The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 30, 1945 (Reprise)

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It was like looking at himself in the mirror. Except that there was no mirror, and he was literally looking at himself. Arcadia had placed him into the body Makarion while Makarion was already being possessed by Gilbert Boyce, a.k.a. The Rogue. Possessionception. This was no ordinary adventure with Gilbert, though. This was the day that everything changed; some things for the better, others not so much. This was the 30th day of April in 1945. This was the day that Adolf Hitler died. This was the day that Mateo Matic made a conscious and dispassionate decision to kill him.

Mateo, now in Makarion’s body, was holding a gun to Hitler’s face. In just a few seconds, Past!Mateo would take the gun from Makarion’s hand, and do the dirty deed. The whole point of this exercise was to decide whether Mateo was willing to change the past, or let things play out as he remembered. If things went according to plan, Mateo would never be born, Leona would be raised by his adoptive parents, and Ed would be reincarnated as Téa. If, on the other hand, he prevented his past self from carrying out the mission, things would revert back to the reality before...or at least something more closely resembling it. Mateo would be born, be turned into a salmon, and accidentally piss off Horace Reaver. Horace would dedicate his entire life to getting back at him, and never get the chance to meet the love of his life, Serkan Demir. Oh my God, Mateo thought to himself. There are too many variables.

“Give me the gun,” Past!Mateo said to the Mateo in Makarion’s body. The first time this happened, he just took it from Makarion’s hand. The script had already been changed. There was no telling what consequences that would leave, and Mateo had yet to decide whether that was the preferable alternative. Past!Mateo spoke again, “I’m here to do this, so let me do it.”

“Wait,” Mateo said. “Maybe there’s another way.”

“If you know of a way out of this...” Past!Mateo trailed off before coming back to it. “Well, I was gonna say that I’m happy to hear it, but I’m not. Hitler has to die, so why are we even standing here?”

Hitler was frozen in place, not by some temporal power, but because he turned out to be a cowardly piece of shit little man with no strength of his own, and had always relied on millions of people following his rhetoric. He was the Donald Trump of the 1940s.

“This isn’t you, Mateo,” Mateo said to his other self. This was weird, even for him. “You’re not a killer.”

“I’ve killed before,” Past!Mateo boasted. “I killed the first Rogue.” Then his face turned, because of course, he wasn’t really proud of that moment.

Present!Mateo recalled what he was feeling in this moment. He was scared out of his mind, but also determined and righteous. That didn’t mean it was actually right. “That’s not the same thing. That was the heat of the moment. You also made that choice on your own. This is being thrust upon you, and that’s not fair. That’s entrapment...the worst kind.”

“Someone has to do it, so it might as well be me,” Past!Mateo said, likely realizing how impoverished the logic.

“No, it doesn’t.” Mateo took a deep breath. I’ll do it.”

“You can’t.” Past!Mateo had a nervous look on his face. Yeah, he did not like seeing himself like this. Was he always this broody? God, he would have to find a way to change that. “The Cleanser sent me. He won’t let it happen any other way.”

“Well, you...you let me deal with him.”

Hitler said some bullshit nothingness in German. Theodore watched them patiently, knowing that it was best to not interject.

“I know you’re trying to prove that you’re better than my first impression of you,” Past!Mateo began, “but you could make things worse. Let’s just go with the original plan. Go ahead and hand me that gun. You can look away if you have to.”

This was Arcadia’s design. She was giving him a choice. Presumably that was to kill Hitler, or to not. But it was more complicated than that. It was not binary. Few things were. It was true that Hitler had to die in this moment. He now knew that for sure. Whatever bad that caused to the timeline, it meant a few extra years without one of the most despicable humans in history. That philosophical hypothetical about whether you would kill Hitler as a teenager was something he would never be able to answer. But this was simple. This Hitler wasn’t a teenager, he was a grown-ass man. The satisfaction from having removed that man from the face of the Earth was too good to pass up. In fact, he was looking forward to do it again. But this was about second chances. He would go on with his life, however long or short that was, and know that he was the man who actually killed Adolf Hitler. Meanwhile, however, most people would believe it to be suicide. A select few—the other time travelers, that is—would think they knew the truth; that he was shot point blank by the Rogue, Makarion Dimitrios. No one else would ever know what really happened here today. He wouldn’t even tell Leona.

The Mateo in Makarion’s body took one last look at his past self and couldn’t help but give him a look of pity, like he was a puppy who couldn’t figure out where the ball his human had purportedly thrown had landed. Then, just like before, he pulled the trigger. From his memory, he had killed Hitler twice. Not even Dean Winchester could brag about such an accomplishment. And the best part about it was that everyone but himself, Arcadia, and probably Gilbert, would go on thinking that Gilbert was the one who actually did it. Hopefully Arcadia wouldn’t use this information against him at some point. And hopefully this slight change in history wouldn’t have some unexpected, and scary repercussions.

Mateo blinked and found himself somewhere else; a garden of some kind. Arcadia was bent over a few feet away, picking something off the ground. “Did I do something wrong?”

“This isn’t math, Mateo,” Arcadia said, standing up and examining her prize. “There is no right or wrong. You did what you did, and now it’s done.”

“You have a better perspective. How did that change affect the timeline?”

“Eh, dead is dead. Very little was affected, except for these.” She handed him what appeared to be reddish mushrooms.

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m joking, you didn’t do this. But what you did was similar to what created, and ultimately destroyed these little guys.” She took the mushrooms back. These are called rust mushrooms. They’re a variation of a different species, I don’t remember either of their scientific names.” She smelled the cap like one would a flower. “The powers that be sent someone back to the 16th century to study the last days of a peoples called the Mississippians. The salmon accidentally introduced a modern spore to his environment and created this...beautiful specimen. She held the mushrooms up to the sunlight. She then carefully drew her hand down at a particular angle and held them on the ground. “Do you see that? There’s some chemical or whatever that scatters the light in a special way, turning the surrounding grass a different color. No plant can do that...nor can any other fungus, for that matter. You see, the time traveling spore latched onto a preexisting species and created a new evolutionary branch, which eventually ended up like this. It’s not important. It’s not medicinal, or hallucinatory, and it’s completely inedible. But it is..beautiful.

“What I’m holding here is a carry-over from an alternate reality. We keep copies of all species from all realities in this dimension. It’s maintained by a lovely couple known as The Horticulturalists. They’re two of the oldest of our kind, and they have dedicated their immortalities to a cause that most people couldn’t care less about. A second salmon was sent to the seventeenth century to do some kind of whatever, carrying a modern seed—completely ignorantly again, of course. This seed mutated a new strain of plant that had a strange consequence for the rust mushroom. It choked the life out of it as it propagated itself. Within a decade, all rust mushrooms were so dead that botanists didn’t even bother recording them. No one knows that they exist, except for the Horticulturalists, and me...and now you.”

“What does this mean?”

“This kind of thing is happening all the time. Salmon and choosers are making minor changes that no one notices, and can’t appreciate. My family could, though. It used to be our job.”

“So this is about them?”

“No, this is about you.” She, both dramatically and casually, crushed the mushroom between her hands and let the spores float around to make more. “Memory is a funny thing. I’ve protected you from forgetting anything that happens from the beginning of the expiations, until the end. But now I’ve sent people into the past, and they’ve changed things. When you return to the island, you’ll find a few major changes you weren’t expecting. Don’t be upset, but you’ll be the one out of the loop this time. Others in your group made their own choices, and you had no control over them.” She stopped talking.

“Please,” Mateo asked of her, “just tell me.”

“Hitler is dead, just like before, but you didn’t kill him, which means your 1975 conversations were different, as were future conversations. This had a ripple effect that I won’t bore you by mapping out completely.”

“Stop dancing around it. I can handle anything now.”

“Your daughter, Kivi. Her origins were complicated, but also now moot. You’ve still erased yourself from the timeline. You were never born, and Leona didn’t meet you until the 2080s, but just the simple act of letting Makarion do what you were meant to do resulted in Kivi never having been born either.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry. I truly am. When you go back to the island, you’ll have memories of her, but no one else will know what you’re talking about. Likewise, you may not recognize everyone there.” Was that last part good or bad?

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 30, 1945

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There was really no way to describe what Mateo was feeling. He knew that his body hadn’t actually experienced four thousand years in a hell dimension, but he had memory of it. Yet the memories weren’t like regular memories. It was more like a constant state of paralysis. After at most fifteen seconds in the alternate timeline, time would reset itself, which meant that he was only able to hold a fifteen second thought. After each reset, he wouldn’t have to rethink that same thing, but he also couldn’t continue his train of thought.

Future!Leona took a page out of The Rogue’s book and placed Mateo in a temporal bubble. This allowed him to experience years of time without breaking his pattern. Less than a day passed in the outside world while he lived his life at a rate far faster than ever before. By the time he felt recovered enough to return to the timestream, he was 35 years old. During the first several of his jumps, he was way too old for Leona. She kept aging, though, while he was stuck, until they were finally the same age. Now he was again seven years older than Present!Leona. As if there wasn’t already enough chaos tearing them apart, this was going to make things so much more complicated. Leona would use math to explain it away, claiming that their age difference wasn’t a big deal, but it would always be in the back of his mind.

To make things even weirder, only the one version of Leona was seven years younger, while the other was ten years older. However, it all had to be done. Following the alternate memory implant, there was no way he was going to be able to move on with his pattern in real-time. He could barely eke out a full sentence, let alone complete The Cleanser’s dastardly tribulations. Not long after Future!Leona took down the bubble, Makarion teleported in front of them. He scrutinized her face and worked it out in his head. “You’re not the Leona I last year saw in the—never mind.”

“I’m from an alternate timeline,” she explained once more.

Makarion breathed in deep, but Mateo didn’t see him let it out. “Yes, the Cleanser mentioned that. He also told me that he killed you. Is that a perspective discrepancy?”

“No,” Future!Leona clarified. “It’s happened in all of our pasts. I’m just not as easy to kill as I used to be.”

“Then I suggest you leave so he doesn’t find out.”

“My thoughts exactly.” She lovingly placed her hand under Mateo’s chin.

Over the last five years, he had fallen back in love with her. But she was wise and careful. While in the bubble, she treated him more like his nurse or mother, and not like a lover. She made sure that his feelings for Leona were directed towards Present!Leona instead. She looked exactly like her, so it was hard knowing that this might be the last time he would see his caregiver, but it was the right thing to do. The Cleanser thought that she died quickly in this timeline, and she would need that to maintain advantage over him. She had to go, and Mateo had to refocus efforts towards Present!Leona, and the tribulations. “I understand. You need say nothing.”

“Take care of him...Boyce.” she said, sporting a knowing smile. Blue electricity began to surge all over her body. She feigned surprise about this. “Oh boy.”

“I’m still trusting you,” Mateo said to Makarion after Future!Leona was gone, possibly for good.

“I’ll continue to try to earn it. I promise that I do not want the Cleanser to know that she is still alive.”

“She knew your true identity.”

“The truth always comes out eventually. Even I know that.”

“What happens now?”

“It’s time to continue the Gladiator II tribulation on April 30th, 1945.”

“Doesn’t the Cleanser have to send me back through his loopholes?”

Makarion looked at his watch. “He’ll be throwing us back remotely in half a moment.”

“He’s not coming with us?”

“No, he just likes to watch from afar.”

“Could someone tell him that?”

A transparent bubble formed around both of them. “Oh, not again,” Mateo said.

“Actually,” the Cleanser considers this to be a treat.”

“How so?”

“Just watch.”

The scene began to change, little by little at first, but soon quite rapidly. The grass went from green to brown, and then to white as snow quickly covered it completely. Trees lost and regained their leaves and limbs. The sun shot across the sky from West to East. Clouds tickled the light in between nighttimes. The terrain changed a little. In the distance they could see the skyscrapers of a city grow smaller. Eventually, every single building was gone, or at least the ones large enough to be seen from that vantage point. While they remained in the bubble, the earth below them rolled away from their feet. Again, it started out slowly, but picked up speed the more it moved. Their bubble raced down the countryside, over the ocean, along the highway, and through the streets. They began to slow down enough to make out the faces of people going about their day. They were fortunately completely invisible to the 1945 population.

“This is Germany?”

“It is, yes.”

“Have you ever traveled through time before?”

Makarion laughed. “Of course I have. Far more than you, actually.”

“What exactly will I be doing here?”

“We’re here to see Adolf Hitler at his final moments.”

“Adolf Hitler did not die in 1945.”

“He will now.”

“Are you saying...?” Mateo started to ask, afraid of the answer. It would seem as though the Cleanser had plans to kill Hitler before his time and make a major alteration to the timeline. Salmon, and especially choosers, were evidently always running around, making changes to history. But this was big. No, this was massive. What would this act do to the future? Things would have to play out dramatically differently. It would have an effect on everyone on the planet from now on. What would it do to Mateo’s own personal timeline? Would his mother or father still be alive? Would his birthmother never be chosen as a salmon? Would he? Mateo thought about asking what part he was to play in this, but he was pretty sure he already knew. The Cleanser did say he wanted Mateo to kill at least one person every day. Apparently, Hitler would be that someone today. All right.

“I know that you and the Cleanser are kind of, well...rogue elements, but surely the powers that be will stop you if you go too far out of bounds. This would change everything. Literally. This will stop people from being born. This will introduce people who were never supposed to be born. Can anyone predict the butterfly effect from something like this?”

“Honestly, Mister Matic,” Makarion said ominously, but waited to continue.

They floated down through the ground. A magic glow emanating from the space in the bubble itself protected them from total darkness. Mateo couldn’t help but hold his breath. It must have just been instinct.

Makarion finally finished his thought, “this is a sanctioned mission.”

Mateo didn’t say anything further, because the trouble was about to begin. He did wonder why this was a sanctioned mission and the Cleanser was in control of it. It just seemed like those two conditions would never exist at the same time. Letting him do whatever he wanted was one thing, but teaming up with the Cleanser would make the powers that be about a hundred times more dangerous than they already were. Hopefully this was just a one time thing, because if it was going to become a trend, there would be no hope of stopping any of them.

The bubble passed through a couple more walls and settled in a room where Mateo could clearly see Adolf Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun. They were on the sofa, but were not moving. At first Mateo thought that they were already dead, but then he saw another man in the room. He was old, but looked familiar. He walked over from a corner and carefully placed something in Eva’s mouth. Just as he noticed the other two time travelers, their two different temporal bubbles apparently collided with each other and popped. He couldn’t be sure, but Mateo thought he heard the faint echo of the Cleaner’s laugh.

Shocked by the sudden appearance of three strangers, Eva closed her mouth and back up against the cushion out of fear.

Hitler yelled something in German, but of course Mateo had no idea what. He pulled out a gun which Makarion promptly took from his hand and pointed at the Führer. Hitler looked like he was planning on taking back control, but then Eva started gasping for air and thrashing about. He dove to her and tried to help, but there was nothing he could do. She was dead in seconds. He obviously wanted to cry, but he kept a straight face so that he could bark at them, again in German.

“Who are you people?” the old man asked.

“We’re part of your future. Mum’s the word, Theodore,” Makarion answered rather dismissively, still holding Hitler’s own gun towards his throat. He slightly shook the weapon towards Mateo. “You’re up, sport. Now, I know you have reservations about killing, and I’ll give you a little time, but—”

Mateo took the gun from Makarion’s hand and shot Adolf Hitler in the head.

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Second Stage of Something Started: Loaners (Part X)

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After Mateo Matic was pulled into the timestream in the replica of the Colosseum, he was escorted down to a staging area. Makarion returned shortly thereafter with bad news. “Okay, so I told you that everything would be over once you built the Colosseum, but I can’t necessarily deliver on that one hundred percent.”

“What does that mean?” Vearden asked with a scowl.

“The Cleanser is going to keep using you,” Makarion began, “as long as the powers that be have you loaned out to us.”

“We’re on loan?”

“Yes, that’s what makes you The Freelancers. If the powers want you to go somewhere else, they will, which is why you, Saga worked with The Doctor for six perspective years. If you walk through the stargate now, and you end up anywhere other than Stonehenge, that means you’re still on retainer for us.”

Vearden breathed in deeply out of exasperation, but it ended up making him yawn. When was the last time he slept? “Why are the powers that be helping the Cleanser? They seem to be...” He couldn’t find the words.

Saga finished his sentence, “at odds.”

“I am not privy to that information,” Makarion said.

Dropping it, Saga said, “so we just keep walking through portals, waiting to find out who we work for next, assuming the current job is done.”

“That is how I understand it.”

She looked to Vearden. “Well, I guess that explains our nickname.”

“Yeah,” he responded. “Makes a level of sense now.”

“But you don’t know what’s on the other side of our portal?” she asked of Makarion.

“No,” he said honestly.

“Very well.”

Saga and Vearden once more walked through the stargate to find themselves in some kind of encampment. “When and where the hell are we?” Vearden asked.

“I recognize these kinds of tents,” Saga said. “I think I’m back in World War II.”

“Why would they bring you back here?”

“I don’t know, but I worry about crossing my own timestream.”

A man Saga knew from before approached them stealthily from the side and pointed a gun at them. “Who are you?”

While Vearden held up his hands, Saga tried to diffuse the situation. “Sargent, it’s me.”

“Me who?” Sargent shook his gun threateningly. “I don’t know you.”

“We must have not met yet from your perspective,” Saga tried to explain. “We’re both salmon. This is my partner, Vearden.”

“Nice to meet you,” Vearden said, arms still up.

Sargent put down his gun. “Are you here for the battalion, or for Operation Earworm?”

“We don’t...” Saga started to say.

“Operation Earworm,” Vearden answered with confidence. It was a rational guess, because he really didn’t think an entire war battalion was in need of two more soldiers. If the powers that be dropped them off right here right now, it was for a reason.

“Good, because you would otherwise be dreadfully late,” Sargent pointed out “What year are you from?”

“2079.”

“Then you have implanted translators,” he said, nodding.

“No, we’re originally from the 2020s,” Saga clarified. “We have no transhumanistic enhancements.”

“Lucky for you, I have two extra, but we’re still going to need to find you Nazi uniforms.”

“We’re Nazis!” Vearden exclaimed.

“We’re pretending to be,” Sargent said.

But they were doing more than just pretending. The implanted interfaces allowed them to perceive the German language as English. The translator voice that played right inside their ears even sounded like the person who was talking. They only knew they weren’t actually listening to English because people’s mouths didn’t sync up with the words they heard. Visible text even transformed to the English language instantly. This kind of technology existed in Saga and Vearden’s original time, but usually had to be seen through some kind of device, rather than being sent directly to their visual cortex.

Using further incredibly advanced technology, they were provided with forged documents that allowed them to go just about anywhere in Germany. They headed to a place called Berchtesgaden. There they met a man named Hermann Göring who agreed to listen to them after learning of their powerful positions within the Nazi party. Sargent spoke to him in German, “Mr. Göring, tomorrow Karl Koller will arrive to inform you of Hitler’s intentions to appoint you negotiator for peace. The Führer believes the war to be over, and that it is time for us to move on.”

“I am to become leader of the Third Reich.”

“Yes, that is true, which is why you must act now.”

“What do you mean?”

Sargent sighed and paced around, careful to keep the composure and posture fitting for a Nazi officer. “The name Adolf Hitler has, for a long time, been synonymous with Germany. People treat him as a God, and will follow him everywhere. But you and we all know that he is but a man, and the Third Reich was always destined to outlive its creator.”

Göring did not respond, but appeared to be intrigued by what Sargent was saying.

“And you are destined to lead us into our next stage, to protect the sanctity of Germany, and maintain its dominance over Europe.”

“But if the war is over...” Göring started to say, never expecting to end the sentence.

“There are many different kinds of war,” Sargent explained. “Europe has turned its back on the Führer. Even if we were to win the war, the continent would be in great distress. We would be spending vast resources merely on appeasing  and containing the population. The time for trenches and helmets has passed. We need someone new for the party, Germany, and Europe to follow. We need a new voice, one with the strength of a commander, and the eye of a true strategist.”

“But the Battle of Stalingrad...” Göring trailed off again, referring to his failure at that point in history.

“Will be forgotten in a year,” Sargent stated dismissively. “You and the Führer are not on good terms right now, but you must cement your place in the party. Send him a message. Remind him of his plan to appoint you as successor. Germans, we are a proud race, and we do not dance around the issue. We get to the point, and we get things done. No one knows that better than you. So get this done. Show the world what a true Führer looks like.”

Hermann Göring needed little further convincing. He agreed that this course of action was best for the Reich. He really just needed someone to stand up and tell him that was okay. After they left, Saga asked what was really going on.

“We need to encourage discord amongst the top levels of the party. Hitler is under a great deal of pressure now. Germany really has lost the war, and a telegram from his top officer, reminding him of his promise to allow him to take over? Well...whew, that’s not going to go over well.”

“Forgive me, Sargent, but if we’re time travelers, why don’t we just go back further in time and kill Hitler? Wouldn’t that be easier than just rocking the boat with one little telegram?”

“There’s something you should understand about this, Mr. Haywood,” Sargent began. “This is the upteenth time salmon have returned to this time period. They have tried countless permutations. They tried killing Hitler several years ago, they’ve tried killing him as a youth. They’ve tried bombing Berlin like the Americans did against Japan. They even tried meticulously extracting all prisoners from the concentration camps. But none of these worked. Stopping the war, using advanced technology to win the war; it all just ends up turning to shit. The only way history will allow us to move past this time period is if we let most of it happen the way it did. The main thing we’re changing is killing Hitler a couple years before he died of syphilis anyway, but we first need to prevent anyone who took over the party in alternate timelines from having enough respect to accomplish that in this timeline.

“I’ve been traveling Germany, and abroad, for months now. I’ve planted seeds of distrust amongst dozens of bigwigs. You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to convince Felix Steiner that his army detachment could no longer fight. I’ve had more rewarding jobs, though, like passing along certain bits of intelligence to the allied forces that they would otherwise be ignorant of. This, however, was my last mission before I’m sent back in time to join the salmon battalion for some good ol’ fashion guerrilla warfare, so the rest is up to Mateo.”

“Mateo is coming?”

“Well, I don’t think he’ll actually be coming to 1945. I believe Glaston has been assigned to run a merge point for him. Either way, he will have the worst-slash-best job of all of us.”

“What might that be?”

Sargent looked at them like they should have already figured it out. “He’s going to kill Hitler.”

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