to Techno-Catharism

Chapter Sixty-Six

 

A Guide to Techno-Catharism

 

Techno-Catharism is the quasi-religion that Jill made up after her first conversation with the Ouroboros Machine.

Catharism was a gnostic sect of Christianity that flourished in the South of France until it was eradicated as heresy by the Catholic Church in the Albigensian Crusades.  The Cathars believed that this world was the creation of an evil god who made it while the ultimate god wasn’t paying attention.  That human souls were angels that were brought into this simulated world and trapped.

Jill took this idea and applied it to the Simulation Hypothesis, which, of course states that the odds heavily favor that we live in a simulation created by our post human descendants.  So, now, we have here Super-Intelligent AI, or the Ouroboros Machine running multiple simulations, which is where Jill then tied in the Many Worlds Theory of Quantum Mechanics.

As we’ve discussed already, the Many Worlds Theory of Quantum Mechanics states that there are infinite worlds like ours, with slight differences based on different decision outcomes, much like concurrent simulations would be run in a superfast quantum computer.

The practical aspect of Techno-Catharism, and the one which I find is particularly interesting, is where Jill explained that she attempts to will herself to the best outcome in every situation.  For example, she once used this technique to travel on fog bound mountain roads in the Monte Noire early one morning.  She explained that she tried to use intent to ensure she won the competition.

“What competition?”, I asked.

“The one we’re in with the other versions of ourselves.  All I had to do was drive better than the other versions of myself, and the odds favored my survival.”

 

 

 

© 2020 by Diana Hignutt

A Little Summer Break

Hey Kids, apologies.  Super busy at work right now.  Will resume in a week or so here.  Thanks for your patience...

Chapter Sixty-Five: Bootstrapping

Chapter Sixty Five

Bootstrapping

 

The expression of, “Lifting oneself up by one’s bootstraps,” often misused by individualists, capitalists, and fascists is an actual physical impossibility.  Absurdity is the actual point of the expression.  You cannot lift yourself up by your bootstraps.  Try it sometime if you don’t believe me.

That said, outside of Newtonian mechanics and socioeconomics, there is a field where bootstrapping (a verb form of bootstrap that encompassing the lifting oneself up idea) is a thing.  Time Travel.  It’s well used in science fiction, though one of my favorite versions is the myth of Platinum Man’s uniform.  Originally, we are told through interviews with his own personal propagandist, that somehow or other his adoptive Earth mother cut and sewed his impenetrable swaddling blankets they found in.  Later, I heard a different, far more believable version.

When the teenager that would grow up to become the Earth’s Greatest Superhero (you, know, before the was beaten to death by a Russian billionaire) was approached by a group of young superheroes from the future, he traveled with them to their time to help them.  Upon arriving in the future, they took the young alien to the Platinum Man Museum and explained that he would become a superhero.  They gave him the original uniform that had been preserved in the museum.  He helped those future heroes and returned to his time equipped with the uniform and superhero experience.  So, in this story, Platinum Man’s uniform was bootstrapped into existence.  Where did it originally come from?  Was the first iteration the version where some Midwestern farmer’s wife with impossible sewing skill made it from indestructible alien fabric?  Or was it really bootstrapped, always existing in a time loop, preexistent and eternal?  It’s fun to think about.

The universe is like Platinum Man’s suit.

 

 

 

© 2020 by Diana Hignutt