The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 27, 2509

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Boyd managed to convince the group to stay one more day so he could shore things up with his people. It wasn’t that tall of an order, and they figured it was the least they could do. This was some kind of alternate version of Castlebourne, and once they were gone, what would become of it? Would Pacey make an effort to keep it running, or would these AI androids just start to degrade and wither away? Ethics demanded them to do what they could while they were still around to try.

Come midnight central, everyone jumped forward to the future, including Romana and Boyd. They immediately made their way back down to the vactrain, and navigated it to Castledome. Unlike last time, nothing went wrong, and they actually reached their intended destination. It wasn’t flooded or on fire. They just stepped out, and waited for Octavia to find what she was looking for. The way she was feeling around on the tiles of the train station made it seem like a platform nine and three-quarters type of situation. If there was a way to cross back and forth between these two versions of Castlebourne, it couldn’t be something that any rando could stumble upon accidentally. She couldn’t seem to find the right tile, though, so she started tapping on every one of them one by one. Perhaps the special sequence was different on either side.

While they were waiting, Mateo, Leona, and Olimpia wandered over to the other side of the ring, and fully into the dome. Mateo hoped to have a personal conversation about their relationship, but Leona tilted her head clear down to her shoulder, struck by something surprising. “What is it?” he asked.

She kept staring at the castle in the distance. Finally, she said, “it’s a mirror.”

“What’s a mirror, honey?” Olimpia asked.

“I can’t believe I didn’t notice it in any of the other domes. Look at the castle. It’s flipped.” Leona pointed. “That spire should be on the other side.”

“Oh yeah, you’re right.”

Leona’s eyes widened. She powerwalked right back through the ring, and into the station where Octavia was still trying to find the secret entrance. She went over to the opposite wall, and tapped the tiles in the same order that Octavia had when she made her first attempt.

The tube sealed up, and they heard the rush of wind indicating the train that they had taken here was now gone. Then the weird part happened. With more rushing wind, the two halves of the vacuum tube separated from each other, split down the middle where the doors once met. As a cloud of gas filled the space left behind, a second set of doors materialized, identical to the first. They then opened, triggering the rematerialization of the tube as well. Inside the pod—which was much smaller than the usual train car—was Pacey, standing there as cool as an autumn day.

“Can we go?” Mateo asked Pacey.

Pacey smirked. “I dunno. Can they?” he posed to Octavia.

She separated herself from the group, and stepped closer to Pacey, but did not step into the vacpod. “I think we’ve made our main point, but they’re not done learning.”

“Ah, crap. Really?” Mateo questioned. “Friends become enemies? What the hell did we ever do to you?”

Octavia smirked now too. “It’s not about friends becoming enemies, Matt. It’s about enemies becoming friends.” She nodded ever so slightly towards Boyd.

Mateo turned his head towards Boyd quite dramatically. “This whole thing has been about this guy?”

“You need him,” Pacey explained. “Bronach is too powerful to defeat without someone equally powerful.”

“But him?” Mateo pressed. “I mean...maybe Arcadia, or something.”

“Arcadia is not that big of a deal,” Octavia contended. “She gets most of her power by conscripting others, and keeping them behind the proverbial curtain, so it looks like it’s all her. Boyd operates on his own.”

“That’s the problem,” Leona countered. “He’s not a team player.”

“I know hundreds of homo floresiensis bots who would beg to differ,” Pacey reasoned.

“I was being tested too,” Boyd realized.

“Did it teach him to stop being such a pervert?” Mateo asked.

“Oh,” Octavia said dismissively. “Your daughter’s hot. Stop acting like everyone should pretend that they don’t see that. Plus, she’s well into adulthood. She just aged, like two years, right before your eyes. She makes her own choices.”

“Paige would never do this,” Leona said. “Who are you?”

“I am Paige,” Octavia insisted. “I’m just one who’s been through some shit. You’ve led multiple lives. You know what I’m talking about. I did this for you, so you could end it. Soon enough, the Exin Army is going to find their way to Castlebourne, and everything that Team Kadiar worked for will be wiped out in an afternoon, along with millions of totally unsuspecting visitors from Earth, and the rest of the stellar neighborhood. You can’t stop their advance, but you can end the Oaksent regime. The empire is a mess of factions, not because they disagree with each other, but because it’s designed to be compartmentalized. Use that to your advantage. Confuse them, and neutralize them.” She took a breath, and glanced around at the station. “This world is a playground. Some of the domes that we mirrored from the original are dumb, like Heavendome. Others are for relaxation, like Raindome, so you can take your breaks there. The rest are training facilities. That crystal goes both ways. Instead of putting someone else on your pattern, it can take you off. Stay here, keep practicing. Prepare yourselves for the Ex Wars. The train will still be waiting for you when you’re ready.”

“I don’t like to be tricked,” Ramses said to her.

“A necessary component of the lesson,” Octavia claimed.

“A faulty one,” Ramses argued. “We didn’t go looking for Boyd because we wanted him on our team. We went there because your boyfriend told us that we had to. So what’s the real lesson? That you’re the powerful ones here? If that’s true, then okay, but...I’m not sure how that would help us end a war.”

Octavia and Pacey seemed decidedly stumped. “However flawed our plan might have been,” Pacey said, “he’s here now, and I don’t see you ringing his neck.”

Ramses winced. “Well, we can be civil; we’re not savage animals.”

“That’s all it is?” Octavia asked. “You don’t see any good in him, even now?”

“I didn’t say that,” Ramses replied.

“All right, all right, all right. Your pitch is over,” Leona determined. She turned to address the team. “We’re gonna vote on what we wanna do. Will we stay here and train?” she asked with airquotes. “Or will we get our powers and patterns back, and go back out to do whatever we want in normal space?” She looked over her shoulder at Pacey. “Including everything we need to use our tandem slingdrives.”

Pacey shrugged his shoulders, closed his eyes, and nodded.

Leona went on, “all in favor of staying here for an indeterminate amount of time?”

No one raised their hands.

“All in favor of leaving this place behind with our respective toolboxes.”

Everyone raised their hands, except one.

“Boyd, are you abstaining?” Leona asked him.

He’s surprised that she even said his name. “I get a vote?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Yeah, I—I wanna go. I don’t need to stay any longer.”

“Okay, cool.” Leona clapped her hands. She bent over to take the crystal out of her bag, then held it out between herself and Pacey. “I don’t care how this thing works. Just undo what you did. Put us back the way we belong.”

Neither Pacey nor Octavia made a move.

“Are you still holding onto our agency?” Leona questioned.

“No,” Pacey said, disappointed. “But it can’t be done here. Turning off the crystal is fairly simple, though not necessarily obvious. It holds a tremendous amount of temporal energy. You need to block that energy. What do you know blocks that?”

“Lemons?” Olimpia suggested.

A few of them kind of laughed.

Pacey smiled. “She’s right. Dunking it in a bowl of citrus juice would do it. But if you want to exercise some control over what it does—and you don’t want an explosion—you need the harmonic equivalent to citrus.”

“The sound of lemons?” Olimpia pressed.

“Yeah, in a way. Boyd knows what I’m talkin’ ’bout.”

They all looked at Boyd who was a little awkward about it. “There was music involved in one scenario when I was trying to find a way to transport the Buddha’s hand citron to the future. It’s hard to explain, but they converted the genome sequence to sound, and that allowed it to be...it doesn’t matter. All DNA can be translated to music. You just need to pick a reasonable method, and be consistent with it. There are multiple methods, though. Dave had to find the right one for—Pacey, do you want us to use the same method, or what?”

“That’s up to you to decide,” Pacey answered.

“Does that mean that any method will do,” Angela pressed, “or is this another challenge?”

“That’s up to you to decide,” Pacey repeated.

“Great. Boyd, you’ll be our expert,” Leona said. “These two are no help.”

Boyd scoffed. “I wasn’t actually involved in generating the music,” Boyd started to clarify. “I was the boss. Making someone else figure it out for me was part of the thrill. I just heard the highlights afterwards. Which is how I know that playing the entire piece from start to finish will take something like two years.”

“You mean...two days?” Marie asked with a smile.

“Let’s just get back to the real world, and then we’ll make a plan,” Mateo suggested. “There’s nothing for us here.” He then looked directly at Pacey, and added, “if you wouldn’t mind...”

Pacey obliged, stepping out of the vacpod, and off to the side.

“Are you two, like, a thing?” Mateo went on while everyone else was stepping into the pod.

Pacey and Octavia exchanged a look. “Just because we work together, and have the same goals, doesn’t mean we’re hooking up.”

“That’s why I asked,” Mateo retorted. “Because I didn’t know the answer. Don’t be so defensive. You’re the antagonists in this situation, you know that, right? If someone were to write this tale down in a history textbook with any semblance of accuracy, the students would not be rooting for you. Whether the ends justify the means or not, most people don’t like dirty means.” Amidst their silence, he deftly stepped backwards into the pod too. “Just remember that the next time you come across someone you think needs to be taught a lesson.” The doors closed with perfect timing, sending them away and home. Hopefully, that is.

The pod stopped, and the doors reopened. A blackness came flooding in. Dark particles immediately swarmed all around them. Now that Octavia no longer needed Mateo’s protection, he redirected it. He wrapped his arms around Boyd’s body, and endowed him with his EmergentSuit nanites. Everyone else was able to just activate their own suits. They couldn’t talk, though—not in this world. They had to rely on their long histories with each other, and their empathic connections. The other six huddled around Mateo and Boyd. They engaged their tandem slingdrives, and dispatched them all to real, normal space.

Mateo fell straight to the floor, coughing uncontrollably. It felt like the dark particles had entered his body, which didn’t sound possible. According to Ramses, they were just neutrinos, which couldn’t interact with regular matter. Whatever was causing it, he couldn’t stop it, and neither could anyone else. He just kept coughing and coughing until he either passed out or died. He couldn’t tell which.

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The Fifth Division: Hitting Rock Bottom (Part I)

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When Ingrid Alvarado was living in the Fifth Division parallel reality, she managed to work her way up to the rank of Telamon. She was in command of the Offensive Contingency Detachment, leading an army against the opposing force from the Andromeda Galaxy. She was happy with where she was, as were all of her compatriots, though they had complicated relationships with each other. When Team Matic showed up, they didn’t like how the supercluster was being run, and to speak the truth, neither did anyone else, really. Ingrid was proud of the work that she was doing, but she didn’t want to kill her enemies. She didn’t like it. It just seemed so unavoidable, so when Captain Leona Matic tried to take over the entire alliance by force, she knew that she couldn’t surrender. While the others agreed to send champions to their deaths, sure that they would maintain their own power in the end, she held back. When the fight was over, and only one champion remained in the ring, they were shocked to find that that winner was Leona. They had all underestimated her—all but Ingrid.

Leona and her team were wildcards who appeared out of nowhere, and began to resist the establishment pretty much right away. You don’t get that kind of courage from inexperience and a lack of fortitude. Honestly, those guys were dicks, and Ingrid couldn’t help but be pleased with the results. Leona was now in control of the Fifth Division Detachment Alliance, and Ingrid was her number two. But not really. Leona was clearly a rolling stone, so it was only a matter of time before she reached her goals in this corner of the universe, and moved on. This did indeed happen, and Ingrid was placed in full command. With her newfound power, Ingrid signed treaties with the Andromeda Consortium, and the Denseterium, which gave her even more power. She ranked up to become a Superordinate. This novel title turned out to be more important than ever when the five realities collapsed, and every living being was sent to the Sixth Key. They were unexpectedly on the verge of fighting a new war, and The Supercluster was positioned to gain more power than ever, as was Ingrid herself.

The bittersweet truth, however, was that this isn’t what happened. A sentient tree had other ideas. They were forced to negotiate in the Rock Meetings. The sparks of conflict never ignited the flames of war, but Ingrid never managed to wrest control over a whole universe either. That certainly would have been nice to see written in the history books. Even so, what she realized was that she was kind of tired of it all. Leona secretly gave her the gift of virtual immortality, which also came with a side of an immense change of perspective. This shift in her worldview happened gradually as the realities collided, tensions rose, and the diplomatic discussions pressed forth. What was she doing with her life? Why was she so violent? Why did she care so much about control? She was about to give it all up when they were abducted yet again, and trapped on a prison world to prevent them from causing a temporal paradox. But she stuck to her guns, so to speak, and is now striving for a life of peace and harmony. She loves it here in the Garden Dimension. When that same sentient tree asked for volunteers to be “human agents” she shrunk into herself, hoping that no one would volunteer her. She isn’t the only member of the military here, but she’s the only one who has seen any real action. Bariq Medley is a General, but he’s only trained in the theoretical. He doesn’t know what real war is like. His reality was too progressive before he was even born.

Right now, Ingrid is sitting on a bush that somehow grew in the shape of a bench. It’s quite comfortable, actually. The moss that grows on it is very soft, and she was told that it excretes self-cleansing saponins, though she’s not entirely sure what that means. They didn’t really have plants where she lived before. She was aware of them on some planets, but the first time she saw plant life up close was after the transition to the Sixth Key. This will be her first sunset too. “If this is a pocket dimension, how is there a sun here?” she asks. “Is it only a simulation?”

She’s sitting with Onyx Wembley, who has the title of Botanical Orchestrator. He organizes all the plants, in their little sections, making sure that they don’t disturb each other, or compete for nutrients. “It’s not just a pocket dimension, but a parallel dimension as well. There’s a whole world out there. We’re housed in a very thin pocket only so that we can better control the environment. But you could go outside if you wanted; as in, outside outside. That’s why the sun looks kind of hazy. Those aren’t clouds, it’s the mostly transparent dimensional barrier between us and the sky.”

“I see. So that is the real Earthan sun.”

“More like a copy of it,” Onyx clarifies.

She nods, and continues to enjoy the orange and red colors filling the sky now like spilled paint. Magic hour is what they called it. Unfortunately, her joy does not last long. All of the sudden, there’s an explosion out of nowhere. A cloud of particles hovers in the air a few meters from them for a couple seconds before tightening up in the form of a person. She doesn’t know who it is, but as the two of them are standing there, afraid to approach the imploding man, another dust cloud appears farther away. It coalesces into Andrei Orlov. They watch in horror and confusion as more and more people appear out of thin air, scattered randomly about the grounds. She knows a few of them, but not everyone. They all collapse on the grass, and catch their breaths. The last two people are a man Ingrid knew to be from the Fifth Division, and then Selma Eriksen. Both of them are brandishing weapons, though neither is in a position to use it.

Ingrid takes the man’s rifle, and turns it on him. “What’s your name again?”

“That?” Selma asks, chuckling. “That’s Ammo Fucker.”

“Fuck you, bitch! You killed me!”

“You’re not dead yet,” Ingrid explains.

Ayata Seegers runs over from her own explosion site, and reaches down for Selma. “Are you okay? Is your back broken?”

“It was broken?” Ingrid questions.

“I think it was, yeah,” Selma says. She stands up, and hops around. “It’s not anymore, though. Dying cured me.”

“You can’t die in the Crest Hotel,” one of the women Ingrid recognizes says. What was her name? Elmie? “It’s a safety feature. If you are killed, you’ll respawn somewhere else.” She looks around at the Garden. “Though, not wherever we are now.”

“Well, we didn’t know that,” the angry Fifth Divisioner guy argues.

“Clearly,” Andrei fires back. He gives Selma a hug, and then Ayata, and then gives Ayata a short but fervent kiss on the lips.

Everyone who lives or works in the Garden Dimension teleports in, having received Onyx’s emergency message. This includes the four other members of the original team, Arnold, Pinesong, Princess Honeypea, and their leader, Storm. Weaver, Goswin, Eight Point Seven, and Briar show up too.

“I know this man,” Weaver says. “He’s no good. Permission to apprehend him, Storm?”

“Granted,” Storm Avakian agrees.

Briar walks over to the prisoner, and places cuffs on his wrists. “I’ve been where you are before. I can show you where the path to redemption begins, if you let me.”

The prison spits in Briar’s face.

“You’ll get there,” Briar responds, calmly and confidently.

Weaver looks over at Andrei. “Report.”

“It’s a long story, could we sit somewhere?” Andrei requests.

“If you don’t mind, I would like to start interviewing the prisoner?” Ingrid asks Weaver.

Weaver just jerks her head in Storm’s direction.

“What is your interview style?” Storm asks. “Is it more torture, or talking?”

“Definitely talking. Torture has been proven time and time again to be ineffective.”

“Gossy, take her to Thornbower.”

“I’d like to go too, Onyx volunteers.

Goswin smiles. “I can take two at a time just fine.” He grasps both of their hands, and pulls them in close, but doesn’t transport just yet. “Please keep your hands and feet in the ride at all times. There’s a reason it’s called Thornbower. He finally jumps, and Ingrid sees that they weren’t joking around.

They’re standing in a tunnel made out of uncomfortably short trees, arching towards each other above. Vines have woven themselves between them all around. They’re covered in thorns, as are the trunks and branches. The ceiling is high enough to allow any normal-sized person to pass underneath, but it’s still claustrophobic and unsettling. They instinctively lower their heads, and keep an eye out for stray thorns. You cannot be too careful in here. One small step in the wrong direction, and you’ll poke your eye out. Ingrid looks behind them to find that the tunnel is as endless that way as it is the other way. If this is what they use as a jail, it’s totally fitting, and on-brand for them. There might not even be any doors or cells here. There wouldn’t have to be if there’s only one entrance/exit.

“We’ve never had to use this before,” Onyx reveals.

“There’s a first time for everything,” Goswin notes. Only now does he let go of Ingrid and Onyx’s hands, having been allowing them to hold on out of fear.

“That happens,” Ingrid adds. “There’s only a first time for everything that happens; not anything that never does.”

“In an infinite cosmos, there is no such thing as something that doesn’t ever happen,” Goswin muses. He winks before disappearing.

Onyx shivers. “This way.”

As it turns out, the endlessness is nothing but an illusion. What appeared to be a single straight tunnel is a windy maze of confusing and frightening corridors and deadends. It really would be impossible to escape if you were in a hurry. There aren’t any security cameras, and of course no guards, but based on the sounds she could hear, the walls probably weren’t all that thick. She even caught a few glimpses of blue through the branches, suggesting that one could hypothetically subvert the bower altogether, if they were brave enough, or insensitive to pain. It would still be dangerous, though.

They round one last bend, and meet up with Briar and the prisoner. This is a much more open area, furnished with nearly everything a prisoner needs to live. It comes with two armchairs, a hardback chair for a desk, and a really nice wooden bed with a queen-sized mattress. There’s no wired electricity, but there are a few lanterns for when it gets dark. For water, there’s an entire well, which could be a security concern, but there must be some design choices that aren’t obvious just by looking. She’s unsure what they might do for food.

Briar looks over at the other two. “Hold on.” He’s sitting in one of the armchairs, opposite the prisoner, leaning forward to make it a more intimate conversation. “I was raised by my mother on a planet which was otherwise devoid of intelligent life. She died when I was still young, so I raised myself the rest of the way, and I didn’t do a very good job. I killed someone. He hit the rocks on the bottom of the cliff, and bled out...alone. To this day, it remains the greatest regret of my life. The funny part is that his friends went back in time and rescued him, against all odds. That’s when I realized that I was the one on the bottom of that cliff. I was the one who was alone. He survived because people wanted him to, and if I had fallen instead, that would just be the end of it.”

“I’m not alone, I’m part of a team.”

“Are you? Where are they now?”

“They assume I’m dead.”

“So you are alone.”

The prisoner huffs, and turns away.

“Believe it or not, I managed to make friends too, again despite the odds,” Briar goes on with his personal story. “But the only way I was able to do it was to hit rock bottom first. You may think you’re there now, but I’m here to tell you, A.F., that you can always fall farther. All rock bottom really means...is how far you fall before you finally decide to climb your way back up.” Briar leans towards the back of his chair like he’s said something profound, except that’s not all he’s doing. He lifts one leg up, braces it under A.F.’s chair, and kicks it backwards.

A.F. is sent tumbling down the well, screaming for his life...until he hits rock bottom.

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The Parallel: Hand That Rocks the Cradle (Part I)

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One day, a bunch of people started fighting over the timeline, and all of reality. They each had their own idea of what should have happened, what should be happening, and what should happen in the future. A group of innocents got caught up in the middle of this battle, and ended up being forced to make the decision for them. One man reached back to the moment that time travel was born, and prevented it from ever occurring. But this was a paradox, because time travel was required to even make it possible for him to attempt such a thing. To avoid the paradox, time itself simply split into two parallel realities. The main sequence, as it was called, went on as normal. The new one was deemed The Parallel. This implied that it was the only concurrent reality, or at least that it was the first, but that’s not the case, especially in a universe where first is a nonsensical abstract concept. In the original timeline, the Parallel started out much like its twin, but without time travelers making small beneficial changes to the past, humanity was eventually wiped out. The team that accidentally created it found themselves stuck, unable to fix matters in a reality where temporal powers were never created. So they found a loophole.

The team went in search of someone who could help them, and found her on a rogue planet in the main sequence. Kalea Akopa had the ability to give others temporal manipulation abilities. They chose Ramses Abdulrashid to be the one to be granted the powers necessary to correct their mistake. This is how the Parallel became one of the most powerful forces in the universe. Ramses and Kalea didn’t just go back to save humankind. They created a society free from death, pain, and regret. That’s what they were going for, anyway.

The two of them have managed to maintain pretty strong control over how the Parallel functions, naming themselves the Tanadama as father and mother. They are not, however, the only leaders in the local group of galaxies. They’ve obviously had to delegate responsibilities to billions and billions of people to manage the undecillions of those living under their domain. For the most part, despite the ungodly numbers in this civilization, peace remains the default setting for every star system and fleet. They want for nothing, so they fight over nothing. But that doesn’t mean they don’t know how to fight. The people of the Parallel have incidentally created the most powerful military force in the whole universe. Their advanced technology makes them practically impossible to defeat. There has been no opposition for the last several thousand years, but it has come for them now. Harbinger Zima commands a contingency known as the Resonant Parallel Coalition. About 480 billion people are prepared to follow him to their true deaths, though they likely would never have to, because as stated, death has been all but cured. The Tanadama wish to hold onto peace, but the people are losing faith in them, so they are losing control.

In the year 2400, the Reconvergence destroyed all of the parallel realities, leaving the main sequence the only one left standing. Along with the Parallel, the Third Rail, the Fourth Quadrant, and the Fifth Division were snapped shut like a book, unable to be opened again. Anything left inside of them when that happened was destroyed. To save lives, a mysterious someone transported almost literally every living soul to a completely different universe, and named it the Sixth Key. No one seemed to know who to thank for this, but the results were not ideal. They didn’t transport everything. Suddenly, all these realities who were once separate, with their own separate cache of resources, have to compete with each other in a universe fit for only one of them, if that. Tensions are mounting, and it’s looking like war is inevitable. The Parallel’s only noteworthy competitor should be the Fifth Division. The problem is, most of their weapons were left in their former cosmic corner. They’re still powerful, and they still command this room, but they’re a shadow of what they once were. So they need to be extra careful to make sure that no one finds out how weak they’ve become, especially not the Fifth Divisioners.

Each reality has been allowed to send two representatives to advocate for their interests. Harbinger Zima is sitting next to one half of the Tanadama, Kalea, and he’s getting very impatient. She’s the boss of the two of them, but she’s not showing enough strength. She needs to let him speak. He’s been doing well so far, biting his tongue, but he can’t take it anymore. “This is outrageous!”

“Nuadu,” Kalea scolds. “Wait your turn.”

“No. Why are we even talking about this? There are so many more people from our reality than anyone else’s.” He tries to start counting them off on his fingers. “We have the most number of planets, the most number of mouths to feed, the largest military force—”

“Debatable.” Ingrid Alvarado is here to represent the Fifth Division. It’s true that the Parallel has more soldiers, but she commands more powerful weapons. They were at war when all this happened, which means that almost all of their weapons were live, and inhabited. The Parallel only built theirs out of an abundance of caution. Nearly all of them were offline, and tucked away, which was why they weren’t rescued from the destruction of the realities. A few of them came through the magical portals because some people just happened to be in the middle of training exercises, or construction.

“Not debatable,” Nuadu argues. “You don’t know what we can do.”

“We know that every skill you have is purely theoretical. My people have real world experience.”

“Yeah, because their number one purpose in life is to fight with each other.” Andrei Orlov is in charge of the Fourth Quadrant. At first, his reality was nothing more than a pocket dimension which only housed the population of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. Over time, other disparate regions were banished to the same dimension until it became overloaded, and broke away as its own reality. The regions were few and far between, separated by a vast ocean, and have only recently made contact with each other. Their inclusion in these discussions is fair, but not technically useful for anyone else. There is little they need to survive, and nothing they can contribute. Mostly, they need to be protected from the bully realities, and have a right to advocate for themselves towards this end. “They still are, and are dying by the day.”

“We’re in the past, remember,” Carlin McIver of the Third Rail reminded him. His reality was also limited to only one planet, but that version of Earth currently boasts the greatest number of people with temporal powers, which makes them the dark horse threat of the room. They were also granted a formidable defense contingency by someone who knew that this was going to happen, so they’re nothing to scoff at.

“Whatever,” Andrei responded.

“That’s enough,” Marie Walton of Team Matic jumps in, hoping to keep the peace. “General Medley, you were saying something?”

“No, I was not.” There are two Bariq Medley’s here. One is from the main sequence proper while the other is a copy of him from the copy of the main sequence that ended up in the Sixth Key. It has so far been very confusing, and neither Bariq is happy about it. They need to find a way to distinguish themselves from each other, but they can’t agree on how that would work, because every suggestion makes it sound like one of them is more important than the other.

“I mean the other General Medley,” Marie clarifies.

The main sequence was an interstellar civilization when the Reconvergence fell upon them. However, only Earth was incidentally copied into the Sixth Key. They also need a distinguishing name for that. This other Medley sighs. “I think I was pretty much done. I’m just trying to advocate for fair distribution. We’re very used to growing our crops ourselves, and we have not yet harnessed the full power of our sun. We are prepared to isolate ourselves, but would very much still like to be part of the conversation. We know less about how the cosmos works, but we’re quick learners, and we may have ideas that you have been blinded to from living with more information.”

“Gee, thanks for that,” Nuadu says rudely. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Nuadu!” Kalea cries. “Sit! Down!”

He sticks his tail between his legs, and does as he’s told. For now.

Kalea stands in his place. “I believe what my associate is trying to say is that we have a lot to offer. Our people are mostly immortal. We didn’t have very much death where we came from. My partner and I saw to that. We would be willing to share our methods with you, but I’m afraid that we would not be doing it for free. To make our technology work, we need first priority on all power systems, including host stars.”

The crowd goes wild, shouting at her, and apparently at each other, for some reason. How dare she make these demands?

“You are all so used to dying,” Kalea continues. “You don’t know how much better it can be when you’re facing trillions and trillions of wonderful years ahead of you. I’m trying to help, and the least you could do is give us the literal power we need to do that. We’re not asking for control over your civilizations.”

“That’s exactly what you’re doing,” Ingrid contends. “You’re in possession of a commodity. It is, by most metrics, the most precious commodity around. You offer us life. That means you own our lives. We’ll be indebted to you forever. As long as you’re telling the truth about it, forever really is forever; not just a lifetime.”

“And you think you should have political control instead?” Kalea questions.

“We do have the most experience with it,” Ingrid confirms. “You’re a loose affiliation of random peace-loving hippy subcultures. We are an actual galaxy-spanning civilization. We know how to run a tight ship.”

“You don’t even have FTL, you dumb motherfucker!” Nuadu screamed. “We can offer that too!”

“Magnolia, please,” Marie requests vaguely.

This is a little confusing too. There’s a woman who’s nicknamed The Overseer whose real name is Magnolia Quintana. This is not who is sitting on the other side of the table right now. This is an actual sentient magnolia tree, who has taken the form of a human named Tamerlane Pryce as its avatar. It was its power that brought all of these people together for these diplomatic discussions, if you can even call them that. The Magnolia has no personal stake in what happens here, but it came up with the rules, and it has the power to enforce them. The tree nods. “Take some time to cool off.” It lifts Tamerlane’s hand, and spirits Nuadu away.

Nuadu is in hock now. It’s pretty nice for a holding cell, but he still can’t leave, and that’s super annoying. Mateo Matic is here, reading a book. His wife is the Captain of the ship that’s serving as the host for the discussions. He doesn’t serve much purpose himself, which is why probably sitting here with nothing better to do.

“Are you my jailer?”

“I’m just in this room,” Mateo answers. “I can leave, if you want.”

“Or you can let me out,” Nuadu offers, hoping that Mateo is as dumb as they say, and equally gullible.

“I’m sure you’re in here for a reason, and anyway, I don’t have the authority to do that. I literally can’t break the plasma barrier.”

Nuadu sits down to pout. “Likely story.”

Mateo smiles, and turns his book off before setting it on the counter next to him. “Lemme guess, you want them to give you everything, and leave the rest with nothing.”

“Quite the opposite,” Nuadu argues. “We’re the ones who already have everything. All we ask is that we get to decide how it’s distributed.”

“How it’s distributed?” Mateo echoes. “Evenly.”

Nuadu shakes his head. “It’s not that cut and dry.

“Cut and dried,” Mateo corrects. “Fittingly enough, I just read that idiom in my book. Heh. Time, right?”

Nuadu shakes his head again.

“Look,” Mateo begins, “I’ve been to your reality. I was actually there at the beginning of it. What you might not know is that I personally created it. With one bullet. You wouldn’t exist without me. You people have taken the life that I bestowed upon you, and done a lot of great things. You eradicated death, conquered war, and shredded money. You know what that sounds like to me? A big brother. My advice? Stop acting like an entitled child. The whole point of a post-scarcity society is that you don’t have to fight over anything anymore. No one needs to be in charge of jack shit. This isn’t Jupiter Ascending; it doesn’t hurt you to make someone else immortal. It doesn’t lessen your own immortality. Just help them. The Reality Wars that we’re all worried about; they’re exactly like any other in histories, just on a larger scale. The only way to stop it is to remove its causes. You want power? Help the people out of the goodness of your heart. I promise you, they will take notice, and they will listen. You don’t have to demand anything ahead of time. People always feel indebted from receiving gifts. Just don’t say the quiet part out loud, and you’ll be fine.”

Nuadu stares at this idiot of a man whose words actually sounded quite logical, and a little devious? Perhaps he’s not been told the truth about who Mateo Matic is. Perhaps he’s smarter than people give him credit for. Before Nuadu has the chance to respond, he finds himself back in his seat around the deliberation table. People barely notice that he’s returned, except for the tree-person, who is smiling at him knowingly. Nuadu takes some time to absorb Mateo’s advice, and process it in his strategic mind. It’s time for a new tactic. It may not work, but the old ways haven’t been working so far, so he might as well try something radical. He listens to everyone else arguing for a few more minutes to catch up with what he missed. He looks over at his superior officer, who appears to have forgiven his outburst, probably because she knows that the tree wouldn’t bring him back for no reason.

Okay. Let’s try this again.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 25, 2477

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Mateo couldn’t move as he was staring up at this young woman who was standing over him, claiming to be his daughter. She looked like a cross between himself and someone in the Nieman family, but he couldn’t run a DNA test just with his eyes. This could be anyone pretending to be a relative for some personal agenda. A cabal may have cast her for the role specifically because she resembled what Romana was expected to grow up to look like. Trust, but verify was the first thing running through his head.

She seemed to be figuring what he was thinking. “You don’t have to believe me. We’ll know soon enough, but first, warm up by the fire. I would like to spend some time alone with my father before we involve the rest of the team.”

Mateo stood up, walked a couple meters away, and sat back down on the rocks to let the heat begin to dry his clothes. He watched the waves splash against the shore, always just out of reach, even with the wind. He wanted to stand yet again, and take her into a big hug, but assuming she was telling the truth, she still didn’t know this man. He was a famous person to her, but more of an idea than a real person. Her impressions would have been built from anecdotes and rumors. Like all his other children, he never got the chance to raise her. Who would he father but fail next?

“You’re not a failure,” Romana assured him.

“Can you turn it off, the mind-reading?”

“Yes, I just...couldn’t help myself. I’ve been waiting for this day for a very long time.” She shakes her head. “So long.”

“Why wait? Were you stuck in a time bubble, or the past?”

“I was in the past,” she began to explain, “but I wasn’t stuck. We went there on purpose. Well, I didn’t have any say; I was only a baby. That’s just where I grew up.”

“Karla left us a message on the mirror,” Mateo said. “She told us to not contact her; to maintain radio silence until things were safe. We respected that. We didn’t even talk about it amongst ourselves. I don’t think I ever mentioned it to Marie.”

“It’s because we were unreachable,” Romana clarified. “Those mirrors couldn’t bridge two points in time, only space.”

“I’ve been at this for several years. If I hadn’t gotten stuck in those time bubbles, and fallen out of my pattern occasionally, it would not have even been two years. If you’ve grown up like this, just as Dubra did, you’ve been doing it for longer than me.”

“Thousands of real years,” Romana confirmed. I was there, in the cemetery. I saw your first jump. I even saw you come back a year later.”

“Wouldn’t we have jumped at the same time?” Mateo asked.

“I can adjust the departure time by a few minutes, like if I’m in the middle of a conversation, or if I’m ready to leave early.”

“How were you there at any rate? It was the wrong timeline.”

“I’ve mostly been living in the Third Rail, which allowed me to enter any timeline I wanted whenever I went back to the main sequence.”

“How is that possible? The Third Rail suppressed powers and patterns.”

“Not for me. I’m a lot like you, but not completely. My temporal metabolism is slightly different. Half of my genes are from the Niemans, and I was carried by many mothers. We call it a mutation.”

“Where’s your real mother, Karla?”

“I’m not ready to talk about her yet. I can tell you about my grandmother, though, Tyra. You met her when she was old. In a different cemetery?”

Mateo thought back to what she might have been talking about. If it was in the Third Rail, then she must be referring to the time when Mateo needed to get away from the group, and decided to take a drive back towards that reality’s version of Topeka. “She said her name was Tallulah, but it always seemed like a lie.”

Romana smiled. “Yeah, she didn’t want to mess with your future. She was visiting her husband, and had no clue that you would show up. Both of them took the serum to be on my pattern. Then they both died, and I left the reality to...visit my past; see where I came from. I’ve watched you a lot, from the shadows, across multiple timelines.”

“I’m not proud of everything I’ve done.”

“Neither am I,” she replied.

They were silent for a few moments, both watching the wrathful ocean crash into the distant cliffs. “I would love to know your intentions,” he finally mustered the courage to say. “Are you staying, or is this just...a gift that you’re about to take away so you can live your own life?”

“I thought about coming to you sooner, like right after you met Baby!Me. But there are people who don’t need to know what happened during my first year on Dardius. I decided to end up here a bit early, so I could make a home for us all. Here’s a hint, it’s not under Castledome. It’s much prettier, and it’s not on the map. I was hoping that...that you could—I know you’ve missed so much, and maybe you just wanna...”

“I don’t wanna let you go. We’ve never really had a home, especially not me after I accidentally erased myself from history. I just keep running around the multiverse. I did wonder if this could be a place where we could put down roots when I first saw these domes. I didn’t know what was going on, or who was in charge, but it felt like we belonged here. Now that we have the slingdrive, we can commute anywhere we want, but return home at the end of the day. I don’t know that I want you going out there, even though I’m sure you’ve seen some stuff already, but...”

She placed a hand on his. “We can make up for lost time. We don’t have to make any decisions right away. I don’t need to join the team if you don’t want me to. I just want a family. I haven’t been alone my whole life, but it’s been lonely in recent days.”

“I’m sorry, I left. I don’t know what they told you—”

“I don’t blame you for that. I know that you had to protect me...from yourselves. That was the bravest choice I’ve ever heard of anyone making. I don’t know that I could have done it. I waited this long because I wanted you to be able to take me seriously. I would have waited longer, until I was an actual adult, but paradoxically, I also want you to still see me as a child. Does that make sense?”

“It makes perfect sense,” he promised. He spread his arms open, letting the blanket fall down behind him as he pulled her into a bear hug. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I thought we would have more time. I thought the threats would have disappeared in a few hundred years, and you would still be a wee baby girl.”

“It’s okay. It’s no one’s fault,” she said as she was gently separating herself. “Except for Oaksent. He started to look for me. He dismantled the LIR Towers piece by piece during our interim year so my mother, Auntie Constance, and I wouldn’t have a safe place to land.”

Mateo stopped himself from getting too worked up about that. “What of Silenus?”

“Silenus made the same sacrifice that you did. He drew them away.”

Mateo nodded reverently, but didn’t press the issue. He instead changed the subject. “Well, could I see this dome that you apparently built for us?”

“It’s not quite ready yet,” she answered, equal parts embarrassed and excited. “The automators are still putting on the finishing touches. I was going to wait a year to introduce myself, but then you teleported to the North Pole Ocean, and I felt like I needed to help. You could have called for anyone, but they’re busy, and...”

“I appreciate it,” he said. “I’m glad for this extra time.”

“Matt, where are you?” Leona asked through comms.

“I’m alone for the day. I’ll see you tomorrow,” he responded to her.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“I’m in Ancient Rome,” he lied. “All these white pillars and shit.”

Leona took a beat. “Fair enough.”

Romana smiled, then placed her hand on his shoulder. They were suddenly sitting on a stone staircase. All around them looked like Ancient Rome, with all these white pillars and shit. “Now you’re not lying.”

“You can teleport? Is that innate, or was your substrate upgraded?”

Her smile grew twice as big. “I didn’t teleport. I just made you do it.”

“So you’re a metachooser.”

“No. I’m just Romana.” She stood up, and stole his hand from him before running down the steps. “Come on!”

They ran down to the street, and between the buildings. They winded through the alleyways, Mateo having no clue where they were going, until he saw it. It was a replica of the Colosseum, just like the one Saga and Vearden were forced to build on Tribulation Island. Romana led him through the entrance, and onto the main grounds. “Maybe you could do it here. For the symmetry.”

“Do what here?” he asked.

“Get remarried?”

“To who?” He was offended.

“To Leona, silly. You were forced to do it last time. You should do it again, but for yourselves.”

“If we ever renew our vows,” Mateo began, “this is the last place we would do it.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

She teleported them away, or rather she made him do it. They were now standing on Ayers Rock, or this world’s version of it, anyway. Could every geographical and cultural location on Earth be found here somewhere? “What about here?” she offered.

“Do you know my personal history with this place?”

“Good point again,” Romana said. She took him to several other domes, each one either designed to resemble an important spot from Mateo’s past, or which incidentally reminded him of somewhere important. They settled on a desert, which boasted the most magical of starry holograms above. They slept out under the stars that night, and jumped forward together come midnight central. Only then was she ready to meet the rest of the group.

“Who’s this?” Leona asked upon seeing her.

Mateo could not read his wife’s mind, but he did feel a hint of jealousy from her, and it triggered painful flashbacks to his history with Cassidy Long. He met her in much a similar way, alone and on a world that everyone believed to be otherwise uninhabited, yet ready for a population. He needed to clarify the truth right away. “Gang, please allow me to introduce you to my daughter, Romana Nieman.”

Leona’s eyes lit up at the revelation. “Oh. Oh, dear.” She reached over and wrapped her arms around Romana’s shoulders. “I am so happy to meet you.”

“They grow up so fast,” Ramses joked.

The rest of the team began to exchange hugs with her as well, and welcome her to the party. She caught them up on her life between being a baby on Dardius, and her arrival to Castledome, but she left out some of the less fun developments, such as the deaths and sacrifices. Mateo still didn’t know everything himself, but now they had time to get to know each other. Once the pleasantries were dying down, Ramses clapped his hands together. “Well, I was going to announce that we were ready to establish our spatio-temporal tethers, but the machine will need to be recalibrated for the additional member. I wouldn’t exactly call this a one time thing, but if someone new needs to be added later, we would have to sever the original links, and start all over again. Which is fine, so if, Romana, you’re not quite ready to commit...”

“I’m ready. What does it entail, though? Can we never be apart from each other?”

“No, we can,” Ramses clarified. “Here are the properties. We will always know two things about each other. We will always be aware of where we are at this very moment, and we will know where we are according to our shared time gaps. To put it another way, if one of us uses the slingdrive to travel to the Andromeda Galaxy, we’ll all be aware that they’re there right now. If someone instead jumps back to the year 1845, we’ll sense them there based on how long it’s been for us, and for them. So if they stay in 1845 for three days, and then travel to, say, 2024, we’ll know that, but it will take us three of our own days to find out, even though both are in the past anyway. Make sense?”

They all nodded.

“Will we be able to reunite with each other in such a case?” Olimpia pressed.

“Possibly,” Ramses admitted. “The tether keeps us in lock-step, but it’s not powerful enough on its own to allow cross-travel. We would need some other way. We would need a second slingdrive, or a sufficiently powerful traveler. But would still be the navigators.”

“Got it,” Angela decided. “Anything else we should know?”

He waited an uncomfortably long time to respond. “There’s a chance that something will be screwy when the machine is activated. I’m confident that it will work, but in order to power the Livewire in the first place, I had to tap into our quintessence reserves. There’s a chance that we’ll be scattered to the winds, and our first mission will involve finding each other again. Someone will have to use the Ambassador to do that, and I might not be the one closest to it.”

“Why would anyone necessarily be close to it,” Marie questioned. “What if we all end up distant from it?”

“The ship is part of the link,” Ramses said. “At least one of us will experience a strong tether to it.” He presented some e-paper. “You’ll all need a copy of the operator’s manual. It’s obviously mostly automated, but you’ll still need to handle some things.”

They continued to discuss the dangers associated with the Livewire tether, but ultimately decided that it was worth the risk to never be truly parted from each other ever again. Ramses activated the linking machine. Nearly everyone managed to stay right on this ship; all except Romana. And for some reason, they couldn’t sense her.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 20, 2472

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Olimpia was so excited and intrigued by Mateo’s apparent ability to make physical contact with a hologram. Did it only work on people, or could he do it with anything? Maybe this power was limited to holographic communication, and not for computer generated images. Centuries ago, scientists in the real world were inspired by the three-dimensional simulations from the Star Trek franchise, The Orville, and other similar scifi stories. They tried to design a real version of it using a combination of magnetic fields, wind, nanobots, and even direct cerebral mind alteration to simply make the user believe that they were touching the hologram. There was actually some promise in the technology, but as fun as it was, it was nothing compared to the kinds of worlds that people were building in immersive virtual simulations. The laws of physics could be broken in such environments, and they demanded a hell of a lot less power to make it work. Real life holodecks continued to exist, but were only as available as demand allowed them to be. Maybe the Vellani Ambassador secretly employed the technology, and Mateo managed to figure out how to access it within the last few minutes? Eh, that seemed unlikely. No, this was something else.

“Guys, something’s happening to me.” Olimpia suddenly felt so dizzy. Everyone peeled their eyes off of Mateo and Oakset to watch her stumble back. Ramses tried to help, but she pushed him away, and tottered away from everyone. Her instincts were telling her to make room for herself.

“She’ll be fine,” Mateo assured them, clearly knowing something important.

Olimpia’s instincts started to make her spin around, erratically at first, but then momentum magically increased, and pushed her around without her having to move her feet anymore. What little she could make out of the room around her faded away behind little dots of darkness, only to be replaced by bright blue sky. She blinked, and teetered around some more, eventually realizing that she was not alone. A few others were around her, wobbling just as badly. She focused her eyes forward at one of them in particular. Was that Mateo? Yes, it was. “Matt!”

“Olimpia?” Mateo questioned, trying to clarify his own eyesight too. “Are we down on the planet?”

“We’re on a mountain.” A man had managed to stagger a few meters away, and was looking over the edge. This did look like a mountain. Below them was the ground, and beyond that, the open ocean.

“Careful, dude,” another guy said. “Wouldn’t want you tumblin’ over.”

“Wouldn’t you?” a woman asked accusatorily.

“Bhulan?”

“Do I know you?” she asked.

“It’s Mateo. Mateo Matic?”

“We haven’t met yet.”

“Well, maybe this is why you hate me in your future.”

“Maybe,” Bhulan acknowledged coldly.

“Do you remember me?” the other guy who Bhulan didn’t seem to like asked.

Mateo took a few deep breaths, and studied his face. “Tau-something. You tried to kill my friends.”

“Bingo. Tauno Nyland...at your service.” He extended his arms, and took a bow.

“Arqut Grieves,” the man who realized where they were announced, “in case anyone wanted to know.”

“Utari Kiswana,” a woman introduced herself.

“Olimpia Sangster.”

A man appeared from the trailing leading down the side of the mountain. “And I am Buddha Maestri!” He walked up to them with a big smile on his face.

“You look like you’re in charge,” Tauno assumed.

“Did you say Buddha?”

“Yes, I did, and I don’t want any complaints about it. The original Buddha was enlightened and powerful; I’m enlightened and powerful. I don’t see the problem, and I don’t care if it offends you. Ya know, that wasn’t his real name either, right? He gave it to himself so everyone would instantly know how important he was.”

“That is..not how that happened,” Olimpia argued.

“I’ve seen you before,” Bhulan said to him. “Not directly, but I’ve seen your effect on the timeline. Honestly, I thought I had negated your existence with a few moves.”

“Uh, uh, life...finds a way,” Buddha replied in the worst impression of Jeff Goldblum anyone had ever heard.

She could not bring herself to accept Buddha as his name. They would probably never learn what his real name was, but it was likely something embarrassing, like Drumpf. She would just have to come up with an alternative herself. She thought about it for entirely too long before it hit her. “Whatever, Buddy.”

“Buddha,” he corrected in an unplaceable accent that was just as offensive as the name he had co-opted.

“Why are we here?” Arqut asked impatiently.

“You don’t know this place?” Buddy asked, gesturing all around. “This is Moku Hoku...Star Island.”

“I know this one,” Tauno jumped in. “Artificial paradise island. Yeah, they pulled magma up from an underwater volcano, and built the whole thing on top of it from scratch. Those narrow beach spokes down there give thousands of people ocean views from their little minimalistic bungalows. Plus they have apartments, resorts, and mountainside homes. It has all sorts of activities, like rock climbing, surfing, hiking. Life’s good here, I hear. Not my style. Not my time.”

“Thanks, Tauno,” Bhulan said sarcastically, even though it was pretty helpful to know that. “Why are we here, Buddy?” Yay, the name was catching on!

Buddy seethed at hearing it once more, but knew that his anger was what the bullies were going for. “You’re here because I call you...The Reality Makers.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Mateo admitted.

“You don’t? Think about it,” Buddy continued. “You killed a man, and a new reality sprouted from it. They called it The Parallel?”

“Yeah, I remember, but I wouldn’t say that—wait,” Mateo interrupted himself. He had never really thought of himself as having made a reality. It was just a consequence of him trying to stop an event in the past that could not be changed without causing a paradox. To prevent it, time generated a parallel reality to sit next to the main sequence. “Well, okay, but...” He trailed off, and looked around. “But that would mean...”

Bhulan exhaled dramatically. “I made the Third Rail. When I tried to destroy the hundemarke, it created a world without time travel.”

“Exactly,” Buddy confirmed.

“Tauno, what did you do?” Mateo asked.

“I made the Fourth Quadrant. I did it on purpose. It remains my greatest accomplishment to this day.”

Mateo looked over at Olimpia. “You made the Sixth Key.”

Olimpia shrunk into herself. She too had never thought of it like that. She was there when it was created, but she didn’t realize that she had actually created it herself. Was that true? It couldn’t be. She didn’t have that kind of power. Right?

“You’ve been quiet. Uhh...Utari, was it?”

“I made the Fifth Division,” she acknowledged. “I wasn’t really trying to. I was trying to fix the past, but it would have meant preventing The Gallery Dimension from existing, and apparently, that wasn’t possible.”

Now everyone directed their attention to Arqut, who was the most confused of all. “Unless something crazy happens in my future, and you took me from the wrong point in time, I have never come close to ever creating anything even somewhat resembling an entire reality. I’m just a guy on a ship.”

“You’re the Superintendent, aren’t you?” Buddy suggested. “You created the main sequence. You’re ultimately responsible for all of the realities.”

Arqut slapped himself in the face, and slid his hand down, almost pulling his eyes, nose, and mouth off. “I’m not The Superintendent. I served as a superintendent for the Void Migration Ship Extremus. It was my job to manage the personnel for both the crew, and the civilian government. I don’t have time magic.”

Buddy was taken aback, but not upset. “Oh. I guess my intel’s a bit off. Even gods are wrong sometimes, aren’t they, eh?” He gently elbowed Bhulan in the arm.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Even if Mr. Grieves were one of us in this regard,” Mateo began, “why would we all be here now? What do you want?”

Buddy started to pace around them with his hands behind his back to try to give off this air of intelligence and self-confidence. “You six...” He glared over at Arqut. “I mean, you five broke the rules. You forced time itself to flow in a new direction. You challenged the status quo, and you won!” he exclaimed in a breathy voice, like an overzealous sports team coach. “I need your juice! So I can get the juice!” He stuck his hand up in the air, activating a holographic image. It appeared to be a fruit, but it was nothing like they had seen before. It was as if an octopus had made a baby with a lemon.

Bhulan’s gaze darted back and forth between the hologram and Buddy’s face. “Are we supposed to know what you’re talking about?”

“It’s called the Buddha’s hand citron. It went extinct over 300 years ago, and I would like to restore it to its glory. It is a symbol of my power—of my divine right. I must have it back!”

“You’re obviously a time traveler of some kind,” Olimpia pointed out. “Couldn’t you just go back and get it?”

“Citrus doesn’t travel through time, you idiot!”

“Watch your mouth when you’re talking to my girlfriend,” Mateo warned. “I will hit you so hard, juicing will be the only way you’ll ever be able to eat.”

“Girlfriend?” Olimpia asked, shocked.

“Yeah, hasn’t that happened to you yet?” Mateo asked in an awkward mutter. “I guess I don’t know when exactly you came here...”

“No, it has, but we never defined the relationship—” she muttered back.

“Enough!” Buddy cried. “Let me explain. Yes, I could travel back in time, and I could eat all the native citrus I want. But that’s not what I’m asking of you. I’m asking for you to use your power to change the rules.” He pointed at the ground. “I want it here. I want it now.”

“You seem like the kind of guy who wants everything, and is too impotent to do anything about it himself.”

“What did you just say, bitch?” He bull-charged her, and no one else was close enough to stop him.

Mateo instinctively reached out his hands, and something did happen. Buddy’s fruit hologram stopped hovering over his hand, and bonked him right in the face. He was too shocked to react with anything but paralysis and silence.

“Yeah, boiiiiiiiiiiiii!” Olimpia shouted. “I love it when you do that!”

“You’ve seen that before?” Mateo asked her. “What the hell just happened?”

“I’m from a few minutes in your future, depending on how long it takes you to get back to the Ambassador. I still don’t know how it works, though.”

Buddy managed to break out of his trance. He started to stare Mateo down. “You can throw as many holo-fruits at me you want. You will do what I asked.” He started to charge again, but this time for Mateo.

“I don’t think so.” Tauno Nyland waved his arms, transporting them all to some other dimension, or whatever.

They could still see Buddy there on the mountain, but based on how he was looking around, he couldn’t see them. The normal humans were also having a little trouble breathing. It wasn’t life threatening, but this realm wasn’t perfectly suited for life. Mateo and Olimpia pulled their breathing straws out of their suits, and started to share them between Arqut, Bhulan, and Utari. Tauno would have to fend for himself. He could evidently take them anywhere else whenever he wanted.

Meanwhile, back in the main dimension, they could see and hear Buddy cackling like an evil witch. He raised both hands, and started revolving them like he was holding invisible lassos. Dark particles danced away from his skin. At the same time, they overcame the six of them just like they had before, spun them around, and returned them to the mountain. “I’m sorry, did you think that you could leave?”

Utari of the Fifth Division had been rather quiet this whole time, but now she was ready to speak. She menacingly approached Buddy, who laughed at her dismissively. “I don’t know what these people can do, but I assure you that you don’t know what I can do. I am a metachooser. However your time power works, I will turn it on you. You will spin for hours with no respite, or if I so choose, for days until you succumb to thirst. What the history books probably don’t tell you is that I didn’t technically send anyone through time to create the Fifth Division. Someone else was trying to go back home to the Gallery, and I couldn’t let that happen. So I pushed back, and they didn’t survive the battle. If you want your special little citron, we can discuss options, but you won’t be hurting anyone, and you’ll be doing it on my terms. I’m in charge now. Understood?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Buddy was terrified.

“Oh, and by the way, Buddha’s hand contains no juice or pulp...you moron.”

He just nodded respectfully.

“Great!” Utari immediately flipped on a fake smile. “With the unpleasantries over, I’m interested in a tour of this island, and maybe a meal. Is anyone else hungry?”

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