The pain disappeared in an instant, but Mateo was still lying face down in
the dirt. He stood himself up, and looked around. He wasn’t extremely
familiar with the topography of Tribulation Island—it wasn’t like he had a
favorite leaf—but he could tell that he wasn’t there anymore. It was a lush
jungle, though not one he had been to before, as far as he knew. He could
see smoke coming from the bottom of the mountain, so with no other options,
he started climbing down towards it. Just as he stepped into the clearing,
dozens of other people did too. They nearly all looked confused, but were
possibly more confused by the fact that Mateo didn’t seem to be. He
confidently walked forward, and approached the outdoor amphitheatre they had
set up. This wasn’t the first time he was suddenly thrust into a place he
didn’t understand, so he needn’t fret. He sat front and center, right before
the stage.
Seeing him do this made everyone else feel more comfortable doing the same.
With no idea where they were, or what they were doing here, they began to
find their own seats, and wait patiently. A woman stuck her head out of the
curtain, and kept it tightly around her neck. “Oh, wow,” she said as she was
looking them over. Mateo was only able to hear because he was close enough.
“You guys are quick.” She watched until everyone had a place to sit. All but
one. One man was left standing. “That isn’t right.” She slipped a clipboard
through the curtains. “A hundred and forty-seven exactly. Is someone here
who shouldn’t be?”
Mateo stood up. “I believe that would be me.”
“Name?” she prompted.
“Mateo Matic.”
She scanned her list. “Date of—of...” she trailed off.
That was fine, Mateo knew what she was asking. He was sure she wouldn’t want
to say it out loud until she could go through her whole delicate spiel.
“July 9, 2124.”
“Yep, that’s today.”
“I’ll come to you,” he decided. He climbed up on stairs, and followed her
backstage. “There’s a reason I’m not on your list. I am a time traveler. I’m
not sure if you’ve heard of us.”
“Oh! I thought they were joking. They went over it in training, but...”
He nodded. “It’s okay. My death started millions of years ago, but then a
fffffrrr—someone I know pulled me through a portal so I could do die in
present day.” Well, he wasn’t a friend.
“I see.” She gritted her teeth, and looked back down at her clipboard,
hoping to remember the procedures. “I believe we’re meant to send people
like you somewhere else. The Designers will want to speak with you directly.
But I don’t know how to...”
“Again, it’s fine. Go ahead and run through your presentation. Those people
out there need to know what’s happened to them. We can deal with me later.”
“Are you sure? The orientation process is quite long. People need time to
adjust.”
“Really, I’m all right. Go do your thing. I’m here if you need help.”
“You’re very kind.” She took a deep breath, and prepared herself. Then she
stepped all the way through the curtain to tell a crowd of people that they
were dead.
“He’s dead?”
“I don’t see how he could have survived,” J.B. reported. “It was...it was
bad. I’m sorry, this is all my fault.”
Leona stared at the ground a moment. “No, it’s fine. You saw a body, which
means he’s still alive. He can’t die. The powers that be won’t let him. I’m
sure his consciousness has been transferred back to the lab on Thālith al
Naʽāmāt Bida, just like it was last time. He’ll be back any minute.”
Sanaa was staring at Ellie. “No, he won’t.”
“What? What are you talking about?” Leona questioned.
“You gonna tell her, or shall I?” Sanaa asked.
“You can read minds again, can’t you?” Ellie hypothesized.
“Answer the goddamn question.”
“There were two clone bodies,” Ellie explained. “The first one that Mateo
used was after his fall from the cliff. The second was after his fall from
the hospital. We didn’t grow a third. If his mind was transferred to some
other substrate, then we had nothing to do with it.”
“Why didn’t you make more?” Leona questioned. “Why didn’t you make an army
of Mateos?”
“Humans aren’t cylons. I’m surprised the powers let us do it even once.”
Leona didn’t cry, or fume. She just kind of looked tired. The truth was she
didn’t know what to feel. Mateo had died so many times already, it was a
trend. He had always come back, and there was no reason to believe he
wouldn’t do it an upteenth time. Anyway, they had a mission to complete, and
now it was up to Leona to fulfill their promise to save Vearden. If nothing
else, she would see Mateo again after it was over. This was probably the
best outcome, because now they’ll be together. “Let’s go. Our window is
closing.” She walked off.
They found Vearden alone in the woods. He freely gave them a sample of his
blood without asking a single question, because he trusted that they needed
it for something important. They returned to The Parallel with it, where a
technician was waiting to produce a clone for them. They asked him to
program it to grow to maturity after a year, and no sooner. There were ways
to expedite the cloning process, but generally speaking, the closer you get
to realtime, the more stable the substrate will be, and the longer it will
last. They didn’t need this Vearden clone to last very long, but they did
need it to be able to bleed and break, so it was just better if they took
their time. They wouldn’t be able to use it for another year anyway.
On July 10, 2125, the team returned to the timstream. Leona half-expected
Mateo to be waiting for them just outside the AOC, but no such luck. Maybe
he really was dead, and it was nearly time to join him. “Are you ready,
Ellie?”
“Are you sure about this?” Ellie asked diligently. “A life for a life is...a
terrible trade.”
“Mateo had faith in you, and he died before he could prove it. I’ll die
proving it for myself.”
“I can’t guarantee that there’s anything on the other side.”
Leona sat down in the chair. “You’re closer to a guarantee than anyone else
has ever been able to give. Do it.”
“Anyone else want to object?” Ellie asked the other two.
“They don’t get a vote,” Leona argued.
“Yes, we do. It’s not just about you,” Sanaa fought back. “And no, no
objections. We do this together, as long you’re capable of that.”
“I am.”
“What do you mean, together?” Leona questioned.
Without responding, Ellie placed her hands at the Vearden clone’s temples.
She concentrated a moment, and then worked her magic, teleporting Leona’s
consciousness into its brain. But she wasn’t alone. She woke up in a
darkened room, with a facsimile of the hexagonoid table from the Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez. Ellie was sitting next to her, with J.B. next to her, and
Sanaa next to him.
“Oh my God,” Leona said. “What are you doing here?”
“We’ve all been asked to save Vearden. We’re all here to do just that,”
Sanaa explained.
“There was only meant to be one sacrifice,” Leona contended. “It can’t be
Mateo, since he already did that, so it has to be me. And J.B., if you’re
here, his death will be meaningless.”
“I was told that it was not,” J.B. replied plainly.
“I’m the one with the power,” Ellie told her, “so there’s nothing you can do
to stop us.”
“I have your power now too.”
Ellie lifted her hand, palm up. A viewscreen for each of them appeared in
the middle of the table, showing them the perspective of the lab from the
Vearden clone’s perspective. They could see their respective former bodies,
strewn about the floor. “No, you don’t. Nobody’s wearing a Cassidy cuff.
Whether he was ready for it or not, Jupiter can’t control us anymore.”
Like always, as if he knew exactly when they were talking about him—which
shouldn’t have been possible in this case, because they weren’t talking at
all, but communicating telepathically to each other using the same
brain—Jupiter appeared. He examined the death and destruction around him for
a second before dragging the bodies up to more dignified positions on the
couch. He removed their cuffs, and dropped them into his bag. Once he had
all of them stored, he took out what appeared to be a bracelet. He held it
up in front of the clone’s face. “This was made from Ariadna’s hair. It
won’t let you cross any dimensional boundary you want, but it’ll get ya past
the merge barrier on Tribulation Island. Give it to the real Vearden when
you swap places with him, and tell him how to get back here. I’ll make sure
he makes a good life for himself in the Parallel.” He wrapped the bracelet
around Clone!Vearden’s wrist. “Godspeed.” He knew. He knew what Mateo was
planning to do the whole time.
After Jupiter disappeared, the inhabitants of the clone body took a few
hours to learn how to navigate. They were all capable of assuming control
over its movements, but it was obviously better if they selected one person
for that role. Leona was going to take care of that, while Ellie would be
doing the talking. J.B. and Sanaa could therefore just be there for the
ride. And the death. When they felt like they were comfortable with this new
body, and ready to go, they transitioned back to the main sequence once
more, crossed the merge border, and went off in search of the real Vearden
Haywood. It didn’t take too terribly long to find him.
He was meant to be out hunting for Lita, who was busy taking care of her
daughter, Brooke. Instead, he was wandering the Colosseum replica he built
with his partner, Saga a long time ago. He wasn’t particularly surprised to
see an alternate version of himself, as he had been through this before.
“Why, hello. How are you today?”
“We’re okay,” Ellie said through Clone!Vearden’s mouth. “I mean...I’m okay.”
First words, already a mistake.
“Good goin’, genius,” Sanaa snarked telepathically.
Vearden stood there with a dumb smile on his face for a moment. “Well, bye.”
“Wait.” Clone!Vearden grabbed him by the arm.
Vearden looked down at it. “Careful. Time doesn’t like it when you rearrange
her furniture.”
Clone!Vearden chuckled. That wasn’t how time worked.
Before they could say anything else, the entrance to the Colosseum replica
opened up. A third Vearden walked through it, and closed the door behind
him. He looked between the first two. “This is not how I was told it would
happen.”
“Vearden!Three, what are you doing here?” Vearden!Two asked. He was from an
alternate reality, where he and Saga jumped around in time, changing
history, and the future, for the better.
This third Vearden was from this timeline, and he had his own adventures,
mostly separate from Saga, of which there were also two versions. “I’m here
to take your place, and rescue you.”
“From what? This island? I have to be here. I can’t go until Saga gets
back.” At this point, Saga!Two had been removed from the timestream, and
what Leona and her friends recently learned was that she was hanging out in
the Parallel.
“You’re fated to die,” Clone!Vearden explained. “I’m going to take your
place. The both of you are going to leave.”
“Why do I need to be saved?” Vearden!Two questioned. “Why does it matter
which one of us dies? I’m not more important than you.”
“You are,” Clone!Vearden insisted. “Look. I’m not really an alternate
version of you. I’m a completely different person who is using a clone body,
so I can die in your stead. I can do this, because after that, my
consciousness will transfer back to my real body, and we will all survive.
You’re not more important, you’re just more fragile.”
Vearden!Two looked to Vearden!Three for confirmation, but Vearden!Three
didn’t know anything about this either.
Clone!Vearden removed the Traversa Bracelet, and handed it to Vearden!Two,
along with a hand drawn map, which J.B. was artistic enough to make for
them. It used the campsite as a reference point. “Take these, and go. A
friend of ours will help you over there.”
“No,” Vearden!Three said. “I already told Saga that I was coming here to
save him.” He took the bracelet, and the map. “I’ll go meet your friend.
He’ll go meet his. Is that a problem?”
“If that’s what happened in the original timeline, then...okay,”
Clone!Vearden determined. “You have to complete your cycle, close your
loop.”
“Great,” Vearden!Two declared, “as long as you’re not lying about being able
to survive this.”
“I’m not lying,” Clone!Vearden lied.
“After a few more glances, hoping to suss out any hidden truths about this
plan, Vearden!Two relented, and headed through the magical door, presumably
back to wherever Vearden!Three had just come from.
Vearden!Three installed the Traversa Bracelet onto his own wrist. “Until we
meet again...in the red forest.” He walked off.
Leona then walked off as well, looking for death. She found it.
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