Microstory 2251: Happened Only After They’ve Happened

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The surgeon has decided that going ahead with the surgeries still makes sense, even after my poisoning. The specific poison that my attacker used didn’t have any direct impact on my bone marrow, or my index. They were probably just trying to kill me as fast as possible, so the medical examiner would determine that there was nothing worth salvaging. I dunno, that’s for the district attorney, or whatever, to decide, I guess. I’m not going to busy myself with worrying about them too much. I need to move on, and live my life. We’re still taking precautions. I’m not going to tell you when my surgeries will be, and I certainly won’t be telling you where. You’ll know that they’ve happened only after they’ve happened. In the meantime, my posts will sound like everything’s normal. The move-in is going well. The house is mostly furnished now, but we discovered that we have to do some renovations/repairs in the downstairs full bathroom, so the security people are sharing Dutch’s in the basement. He says he’s cool with it, and I believe him. That’s pretty much it for today since I apparently can’t say much about my life anymore without raising the alarms. In my free time, I’m trying to commune with my alternate self, asking him to send help. He’s definitely getting my messages, because he’s him, but I’m not getting his yet. Maybe he’s just toying with me.

Microstory 2202: Were Still Late

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I’m so embarrassed, I woke up late this morning. I guess my body (and my now broken alarm clock) thought it would be funny if today was the opposite of yesterday. Fortunately, Jasmine and I always go into work together, since we live in the same building. I usually meet her in the lobby, but when I didn’t show, she used her copy of my key to check in on me. She didn’t even wait very long, because she was worried that I was hurt again. I was just still in bed, none the wiser. I rushed to pull my clothes on, and brush my teeth, then we ran out of there. We normally take the bus, since I don’t drive anymore, but if we had waited for the next one to come by, we would have been really late. Jasmine, being the friendly neighbor she is with everyone, knows someone else in the building who has a car, so he gave us a ride. We were still late, but it wasn’t serious. Being the boss, I could just claim that I make the rules, so I can do whatever I want, but I don’t want to be like that. Everyone on my staff is dedicated to their jobs, so I need to be just as committed. I can’t really be fired for being a half hour late, but I still owed them an apology. They understood, of course, and didn’t give me any crap about it. I used to set multiple alarms when I was a kid for safety. I should probably look into that again, placing one in a different room to make sure that I actually get up and moving around. That’s it, bye! You don’t deserve more out of me right now.

Microstory 2161: All Cons, All the Way

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Last weekend was not fun. Sleeping in jail is usually the hardest part about it. It’s always either too hot or too cold, and of course, you have no control over any of that. We can shut the lights off in our cell, but the lights in the hallway are always on, and shining through the little window. The top bunk is better than the bottom one for that reason, but I always let my cellmate have it, honestly because I have a more comfortable life on the outside, so I think he needs it more. I hope he’s not offended by that. At any rate, these are all things that you can get used to once you figure out how to adapt. The reason it was so bad on Friday and Saturday nights is because we had a group of disharmonious newbies. It takes a certain type of personality to be suited to intermittent jail, or to fulltime prison instead, and determining which is something that I don’t, and never will, comprehend. Either the judges meant to make these assessments made mistakes, or there were variables beyond their control. Knowing where precisely to place each guest is probably impossible to get right, and certainly not every single time. I don’t think that each of these guys was bad on their own, but they just didn’t fit with each other, or anyone else. We were all particularly grumpy and anxious, and no one was happy. Again, I think that it would have been fine if the new guys had been scheduled for a different part of the week, or if someone else had been moved to it. I don’t know. There’s no way to know. It’s just something that happens, so you can add it to the list of reasons to not do something that will ultimately get you sent to jail, in case your pros and cons chart isn’t as uneven as it ought to be. All cons, all the way. That’s the way I see it anyway. I suppose if you’re otherwise unhoused, it might be your best option, but that’s a whole systemic issue that I think can—and should—be solved in a myriad of other ways. Well, that’s what made sleeping so much harder last weekend, but it wasn’t the only thing. I thought that I was going to be able to make up for it on Sunday night, but it didn’t work out that way. The fire alarms went off throughout the whole building at around 02:15 in the morning, forcing us all to go outside, and stand in our designated area for almost an hour before we received the all clear. They won’t tell us exactly what happened, but they promised that no one was hurt, and the damage didn’t spread. This means that there was a fire, though, instead of just a faulty alarm system, or a prank. So I guess I can’t be mad that they woke me up, and kept me up. I had to push my work hours back today, but I got everything done, and at least it didn’t happen on a Friday, which would have screwed up my jail schedule. Here’s hoping that I’m not accidentally foreshadowing the future.

Microstory 1933: Idiot Dies in Desert

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Idiot: Are you serious? What the hell is this damn thing? Is it supposed to look like that? I don’t even know why I popped the hood. I don’t understand any of this stuff. I should have paid attention when my uncle tried to teach me. Ugh! It’s so freaking hot; I hate this freaking place. If I had only just—argh! Great, it’s not like I keep a first aid kit in the car. Oh wait, I do. This just isn’t my car! *sighs* No one’s gonna stop. I’m gonna die out here. This is it. I can see the headline now: Idiot Dies in Desert. They’ll make a movie about me. Someone much hotter and younger than I am will play me. It’ll win awards, and people will say, that was based on a true story? Nah, it was so contrived. No one’s gonna stop. I haven’t seen anyone for miles. Where the hell am I? [...] There’s a slight hill up there. Maybe I can find a signal. I’m certainly not doing any good trying to fix this piece of crap. Oh, hello. Finally, someone to talk to. Are you lost too?

Turtle: *growls* *hisses*

Idiot: Yeah, I hear ya. I was minding my own business, just like you. I even carry my house everywhere I go. Well, it’s my second house. No, actually, it’s my first house now, isn’t it? I have a real house, but I was sick of being in one place all the time. Is that why turtles are always walking around? Do they just get tired of their surroundings? Probably not. You’re probably always just lookin’ for food. Do you have any I can spare? Do you keep it in your shell? Is that a thing? If I had a shell, that’s where I would keep my food. Whatever, what was I saying? Oh yeah, my house. So it belonged to my parents, so it’s all paid off. I thought it would be a great idea to move in, but after a year, I just couldn’t take it anymore. It reminded me of my childhood, and...well, I won’t get into that, but basically my parents hated me. They didn’t hate me, but I’m such a screw up. Case in point, right here. Oh wow, that hill looks a lot slighter the closer I get. It’s probably not going to be any better. Still no signal. So anyway, I sold the house. That was this whole thing. They wanted me to spend all this money to fix it up first, and I’m like, I don’t wanna do that. So I did some math—I’m not good at math, but I spent time on it. I did the math, and really, what I got for it without renovations was barely less that I would have gotten with the renovations. So I just skipped it, and accepted the lower bid. Like I said, it was paid off, so it was pure profit. But it fell through. It was a done deal, and now it’s dead. But I didn’t know that when I bought a new RV. I was gonna explore the continent, but then I get a notification that my smoke alarm is going off. I have these speakers—whatever, it doesn’t matter. But I have to go back and see what the problem is, but there is no problem. It was literally a false alarm. So I left again, and two days later, I’m halfway across the country when another notification comes through. So I just ignore it. As it turns out, there was a fire, and the house practically burnt down. Can you believe it? I mean, it’s not as bad as it would be for you. If it were you, you’d be dead. So I turn around and head back, then my RV breaks down, and also catches on fire. FML, right? I’m in a small town, and the rental selection is for crap, so I take what I can get, and you can guess what happens next. I ain’t stopped on the side of the road for my health. I ain’t holdin’ a desert turtle, walking to a hill in the hopes of getting one bar so I can order pizza. What? What the hell is that? Oh my God! Aaaarrrrrgggghhhh!!!

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: February 22, 2399

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Leona has begun to split her time between the isolation building in Crown Center where Vearden is being treated, and the government hospital where Arcadia is being treated. He asked her to spend time with his baby mama, so she can be reminded of how much people love her. She may not be able to hear people’s voices, but she may, and it’s worth the try. While in either place, Leona continues to work on the global defense project with Ramses and Aldona. It is coming along nicely. They should reach their goal by the start of this war. She also receives updates from Kivi’s team in Brazil. They’re experiencing a lot less good luck. The Harlows have evidently caught on to the fact that they are being pursued, and are actively evading capture. They’re fast, though they’re not teleporting, which is kind of one more strike against their hope that the young woman is Alyssa.

The SD6 team is closing in on the targets now, however, and the chances of escape are low. Leona is in the isolation building, monitoring the mission progress via their helmet and drone feeds. Kivi is approaching a shack in the middle of the jungle that was probably originally built to study the wildlife. The rest of the team is hanging back while she spots. “I see a window. Getting closer for a better look,” she whispers. She keeps going. “I have eyes on Target One.” It’s Roeland, so at least they’ve been chasing after the right people, instead of two random other time travelers. “I think I see the top of someone else’s head.”

“Lift your helmet, Spotter,” Alserda orders. “Skipper will confirm visual.”

“Am I Skipper?” Leona asks.

“Yes,” Kivi replies as she removes her helmet to get the camera at a better angle.

Leona doesn’t know when that happened, but okay. She shakes her head, even though no one can see her. “A long-haired individual is sitting on the floor at Target One’s feet. Their back is to the window.” She pauses. “You’ll have to breach.”

“What tactic do we use?” Kivi asks.

“Fall back and hold,” Leona orders. She is by no means the team’s leader, but she has an idea, and she hopes Alserda does not take offense.

They each back up a few meters, and duck behind trees and brush.

“I’m going to try to come to you,” Leona explains. “Muting now.” She mutes her transceiver, and dials her phone. “Ram, has the shipment come in?”

“Yes,” Ramses confirms. “Not very much of it, though.”

“Then I’ll only ask you to make two jumps.”

“Where do you want me to go?”

“Come here, and then take me to our operatives in Minas Gerais.”

“Give me five minutes to finish extracting the temporal energy,” he requests.

Leona hangs up.

“You’re leaving?” Vearden asks through the protective barrier.

“I wasn’t going to worry, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve decided that mine is the best face for them to see. Roeland knows me, Alyssa definitely knows me. Even if it’s not her, she’ll probably react to me dressed like this than eight soldiers in heavy tactical gear. I would not have let them go out like that if I had been in charge.”

“I understand,” he says. “Just be careful. Maybe you should wear something, though, like a bulletproof vest?”

“I’ll be fine. He didn’t seem like the violent type. He’s been running from us, remember? His go-to stress response is flight.”

“Yeah.” Vearden and the other patients are still alive. Their conditions have not gotten worse, but they’ve not gotten better, really. The doctors have been able to alleviate some of their symptoms, but they still don’t know exactly what’s causing them, or how to fight it. They have ruled out a parasite, because the pathogen would have to be airborne to spread in the way that it did, especially at the speed that it did so. A fungus should be causing external changes to the patients by now. A prion would not be expected to cause the apparent symptoms. That leaves a bacterial or viral infection, with the latter being the most likely, since bacteria are not known to damage blood vessels.

Ramses suddenly appears in the room, but he’s on the wrong side of the plastic partition. Alarms begin to blare. Sensitive sensors have been installed in the room that can detect the presence of a second body heat signature. Actually, they’re designed to alert the caretakers to a tear in personal protective equipment, and this is much more than that. He isn’t even wearing a mask.

Leona starts to massage her temples. “Oh my God. Don’t go anywhere. I know you can leave, and your upgraded body may be immune, but don’t go anywhere. You could still be a carrier.”

“I’m an engineer, but I took health class too,” Ramses replies. “I just...didn’t know the layout of the room.” He looks over at Vearden. “I’m sorry, man.”

Vearden shrugs. “Doesn’t change anything for me. I’m still dying.”

“You’re not dying,” Leona argues. She grabs her tablet, to access the government retrofit systems. They were so concerned with quick deployment that they had to sacrifice security. Hacking into them was as easy as using binoculars to spot the WiFi password written on the blackboard at the bottom of the menu in the bakery across the courtyard. She switches off the alarm, but just the sound; the alert has still been sent.

“Thank you,” Vearden says.

Leona turns back to the monitors, and unmutes her radio. “I won’t be able to make it. But I still would prefer a restrained approach. You don’t have to take off your gear, but maybe one person can approach alone with no weapon in hand?”

“We made contact,” Alserda responds. “He’d like to talk to you.”

Roeland starts to speak after a beat, “I told you that I don’t know where your friend is. Last I saw her, she was dying in a cave in the stone age. This is my daughter. She was a little boy who was living there when a group of humans attacked. She’s half-human, half-primacean, and we think they didn’t like that.”

“You never told me that you knew Alyssa at all!” Leona shouted back.

“I forgot her name! It was decades ago! I’m sorry! We crossed paths briefly!”

“I suppose you don’t remember what she looks like either!”

“I remember now. I assume she’s your twin sister?”

“Argh!” She throws the radio against the wall. “This has all been for nothing! I just want my people back. Is that so much to ask?” She kicks her chair over, but holds herself back from committing any more property damage. So that’s it, huh? Either they figure out how to go back in time tens of thousands of years in a reality specifically designed to prevent time travel, or they figure out how to let her go. If they choose the former, they will need help. Danica’s help. She dials her phone again. “Aldona? I need a ship...one of the ones with the reframe engine I designed for you.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 12,398

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One second. That’s how long Mateo spends in the stasis pod that Danica forced him into. As soon as that door closes, he teleports out, and lands on the other side of it. To his left is Past!Mateo’s pod. This is the version of him that first came back here after falling down the main elevator shaft. He’s destined to remain here for the next few billion years until his team rescues him with a sledgehammer. For now, though, this room has not yet been sealed up with concrete and wood. He could walk right out that door, assuming it’s unlocked, but that may not be the best way to handle this. She obviously doesn’t want him wandering around The Constant unsupervised. He might learn a secret that she doesn’t want getting out. He has to be smart about this. He tries the door anyway, and finds that it is indeed locked from the outside, so that’s a no-go.

Mateo jumps around to loosen up his joints. He’s assuming that each section of the Constant has its own set of alarms. If he can teleport to each one of them in succession, he’ll be able to choose one at random, and hide out there while Danica is scrambling, searching through the rest. It’s not the most brilliant of plans, but that was never his strong suit. He doesn’t usually do well on his own, but he’s all he’s got right now, so there’s no point in dwelling on that. He starts going over the sections in his head one by one, formulating a route, when the handle turns, and the door opens. He peeks his head out, and looks around to the other side of it. There was someone there, but he doesn’t get the chance to see who. He catches a glimpse of a silhouette before it disappears, either teleporting or time traveling away. They’re either trying to help him or hurt him, but either way, they have more information than he does, so worrying about it isn’t going to do him any good. All he can do now is try to gain some kind of advantage that will prevent Danica from being able to just throw him away like garbage.

First off, he wants to find out where she is, and where there might be others lurking about this facility. Though, if there is anyone else here, they’re probably fully invited, and he’s the only lurker. He steps out of the stasis room, and immediately regrets it. His shoes are too loud. What are they designed for, tap dancing? After he closes the door behind him, he takes them off, and starts walking with them in his hand, but he doesn’t get far before changing his mind. He feels like a heroine in an action movie who had to go undercover at a fancy party where the villain is entertaining a bunch of freeloaders to hide the fact that he’s really there to host a black market auction in the wine cellar, and now it’s time for her to run and fight. He decides to tuck them away underneath the couch, and move on.

He slinks down the hallways, hugging the walls, and trying to avoid the cameras, but he didn’t exactly memorize their locations, and there probably aren’t any blindspots anyway. He just keeps going, and hopes that his presence doesn’t trigger the artificial intelligence to sound that alarm after all. He could probably breathe easy, because the person who let him out of the stasis room surely knows whether they would be a real issue or not. No one is in the kitchen, no one’s in Danica’s office. No one’s in the security room, or the small film screening room. There’s no one in this library-looking place that is apparently called the master sitting room. “Wow, look at all this seating!” he exclaims to himself. The gym looks empty, but it has lots of spots to hide, so he gets himself a better look to be sure. No, it’s clear. Man, this is a big place for only a few visitors at a time. Only one person is meant to work here, except for Danica’s current posse, which Mateo assumes consists of Bhulan, Aquila, and maybe Tamerlane Pryce and Dalton Hawke?

“Tryna get swole?” a voice asks from behind him.

Mateo turns around to find a man who he doesn’t recognize. “I’m just trying to get answers,” Mateo admits.

“Aren’t we all?”

Mateo sizes him up a little. “Report.”

The man smiles. “Asier Mendoza, father of The Concierge. Some people call me Corporal Mercy.”

“Never heard of ya. Danica never mentioned her father, and Daria never mentioned her baby daddy.”

Asier nods. “You were probably talking to the wrong version of Danica.”

“I thought there was only one.”

“It’s complicated when you’re the way that she is.”

“Is that why we’ve never met before?”

“I guess.”

That’s not surprising, when Mateo thinks about it more. This is not the Danica he knows and loves, and that’s the point. Nerakali was always trying to explain that alternate selves are not identical. The fact that everyone is unique isn't just something to teach your kids; she called it a metaphysical maxim. “What are you going to do to me?”

“Do to you? What do you think we are, monsters?”

“Honestly, I don’t know anymore. Danica can’t take five minutes to have a conversation with me before she either erases my memory, or throws me into stasis.”

“If your memory was erased, how do you know how long the conversation was?”

“Does it really matter if my memory is gone? It’s like it never happened anyway.”

“Good point,” Asier muses.

“Interpret my question however you please, I would still like an answer. What is going to happen, and how can I prevent you from putting me back into that stasis pod?”

“Stasis is a gift, Mateo. For you and me, it’s a way for us to skip time, and reach the future. For the others, it’s a way to avoid the boredom of the aeons.”

“I understand its value, but why did she force me into it without saying a word? She took my friend, Alyssa away, claiming that she was going to send her back to the future, but I don’t know if that’s the case. Why is she being so cagey?”

Asier considers his approach to this. He’s obviously not allowed to answer all of Mateo’s questions. “This version of my daughter has caught glimpses of the parallel realities, which most versions never see. Each one is only meant to be responsible for one reality, and are meant to fend for themselves. The insight she gained from this information has changed her. She’s decided to make this reality different. She’s decided to protect it in a way that all other Concierges were never asked to do. It was a hard decision to make, and she’s incredibly stressed out about it. I would kindly ask you to be patient with her while she figures out how to proceed. Can you do that for me?”

Mateo considers what’s been asked of him. “If I’m going to support her, then I’m going to need to speak with her personally. Can you promise me that?”

“She’s not scheduled to come back out of stasis for another ten thousand years.”

“Then I’ll be back in ten thousand years,” Mateo responds.

“Okay, then. I’ll escort you back to your pod.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 302,398 Part 1

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One second. That’s how long Leona spends in the stasis pod that Danica forced her into. As soon as that door closes, she teleports out, and lands on the other side of it. To her left is Marie’s pod. She deactivates the stasis field, and opens it up.

“How long was I out?” Marie asks, fully aware that time inside is not the same as time outside.

“I don’t know,” Leona replies.

Marie takes a few looks around. “This isn’t where Danica put us.”

“No, you’re right, we’re in a different room. Our pods were moved in the last however long it’s been.” Leona starts fiddling with her pod’s interface. It’s surprisingly difficult to navigate. Opening Marie’s door wasn’t hard, but just getting a clock is near impossible. She’s tapped through several screens by now. There it is. “Ten thousand.”

“Seconds? Minutes?” Marie questions, knowing that neither of these is right.

Leona rolls her eyes. “I was in there for one observed second.” She starts to do the math in her head. “If one second equals ten thousand years, and we had four and a half billion years to go, then we would have had to stay in our pods for around five days, give or take a few minutes.”

“So, escaping was a mistake. We’re standing who knows where, ten thousand years after the solar system was created, and we would have been better off waiting.”

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,” Leona replies. “There’s no timer on this thing. It wasn’t scheduled to open up in the future. Someone would have had to let us out.” She jerks her head around like a bird looking for a worm. “I think I know where we are.”

“Where?”

“Phoenix 15-236P7 Marathon-Algae-Temple.”

“That’s the place in the Oort Cloud where we were supposed to find Mateo?”

“Yeah, maybe Aquila was telling the truth after all.”

“That’s not hard to believe,” Marie says. “There’s a reason that Curtis absorbed her mind into his own brain, to keep her from saying more than she already had.”

“So Danica didn’t want anyone to revive us?”

“Maybe not until she was ready. This is a great place to get a couple of irritants off your back. She has plans down there, and we’re getting in the way. Everything we’ve been through since I arrived could have been a distraction. Heath, my work with the government, even Vearden showing up when he did. We keep looking for answers in all the wrong places.”

Leona finds a viewport, and opens the cover to reveal the stars, which are moving quite quickly, suggesting that the celestial body that they’re on is spinning. It’s actually spinning too quickly, because there is no artificial gravity. A normal person can’t tell the difference between artificial and real gravity, but she can. She has had experience feeling it, and working on the technology. This is a planet. It feels a little like Mars. The viewport is a hologram—it’s fake—and only there to give them the impression that they are isolated from help. She takes Marie by both hands. “Do you trust me?”

“Implicitly.”

Leona teleports them away, landing them back by the large pool in The Constant. A mild alarm is going off. “Computer, please shut off that alarm.”

The alarm stops.

“How did you do that?”

“I don’t know, I shouldn’t be authorized. Computer, please disable all security precautions, and locate all other individuals in this facility.”

“Security disabled. All current inhabitants of The Constant are presently being stored in the executive stasis chamber.” The AI sounds just like Constance.

“Has the alarm not woken them up?”

“They have not been alerted. Would you like me to do that now?”

“No, thank you. Could you tell me, is there any room in this facility that blocks all teleportation and time travel?”

“There are two: the security room, and the master sitting room.”

“I’m not familiar with the master sitting room, but I’ve been to the security room. It has two doors,” Leona says to Marie.

“Aquila said that Mateo and Danica went into a room with only one entrance before he disappeared, leaving her with no memory,” Marie agrees.

Leona nods. “Hey computer, could you light the way for us, please?”

“You can call me Constance,” the AI offers as the navigation lights appear. Hmm. Apparently Ramses isn’t the one who came up with that name.

They walk down the passageways, and stop when they reach their destination. Leona has seen this before, but it didn’t seem particularly special at the time. She opens the door, and steps in. In it are shelves of books, reading lamps, end tables, and of course, plenty of chairs and couches. “Wow, look at all this seating!”

“What do you think?” Marie begins as she’s hopping over to the nearest books. “Does one of these open a secret passageway?”

“No, I still think that the Transit, or something, came to take him away. I’m looking for something else.” In addition to all those other things, there are also drawers and cabinets. She opens a couple. “Do you think you could fit in one of these?”

Marie shrugs, and curls herself up as she’s crawling in. “I’m thinking yes.”

“Okay, then that’s the hiding place you’ll be looking for.”

“Hiding place? Hiding from what?”

“From anyone who may have been here...ten thousand years ago.”

They leave the master sitting room. Leona leads the way down the passageways this time, to the deepest, darkest area of the Constant. She found it when they first came down here after the whole place was stripped and cleared out. There was always something interesting about it, and now she thinks she knows what it was originally used for. She opens the double doors. There before them is exactly what they need. It’s a time machine, and it’s what’s going to get them back to when they need to be.

“Won’t they notice us when we show up in the past?” Marie figures.

“They’ll notice me, but not you.”

Marie closes her eyes. “You want me to complete the secret plan to teleport to the energy generation room, and hide out.”

“Yes, please. I still think it can work.”

“It won’t. Think about it, you’re the one who got us out of the stasis room. You’re the one who controls the AI. Let them catch me while you hide, and save your husband.”

That’s logical, but it doesn’t sound like something a captain should do. “Really?”

“Yes. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Now let’s go before they catch us.”

“Before who catches you?” It’s Tamerlane Pryce. Isn’t it always?

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 7, 2396

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As soon as Mateo and Ramses jumped to April 7, 2396—or what passed for the date in this reality—the friend detector alerted them to the relative proximity of one of their people. They didn’t know which reality they were in, or who it was, but Mateo couldn’t help but feel hopeful that it would turn out to be Leona. He loved Olimpia, Angela, and Marie, but not like he loved his wife. “Is this going to work?”

Ramses sighed. “We may not have much time to think about it. I’ve done all I can to prepare. But if our target is in a hostile environment, it’s best that we get to her as soon as possible.”

“Then do it,” Mateo decided.

Scientists from the Parallel created these devices for them. The one that accessed other realities was originally designed to grapple onto the target, and pull them here. It wasn’t meant to actually go to that reality. But Ramses wasn’t satisfied with that. He wanted to leave the Parallel, and never come back. Mateo pointed out that they may still have to in the future. When Dalton separated them throughout time and space, there was no guarantee that they each landed nice and neatly in their own special pocket of the cosmos. It was neither predictable, nor necessarily evenly distributed. Leona could show up here ten years from now, or ten thousand. However, Ramses could tell that they were going to a different reality right now. Three realities, three years, each falling on a proper day on their pattern. That was a pattern in its own right. “Okay. Hold on.” He pushed the button.

It felt just as it had before, when Ramses pulled Mateo from the Fourth Quadrant, except in reverse. They were pushed across dimensional barriers, and gracelessly dropped at their destination. Mateo wasn’t knocked unconscious, but he suffered a terribly annoying headache, and was on the verge of retching. “Ow,” he said plainly.

Leona was hovering over him. She helped him off the floor. “Mateo. Do you know why we’re back here?”

“I don’t know where we are.” That wasn’t true. He looked around, and quickly realized they knew what this was. It was the wreckage of the Suadona, back in the Fifth Division. All that, and they were right back where they started. “Where’s Ramses?”

“I only saw you, but it was a blur. I’ve only just arrived myself.”

“Ramses? Ramses!”

A weak voice came from the other side of some debris, “here.”

They climbed over it to find their friend badly hurt. A metal bar of some kind had impaled him through the stomach, perhaps at his kidney. “Oh my God! What do we do?”

“We have to cut him out of it,” Leona determined.

“No,” Ramses said amidst the coughs. “Just pull me off.”

“That’s not how it’s done,” Leona argued.

“I’ll be fine, my body will heal,” Ramses insisted, “but it can’t do that until you get it out of me. Don’t worry about how much it hurts along the way. That will go away too.”

Though Leona never took the Hippocratic Oath, this still felt wrong. Even so, Ramses obviously knew more about these bodies than she did, so she chose to trust him. They carefully lifted him off of the spike, and laid him back down in a safe space. “What do you need? What kind of medical attention will help?” She opened her bag, and awaited a response.”

“I don’t need anything,” Ramses answered. “I’ve rested recently, absorbed sufficient amounts of sunlight, and consumed the necessary nutrients. I just need time.”

“Do we have time?” Leona asked.

“Matty?” Ramses prompted.

Mateo checked the friend detector. No one else was close enough to sense. “So far, so good. Just let your substrate do its thing, buddy.”

Leona was hesitant to leave him alone, but they needed to get out of the wreckage of the ship to assess their situation. There could be danger nearby. Perhaps this reality contained scavengers. They began to teleport around the ship to see if they could find any sign of more recent activity. “Report.”

“Dalton screwed up. He separated us. Ramses went to the Parallel, but didn’t travel through time. I stayed in the Fourth Quadrant, but jumped forward a year. You jumped two years, and came here. The others are theoretically elsewhere, and elsewhen. We may all have been sent to different parallel realities.”

“The math doesn’t check out,” Leona warned. “There are only five concurrent realities, and six of us.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve only heard of five.”

“Maybe there are more that you’ve never heard of.”

“We’re time travelers, Mateo. If anyone ever discovers a sixth reality, and if they ever return to report this development, that information can travel in both directions of time.”

“You had heard of the Fifth Division before we first came here?”

“Yes. I didn’t know anything about it, and I didn’t know we would ever come here, but it was a known unknown.”

Mateo thought about it. “What’s the last one; the one we haven’t gone to yet?”

“They call it the Third Rail. I don’t know much about it either, except that we’re—to some degree—not supposed to go there.”

“We’re probably gonna go there.”

“I know.”

“And there may be another one after that. There are a lot of things we don’t know about until we know them. I was at my own memorial service on Dardius. Billions of people were aware both of the fact that it happened, and that I survived it anyway. Like you said, information moves in both directions of time. Yet no one ever talked about it beforehand. As soon as I killed Hitler, and created the new timeline, somebody could have shown up to warn me about it, but they didn’t. They don’t tell us everything. That’s just one example.”

“You’re right. Just because information travels, doesn’t mean it’ll come to us.”

Mateo tilted his lizard brain, which given the fact that he was now genetically engineered, he shouldn’t really have anymore. “Do you feel that?”

Leona smiled. “Yeah, he’s not feeling any pain anymore.”

“When I was shot, it happened even faster than that.”

She shrugged, but made no attempt to explain the discrepancy.

Once they were finished checking the perimeter, they were about to go back to Ramses when a small ship approached them from the mountains. Its shape reminded Mateo of a container of floss. It was smooth and rounded, with no sharp corners.  “Let’s assume they don’t know about him, and stay here.”

“Of course.”

The ship hovered before them for a moment. Then lasers came out of it, and transported them inside against their will. Before them stood a man that only one of them recognized.

“Hello,” Mateo said politely. Rule number fifteen, don’t antagonize the antagonist. Except maybe he wasn’t an antagonist at all, what did he know?

“Hi, Mithridates,” Leona said a little less politely.

“I heard you left,” Mithri pointed out.

“We came back. It was an accident.”

“Well, you’ll be happy to know that I have not wavered in my promise to be an agent of peace in this reality. Rátfrid and I have been making real progress. Xerian Oyana of the Security Watchhouse Detachment absorbed the Dominion Defense and Offensive Contingency Detachments, and they have all been standing down. Unfortunately, the Warmaker Training Detachment detached again, and declared war on the rest of us, but I have faith in the future.”

“Glad to hear it,” Leona acknowledged.

“I would like to ask if you also kept your promise, or if you found a way to age yourselves up,” Mithri asked.

“No,” Leona lied. “It’s just been awhile for us since we’ve been here.”

He squinted at her. “You’re lying. Why are you lying to me?”

“I’m not lying,” Leona dug in deeper.

“It’s okay,” Mithri said with a kind smile. “I never specified you had to stay that way. Time travelers gonna travel time.”

“Thank you. It was just...”

“Impossible to have sex? I bet. That was the joke, but I’m older and wiser now.”

“Since you’re being so understanding, is there somewhere here on Earth where we might find refuge? It seems pretty desolate, but I haven’t exactly circumnavigated it.”

“I have a place you can hide,” Mithri said as he turned to the controls. “We’ll pick up the injured Mr. Abdulrashid before we go.”

“We’re hiding?” Mateo asked while Leona was making sure Ramses was okay after he was transported inside. “Are you expecting an attack of some sort?”

Mithri placed his hand on a big lever, but waited to pull it. “Rule number sixteen, when Team Matic is involved, always anticipate conflict.” He pulled the lever.

What he didn’t say was that he was taking them through a Nexus, and transporting them tens of thousands of light years away. They were on a world so deep in the void that it would still have been outside the Milky Way galaxy proper if the stars were as spread out as they were originally. It orbited a Stage Tau Gerostar, which in the main sequence would be called a blue dwarf.

Leona placed her hands on the glass, and stared at it like a long lost lover. “How is this possible? Wait, you must have accelerated time.”

“We have only been here for tens of thousands of years,” Mithri explained, “and it was waiting for us, as was the Nexus building that we just came through. Even if we had accelerated to one second for every year, we wouldn’t have had time to make this. It would have taken two hundred thousand years. Besides, we don’t detect any temporal energy around it. You can check for yourself.”

“Could someone please explain this?” Mateo requested. “Why is it a big deal?”

She stopped gazing to address her husband. “Mateo, that thing would have to be six trillion years old, or older.”

“The universe isn’t that old, is it?”

Leona scoffed. “Uhh...no.”

“So how do we know a blue dwarf is even a thing?”

She sighed. “It’s science, Mateo, I can’t explain it.” She returned to gawking at the apparent anachronism. She surely could explain it, but she didn’t want to.

“It just looks white to me,” Mateo noted.

She growled.

“Is there somewhere I could rest?” Mateo asked Mithridates.

“Downstairs, pick any of the pods. Not the full-sized bed, that’s mine.”

Mateo giggled when he got down there. The sleeping pods along the wall were shaped just like the ship itself. The man must love to floss. Prestons were such an odd bunch. He wasn’t all that tired, so he just started snooping instead. There weren’t a whole lot of things to find here. The floors, walls, and ceilings were all white, and smooth. Pretty nondescript, he would say—aesthetically pleasing and classy, but not particularly interesting. That was until he opened the door to a pocket dimension. Inside was a full stable, with hay, and manure on the floors. He walked through it, peeking over the doors to see if there were any actual horses, but there weren’t. It wasn’t until he got to the last stable that he came across another lifeform. It was undoubtedly a centaur. She was saddled, but not wearing any other clothes.

“Oh, hello. Are you Mithri’s friend?”

“That’s a strong word,” Mateo answered. “I don’t really know him. Does he...um?”

“Does he ride me like I’m an actual horse?” she figured.

“Uhh...”

“My son is still in regular human form. This is how I get him around on our home planet. It’s only weird if you make it weird.”

“I don’t think it’s weird.” Mateo looked around the room. “Where is he, and where is your planet?”

“They’re in the same place. He’s at school right now. Mithridates agreed to help me get back to him after rescuing me from my captors.”

“You don’t seem that anxious about it?”

“My planet is safe, he’s fine.”

“I’m Mateo.”

“Delintza,” she returned.

“Delintza, we were to understand that consciousness transference isn’t a thing here, nor is cloning. No one realized after we had done it.”

“I’ve never heard of it either,” she said. “This is my real head and torso, and this was a real horse. A surgeon put us together.”

“Oh, so...the horse died? That doesn’t bother you?”

“No, why would I care? It’s just a dumb animal.”

The friend detector began to beep, which was good, because he didn’t want to have to get into an ethical debate with this stranger.

“What’s that?” she questioned.

“Sorry, gotta go.” He ran back upstairs.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 6, 2395

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Dalton Hawk looked different. Sure, his face was the same, and he was at about the same age as he was when they last saw him, but he held himself differently. He stood up straighter, which made it all the more interesting that he was also carrying a cane. Upon closer inspection, they saw that this was unlike any cane any of them had seen before. A humongous diamond was affixed to the top of it. Leona realized as he was walking towards them, though, that she had indeed seen it before, just not in its completed form. A long time ago, Dilara Cassano, a.ka. The Arborist asked her and her then team to procure the diamond for them as payment. She used her ability to muster a version of Horace Reaver from an old timeline, along with Lincoln Rutherford as a bonus. They were both apparently paradoxed out of reality after the former deliberately erased Tristesse Ulinthra from all histories.

“You can?” Mateo asked. “Aren’t you just a body hopper? I mean, I don’t mean to say that’s all you are, but...”

“It’s fine,” Dalton promises, “no offense taken. And no, I don’t have that ability anymore; not since I was reborn from the afterlife simulation.”

“What can you do now?” Leona asked.

Dalton spun his fancy cane like a professional baton twirler. He ended by moderately gently dropping it on the floor, where it stood up to gravity. “I can’t do anything, but I can use this.”

“What can it do?” Angela pressed.

“It invokes and harnesses a special flavor of temporal energy. I should be able to send you anywhere, anywhen. Or I could give you powers, take them away, saddle you with a time affliction. I could theoretically rewrite reality to my will.”

“What do you do with it?” Olimpia questioned, worried.

“Nothing much so far,” Dalton answered. “I’m still figuring out how it works. It comes with a learning curve, and a downside.”

“Doesn’t everything?” Ramses asked rhetorically.

“I can’t use it on myself,” Dalton explained. “Well, I could, but then I would lose the cane, because someone else would have to do it for me. My arm doesn’t reach that far.” He demonstrated the idea by holding the cane from the bottom, and trying to point the diamond at himself. Humans weren’t anatomically set up for that. The thing was too long.

The Presidents and Vice Presidents looked amongst each other. “We don’t know who he is,” Skylar told the team. “We’re assuming he’s good people because of your reception of him, but could you confirm that?”

Leona shrugged. “We don’t really know him that well, but he seems cool.”

“We can help you then,” Lucy said. “Have you tried reflecting the energy off of a mirror?”

“Yes, I have,” Dalton replied. “It just consumes the mirror. It doesn’t care that it’s reflective.”

“Our mirrors are different,” Oliver told him. “If we were to be transported to the barrier at the edge of the metro, we could show you right now.”

They took each other’s hands, and teleported to Stilwell, Kansas. It sat on the southernmost edge of the dimensional bubble they were in. Beyond this was nothing, or maybe they just couldn’t get to it. The team had never actually questioned anybody what happened if they tried to cross over. Surely someone had tried in the last 370 years. It was weird to see. The barrier was a mirror, just as Oliver had described it. They could watch themselves as if they were in a giant dance studio. The image faded as they looked upwards, and eventually gave way to the sky and clouds.

“It goes all around,” Kostya explained. “It used to be the entire dome. You could stand here and watch things happening miles and miles away, on the other side of hills and buildings. We don’t know who did it, but we don’t think it was the man who made the snowglobe itself. We think one day the reflection will disappear completely, and we’ll be able to expand beyond the borders.”

“Some people think that,” Oliver contested. “It’s kind of a religious thing.”

“How do you know that this will reflect temporal energy,” Dalton asked.

“We’ve seen it before,” Skylar answered. “That’s all we’re gonna say about it.”

Dalton smiled with little confidence. “I’ve sat through trigonometry class multiple times.” He turned his cane, and aimed it at the barrier. A blast of energy came out of it, bounced off of the barrier, and landed in Olimpia’s chest. She disappeared.

“You better have sent her somewhere safe,” Angela warned.

“I did. The only question was whether the reflection would work.” With that, he shot her with energy too. He then proceeded to do the same for Marie, Ramses, Leona, and finally Mateo.

Mateo woke up on the ground. He didn’t think it was possible to be knocked unconscious in this new body, but then again, temporal energy was probably some pretty powerful stuff. He got himself to his feet, and looked around. No one else was there; not Leona, nor anyone else. He was completely alone in the middle of a field. He gazed up at the sky, and saw the stars, but there was something odd about them. He kept staring, looking for what was wrong. As he adjusted his angle, he realized that there was a slight distortion in the light coming down from them. The sky wasn’t perfectly transparent. A dimensional barrier was between the land and the heavens. He was still in the Fourth Quadrant. What evil trickery was this?

Before he could teleport to civilization, to figure out what was going on, he felt something wrap itself around his waist. He looked down to find a lasso, or perhaps a whip. It tugged him backwards, through a tunnel of flashing lights. He landed on his feet when it stopped, but couldn’t get rid of the momentum without falling on his ass. It didn’t really hurt, though. Ramses reached down, and helped him off the floor.

“Where are we?” Mateo asked.

“The Parallel. I’ve been here since yesterday.”

“What’s yesterday?” Mateo went on.

“It’s just been a day for me. Whatever Dalton did, he sent us to different points in spacetime; I believe to different realities. I came here last year. You were simply thrown forwards in time one year. The others are elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere,” Mateo echoed. “Elsewhere is where?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m still looking into it.” Ramses turned and addressed a woman who had been watching them. “There’s your proof of concept. Please allow me to seek the others.”

She seemed very unappreciative of their inconvenient situation. “We will not allow you to travel through time...in any reality. We will let you seek the others, but you must wait until you catch up to them on your own before you may bring them here.”

“What if they’re not on our pattern anymore?” Ramses tried to reason. “What if they’re a day behind, or a day ahead, or centuries in the past? What if we never catch up to them?”

“We will not allow you to travel through time,” she repeated like a robot. “You must wait until you catch up to them on your own.”

“Real mature, asshole,” Ramses said. “He pulled one device off the counter between them, and handed it to Mateo. He then grabbed the second device.

“What are these?” Mateo asked him as he was following his friend out of the room.

“What you’re holding is basically a kin detector. Obviously we all have unique DNA, but the way I engineered our clones was consistent across the six of us. That thing will alert us when it senses another one of us in the same moment of time. It even works across realities.”

Mateo flipped a switch on the side of the detector. An alarm started to blare, and until Ramses could take it away from him, and turn it off, Mateo thought he was going to lose his hearing.

“Sorry, I should have said don’t push any buttons.”

“Does that mean someone else is here?”

“No, it’s still not calibrated to ignore you,” Ramses replied. “That’s why it was so loud, because you’re so close to it.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“But we don’t know when we’re gonna find the others. Maybe never.”

“This universe is not exactly a unified empire. We’ll find someone who can help us eventually, I promise you that. I would modify it myself, but it is so far beyond me, Matty, like you don’t even know.”

“Why did Dalton do this to us?”

“I don’t know that it was on purpose. He may have looked confident, but I could see anxiety in his eyes. He had little experience with that cane. There’s every chance the first time he tried to use it had somehow backfired, and trapped him in the Fourth Quadrant in the first place. We should have talked to him more.”

The two of them were given a full suite to stay in, but they ended up just sleeping in the same bed, so they could both hear the alarm. Neither knew how faint the volume would be once it did go off. Ramses said it could even potentially be infrasonic. Of course, that was a relative term for them now. They were capable of seeing a wider range of frequencies on the light spectrum, and of hearing a wider range of sound frequencies. Also due to their new bodies, they didn’t need to sleep much, but they did need a little. Their skin could absorb and convert solar radiation into chemical energy, but as it was organic, it was only so efficient at this conversion.

They woke up a couple of hours later, fully rested. The friend detector log did not indicate that they had missed their window. It was still April 6, 2395, at least inasmuch as that meant anything in this reality. “Can we go anywhere in the universe, or do we have to remain close to Earth?”

“Comparatively speaking, it shouldn’t matter too much,” Ramses answered. “Other realities are further away than you or even I could fathom. Plus, we don’t know where Dalton might have sent them. It could be Earth, or somewhere else. Why? Was there somewhere you wanted to go?”

“I was just thinking about checking in on Flindekeldan. I know it’s stupid, but I’m feeling a little nostalgic.”

“Better leave them out of it. Besides, that’s particularly far away. In no other reality is that populated. I doubt anyone’s that far out, and we don’t need to test the limits of this thing.”

“I understand.”

“As do I,” came the voice of another Ramses. He hadn’t bothered to knock on the door. He waltzed right into the bedroom, and outstretched his arm. “Pleased to meet you, Ramses, I’m Parallel!Ramses.”

“Likewise,” Ramses said rather unconvincingly, but surely rather innocuously. “Here but for the lid of Schrödinger’s box stand I.”

Parallel!Ramses chuckles. “If that’s the way you wanna look at it, then I won’t try to stop you.”

“Oh, I’m sure you understand it better,” Ramses said, worshiping him with a wave of his arms. “We’re not worthy.” It was starting to look a lot less playful.

“I just wanted to make sure these accommodations are too your liking,” Parallel!Ramses began. “I see that you two have finally hooked up. I always thought it might happen.”

Mateo looked back at the bed, and then over at his Ramses. “Really?”

“He’s messing with you.” Ramses retrieved the friend detector from the nightstand. “This thing is amazing, but I have feedback.”

“And I would love to hear it,” Parallel!Ramses lied. “Unfortunately, I have a lot of work to do. It’s a big universe out there, you understand.”

Ramses squinted at his alternate self. “I always knew I would become you...if I ever got power. That’s why I try to stay away from it.”

Parallel!Ramses glided back towards the door. “It would seem as though you chose wisely.” He left.

“Well,” Mateo said awkwardly. “That was a pointless conversation.”

“He was trying to gloat,” Ramses said, still staring at the space his alt once occupied. “He thinks he’s finally won.”

“Has he not? He has all that power. I don’t want to compare the two of you, but if this really is all you ever wanted...”

Ramses finally looked over at his friend. “He doesn’t have everything he wanted. He barely has anything. He doesn’t have you and Leona. He believes that these arbitrarily restricted devices will keep us from ever getting out of this reality. He believes you’re stuck here with him.”

“Are we?”

Ramses rifled through his bag until he found his toolkit. He removed one small tool, and flipped it in the air before catching it again. He used it to pry the casing off of the lasso dimensional extraction device. “We’re not just gonna bring our friends here. We’re gonna go to them, and even if we end up in a reality not of our choosing, we’ll be together.”

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