It was annoying to spend a whole other day just sitting around, waiting to
do anything to fix this problem. If even one of them had an identity in this
reality, they could have gone to check on their friends, but it wasn’t worth
the risk. Marie actually wasn’t sure if the authorities would ask for
identification or anything, but they most likely would, so there was nothing
they could do. They watched the news, which wasn’t reporting the incident.
It was a minor infraction, all things considered, so they wouldn’t expect
anything to be up there, but there was a small chance, so it was nice to see
this was all being kept fairly quiet. The downside was they weren’t entirely
certain where Heath and Angela were being held. Based on the location of the
arrest, they could guess, but that wasn’t a sure thing either. It should all
be resolved in the next couple of days, but they’re finding it hard to wait.
Marie is sitting at the kitchenette table, chin resting on the palm of her
hand. “What do you think Olimpia is doing right now?” The two of them had a
thing back when there was only one version of Angela. Mateo is unaware how
serious it was, or if they had time to attempt to navigate the duplication
that complicated matters. She has Heath now, but obviously still feels
something.
“Hopefully she doesn’t exist,” Leona decides. “If Dalton accidentally
created a shortlived pattern, then we were each delivered to our respective
realities a year and a day apart. That would put Olimpia on April 9, 2398.”
“That was a week ago,” Marie laments.
“Yeah, but she should have only been alone for a day,” Leona figures. “We
can try to retrieve her in 2399. That gives Ramses and me a lot of time to
solve the issue. I think our main obstacle is a lack of accessible temporal
energy. But we are still living in salmonverse, and salmoverse still has
time travel. If somebody has a way of suppressing it, then they have to be
using it for themselves.”
“What does that mean for us?” Mateo asks.
“It means that there is a source of temporal energy, be it a person, a
special object, or even a location. If we find it, we can just take the
energy we need for ourselves. We’ll have to rebuild the devices that Ramses
got from the Parallel, but like I said, we have a year. We will probably
want to try it on April 10, 2399.”
“How do we know that Olimpia isn’t on our same non-pattern, wherever she
is?” Marie complains. “Maybe she’s been alone for as long as you’ve been
here, or as long as I’ve been here.”
“We just can’t think like that,” Mateo tries to say in a comforting voice.
“Let’s try to be positive.”
“Well, I’m A-negative,” Marie argues. She stands up, and tries to climb up
the narrow steps, but Ramses happens to be coming back down.
When he gets to the bottom, he doesn’t realize right away that she’s trying
to get past, so he just stands there for a moment, looking amongst the
others to gauge the tone of the room.
“Please!” she says plainly in a raised—but not yelling—voice.
“Sorry.” He steps to the side, and watches her leave in a huff. “Is
everything okay?”
“No,” Leona answers, “but...she just needs some time alone.”
“It is safe up there, right?” Mateo asks him.
“I didn’t see any activity. They chose this site well.”
Ramses sits down where Marie was, bored after his forest walk. “What are we
gonna do now? We can’t even play RPS-101 Plus.”
“No,” Mateo agrees with a smirk, “but we can play regular RPS-101.” He pulls
the wheel from his bag, unfolds it, and presents it to the two of them.
“Where did you get that?” Leona questions.
Mateo shrugs. “I had the industrial synthesizer print it out forever ago.
That’s why it’s made of metal instead of paper.”
“How would one even go about playing?” Ramses asked.
“You search the wheel for the gesture you want. Then we pound and shoot just
as we would for Rock, Paper, Scissors. Then we consult the outcome list to
find out who won. It’s etched on the back.”
Leona stares at the wheel. “I can’t believe you’ve been lugging that thing
around this whole time.”
“It’s made of graphene, so it’s light,” Mateo contends.
“That’s not metal.”
“Whatever. Do you wanna play a game?” Mateo offers.
She stares at it some more. “Whatever. Just be careful of choosing Sponge
every time, like you usually do.”
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