VELVETEEN vs. Extinction
Stunned into a silence as profound as it was temporary, Jacqueline and the Princess watched the red line on the television display as it continued to pulse and expand, pulling an ever-larger stretch of the country into the time of the dinosaurs.
The various mirrors showing them the modified world began to flicker and change what they reflected: one by one, the various views of Portland became images of other places, other cities.
The Princess sighed as she moved closer to the mirror. “There goes Vancouver,” she said. “Think they realize what’s happening to them while it happens, or is it kinder than that?”
“I guess it depends.”
“On what, sugar?” The Princess turned to look at Jacqueline, who had yet to take her eyes off of the mirrors.
“On how bad of a guy our bad guy really is.”
One of the mirrors showed a saurian who both assumed to be Doctor Darwin, based on the cut of his lab coat and the design of the ray gun he had cradled in one arm.
He was accompanied by a slightly taller raptor with long red-brown feathers and a beautifully beaded pocketbook, and by two much younger saurian creatures whose plumage seemed to be a mixture of the adults’ in terms of color.
As the pair watched, Doctor Darwin preened the female’s hair with the tip of his muzzle, then smiled, mammal-style, lips pulling back wide enough to display the entirety of his teeth.
The dinosaur nuclear family, in other words. Jacqueline shot the Princess a despairing glance, and the pair of them remained where they were, watching the world as they knew it as it was consumed by something else entirely.
* * *
When one checks the records of the superhuman organizations that have dedicated themselves to keeping us safe, the sheer volume of reports to be found on alternate worlds and alternate timelines is staggering.
There is, in fact, so much documentation of what are collectively called “alternate histories” that they must be divided into categories to keep the quantity from becoming overwhelming.
“Alternate worlds” are worlds which would exist with or without the influence of our own.
They will have their own evolutionary paths, their own continents, even their own solar bodies.
There are no shared populations between alternate worlds and the world we know, even in those rare cases wherein the point of deviation can be determined.
Some theorize that all alternate worlds will have a point of deviation, and that this is what defines an alternate world, but those few researchers who have attempted to prove this have never been heard from again.
“Alternate timelines,” in contrast, are defined entirely by their points of deviation, and will have histories which run identical to our own up until this point.
Most alternate timelines will have populations identical or near-identical to our own, however unlikely the world’s changed path makes the birth of any specific individual.
Some alternate timelines can even be resolved, changing the point of deviation to match the events of our reality, and causing the alternate to erase itself from the continuity.
This is not generally a goal, as even seemingly identical people deserve to live their own lives.
Distinct from either of these is the replacement world, in which a point of our own world’s history is somehow changed, allowing it to be overwritten with history as it played out in some other timeline.
This replacement is the greatest crime that may be committed by the various parallels and alternates which surround us at all times: so long as those potential worlds remain content to keep their distance and allow us to keep ours.
Replacement attempts are largely small and easily forgotten, but the fear endures that one day the attempt may be made by someone with experience and determination, and we made find ourselves in more trouble than we’re collectively prepared to handle.
When asked how they know our world is the original, scientists who focus on these parallel potentials have a tendency to either babble incomprehensibly or refuse to reply.
Both these answers may be true.
* * *
Velveteen walked silently along the backstage hall, her vast, feathered tail waving from side to side as it counterbalanced her steps.
She was a graceful outline in the dark, the feathers of her headband jutting jauntily above her head.
They were always happy to see her fans, those feathers, even when she wasn’t happy to see anyone.
As a child, her handlers had been eager to tell her how fortunate she was to have a costume with a happy face built in, displayed such that it could never be forgotten.
But it had meant she could never show her own joy, which was pressed flat by the headband carrying the joy that belonged to everyone else.
It had meant no one knew how miserable she was until it was too late, and she’d almost been lost to villainy.
It was very nearly funny. There was her team, supposedly the jewel of the Super Sapients crown, up-and-coming heroes who would one day be responsible for protecting the entire world, and half of them had been in therapy before their first heroic mission could be carried out.
Vel, whose true intentions and feelings were concealed behind a childishly optimistic costume, and Sparky, whose own feelings had shown in the changing chromatic patterns of her feathers, impossible to shut away, impossible to hide.
It was amazing how close something as small as an inability to tell someone’s feelings had come to knocking everything down.
But it had. It—Vel stopped as she heard claws clicking on the floor up ahead.
She stepped to the side as quietly as she possibly could, pressing herself up against the wall and using it for a small manner of cover.
Another raptor of her approximate height and build came bobbing along the corridor, neck carried at a relaxed angle, plumage—species-appropriate, adult plumage—jaunty and unconcerned.
The light was too low to show her the details of coloration or costuming, but Vel tensed all the same, waiting for some sign of who this could possibly be.
“Vel?” said the raptor, voice pitched barely above a croon. “The stage crew is ready for you. You need to come out and get your mic and light checks out of the way. C’mon.” He swished his tail alluringly. “They said if I found you, I could get a line during the big reunion scene.”
“Do I care if you get a line?” she asked. “Sorry, I forgot that was still my concern.”
“Hey, now. You’re not still mad that I said you’d do this?”
Vel sighed heavily, her own feathers going flat with displeasure.
He’d be able to tell from her silhouette: after as much time as they’d been together, both socially and professionally, he was better at reading her moods than anyone short of Yelena.
Maybe even better than Yelena: they didn’t have any pesky periods of estrangement to work around. “I’m a little mad,” she admitted.
“Why? This is an incredible opportunity!”
“Is there any chance you’ll drop it and let me deal with things my own way?”
He cocked his head to the side like he was listening to someone neither of them could see. “Nope,” he said, finally. “You can tell me what’s really bothering you, or I can keep making a fuss about the way you’re acting. But you can’t have silence and my meek acquiescence. That’s not my style.”
“Neither is going for the spotlight, and look where that gets us: you, and Lena, and Vic, all on the sidelines while I have to stand up there next to Doctor Darwin all by myself. I have a team for a reason, Tad, and that reason is called ‘I don’t want to go out there without backup.’”
The male raptor blinked, crest drooping, and ducked his head before he moved toward her, tail so low his feathers brushed the ground.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey, that wasn’t what I was trying to—Vel, you know that isn’t what I was trying to do.
You’re amazing. Not enough people realize how amazing you are.
I just wanted to make them all eat the eggs they’ve been laying on your reputation, that’s all. ”
Vel sighed and twined her neck around his, burying the tip of her muzzle in his feathers. She exhaled, then pulled away. “Next time, ask me before you volunteer me for something that’s guaranteed to stop my heart?”
“I will,” he said, solemnly. “I love you. You know that, right?”
“I do. Now can you get me out of this?”
Tad just laughed.
* * *
Jacqueline and the Princess exchanged a confused look. Jack recovered her voice first—a rare enough occasion to be noteworthy, under other circumstances.
“If that’s Tad, how is he out there?” she asked
“Well, the Castle is located in fairy tale-space, which isn’t real, as such things are generally measured; it’s a little porous when the situation calls for it,” said the Princess, haltingly.
“If this version of reality wouldn’t have allowed Tag to be hurt the way he was in our world, he’d never have gone into the glass coffin, and she’d never have been called on to wake him up. It doesn’t take a big change.”
“But is he out there and in here at the same time?”
The Princess blinked. “Well, sugar, that’s a question I don’t quite know the answer to.
Let’s find out.” She turned her back on the mirrors and began walking briskly away.
Jack chased after her, feeling like this might be the start of an answer—or at least the start of something they could actually do about the situation.