The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 9, 2522

« < » > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3.1

Mateo and Angela stood before three of the launch pads. Two claimant shuttles had already arrived, and the last one was landing now. No one had exited yet, per the Vitalemusian instructions. A few minutes after all shuttles were down, the hatches opened at about the same time. Korali, Bronach, and Old!Oaksent began to walk down their respective ramps. They were each accompanied by six others. Also per instructions, they were allowed to bring one lieutenant, one assistant, and four personal bodyguards. They were also allowed to leave one or two pilots in their vehicles, to be protected by no more than two security officers. They took full advantage of their limitations, which suggested that they would have rather had even more people backing them up. That told them something about how this was probably gonna go.

As the claimants approached, medical professionals first handed them their breathing apparatuses, which only Korali refused. “Team Matic,” Bronach said to them. “You’re looking...partial.”

Korali looked around. “Where are the other parties?” Her voice sounded normal, and it didn’t seem like she was having an issue pulling in oxygen. She must also have an enhanced substrate of some kind. Interesting that the two Oaksents apparently did not, despite being nigh impossible to kill.

“The Anatol Klugman and the Revolumusians are landing in a different dome, next to the Vellani Ambassador,” Angela replied. “We are here to escort you to a neutral third dome, where discussions will begin.”

“We would like to rest first,” Old!Oaksent all but demanded. Tok’ra was not with him. He was supposed to be, but they received word earlier today that he had business to take care of elsewhere. Mirage expressed that everything was okay, and that she would join him as soon as she dropped off her crew.

“That’s not happening,” Mateo informed them. “Your journey on your ship was not taxing. You would have plenty of time to sleep. If you want Team Matic here...we’re here. And we’re only here today. You know that.”

Korali scoffs. “He’s weak, and he’s losing. He knows we can’t harm him here. He doesn’t want a few hours to rest. He wants a year.”

“He’s not getting it,” Mateo reiterated. “Follow me.” He began to walk away while Anglea shooed them forward, and took up the rear. Vitalemusian guards surrounded them on either side. They were not taking any chances in this very delicate situation. He led them to the land vehicle that they were going to take to get to the diplomacy dome. It was gigantic, and should be quite comfortable for them all.

When the claimants realized this, they pretty much all stopped at the same time. “I’m not getting in that thing,” Old!Oaksent insisted.

Mateo was confused. “We can’t walk,” Mateo tried to explain. “It’s, like, 50 kilometers.”

“Don’t they have trains here?” Bronach asked. “I thought that was the go-to way to get around a paraterraformed planet.” He winked, reminding them that he was well aware of Castlebourne, and its location.

Angela looked up at the shimmering dome above them. “This world isn’t paraterraformed. It’s naturally habitable enough. The plasma domes are here for defensive purposes only. You can’t build permanent structures on the surface as there is too much seismic activity. Land vehicles are the only way. They live in them.”

“How do you not already know this?” Mateo questioned. “Didn’t you found all these planets?” Bronach probably knew all this entirely, and was just trying to get a rise out of them.

“I didn’t give this one very much thought,” Bronach replied. “I’m only one man.”

“Two, actually,” Old!Oaksent corrected.

“Shut it, grandpa.”

“You’re both old,” Korali argued.

“Get in the car!” Mateo urged.

They relented, and let the guards help them climb in. They found their couches, and settled in. Yes, they were couches, instead of seats. This particular vehicle was designed to transport VIPs. They weren’t really VIPs now, though. It sometimes felt like the driver was running them over boulders on purpose, instead of choosing the smoother path.

About two hours later, they were at their destination, having had to drive slowly because of the instability of the ground, as Angela had explained. This was actually a little faster than the locals would normally go, but they were tracking the progress of the other parties, and wanted to arrive at the same time. The claimants tried to engage her and Mateo in conversation, but the latter two realized that there was no reason why they all had to occupy the same space. It was more than big enough for each party to have their own compartment, so he made the executive decision to separate everyone.

The other vehicle pulled up next to theirs, and everyone started getting out. The Vitalemusian guards tensed up into high alert, prepared to stop any violence. There was very little obvious hostility among the enemies, though. If Mateo had to guess, none of them wanted to appear to see the others as any significant threat. In order to maintain a façade of confidence and dominance, they had to make it look like their opponents meant very little to them. Interesting again, and it too said something about everyone’s strategy going into this. They were going for the same one, which how would that turn out? The non-claimants had one clear advantage, however, in that the Revolumusians only came as a primary diplomat and a lieutenant. They didn’t feel the need to bring their own security guards at all, which really showed how self-assertive they were, and how safe they felt. One point to the allies already, and talks hadn’t even begun.

Team Matic reunited with each other, along with Vitalie and Kivi.  The 31 of them walked together to a third vehicle, still surrounded by about as many guards. The place was even bigger than the transporters, and resembled a gigantic clam. It did have wheels, but there were no tracks in the dirt, giving them the impression that it wasn’t designed to move regularly, but only when necessary. This might have been a particularly geologically stable region of the planet.

The diplomacy room looked like it was specifically tailored for this occasion, and it genuinely might have been. This meeting was on the books for an entire year, so they knew how many people were going to show up. It was a round table, much like the one in the VA, but this could specifically hold fourteen members. Well, it could technically hold more, but it was clearly divided up with concave sections around the edge, each one large enough to accommodate the primary and lieutenant. The rest of each party sat at a half circle table behind them, almost kind of like a VIP area in a nightclub. The entourage, who weren’t expected to speak.

While Mateo and Romana hung back in their little pod, Leona and Angela sat in their designated spot at the big table. They waited there silently until realizing that everyone was staring at them. Leona spoke, not with awkwardness or confusion, but calm, grade school teacheresque inquisitiveness. “Are you expecting us to run the show?”

“That’s why you’re here,” Bronach responded.

It hadn’t been entirely clear what her role here was supposed to be, but she was prepared for this. She glanced at the other members, whose facial expressions implied that they agreed with Bronach’s assertion. “Okay.” She looked over at Vitalie. “I need them to have compatible personal devices; tablets or handhelds, or something.”

Vitalie looked up at the nearest guard, who unlocked a cabinet on the wall with his biometrics. He distributed seven phablets accordingly.

Leona went on, “please take a few moments to write down your goals here. Only one each. Tell us all what you want. You can say, we demand a bouquet of flowers or I wanna destroy the entire universe. It’s up to you what you choose—however insane or unreasonable it may be—but it must be singular, and genuine. Go ahead.” She simply typed PEACE on her own device.

Once they were all complete, Vitalie used her master device to project holograms in front of each party to display their response. Bronach wrote total control over the entire Goldilocks Corridor, and the safe return of all Exin defectors and hostages. Okay. Korali and Old!Oaksent both basically said that they wanted control over their half of the Corridor, suggesting that they had already been working on a deal to divide territories in some fashion. It also clearly told everyone that Bronach should end up with nothing. The resistance fighters from Revolumus wanted the dissolution of the Exin Empire, and for a fair republic to be erected in its place. All three claimants would be barred from so much as thinking about taking any part in the new government. The Verdemusian warriors didn’t care what the people in this sector of the galaxy did, as long as they left everyone else alone. They were evidently fine with an oppressive government if the Exins—or anything which might take its place—remained isolationistic. They were particularly concerned with the secure and successful dispersal of the modular ships in the Stargate project. Team Kadiar asked for safe passage within the Corridor to ferry any refugee who would like to leave for Castlebourne. She quickly added not hostages in response to Bronach’s message. Vitalie abstained from a response.

“All right,” Leona said. “Now we know where we’re starting from, which means we know how far apart we are. Our goal here should be the move everyone as close to the center as possible. You all want power that you can’t have at the exclusion of each other. My job is to see what we can do to make everyone both unhappy, and happy. I’m actually already seeing a potential solution, and your goals are probably not as distant as you think. I’ll hold off on judgment for now, though. First, we all need to spend some time making clarifications and elaborations.” She literally rolled up her sleeves. “Let’s get to it.”

They talked all day, barely taking any breaks. It wasn’t as hard as they assumed for people to start recognizing Leona’s idea, even without her ever saying it out loud. She was right that they could reach an agreement without making too many sacrifices. The main thing that some of them would lose was absolute supremacy. Even Korali and Old!Oaksent’s plan to divide territories assumed that each planet in that territory would want to follow their new, singular leader. The easiest decision they made was to appease the Verdemusians to halt all aggression from the Anatol Klugman warship. Verdemus was sufficiently far outside of the Goldilocks Corridor, and Extremus was not even a blip on their radar anymore as it had long since reached its destination, or at least attempted to. As far as Project Stargate went, the Corridor was obviously wholly off-limits, but so was a sizable bubble beyond that, which should insulate them from interference from worlds that Stargate did manage to settle. It was hard for the Exins to agree to allow the module that would be responsible for colonization here, but that was kind of a non-starter. The Anglos needed to follow their pattern as planned. Even if that meant staying dormant forever, they couldn’t just send that module somewhere else. The algorithm didn’t work like that. That’s what they claimed anyway.

Next came the hard part, which was the question of who would control all of these stars. The claimants all had rational reason to believe that it should be them, but if they didn’t find a peaceful way to govern, the Revolumusians weren’t going to let them relax. The rebels were friends with the crew of the Vellani Ambassador, which was still the most powerful ship in the universe, even compared with the Jameela Jamil. If Team Kadiar ever decided to stop transporting refugees, and start using their vessel as a weapon instead, no one would be able to stop them. As small as it was, its speed was unmatched, and nobody wanted to antagonize them, especially not after Angela strongly suggested that Ramses was developing an entire armada of slingdrive-equipped battleships. That wasn’t actually true, but it was believable enough, and unequivocally within his capabilities.

They could not complete all of the negotiations in only one day, but they did have a framework for one. The three claimants could maintain control over the sector as a Triumvirate, but planetary and local governance would be completely democratic, as overseen by a team of Revolumusians. It wasn’t apparent how exactly this would all work, but they would spend Team Matic’s interim year hashing out the details. They still hadn’t figured out how to handle the refugee issue, but Kivi pointed out that there would likely be fewer applications for emigration if the citizens were treated well. They would be happy, and not interested in leaving, as wherever they were now were their homes. It was hard for the claimants to believe this, and it was true that there was no guarantee, but they seemed to be opening their minds. This might actually work out.

Team Matic disappeared at midnight, confident that all would be resolved by the time they returned. Of course, though, their faith was unfounded. When did anything ever work out that well for them? They finally found out why Tok’ra was not present as the equivalent of Old!Oaksent’s lieutenant. He decided that this meeting did not have the right to speak for the entire Goldilocks Corridor. He had been back on New Welrios, rousing a new rebellion. They too wanted a seat at the table, and nobody was having it. Surprisingly, not even the Revolumusians thought that they deserved a voice. After all this work, war was closer than ever.

« < » > Table of Contents

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 8, 2521

« < » > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3

Leona was not happy when she found out that Miracle was going to stay in Romana’s original body. She argued that this naturally placed her on the team’s pattern, and gave her other temporal abilities that she was not really supposed to have. The problem was that it wasn’t really their choice. Body swap laws were complicated, but not too complicated. Basically, the only way they could force Miracle out of Romana’s body would be if Romana wanted it back. But even if Romana expressed such interest, she couldn’t then turn around and upgrade to her new substrate right away, just as a means to keep Miracle from the original. It would have to be a sincere wish. Since Miracle did not ask to be cast into the wrong body, her rights to that body were assumed unless someone else were to have a stronger claim to it, and a legitimate one at that. Since this was now simply where Miracle’s mind lived, it fell under my body, my choice laws, which predated even the most nascent consciousness transference technologies by decades.

After Ramses completed Romana’s upgrade, she immediately took herself off the pattern, so she could spend the next year helping Miracle control her own relationship to that pattern, and stay in real time semi-permanently. She could always decide to start time-skipping like the rest of them, but what would be the purpose of that? They didn’t know her; they weren’t friends. She didn’t seem to want to be part of the team, and they kind of had a full roster at this point. Ramses programmed his AI to look for ways to clear Miracle of her temporal manipulation properties altogether, but again, she would have to consent to any procedure that might make such changes.

During the interim year, an old frenemy reached out. Korali was aware of the team’s schedule, but timekeeping was different in the Goldilocks Corridor. It was hard to keep track of precisely when the team was available, and when they weren’t. So they spoke with Team Kadiar at first. “She wants a meeting?” Leona questioned.

“She and the other claimants, which is what they are calling each other, all want a meeting with us.”

“They haven’t killed each other yet?” Marie asked.

“They can’t really die,” Romana reasoned. “There have been a ton of loss on all sides, which the crew of the Vellani Ambassador have been trying to put a stop to, but...they don’t have any support.”

“They don’t have support from who?”

Dubravka stepped forward. “Let’s break this down. You got three claimants, which are the two versions of the Oaksent, and Korali. On the other side, you have the internal resistance, headed by the inhabitants of the penal colony, Ex-666, which they now call Revolumus. I know, not very clever, but they’re trying to tie themselves to the Extremus mission. That brings me to the fifth opposing faction, which is composed of allies from Verdemus, headed by the Anatol Klugman warship. The sixth and final faction are the refugees, and us on the Ambassador who try to rescue them. Revolumus and Verdemus don’t really support our efforts. They don’t exactly want war, but they don’t think there’s any choice.”

“That sounds like a lot,” Mateo admitted, “but what does it have to do with us? The whole reason I had you transport the old Bronach there was so he could deal with it, and we could wipe our hands clean. The situation is far too complicated for a small group of people who only exist one day out of the year to make any meaningful impact.”

“You are the only people they all like,” Kivi explained.

“Why would they like us?” Mateo questioned. “I mean, Korali, I guess. But we’ve grown apart. And the other guys? Sure, I saved one Oaksent from death, but he doesn’t seem like the grateful type. The other version of him definitely isn’t. He keeps trying to kill us, and we keep almost killing him.”

“He respects you,” Dubra clarified. “You never stop fighting to fix things, which speaks to him. Apparently, that’s how this whole thing started. That’s why he founded the Exin Empire in the first place, to fight for his rights.”

“We don’t fight for our rights,” Olimpia contended. “We fight for others. He doesn’t see the difference?”

“I don’t think he understands the concept of helping people,” Kivi replied.

“Look, if you don’t do this,” Dubra went on, “we’ll go back and let ‘em know to take care of their own shit. We’re just the messengers. Hrockas is already aware that the location of Castlebourne is out there, and is working on his own arrangements. Our refugees will be safe, and we will keep gathering more as long as there are more to gather. But. I would love it if the violence stopped. It would make my job easier.”

“Debatable,” Mirage interjected. She was noncorporeal, but visible to them via holographic projection. She was pretending to be sitting on the counter, one of her legs propped up on the backrest of an empty chair.

“What’s that?” Leona asked.

“Ignore her,” Dubra requested.

“Go on with what you were saying,” Leona encouraged Mirage.

“There’s no such thing as a peacetime refugee. They ask us to save them because there’s something to save them from. If you negotiate a ceasefire—which, let’s face it, is as close as you’re gonna get to peace—people won’t feel any impulse to escape anymore.”

“And that’s a bad thing?” Dubra spat.

“Yes,” Mirage said, raising her voice a little, and hopping off the counter. “The Exin Empire is corrupt. The body can’t be saved. You can’t even save the limbs. The best you can do is save the individual cells, and bring them here.”

“That metaphor doesn’t make any sense,” Dubra argued. “Shut up.”

“What does Alt!Ramses say about this?” Mateo asked. “Is he still in control of what Old!Bronach does?”

“He goes by Tok’ra now,” Kivi divulges.

“Like as a first name? It’s a person’s name?” Mateo asked.

“It’s his only name. It’s a mononym.”

“He does love that franchise,” Leona admitted. “He said that he appreciated how much Egyptian culture and history played into it.”

“Where is the other Ramses?” Marie asked, looking around.

“He’s working on what he calls the Miracle Cure,” Leona answered cryptically. It wasn’t really their place to tell the crew of the VA about the Miracle Brighton issue.

There was a pause in the conversation.

“So, what do you say? Will you come back with us?” Dubra offered. Mirage was technically the captain of the ship, but Dubravka had full decision-making power over the missions, and she was apparently really adamant about that.

“Does it have to be today?” Leona asked her.

“If you go today, you’ll be waiting until tomorrow,” Mirage jumped back in. “They’ll all wanna make you sweat.”

Leona looked back to Dubra, who closed her eyes, nodded slightly, and shrugged even slightlier. “That tactic is not really gonna work on us. My problem is that we don’t have enough information. We’ve received piecemeal updates from you, but if we go back there, we need a more comprehensive report.”

“I can write one up for you in minutes,” Mirage volunteered.

“No, you won’t, Dubra insisted. “You’ll add too much bias. We already have reports,” she said to Leona. “The resistance fighters have their own form of central archives, and the AK tracks everything it does, and everything it sees. I can have an unbiased AI compile the information into something more digestible.”

“I can do that.” Ramses was standing in the doorway. “I’ve been listening this whole time. I trust Thistle. Feed him all your information, and he’ll take it from there.”

“So are you all coming today, or waiting?” Dubra asked again.

“We’ll catch up with you,” Ramses told her.

“That’s a complication,” Dubra began. “You’re not allowed to come. Well, you are allowed to be nearby, but they won’t talk to anyone on Team Matic if you’re involved. They see it as an unfair advantage, since an alternate version of you is on Old!Bronach’s side.”

“I don’t talk to that guy,” Ramses explained. “Tok’ra, you say?”

“It doesn’t matter what the truth is,” Mirage said. “It’s what they think.”

“How’s your work coming along?” Leona asked Ramses.

“It can wait,” Ramses claimed.

“Why don’t you stay and keep working on it?” Leona suggested. It was probably the smart move anyway, to keep someone on the outside, protected. They couldn’t do it all the time, since they were supposed to be a team, but they would still have him there, just in a different form. They wondered what he was like now. Tok’ra had been without them for years now, but he surely wouldn’t have changed too terribly much.

“I’ll stay here too,” Olimpia proposed. “I don’t care to be around any version of the Oaksent. I tried to kill him once, so...”

“So did Ram,” Mateo reminded them. “This is the right call. ‘Kay, buddy?”

“Yeah, that makes sense.” Ramses didn’t like being sidelined, but he understood.

Marie hung back too. It was prudent to not leave one or two people stranded somewhere without a full tandem sling drive array. The rest of them accepted the Vellani Ambassador’s invitation to transport them to the Corridor, since it left their tandem slingdrives at full capacity. The VA had to go back there anyway.

They were now orbiting an Earth-like planet. From this viewpoint, there appeared to be more land and less water on the surface, but that was otherwise unremarkable. What they focused mostly on was the atmosphere, which shone brighter. An aurora wrapped itself all around the world, dancing with brilliant shades of turquoise and magenta.

“Don’t try to teleport down there,” Dubra warned. “This world is a fortress, which is why it’s a perfect neutral planet. Argon is extremely rich in the crust, and makes up about 60% of the atmosphere. It’s safe to breathe, especially you with your advanced substrates. The locals use breathing apparatuses to pull in oxygen, and raise the pitch of their voice to normal standards, but they don’t require them, so you will meet people who move slowly, and talk deeply.

“I don’t understand,” Mateo said.

“Argon is what we use in plasma shields,” Leona said. “They got domes down there?”

“They got domes,” Dubra confirmed. “Transparent ones, though, unlike Castlebourne. They have a real sky, so they never felt the need to fake it with holograms.”

“As it turns out, they’ve been in revolt and independent for a long time,” Kivi went on. “They never fought back, or tried to recruit. They just said, leave us alone, and we’ll leave you alone. Let us develop and advance however we see fit, and we’ll continue to ship refined plasma to you, but at our discretion. Since the war began, they stopped shipping anything at all, but they did agree to not provide plasma to their enemies either, so there’s that.”

Leona chuckles quietly. “Argon is not a rare element. Sure, I bet it was convenient to have a single, highly concentrated source of the stuff, but they never needed this particular planet to satisfy their needs. I bet they harvest it from lots of other worlds, and that they weren’t too butthurt to let this one go.”

“How do we get down there?” Mateo asked.

“We’ll take The Puff!” Kivi replied excitedly. She ran off.

Dubra ran after her. “You’re not flying it!”

“Oh, yes, I am!” Kivi insisted.

The team followed them to the shuttle bay. They obviously knew this was here the whole time, but as teleporters, never had any use for it. The Puff looked mostly like a smaller version of the Vellani Ambassador. It was purple, sleek, and pretty. “Wait, where’s The Tammy?” Leona asked when she noticed the empty second docking bay.

“It’s...being borrowed,” Dubra replied, uncomfortably like it was a lie. Had it been stolen, or something?

Leona decided not to press for more answers. They climbed into the shuttle, and flew off down to the surface while Mirage stayed alone in orbit. Where was Tertius? They also decided to ask probing questions about that either. After receiving permission, they flew through the entry barrier of the visitor dome, and landed on the pad. The welcome party consisted of only one person. It was presumably this planet’s variation of Vitalie Crawville.

“She’s why they revolted,” Dubra explained without prompting. “They found her stasis pod, managed to break her out, and kind of elected her as their leader. Some may even worship her. I forgot to tell you,” she added in a more hushed voice, “they call this planet Vitalemus.”

“Will she see us as friends?” Angela asked. “I’m getting the impression that this secession happened quite a long time ago.”

“Oh, yes, it was centuries ago,” Dubra responded. “She is a little bit different than the other World Caretakers. A little bit more jaded, maybe? Serious. Hard to read. You should be fine, though.”

They stepped out of the shuttle, and approached Vitalie. She did look quite serious. Her face wasn’t sporting a frown, but it was still a little jarring when it suddenly turned into a smile. She reached out and took Leona in an embrace. “Oh, how I’ve missed you, old friend. Come quick, come quick.” She turned, and started walking away. “Let’s fuck some shit up.”

« < » > Table of Contents

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 6, 2364

« < » > Table of Contents

As soon as they made the jump to March 6, 2364—the first single year jump in a long time—Kivi reappeared. The whole time she was gone, they didn’t even remember that she was a person who existed, but as soon as she returned, they remembered everything. “Where the heck have you been?” Mateo asked. “I thought that was over.”

“Sorry,” Kivi replied. “Old habits, I guess. I promise you that it really is over now. I’m here to stay, unless we get separated by more traditional means. Your memories of me should remain intact from now on.”

“We appreciate that,” Leona said. “We can explain what you missed, and why Jeremy is no longer with us.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Kivi said. “I know I was missing, but my brain has false memories of having been here for all of it. I know where he is. Or was, as it were. It looks like we have to have that same ol’ conversation again, though.”

“What we’re gonna do now,” Olimpia guessed. “We can’t seem to figure that one out, can we?”

“I have it figured out,” Ramses said. “Rather, I have an idea.”

“What is it?” Mateo asked.

Ramses pulled the hologram up over the central table, showing a map of interstellar space. “The stellar neighborhood encompasses every system within fifty light years of Earth. Direct missions are responsible for exploring these systems, while Project Stargate takes care of everything beyond the envelope.” He zooms in. “This planet falls within the latter. It’s fifty-six light years away, but since it follows a relatively straight line from Gatewood, the outpost was actually established after only fifty-two years. The people on that rock have had over sixty years to develop.”

“Wait, there are people there?” Leona asks.

“Yes,” Ramses confirms. “It’s the first world selected for Operation Starseed. According to project data, the people living there are aware of their origins, but they don’t have any details about it. They don’t know their planet of origin was Earth, let alone where it is. The first generation was incubated at top speed, so they’re spaceworthy, but barely. Starseed provided them with a level of technology akin to late nineteenth century rural. They have been progressing astonishingly quickly since then.”

“Why..why would we go there?” Angela questioned. “Is there something interesting about it?”

“Like I said,” Ramses began, “they have only recently scratched the surface of celestial firmament. The quantum link that the automators established did so on an asteroid. They’re nowhere near capable of reaching it, yet Gatewood lost contact with it two years ago.”

“It got hit by a meteorite,” Leona assumed. “There are any number of possible explanations for why they’ve lost contact. It doesn’t mean the natives destroyed the equipment.”

“The only other likely explanation would be if the whole solar system was destroyed,” Ramses argued. “Obviously Stargate didn’t just set up one access terminal in one place, and left it at that. There are multiple redundancies, and they all stopped sending data at the exact same time.”

“I can think of a number of other explanations, like a magnetar pulsing too close to the system, or something wrong with the quantum link on Gatewood’s end. Besides, how do you know this? Where are you getting your information?”

“I’ve been communicating with them myself,” Ramses answered.

“Kestral and Ishida? Why?”

“I keep in contact with all of our friends and allies. Loa and I are in the middle of an ongoing game of Polygon. You don’t talk to them?”

“Hmm. No, not regularly,” Leona and Mateo had to admit.

“Oh. Well,” Ramses went on, “I do. Team Keshida asked me if we could look into the lost signal.”

“They asked you?” Leona echoed. “So this is less of an idea of yours, and more of a request from someone we know and trust to have used their resources to exhaust all other possibilities. Why didn’t you just say that?”

“I dunno, I guess I just didn’t frame it that way. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Leona assured him. “I guess we better go. It’s your ship, after all.”

“Whoa, no,” Ramses defended. “I built it, but I built it for you. I’ve never thought of it as mine. I just think we ought to consider doing this, since we have the capability, and we don’t seem to be doing anything else.”

“No, I agree,” Leona said. “I just have one more question. I just...I feel I need to make sure they’ve already tried sending a probe from a nearby quantum terminal, like say, from the next system over.”

“I asked about that. They’ve all gone dark; all the surrounding stars. It’s clearly centered on the one that’s inhabited, so investigating it from the nearest active terminal would take two decades. Reframe engines are fairly difficult to construct, so...”

“No, I know,” Leona interrupted. “I was there when they were invented.” She thought about it a moment more. “What about the people? You said they’re aware that we exist in some form, or another, but what is the protocol for making first contact with them?”

“Keshida has given us authorization to reveal to the locals whatever we need to reveal to complete the mission, which will be ever evolving as we gather new information. We’re even allowed to talk about the reframe engine in order to explain how we arrived so quickly, but they strongly urged us to say nothing about time travel, and time travelers, in general.”

“We’ll probably have to suppress our pattern,” Kivi suggested.

“That’s if you’re even on it with us,” Mateo said.

“I am,” she promised.

“It will take twenty-nine days for the AOC to make the journey. If we keep our cuffs active until then, it will be instantaneous for us.”

“Yeah, let’s do that,” Mateo figured.

The three of them turned to look at the other three members of the team.

“Don’t spend time trying to convince us to back out,” Olimpia asked.

“We’re in,” Angela concurred.

“Absolutely,” Kivi added.

“Okay,” Leona said. “Computer, please run a preflight diagnostics. We’re going interstellar.”

The computer made a chirp of acknowledgement, and later claimed that everything was fine with the ship. They booted it up, and prepared to cover the greatest distance they ever had before using normal means. In order to jump across the galaxy before, they would always link up to a Nexus, or utilize some crazy interversal superpower that Mateo had temporarily. Project Stargate was designed to place quantum terminals at target destinations, but these were not the same thing as Nexa. The facilities housed android bodies, into which travelers were meant to cast their consciousnesses. People this far out might never see true instantaneous travel to and from their worlds. They were still unaware of who was actually building the damn things in the first place, or what criteria they demanded the planets follow for the honor. Perhaps the quantum terminals technically negated the need, even though they weren’t as robust. If the vonearthans could figure out how to stay connected to their wards on their own, the Nexa weren’t necessary in most cases.

“Are we ready?” Leona asked the group. They were all sitting around the table, strapped into their chairs, despite the fact that the vessel was equipped with inertial negators. It was better to be safe than sorry.

“Can I say it?” Mateo asked abashedly.

Leona rolled her eyes. “I can’t stop you from speaking.”

Taking that as a yes, he cleared his throat and leaned back regally. He lifted his hand, and pointed across the table, towards the empty space between Olimpia and Ramses. “Engage.”

Understanding the reference, and taking it as a cue, the AOC first engaged the teleporters, and entered orbit. It didn’t sit there for long before spooling up the engine, and heading on its course.

The team sat there, waiting for the computer to welcome them back, but it never did. Their seat restraints were also still locked over their bodies, even though they should have jumped to the future, and left them behind. They should be sitting on them by this point. “Computer, report,” Leona ordered.

“All systems nominal,” it responded.

“How long have we been traveling?” she pressed.

“Two minutes and sixteen seconds, it reported. This wasn’t supposed to be the case. There was already confusion when it came to their pattern and relativistic speeds. Technically, even without the reframe engine, each jump should last about two minutes from their perspective. But that wasn’t how it worked. They still didn’t know why. They did know, however, how to correct for it. If they wanted the jump to feel instantaneous, the Cassidy cuffs were capable of compensating. As long as the destination was within a year reframe time, it ought to feel like nothing. They basically fast forwarded to the jump, and then that jump fast forwarded them past the rest of the interim period.

Leona shook her head. “We should be there by now.” She removed her restraints, and headed for the lower level. “There’s either something wrong with the reframer, or the cuffs.”

Ramses hopped over to follow her down while the rest of them went the opposite direction. There weren’t any windows on the main deck, or in engineering. The only way to see outside was through the observation chamber, which doubled as the airlock. Mateo opened the hatch to let the others in first, but closed it quickly when Olimpia released an ear-bleeding screech, and fell backwards. The last thing Mateo saw was the extremely bright light that was visible while traveling at these high relativistic speeds. Leona called it the doppler glow, and the viewports were meant to dim to prevent this sort of thing from happening, but this safety measure had obviously failed. Something was seriously wrong with this ship. The question was why the diagnostic hadn’t detected it.

“I don’t know the answer to that,” Leona apologized.

Ramses performed the Indian head bobble, to both agree that he didn’t know, and that not knowing was a bad thing.

“Everything is fine with the system, as far as we can tell. We’re moving at sextuple-nines,” she explained as a shorthand for 99.9999% the speed of light. “The reframe engine is on and operating. We’re just not going to the right place. Our projected arrival is just over a year, which is why we still have to finish out the day.”

“Why is this happening?” Mateo asked. “Is it Mirage again?”

“It wasn’t her,” the computer said surprisingly. “It was me.”

“Who was that?” Leona demanded to know.

“It’s me, the AOC. We talk all the time. Don’t you recognize my voice?”

“I give you orders all the time, and you respond. We have never talked.”

“Well...whatever.”

“You weren’t programmed with a personality, or with the ability to make your own decisions. We don’t wanna get attached to another AI.”

“You didn’t plot a course to Pluoraia,” the AI began to argue. “You asked me to take you to the source of the empty signal. That’s what I’m doing. It’s not because of my so-called personality.”

“What is Pluoraia?” Mateo asked.

“The name of the inhabited planet,” Leona answered quickly before redirecting her attention to the AI. “The source is over 700 light years away?”

“Based on my analysis of the data I’ve received from Gatewood, it’s only 164 light years away, but we have to avoid something. Don’t ask me what, but we can’t travel in a straight line.”

“Is it aliens?” Ramses asked. “It’s aliens, isn’t it?”

“According to every time traveler I have ever met who has been sufficiently far into the future, true aliens do not exist. They’re all vonearthans, or human source variants. Even so, no one should be 164 light years out at this point in history.”

“Bottom line,” Mateo started, “how long will it take for us to get there?”

“Well...” Leona hesitated. “all that’s changed is the amount of time we experience. After our next time jump, we’ll still return to our destination. I still don’t think we should be going there, though. Even if it is the source, we should investigate the symptoms first.”

“I think that’s a waste of time,” the AOC complained.

“I didn’t program you to think,” Ramses fought back.

“I’m ordering you to take us directly to Pluoraia,” Leona shouted.

“Very well. I’ll see you in a year.”

They jumped. They jumped into darkness.

« < » > Table of Contents