Nearly everyone is gone. Olimpia either doesn’t exist at the moment, or is
trapped in a different reality. Trina lived in one alternate reality, and
died in another. Alt!Mateo, the other Leonas, and Andille ended up who knows
where, doing who knows what? Both Bridgette and Cheyenne are dead, as is
Heath, though a duplicate doll of him remains. Marie is helping him learn
how to function in Palmeria, using the expertise of a clinical
neuropsychologist who specializes in rehabilitating patients with severe
brain damage. He has never met someone with such an extreme case of
cognitive incapacity, and was more than willing to move to a different
country just for opportunity. Marie has agreed to let him write and publish
a paper on his subject in exchange for anonymity and discretion. Vearden is
on the island too, so the McIver boys, Carlin and Moray, aren’t alone. The
eldest can take care of himself, and for the most part, his younger brother,
but they need a trusted adult around, and Marie is pretty busy most of the
time.
With Kivi and Arcadia—who is still in Leona Delaney’s body—now working with
the tactical SD6 team in pursuit of Meredarchos, and other bad actors and
missing persons, that only leaves five left in the Lofts. Mateo, Leona,
Ramses, Angela, and Alyssa now attempt to fill the void once occupied by
their friends. They’re finding it quite difficult. Angela’s apartment, which
she used to share with Kivi, is clear on the other end of the floor, so she
moved in with Alyssa right away. They tried to all eat together in the huge
common area, but it’s so awkward with so few people. They’re probably going
to start doing it in one of their unit’s from now on. Mateo had a thought to
choose Ramses’ place, because he’s more likely to try to get out of meals to
work downstairs, so always having to host might force him to take at least
three breaks every day.
It’s almost midnight, and they’re still in Bridgette and Cheyenne’s old
apartment. Everyone pitched in throughout the day, but Mateo and Alyssa led
the effort to clean it out so it no longer reminds them of their failures.
Now they’re sitting on the floor together, tossing garbage into an empty
box, dwelling on those failures anyway. “We’re gonna have to do this for the
condo too,” Alyssa points out. “We should sell it. Or you should sell it.
Whoever owns it should sell it.”
“That’s up to Marie,” Leona says, “but yeah, it needs to be cleaned, at the
very least. If Heath...or rather, if the new Heath ever learns how to
function on his own, they may want to move back, and still stay out of all
this stuff. Or since he died in there, she may never want to see it again.
We don’t have to worry about that right now, though.”
“This was so stupid, I’m sorry,” Ramses says.
No one knows what he’s talking about. “You’re sorry? About what?” Mateo
asks.
“This whole building. This was a dumb idea. There weren’t even that many
people with us when we agreed to it. The McIvers were still in Utah, we
hadn’t even heard of Bridgette and Cheyenne. Arcadia, Vearden, the other
Leonas, Alt!Mateo, Andile? It’s like I knew these people would show up, but
I didn’t know that they would leave us.”
“Honestly? I miss the AOC,” Angela adds. “It was small, but it had
everything we needed. I took comfort in its efficiency.”
“This was your ship that you’re talking about?” Alyssa asks.
“Yeah, it was great,” Leona explains. “It only had three levels. The top was
for facilities and microponics, and the bottom was engineering. The middle
was for living. Instead of rooms, we slept in these things we called grave
chambers in the floor. You couldn’t even stand up in them, but you could fit
two people if you needed or wanted to.”
Ramses bites his upper lip. “We may be able to get it back,” Ramses claims.
“How?” Mateo questions. “We left it in the Fifth Division.”
“We left a copy of it there,” Ramses reveals. “I have another one in my
pocket. I mean, I don’t have it right now. It was in my pocket, now it’s
locked up in the lab.”
“I thought you couldn’t copy the ship,” Angela begins. “I thought you could
only bring it back from a save state at a specific point in space where it
once was. That’s why come Marie exists at all.”
“That was a bug, I figured it out,” Ramses says dismissively. I figured out
how to save the ship in a pocket dimension on a device...in my pocket.”
“Why haven’t you brought this up before?” Leona asks in a captainly sort of
way.
Ramses shrugs. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Reconstituting it in
this reality would take a shit-ton of temporal energy. The tanks on the
Olimpia can’t even fit the volume of Existence water we would need to take
from the Bermuda Triangle.”
“Couldn’t you reconstitute it at the Bermuda Triangle?” Mateo offers.
“I guess so, if I thought it would help, but I also don’t know what the
point would be,” Ramses laments. “The reframe engine requires a constant
supply of temporal energy, as does the teleporter, and even if they didn’t,
where would we go?”
“That’s true,” Leona agrees, nodding.
They sit in silence for a while.
“Well, what about the Olimpia?” Alyssa suggests.
“What about it?” Mateo presses.
“We could live there instead, if it’s cozier and efficient.”
“Yeah, I guess that could work,” Angela determines.
Leona and Ramses too think it’s a good idea.
“Wait, are we seriously talking about this?” Mateo questions. We have
perfectly good apartments. Who cares if the other units aren’t occupied?
When you rent your own apartment in a normal complex, do you think that much
about how many neighbors you have? This place is great, we don’t need an
alternative.”
“We do need a contingency, though,” Leona decides. “When we had all those
people, there was nowhere to escape to, but now we can.”
“You can escape through me, because I’m a teleporter,” Mateo reminds her.
Leona bites her lower lip. “Did you happen to look at your watch the last
time you teleported? I rode with you to take Vearden to Palmeria after your
first two roundtrips.”
“Did I—no, why? Did you?”
Leona hesitates to explain, but she knows that she has to. “Yes, it took us
five seconds to get from Kansas City to the island, and eight seconds to get
back.”
“Okay...is that bad?”
“It’s teleportation, Mateo, it’s meant to be pretty much instantaneous.”
Mateo’s face drops. “Right. What does that mean? Am I losing my power?”
Ramses perks up. “You’re probably losing energy,” he postulates. “You’re
losing temporal energy. That’s what happens in this reality, it just gets
sucked away.”
“Well, how long do I have?”
“We need to run some tests on you.” Ramses replies. “I guess I know what my
next project is now.”
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