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When the team was trying to escape the Fifth Division, and return home, they
knew that they wouldn’t be able to take their ship, the Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, with them. They didn’t want just anyone to be able to steal
it, though, which was why they flew it into a crevice in a random asteroid,
and powered it down so that it wouldn’t be detected. There was a chance that
someone would find it anyway, but it was programmed to purge all of its data
should anyone but a member of the team try to use it in any way, so they
took the gamble. They still did not have a map of this universe. All of the
worlds that Kyra Torosia transported from their respective parallel
realities were seemingly spit out wherever she could find space, except for
the five versions of Earth, which were placed in a very orderly arrangement,
very close to one another. None was more than two light years from any
other, allowing for fast ferrying between them. They might not have been
able to find the AOC on their own, but apparently their old friend, Xerian
Oyana found it for them. It was only about 185 light years away, so they set
a course for it, and let their pattern send them all to the future while
Constance!Three flew their shuttlecraft the full distance in reframe time.
“I didn’t find it,” Xerian explained once they were all aboard the AOC
together. “I was told to come here six years ago.”
“Who told you this?” Leona questioned.
“Someone who you may call a seer. He said that I had to get myself to your
ship, and wait here until a certain amount of time had passed. I came here
in my own little personal ship, but it disappeared, and I can’t get this
thing to fly. Fortunately, life support has remained in working order, and
your synthesizer still works. That’s all I’ve been able to do, though. I’ve
just been stuck here.”
Leona nodded, and thought about it. “Did you leave anyone alive on your
ship?”
“What, you think I killed a bunch of people?” Xerian asked, offended.
“No,” Leona replied. “I mean, did you come here alone, or were there other
people on that other ship? Even just one?”
“I was completely alone,” Xerian answered.
Leona nodded again. “And you haven’t been able to make contact with anyone?”
“No one but you. I sent the message years ago, but I didn’t think you would
ever come back. I know you left our reality.”
“Leona?” Mateo asked. “What’s goin’ on?”
“Kyra. She had the ability to move entire worlds, and also ships, and other
stations, but she only cared about the inhabited ones. She didn’t need the
entire galaxy to come through. It would have been too much work.” She looked
back over at Xerian. “Someone wanted the AOC to be transfered, but they
didn’t care about your own ship.”
“I don’t understand,” Xerian said, shaking his head. So they explained to
him what had happened with the Reconvergence, leaving out a lot of
unnecessary details, such as all of their friends’ involvement. “So, I’m not
home anymore?”
“Everyone you ever cared about should still be around,” Olimpia told him,
“unless they died in the six years since. But your ship, and any other
belongings you left in a place without any other people, they may be gone.”
Xerian dismissed the thought. “I don’t care about any of that. I’m just lost
here. Everyone else has had six years to get used to whatever new political
landscape has arised, and I’ve been marooned.”
“We can try to take you somewhere,” Leona began to suggest, “or I’ll restore
the AOC’s system, and you can go yourself. The reframe engine isn’t the
fastest in the universe, but you can have it. Better than a lightyear drive.
We’ve upgraded, but we still only have reframe capabilities.”
“Would you really just give me this?” Xerian asked, hopeful. “It’s not as
fast as a Nexus, no, but it’s an upgrade for me.”
“Sure.” Leona faced the group. “Can I get a ride back to the Dante real
quick?”
Angela reached out, and took Leona’s hand. They teleported up there
together. “Can you restore the AOC’s AI?”
“I can’t,” Leona said. “I can give him Constance, though.”
“Do we really wanna do that?”
“I meant, I can give him a stunted version of her, just enough to make
things work. It will be able to follow prompts, but not think for itself.”
She set the kettlebell drive that was storing the Constance AI on the
interface table. “Connie, you understand what I want?”
“You want a dumber Constance, so Xerian doesn’t get too powerful.”
“It’s not about him,” Leona clarified. “I don’t want there to be more than
one version of you out there. You belong with our team, and our team alone.”
“I don’t know if that’s sweet, or overly possessive.”
“I don’t know if my request bothers you, or you’re fine with it,” Leona
retorted.
A slot popped out of the front of the kettlebell drive, presenting them with
a simple-looking USB stick. “If Dumb!Constance is all you want, then you
don’t need to lug that huge thing back down to your friend. Plug that into
the AOC, and it will upload itself into everything.”
“Thanks, Con,” Leona said appreciatively.
“My data suggests that Xerian Oyana prefers a masculine personality in his
AI. Dumb!Constance is named Costas.”
Leona laughed. “Okay.”
She and Angela jumped back down to their old ship, and plugged the memory
stick into the central computer. The systems immediately began to rev up to
full power, raising the lights to a more comfortable level, and warming up
the engine. This could be the last time they ever hear that sound. The end
of an era. This vessel had served them well, but it was over two hundred
years old, and it was time to move on. It was great that it was going to
continue on for someone else who needed it. “Where will you go?”
“I have to figure out what my life looks like now,” Xerian began. “I’m
gettin’ old. Can’t keep fighting forever. But I know where to start.”
“I wish you luck.” Leona shook his hand, then took Angela’s again.
“That’s it?” Mateo asked once they were back on the Dante. “We’re leaving
him down there, alone? With our old ship?”
“He’s not our problem anymore,” Leona explained. “I don’t want to keep
dealing with the same things—and the same people—that we have in the past. I
want to move forward. Does anyone here not agree?”
“I certainly agree with that,” came Ramses’ voice from the helm. They hadn’t
noticed him sitting there, facing away from them, legs propped up on the
control panel. He spins to face them.
“Are you back?”
Ramses scans their few faces. “Doesn’t look like it.”
“What do you mean by that?” Leona questioned.
He waves his hand in front of him. “This isn’t the Ramses you’re looking
for.”
“Clarify.”
“I’m from the future. I have been this whole time. Your Ramses; the one who
stepped through that portal on Altair. He’s the one you need to be waiting
for. I’ve already been through all that.”
“Then why are you here? What is your purpose?” Mateo pressed.
He pulled something out of his breast pocket. He set a glass vial on the arm
of the navigator’s seat. Then he reached behind him and pulled out a gun. “I
came for blood.”
“What blood?” Leona asked.
“Yours.”
Leona narrowed her eyes, then dropped the illusion that was making her look
like herself, instead of the body she was in, which was Alyssa’s. “It
wouldn’t be my blood.”
“That’s exactly why I need it.”
She didn’t expect that, even though it shouldn’t be a surprise. If this
Ramses was from the future, then he would know all about this situation.
“You’re building us new bodies, and you want us to be able to create
illusions.”
“We need to be able to create illusions,” Future!Ramses claimed. “Our future
endeavors depend on it. That was the one thing I missed, and why I came
back.”
“So, you’re not fulfilling your own fate. You created a new timeline.”
Future!Ramses nodded. “When I’m done, helping you, I’ll go off to live on my
own somewhere.” He played with the metal beads that he now always had in his
hand. “It may not be this time, or this universe. I haven’t decided yet.”
“You’re giving up,” Leona asked, “on the team. You’re letting a different
you have it. The other, other you never got over that. Tanadama, or
whatever.”
Future!Ramses chuckled. “I’m stronger than him.”
“Or you’re not him.” Leona inhaled, and closed her eyes. She kept them
closed as she reached out, and swung her hand down slowly, pulling the
illusory light away from Future!Ramses’ face, and revealing the true face
beneath. It wasn’t Ramses at all, but yet another Leona. She opened her eyes
again, and exhaled. “Why?”
“I didn’t lie about my reasons for being here, only about who I am,”
Alt!Leona said. “I chose his face, because I knew he wouldn’t be with you,
and you needed to be able to trust whoever showed up. Generally speaking,
people don’t trust alternate versions of themselves.
“But if you’re an illusionist, that’s not really a Leona body anyway. It’s
Alyssa’s.”
“No,” Alt!Leona insisted. “My face, my illusion power. My timeline was very
different than yours. We found Alyssa too, but it took longer, and...we lost
her. They lost me too, but a friend had to choose to save one of us, and
they chose my body...” She breathed in deep. “And her lungs. What I need now
is her full DNA.”
“You are Alt!Leona,” the real Leona said. “You’re the one from the timeline
where Mateo was trapped in the dimension where time only lasts for ten
seconds. You rescued and rehabilitated him, and then you just disappeared.
Still, you went to the Third!Rail, met a version of Alyssa? How similar was
your timeline to mine?”
“I’m not gonna give you my full history,” Alt!Leona contended. “I’m not here
to give you anything. I’m here to take your blood, and tell you where to
find your new substrates in one year’s time.”
“Let me guess...” Mateo interjected, “Phoenix Station.”
Alt!Leona chuckled again. “No. The Phoenix is a symbol for rebirth and new
beginnings. The Scorpion symbolizes growth and advancement. You didn’t die,
you just...need to change.” Alt!Leona spun partly back around, and tapped on
the controls. “Be at Scorpius Station next year. You’ll know what to do with
what you find.”
“There is no Scorpius constellation in the Sixth Key,” Leona reminded her
self.
Alt!Leona smiled. “Who said you were still in the Sixth Key?”
Just then, the back hatch transformed. It was still a hatch, but a different
one; a much smaller one, just enough for a single person to walk through. It
opened, revealing Arcadia Preston on the other side. “Hi, kids.”
“This is the Prototype,” Leona realized.
“Indeed. And I believe you’ve been missing a member of your team?” Arcadia
took one step into the Dante, and hopped over to the side. Ramses—presumably
the real Ramses—was behind her, as well as a stranger.
They all exchanged hugs, especially he and Olimpia, who he was this close to
rescuing before ultimately failing. In this time, Arcadia said her goodbyes,
and left with the Prototype. All right, I still need to introduce you to a
new friend of mine. Leona, Mateo, Angela, Marie, Olimpia, this is Maximino
Lécuyer. Max, this is the team.”
“Hi. It’s nice to meet you all. He talked a lot about you on the way here.”
“We have to help him,” Ramses went on. “He’s looking for a—what was it—a
coat which can control his reality.”
“It’s a flipcoat,” Max began to explain himself. “It doesn’t control
reality, per se. If I’m wearing it, and I’m using it right, everything that
can happen, and I want to happen, will happen. Well, as long as it’s
relatively plausible. There is a remote chance that a pink elephant will
suddenly fly through your viewport, and I may even want that, but the
reality where that actually happens is so far from what’s truly happening
that forcing such an outcome is nigh impossible, or may as well be.”
“Quantum immortality. Sounds simple enough. None of us can do that, but we
know a few people. Can it wait? We have somewhere to be next year.”
“I’ll keep him company in the intervening time,” Constance promised.
“Is that okay?” Leona asked Max. “We sort of...”
“Exist one day per year,” Max finished. “Yeah, Ram told me all about it. As
long as I can go back to my home universe to help my friends, and save the
galaxy, I can occupy my time.”
Leona turned to face the helm. “All right, Con-Con. Lay in a course for
Scorpius Station, so we can get our new bodies, maximum reframe.”
“Course laid in, Captain.”
“What will you say?” Marie asked. “Engage? Hit it? One of the others?”
Leona shook her head. “I don’t want to use something that’s already been
used before, and one of them is just stupid. So instead, I’ll go with...”
She looked at each of them for inspiration, which she ultimately found in
Ramses. “Yalla.”
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