The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 1, 2483

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After adjusting to the lights of the infirmary, Romana looked over at her father, but seemed to be focusing on her own breath. It started to look like she was trying to speak, but she was home now, and everything was going to be fine, so there was no reason to rush this.

“It’s okay. I’m here, and you’re safe. Only talk if you can,” Mateo encouraged.

She struggled to bring her lips closer together to formulate words. She didn’t look like she was in any pain, though, and the pod didn’t indicate that there was any medical issue to be worried about. She didn’t make a sound until she was ready to produce the word, fully and clearly. “Report.”

They told her what had happened, and asked if she remembered anything.

“Nothing,” Romana answered. “Ramses turned his new machine on, and then I woke up here.”

“That might be for the best,” Olimpia hoped. It didn’t appear that she was ever tortured or abused, but there was no telling how difficult it was to be trapped in Buddy’s particles. They might try to find out more information later, but for now, they were just grateful that she was back.

Romana needed physical help getting out of the pod, and then into the tub to be washed up. Olimpia graciously assisted with that. Mateo didn’t feel comfortable participating, and Romana probably preferred it this way too. While she had no apparent memory of the dark particle prison, she still looked traumatized. Perhaps the ordeal had a nuanced impact on her psyche, or maybe her mind was repressing it to protect itself. This gave Mateo an idea, to find a way to let her use his rendezvous card, so she could speak with Dr. Hammer. That was against the rules, but if it could improve his mental health, the Center might make an exception. And anyway, once he made sure that Romana was better, Mateo probably wouldn’t need the support group anymore.

He gave the two of them space, and went back to the bridge. “What’s the word with this thing? Are we in danger of another tangent?”

“Probably,” Leona replied. “But the risk can be mitigated with some careful planning.”

“Two jumps,” Ramses added. “I can probably only muster two good jumps a day, though it’s best that we spread them out by several hours. And I’m only guessing that due to our past experiences. We’ve obviously pushed the limits before, but it hasn’t always worked out, so for the sake of a successful jump, we should probably consider that the safety margin. That doesn’t mean I know what’s causing it. It could be a design flaw, an inherent limitation from the ship that the slingdrive has been retrofitted to, or it could be because of the quintessence itself. Perhaps it doesn’t like people to mess with it until it’s had time to settle down. I need more time, and more tests...again.”

“Before, when we were testing the navigation function,” Mateo began, “it was to save Romana’s life. Now we’re okay. Now we can afford to take a little time. Do what you need to do, but take the pressure off.”

Ramses nodded with a frown.

“And don’t feel bad about what happened,” Mateo continued, noticing that this was not his friend’s real concern. “Buddy is an antagonist who took advantage of an accident that you even predicted. We all knew the risks, including her. I’m not holding it against you, and I would like to see the day when you don’t hold it against yourself. Romana will be fine. She’s back now, and the tethers are holding. We’ll never lose her again. I love you, man.”

“Love you too,” Ramses replied.

“There’s something else,” Leona said, now that the serious conversation was over. “It’s about the Insulator. While he was getting us back, I was conducting my own research.” She stepped to the side to reveal the glass object sitting on the console. “As you can see, it’s missing the dome that’s supposed to go on top. Glass insulators have no moving parts, yet it’s been removed as if it could be popped off like a snap fastener. We scanned for the dome out in the black while we were at our last pitstop, but it might be lost forever.”

“Cool,” Mateo said. “I don’t care about it, though.”

“You should,” Leona insisted. “I was able to make minimal contact with the inhabitant. I can hear her, but she can’t hear me. Mateo, it’s Dubra.”

“My sister?” Romana was here, totally naked, but not worried about it.

Olimpia rushed up, and wrapped a towel around her body. “Sorry, she suddenly hopped out of the tub, and ran off.”

I could hear their conversation in their minds,” Romana explained. “If Dubra is in there, I can turn that minimal contact into a real conversation.”

“Be my guest,” Leona agreed, moving away even farther.

Romana stepped up to it, took a deep breath, then lifted her arms, apparently to prepare to touch it. Her towel fell right back off of her.

“Maybe you should get dried off and clothed,” Mateo asked.

“I got this.” Olimpia was wearing a splash tunic, which was a hydrophobic garment caregivers used to aid someone in bathing, whether as a family member, friend, or medical professional. She pulled it off of her own body, and dropped it over Romana’s, since the latter didn’t seem to be bothered by the mixed company. Now Olimpia was the one without clothes on, but that was fine.

Romana adjusted the shoulders of the tunic, then refocused on the task at hand. She placed fingers from both hands upon the Insulator. She stood there for a few minutes, occasionally showing mild signs of active listening. She nodded definitively, and separated. “Okay.”

“Okay, what? Is she all right?” Mateo asked.

“Yeah, she’s fine.”

“Is that all she said?” Leona pressed.

“No, she said quite a bit.” Romana was acting like these were perfectly complete responses.

“Such as what?” Ramses asked.

“Oh, uh...sister-sister confidentiality.”

“That’s not a thing,” Mateo argued.

“Yes, it is.” Marie was walking onto the bridge, followed by her own sister.

“I’ll just talk to her myself. How do we get her out?” Mateo questioned.

“I’ll have to build her a new substrate,” Ramses reasoned, “but I don’t have her DNA, so I can’t make her look as she did.” He consulted his watch. “And it will take me a real year.”

“Go on and get on it,” Leona said. “Just give her something temporary, and we’ll transfer her to something else later. She might know how we can acquire a sample of her DNA somewhere in the past.”

“Let Romana ask for consent first, please,” Mateo suggested.

“Yes,” Romana said. She went back to briefly speak with Dubravka. “She’s in. Something temporary is fine. It will take some effort to make her the real thing, and she wants to be involved in that. I’m so glad I won’t have to wait a whole year to meet her for real. I really don’t care for telepathy.”

Romana had to wait an entire year before she even had a chance to meet her half-sister in person. She was sixteen years old when Mateo and the team returned to the timestream. Instead of jumping forward like she was used to, she found herself stuck in realtime. She spent that year trying to stay busy by helping Hrockas to prepare for the Grand Opening. There was nothing else she could do. Ramses and Leona were the only ones with any hope of figuring out what might have gone wrong, and more importantly, how to fix it. She certainly couldn’t understand it herself. She didn’t have a whole lot in the way of a formal education. She knew what little she knew thanks to books that her family was able to procure for her over the years, but her unstable lifestyle was not conducive to studying in a classroom. She didn’t have access to Ramses’ ground lab either, or she might have tried to initiate Dubra’s download process herself.

She was depressed, and feeling left behind, but she had all year to come to terms with missing the bus, and the delay in the big family reunion. She also grew up hearing stories of Team Matic’s fantastical adventures, with their top-notch engineer and captain. Together, they could fix anything. So she was confident that they would solve the problem quickly.

“You noticed these, right?” They were back in the realspace infirmary on the Vellani Ambassador. The patient was sitting on the exam table, legs hanging off the edge. Leona was no doctor, but she had a penlight, and she knew how to point it at someone’s eyes.

“Yeah,” Romana replied. “I’ve tried to flush them out, but they’re not exactly...tangible.”

“What are you talking about?” Mateo was standing off to the side, arms crossed, and thinking about the most painful way to tear Buddy’s limbs off of his body.

“The dark particles,” Leona answered. “There are still some in there, floating around. I can’t tell exactly where; behind the cornea, maybe? Or they’re in another dimension...”

“Then figure it out!” Mateo cried.

“Stop it,” Leona instructed. “We’ve talked about your anger.”

Mateo took a deep breath. “I know it’s not your fault, I’m sorry.” He pulled the rendezvous card out of his sleeve pocket. It was red, just as anyone would expect out of someone this angry.

“What are you thinking?” his wife asked.

“I’m thinking that Dr. Hammer is not just a psychiatrist. She has diagnostic equipment that Ramses wouldn’t be able to develop, or know how to use properly. She may have even seen this before.”

“That’s not what that card is for,” she reminded him.

“My daughter’s back, I don’t need therapy anymore. I need her to be healthy.”

“Maybe it’s a good thing.”

“No,” Romana jumped in. “I know what you’re saying. But Matics are time-skippers. It’s what we do. I don’t wanna lose that.”

“I’m just making sure you understand your options,” Leona told her.

“My options,” Romana began before a pause, “are to find the man who did this to me, and make him fix it.”

Mateo shook his head. “I get the impulse. Believe me, I want to ring his neck. But Rule Number Fifteen is probably the most important one when it comes to us, so if you’re going to be a part of our team in any capacity, you will need to learn to follow it. Buddy is powerful, fragile, and whimsical. In my experience, that combination equates to sudden outbursts of excessive retaliation. His objective is to bring a fruit from the past into the future. He has the power to simply go back to the past, and pick one whenever he feels like it. He’s going to extreme lengths to accomplish something stupid and pointless. You can’t reason with someone like that, and we certainly can’t fight him. We try to handle this on our own. Locating him is a last resort.”

“Okay,” Romana agreed. “Then can someone help me get back down to the planet? I want to be there when Dubra wakes up.”

“Okay, but then we’re talking about Snake Island,” Mateo called to her as she was trying to leave.

“Whatever, just let me get this gown off!

Leona sighed. “We’re not going to Snake Island.”

“Leona...”

“We’re not going to Snake Island. We like Dr. Hammer, but we don’t know her all that well. Your own cousin became an adversary in the Third Rail. We need to be cautious, and follow the rules. Now go get your daughter, and go down to see your other daughter.”

Ramses’ ground lab was a lot bigger and better than the one he had in the pocket dimension attached to the ship. He had been wanting this forever, and finally found a place to build it. Starter nanites constructed it for him while they were gone, with the first room being dedicated to the Insulator of Life, as well as the equipment necessary to produce a new body.

Mateo peered at it, floating there in its amniotic tank. “What DNA did you end up using, since we don’t have hers. I assumed it would just be one of those public-use template things.”

Ramses was running through his tasklist before the download procedure. “Uh...don’t worry about it.”

“I wasn’t too terribly worried before, but now I really am. What did you do?”

“It’s fine, don’t—it’s fine.”

“Ramses Abdulrashid,” Mateo enunciated like a disappointed parent.

“Yours,” Ramses answered. “Yours and Leona’s. I mixed them together, like what would happen if you had your own kid.”

The room grew extremely tense. “Oh,” Romana said quietly and accidentally.

“Ramses. Leona and I did conceive twins. She lost them.”

“This isn’t either of them,” Ramses reasoned. “Couples have multiple kids, they don’t look the same. The DNA always combines differently.”

“Ramses,” Mateo said once more. “You can’t give my daughter that I had with Serif a body created from what might have become the daughter that Leona and I had together. It will remind her of that trauma.”

“Well, I can’t undo it.”

“Make her a new one.”

“What?”

“Make a new body.”

“Well, what am I meant to do with this one?” Ramses questioned.

“Whatever you do with it, don’t tell anyone; least of all my wife. Start over, and just use one of the templates.”

Ramses breathed deeply, and looked over at Romana as if she would somehow be able to alter the outcome of this situation. It didn’t matter how either of them felt about it. This was Mateo’s decision, and nothing was going to change it. Mateo shut his eyes and nodded. “Okay. It will be another year for us. I’ve obviously developed a method of accelerating time to expedite the maturation process, but I still don’t have it down to less than a day.”

“Sorry, kid,” Mateo said to Romana. He then looked back over at Ramses. “Get it going, and automate the process. Then focus on my other daughter. Let her jump with us. She shouldn’t have to wait a whole other year.”

Ramses got to work on the second major project, but couldn’t figure it out. The team jumped forward without her, and came back to a seventeen-year-old. Fortunately, she wasn’t alone. Now with access to the lab, she was able to initiate the download process herself, and meet Dubravka for real. They had grown quite close over the last several months.

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Microstory 2275: Now I Can’t Remember What

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This is finally Nick again. Kelly is typing this for me, but it’s my words. I’m really struggling to keep my eyes open. It’s not even that I’m falling asleep. It just kind of feels really uncomfortable to hold up my eyelids. They feel like huge weights on my face. I do occasionally fall asleep when I don’t want to, though, so it may take us a long time for us to finish this post. I would tell you to be patient, but this isn’t live, so by the time you read this, you’ll have known how long it took us to finish. I’m still in the hospital, as you can imagine, and I’m in quite a bit of pain. I’ve limited myself to regular OTC stuff because I don’t like how narcs make me feel. Before I could advocate for my own healthcare needs—back when I was on the brink of death, and totally out of it—they had me on morphine, or something or other. They continued to give this to me after my surgeries, because that was protocol, and I couldn’t tell them otherwise. It was probably for the best during this period, however, because the pain would have been unbearable, and the hallucinations were worth it if I could remember them. I started being able to remember them before I was lucid, though, so I can tell you about them, if you’re curious. The most common one was that every time I tried to shut my eyes to sleep, a cacophony of unintelligible voices would start to talk over one another in the hallway. I asked them to be quiet, but I think in the real world, I wasn’t saying anything at all. These people obviously didn’t exist. The scariest hallucination was when—sorry, I actually did fall asleep in the middle of this sentence, and now I can’t remember what I was gonna say. Maybe I’ll recall for a future update. I would have written it down earlier if I could have. I can barely move. I’ve not gotten out of this bed since they brought me in. Kelly has had to do things for me, even though she doesn’t work here. I’m hoping I’ll be able to stand up by tomorrow, and then shower on my own shortly thereafter.

Microstory 2130: Not Lookin’ Good For Me

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Things are not good. At first, I thought I just overdid it with all the walking and shopping yesterday, and that surely exacerbated the issue, but that is not what’s making me sick. It couldn’t be. Exercise might make you nauseated, and certainly tired and sore, but my symptoms are a lot worse than that. I was restless all night last night. I’m not sure if I got any sleep, but I was pretty out of it the whole time. Things started to come back to me as more time passed after waking up, reminding me that I never truly got any sleep, though I wasn’t ever fully conscious either. I was sweating throughout, and coughing regularly. There’s a rash kind of all over my body that I think I’ve probably had for a few days now, but didn’t give much thought to before. I was really hot and chilly at the same time this morning, so I was guessing that I had a fever, but at no point during my shopping did I think to buy myself a thermometer. I first took a shower to clear myself up, but that did no good, so I filled up the tub, and let the steam wrap me up. Then I had to shower again, because that’s what you gotta do. It was a relief while I was in the water, but it didn’t last one second on the bathmat. I knew that I had to do something to actively fix this, so I called my parole officer, who basically ordered me to go to the pharmacy down the street. They have a clinic there for quick visits, which are only meant to give you an idea of what’s wrong. They don’t provide treatment, but they can give you recommendations. They’re quite certain that I have an infection, though they can’t tell me whether it’s bacterial, viral, or parasitic again. They sent my blood to a lab, but that could take time to process, as you can imagine. I don’t have any insurance yet, so I can’t go to a regular doctor, but fortunately, I’m a felon! That means the state has to provide me with minimal medical care. I’m going to the jail an hour and a half early to speak with the medical staff there. We still need to figure out what this means, because regardless of my specific diagnosis, it’s not lookin’ good for me. I’m likely contagious, and can’t be allowed to roam around the general population. The solitary cells aren’t equipped to handle me either. Even if all I need is water and rest, it’s a legal issue to just throw me in a hole, and let me fend for myself. The prison that’s about an hour away has a special medical ward, but I’m really hoping that they don’t make me go there. I know that I won’t really be in prison, but it’s close enough that I don’t want to do it. My parole officer is looking into house arrest options, or just a postponement of my sentence, but they’ve already accommodated me for a lot, so I don’t like my chances.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 29, 2398

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Heath is pacing around the living room, talking to his wife on the phone. The other four are watching him, worried. It’s hard to tell how the conversation is going, but it’s clear by now that she and Kivi are at least not dead or hurt. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah,” he repeats. “Okay.” He nods, unhappy, but trying to be patient with her. “No, they’ll understand.” He continues immediately, “even Mateo.” He pauses. “All right, we’ll see you when you get back. Be safe.” He pauses one last time. “Love you.” He hangs up, but doesn’t say anything right away.

“Are they okay?” Leona asks him.

“They’re fine.”

“Are they on their way back?” Mateo asks.

“They’re not. They’re in Florida.”

“What? How did they get there?”

“Apparently, Marie wanted to see the plot of land where she grew up,” Heath begins. “In this reality, in these days, it’s an airport. It doesn’t go to very many places, but one of the destinations just so happens to be Orlando, Florida.”

“Okay...does she have a thing for Orlando, errr...?”

“It’s near something called the Fountain of Youth?” He answers in the form of a question.

Oh, that makes sense, sort of. “Well, it’s not,” Leona contends. “They founded the city of Orlando relatively close to the location of a spring that no longer exists.” She goes on, “my namesake, Juan Ponce de León once looked for it in 1513, and found it to already be dried up. He did find the Compass of Disturbance, though.”

“That sounds bad. Marie never mentioned it, what is it?”

“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” she assures him. “It just detects temporal anomalies; rifts in the spacetime continuum, invisible portals, the spot where a teleporter disappeared from, etcetera. The spring is hard to find, and even more so now. Juan once described the terrain for me, but his info is almost 900 years out of date. Even then, to get Youth water, you probably have to be there centuries prior.”

“So, what is the point of them going there?” Heath asks.

“They’re probably just doing their best to check it off the list,” Mateo figures.

“Well, they don’t have to do it alone,” Heath decides as he’s looking at the map on his phone. “We can be there in three hours.”

“I don’t think that’s what she wants,” Angela says in a warning tone.

“It could be dangerous,” he argues.

“She can’t get hurt,” Ramses reminds him.

“Kivi can! I know you four don’t remember her, but I’ve known her as long as I’ve known you.”

“We’ve known her longer than that,” Leona volleys. “Both of them are capable and cautious women who have been through more than your wife has had time to tell you. She’s been around the block. The farm where she grew up is an airport. I’m sure the location of the former Youth Spring is a baseball diamond, or something.”

“What the hell is a baseball?”

“Out of all the dumb sports,” Angela replies, “it’s the least dumb.”

Heath has grown weary of being away from his wife so much. He’s noticed that she’s the one who keeps doing the leaving, even though at one point, he was meant to go off on these adventures with Mateo. Once they get past this, things are going to change. Ramses, Leona, and Angela have their new business to think about, which will hopefully resupply the funds that dwindled quite a bit when the majority of the team showed up. The only dangerous outsiders who might care about that both Marie and Angela exist already know about them, and the back-up twin thing they have going on. There is no reason why Marie and Heath can’t now begin the real mission of studying time travel in the Third Rail. Mateo should come too, and Kivi, if she isn’t interested in anything else.

“Are you doing okay?” Angela asks after he takes too long to react.

“I’m fine. I’m just going to go take a bath, and clear my head.”

“Okay.”

If Marie were here, she would be able to stop him from taking the bath, because that’s usually when he takes the time to locate and purchase something that costs them far too much.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 21, 2379

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The Cassidy cuffs that they were still wearing—even though everyone on the team was bound to the same pattern, and no longer needed an unnatural way to stay connected—came with a lot of handy features, including a teleporter. They could not simply transport to wherever they wanted, though. When within range, they could only make jumps to each other. At least one of them had to physically be at a particular location in order for the others to come without dealing with that annoying realspace. This was why Mateo had to jetpack over to Xerian’s ship, but Leona didn’t once he had arrived for her.

Mateo was about to exit the no longer operational shower room when he realized how long he had been gone. He didn’t want anyone on the team to know quite yet that he had found a way back to the main sequence, but he also couldn’t explain why he just spent the last fifteen minutes standing naked in a portal closet that was also not supposed to be working. The cuff teleporter was his only hope. Everyone was already right there within several meters of him, but maybe he could fudge with that a little. Maybe he could jump to the other side of this floor, and come out of the working tub so he wouldn’t have to explain to Ramses what took him so long to figure out that the other one was useless. Did he just stand there like an idiot? Or had he realized his mistake right away, and Ramses simply hadn’t noticed him walking by a second time earlier?

Mateo gathered his belongings, but didn’t put his clothes back on, in case the AI had ended up filling up the tub for him. Again, the teleporter wasn’t designed to transport someone to a specific location, but just close enough to a teammate without appearing inside of a wall or floor. He was going to have to kind of do his best. He pressed the button, and jumped.

It was darkish, and he didn’t know where he was. Gravity suddenly took hold of him, and knocked him to his back. He landed on something smooth and soft, and then rolled off onto something soft and cushiony.

“Ouch!” cried a voice. Was that Olimpia?

“Where am I?” Mateo asked in a panic. For a split second he had thought maybe he was in outer space, and in that time, his heart decided to try to burst out of his chest in response. His brain knew he was safe, but his body was still freaking out.

“You are in my grave chamber,” Angela explained. Oh, it was her, not Olimpia. Then she switched on the light. It was both Angela and Olimpia. They were as naked as he was.

“Well,” Mateo said awkwardly. “I guess now we know the teleporter isn’t that precise.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Olimpia replied.

“I’m gonna go,” Mateo declared, sitting up, and fumbling for the hatch.

“Up to you,” Angela said.

They just went right back to what they were doing while he was climbing out of there, desperately trying to hold onto his clothes. Leona was sitting at the table, watching him. “It’s not what it looks like,” Mateo defended. “I mean really, it really isn’t.”

“Why wouldn’t you put on your clothes first, and then test the teleporter?” Leona questioned. Smart as a whip. “And why would you ever test it on a spaceship this small?”

“That’s why you wear the pants in this relationship?” he tried to joke.

“Well...maybe you ought to...try it yourself.”

“Yeah.” He started putting his clothes back on. “Everything okay in engineering?”

“It’s fine,” she answered. “I want us to be geared up by midnight when we arrive near the Nexus planet. We don’t know what we’re walking into, so you should get some sleep now.”

“Okay.”

“In your own grave chamber,” Leona added.

“I know.” He started walking towards it.

“No, not ours...yours.” She gently jerked her head towards the one that Jeremy used to sleep in.

“Leona...”

“We’re fine, I know you weren’t cheating on me, but...I need to be able to sleep here in a minute too, and I know how you get when you’re...because of what you saw.”

That was true, he was in the mood now. “Okay.”

Nobody talked about what happened to them. Ramses could sense some tension, but he ignored it. He was probably still thinking about the last chapter he read in his book. Leona, meanwhile, was making sure that the AOC was programmed correctly. They wanted it to come out of reframe speed about sixty astronomical units from the destination, and find a place to hide on an object out there. The star system may be equipped with defenses capable of detecting it, but this was as far out as they wanted to be. It would take about an hour to complete the journey from there, making maximum range rapid burst jumps, and then pausing to let the vessel cool down and recover. Most of the time, when they tried something like this, they would end up getting caught anyway, but they still had to try every time.

This time, it worked. When they returned to the timestream a year later, they found themselves sitting on a comet in a highly elliptical orbit around a class IV subgiant. No other vessels were around, and no one had fiddled with their ship while they were gone. According to data it collected for them, the single terrestrial planet was orbiting in the habitable zone, and was, in fact, inhabited. The locals were a group of resistance nonfighters. They didn’t want to bring down the system, but they wanted to live outside of it. The Nexus served as a means of ferrying refugees from the Andromeda galaxy, where the war was raging. Out here in the void, it was harder for the Security Watchhouse Detachment to find them. Detachment, Leona noted upon hearing this. If the matrioshka-class SWD was a detachment then they needed to be very afraid of the sheer scale of whatever it was detached from. It could be the largest object ever created across the four known realities. Wanderer was apparently a nickname they used in a pathetic attempt to fool the refugees into believing they weren’t truly the enemy. No one was buying it. The Fifth Division was a ruling force, and not everyone wanted to be ruled by them.

The Investigator was like a police cruiser, scouting around for signs of life. The planet here, Paz was the biggest prize, but they scooped up anyone who rejected the Fifth Division’s sovereignty. The theory now was that the SWD was actually being rather cordial with the team, and that the tactic was meant as a means of learning the whereabouts of this intergalactic star system.

“They’re probably going to be quite concerned about us,” Olimpia figured. “We can’t just teleport to the surface, and expect to be welcomed with open arms. We have to warn them that we’re here, and assure them that we come in peace.”

“Agreed,” Leona said. “Computer, send a message. Tell them exactly where we are, and that we seek sanctuary.”

“Acknowledged,” the computer returned.

“Take off the tactical gear,” Leona ordered. “We don’t want to look hostile.”

“Do I have permission to clarify our power systems?” the computer requested.

“Say nothing about the reframe engine. Tell them we use antimatter for propulsion, fusion for internal systems, and have an AU range teleporter drive, or whatever it is they call it here.”

“Understood,” the computer replied. Before too long, it went on, “they’re sending a light year drive to retrieve us.”

“Very well,” Leona said. “How did they sound?”

“Human,” the ship answered.

“I mean tone, demeanor, emotional mood.”

The computer waited a moment. “Human.”

“Does it not understand the question?” Angela asked.

“No, it’s just recognizing its own limitations,” Ramses explained. “Humans are emotional, and it’s not. We programmed it without such things to avoid creating another Sasha or Imzadi. It’s just telling us that the person or persons it conversed with are emotional beings, but it can’t tell us which emotions. It just doesn’t know.”

They sat there for a moment, waiting to be picked up. The computer then finally responded to Ramses’ last words, “correct.”

“We can tweak the language cadence later,” Ramses said. “I think it thinks that it was pausing for effect.”

They waited another moment before the computer said one last thing, “correct.”

A ship suddenly appeared above them. “Crew of the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, this is the captain of the Paz Rescue Vessel Ataraxis. We’re here to take you to the inner system. Do we have your consent to transport you to our docking bay?”

“This is the captain of the Stateless Private Vessel AOC. We consent.”

They never met anyone on the ship. It was fast enough to jump them into their bay, jump themselves all the way over to the planet, and then drop them off on the surface before they knew it. The team exited the airlock, shocked by the bright light from the sun. How long had it been since they had seen something like this? It was dark and cloudy on Pluoraia, which was the last planet they had been on that was habitable without human intervention. Before that, they spent a little bit of time on 1816 Earth to say goodbye to Jeremy. They just didn’t do much on planets anymore. Perhaps they would wait to make the trip to Andromeda. This looked like a nice enough place. Sure, they were stumbling on the stairs—because they always kept the AOC at slightly lower gravity than Earth, and this world was reportedly slightly higher than Earth gravity—but they would get used to it quickly. This could be their new home. Maybe.

 “Greetings,” said a woman at the bottom of the stairs. “I’m Florida Telano.”

“Florida, like the state?” Olimpia asked.

“I’ve never heard of that,” Florida said.

“The U.S. doesn’t exist here,” Leona whispered.

“Right. My mistake.”

“Where do you come from?” Florida questioned. The name must have been a linguistic coincidence.

“We would rather keep that private,” Leona said. “We still have family there, and we don’t need any targets on their backs.” Really good lie.

“Understood,” Florida said surprisingly. “Let me give you the tour.” She lifted her arms up to project a hologram of the planet between them. “We are primarily a pitstop on a refugee’s way to their new home. The void consists of millions of minor celestial bodies, which we spread out to avoid detection. Every one of them is hydrogen-rich, and powered by at least one fusion reactor, depending on capacity. It’s capable of self-propulsion at subluminal speeds, but not faster-than-light travel. The idea is to radiate the least amount of heat possible in order to remain hidden. In contrast, Paz is orbiting a Stage Nu subgiant rogue star. It’s hard to find out here in the black, but still rather visible. People do live here, but it’s more dangerous. We are always at risk of being discovered. It’s up to you whether you’re willing to take that risk.”

“We were told that we could go to Andromeda,” Leona said. She showed Florida her handheld device. “A friend gave us these coordinates.”

Florida tilted her head, and frowned. “This is the capital of the Andromedan Consortium. It’s the number one opposing force to the Fifth Divisional Denseterium. It’s safe from the latter, but you’re at the mercy of the former. Some say they’re no better.”

Leona frowned back. She looked over to her team. “We’re not much for hiding anyway, are we?”

“No, not really,” Mateo concurred.

“All right,” Leona decided with a nod, “unless there are any objections, I think we’ll just stay here.”

“Great!” Florida exclaimed with sincerity. “We have a number of options for habitation. You’re welcome to stay on your vessel, or we can place you in a home. The price of the latter is some form of contribution, even if you choose privacy mode—which means we never go to you; you come to us—over community engagement mode.”

“Privacy mode,” they all said in unison.

“And we’ll stay on our ship,” Leona added.

« < » > Table of Contents

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 20, 2378

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At the end of the day, they jumped to the future, but they left the AOC in reframe time so it could continue on its way for them. They were about halfway through this leg of their journey, and everything seemed to be going smoothly. There was nothing to do but wait until tomorrow. Mateo was playing a game of RPS-101 Plus by himself. Ramses was reading a book, and Leona was teaching Olimpia more about the ship down in engineering. Angela crawled out of her grave chamber after a nap, and plopped herself down at the table. She sat there for a few moments, staring into space with her chin in the palm of her hand. “Can we...?” she trailed off out of boredom.

Mateo paused his game. “Yes?”

“You wouldn’t know.”

Ramses pretended to not have heard.

“Can we...?” she repeated, but still didn’t act like she cared enough to finish. “Can we...?”

“Can we what, Angela? Damn,” Ramses said, fed up. He set his tablet down.

“Can we make a lightyear drive?” She finally asked.

“Like the one that the Jameela Jamil has?”

“Yes.”

“No. Not for the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, anyway. The hull wouldn’t be able to handle the strain.” He hoped this would be the end of it, allowing him to return to his book.

“Can we make the hull stronger?” Angela suggested.

Annoyed. “Maybe, but I don’t have the resources, and I don’t know how to build one. Keep in mind that my education is nearly 200 years out of date, and I was never as smart as Team Keshida. It would be a nice thing to have, and had we not gotten ourselves trapped in this reality, they may have worked something out for us. Why? Are you bored?”

“I’m bored!” she cried adorably. She accidentally made eye contact with Mateo. “I’m not playing that game again.”

“Never?”

“Nuh-var!” she cried adorably again.

“Never have I ever wanted to never play this game again.” Mateo pretended to pick up a glass from the table, and take a sip from it.

“No, you’re supposed to drink if the statement is true for you,” Angela taught.

Mateo pantomimed chugging the rest of the glass. “Whatever!” he shouted, trying to be as cute as her, and failing. He threw it on the ground.

“Is everything okay up there?” Leona shouted from engineering.

“Fine!” Mateo yelled back.

They sat in silence for a few moments. Ramses kept eying his tablet, wondering if someone would ask him another question the second he tried to get back to his book. He was proven right once he finally did make the attempt.

“Why are we in this reality?” Mateo asked.

Ramses waved his hands in front of his chest. “Magic,” he whispered.

“Seriously.”

“Seriously, I don’t know,” Ramses answered. “It’s just something we have to handwave to get by. I understand why this reality was created, and I gather it’s profoundly more advanced than civilization is in the main sequence—maybe even more so than The Parallel—but I can’t tell you why we’re here, or how we get back. I’m not even sure that we want to get back; what do we care?”

“Hm,” Mateo noted.

“I suppose that would be up to the Captain,” Angela decided.

“My ears are burning,” Leona said as she was climbing up the steps.

“We’ve not even talked about whether we would want to get back to the main sequence,” Mateo fills her in, “let alone how we would accomplish such a thing.”

“Hm,” Leona said.

“My words exactly,” Mateo revealed.

“We would have to find someone here who understands how reality works, and if they’re capable of switching us back, they do, or if not, they help us find someone who can.”

“That may be asking a lot,” Olimpia said, coming up from behind her teacher. “We don’t know where we’re going, or who is going to be there when we arrive.”

“We don’t know much,” Leona concurred.

“We just have to take it one day at a time,” Angela said. “One boring day after the last.” She pressed her tough against her bottom lip, crossed here eyes, and bobbled her head around like she was mocking someone, but she was really just condemning the situation itself. How precious.

“What do you want to do, Angela?” Ramses asked. “What would not be boring?”

“An orgy,” she replied, and it was rather hard to tell if she was joking, or not.

“Okay, I’ll tell you what,” Ramses began, “I’ll try to securely access some sort of data network in this reality, and see if there’s any reference to the lightspeed drive. If it’s doable, I’ll program an AI to retrofit our ship with one, along with all the ancillary components necessary to make it safe. Does that sound fair? It doesn’t help with your boredom today, but I might as well.”

“I would much appreciate that,” Angela said. “Wake me up when that happens. I’m going back to bed.” She slipped off her chair like she was drunk, and crawled back over to her grave chamber, dipping over the edge head first, and rolling into it.

“Is she depressed?” Olimpia asked.

“None of us is a licensed psychologist,” Leona pointed out.

“It would make sense,” Mateo reasoned. “You can do literally anything in the afterlife simulation—break any law of physics. We’ve been through a lot since she joined the team, but it may be nothing compared to the adventures she made for herself for 300 years.”

“Let’s stop talking about her behind her back, shall we?” Leona strongly recommended.

“What should we talk about?” Olimpia asked, not suggesting that she disagreed.

“We could start a book club,” Mateo offered, getting the idea from Ramses who once again tried getting back to his own.

“Reading is mostly a quiet experience,” he patronized. “Can any of you handle that?”

“Well, what is it?”

“Infinite Jest,” Ramses answered.

Now they started mocking him.

“Oh, wow!” Olimpia said sarcastically as she pantomimed lifting a cup of tea with her pinky in the air.

“We’re not worthy,” Mateo confessed, fanning Ramses reverently.

Leona had an imaginary drink of her own; an alcoholic one of some kind that she swirled in its glass. “I went to collage.”

“Okay, thanks,” Ramses replied to all this. “I’m going up to read in the airlock. Not sure which door I’ll use when I’m done.”

“Aw, no, come back! We wanna watch you do it. What’s the point of reading that if not to rub it in everyone else’s face?”

“Oh, we are bored, aren’t we?” Olimpia mused.

“We could go over the mass differentials for spike propulsion again,” Leona said.

“No, I’m okay for now,” Olimpia said. It was one thing to be able to begin a troubleshooting process on the ship if something went wrong. It was a whole different thing to comprehend the actual mechanics of antimatter reactions on a serious level.

“Very well. I’m going to go back down and triple check the magnetic containment fields on the antimatter pods,” Leona decided. “You’re always welcome to help.”

They watched her leave. “I’m gonna...go take a midday bath, I guess.”

“Want some company?” Olimpia asked.

What?

“Kidding,” she clarified. “Sort of. We’re all friends now, right?”

“You and Angela both...are...” He didn’t know what he wanted to say. “Bye.”

“Interesting idea.”

Again, what? He actually didn’t leave right away. He had to gather his belongings, and carry them up to the upper level. As he was climbing the steps, Olimpia rang Angela’s trapdoor bell, and crawled in. What was happening there?

Ramses looked like a deer in the headlights when he saw Mateo through the window. Mateo had to smile and lift up his shower caddy to assure his friend that this was not an interruption. Ramses nodded with appreciation.

The AOC may have been a small ship, but it was state-of-the-art when it was first engineered, and it was still in perfect operating condition. The hygiene facilities were particularly nice. Since the vessel was cylindrical, the bathtub wasn’t standard size, but it was close. The water was always hot, and the pressure always on point. It had an excellent filtration system, so it never felt like a waste when they came up here just to relax. Normally, the tub would even already be filled up for him once the AI heard that he was planning to use it. Unfortunately, Mateo completely forgot that the far side shower room was not presently in working order. They had converted it into a single destination portal to better coordinate with the people on the JJ. While they were now in a totally different reality, the room had not yet been converted back to normal. It wasn’t like it was hard to get by with only one shower for five people.

The Jameela Jamil should not have been in range, but somehow it was. Mateo walked through under the assumption that he was about to step into water that had been warmed to his temperature preference, but instead ended up coming out the other portal. The entry room looked just as it had before. This all looked very normal, except supposedly not possible. He opened the door on the other side of the wall, and entered the bridge completely naked to find Team Keshida, along with Sasha and Vendelin.

“Interesting,” Kestral said. “We checked the portal. We could no longer reach you. We also couldn’t locate you anywhere near that brown dwarf. Where have you been all this time?”

“We—we’re in the Fifth Division,” Mateo explained.

“You are, or you were?” Ishida asked to clarify. It wasn’t too terribly surprising that they had heard of it, or that they weren’t surprised by the development itself.

“As far as I know, the AOC is still there,” he answered.

“Is this the first time you tried the portal?” Sasha questioned.

“First time I did,” Mateo replied. “Ramses and Leona took a look at it briefly, but it didn’t seem likely that it was capable of crossing into alternate realities.”

“It shouldn’t be,” Kestral confirmed. “But I don’t suppose you know how you got there in the first place.”

Mateo just shook his head.

“Are you okay?” Sasha asked. “Is everyone safe?”

“We’re fine. The place is a little weird. You?”

“We’re all right,” Ishida said. “Teagarden is still asking us to do things, as we all suspected they would.”

He looked over to Vendelin. “I see you’ve added another member to your team.”

“Blackbourne has been of great use to us,” Kestral divulged. “We’re helping him work through his issues.”

Vendelin sported a sad but hopeful half-smile.

“That’s good,” Mateo said, glad to have apparently made the right choice in saving the man from what appeared to be a much less inviting afterlife simulation.

“What will you do?” Ishida asked. “Do you wanna go get your team, and bring them through the portal? There may be a limit to its use.”

“It may even only be one-way,” Sasha warned.

“I don’t know that we’ll want to leave our ship behind,” Mateo lamented.

“In that case,” Kestral began with a sigh, “you should take this.” She dug into her bag of holding, and removed a circular object that almost looked like it was made of hair. “The Traversa Bracelet. Ariadna agreed to make precisely one of these, and no more. Ramses and Leona will be able to figure out how to incorporate it into the AOC’s drive systems. There is a strong possibility, however, that doing so will vaporize the thing, so you may only get one shot.”

Mateo accepted the bracelet graciously. “I really appreciate it. We may not use it right away, but it will be a vital accessory in the future. I was wondering if I could trouble you for one more thing, though, if it’s not too much.”

“What might that be?” Ishida asked.

“Would you mind maybe, possibly giving me the plans to a lightyear drive?”

“I can do that,” Kestral agreed. “You won’t be able to use it on the AOC, though. It’s far too big and massive. You would need to construct an entirely new ship, which it sounds like you don’t wanna do.”

“I’ll leave that up to the team,” Mateo decided. “Maybe it will still help them boost our current teleporter.”

“Very well. I’ll download the data to a drive.”

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Microstory 1558: Bladder

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Prompt

I was walking my dog last night when a stranger came out of nowhere and offered to help me with my problem. I asked him what he was talking about, and he said...

Botner

“Let me see your bladder, I can tell if you have a problem.” My first reaction was “Do I have a problem?” But I’m not a doctor, and I also wondered if he just had a strong intuition about this and wanted to have a look for himself. But what came next almost made me pee myself with fear. He touched my bladder, and when he pulled back, he said “you have a lot of pressure there, you need to see your doctor, your bladder is only designed for 10 – 12 CCs.” I don’t even know what that means, but I said OK, and started walking away, and he repeated, “don’t forget your appointment, come back.” I want to say that it was a case of free will, but really...he had already touched my bladder, I was scared. I didn’t have the time to think about what I was going to do. I ran home as fast as I could and didn’t stop for a breath until I was in my bedroom. I’m so angry at myself that I didn’t do anything, that I let a total stranger touch me without my consent, without my knowledge... It’s almost as if the air around me changed...or the gravity. I wanted to get rid of the stress and anxiety I had, so I took a nice hot bath, but this man was stuck in my head, there was no peace in my body. I know...

Conclusion

...that it wasn’t not my fault, but I couldn’t help but feel guilty. I started to wonder if the man had some way of implanting a thought in my brain, or if these were truly my feelings. I needed to find some kind of distraction. I had had a really stressful day of work, so the dog walk was meant to be that distraction, but that totally backfired. What could I do? I could try to watch some TV, but I was sure that everything that happened would remind me of the incident. That guy on that one show kind of looks like him. Oh, she mentioned having to use the toilet. No, that wouldn’t work at all. I didn’t want to hear words, or see people, or be anywhere near here. The car. It’s like a sanctuary. I’m still in the world, but I can separate myself from it at the same time. I loaded my dog into the back, and got myself on the road. It was the middle of the night, so there weren’t many others around. The further I got from the city, the more isolated I felt. I even listened to classical music, so as to make believe I was the only person in the whole world. I drove all through the night, until I was so far away that I didn’t even know what state I was in. I didn’t pay attention to highway signs, or anything. I just focused on the pavement. I’m running out of gas now, though, so I start to look for the nearest place to stop. It’s in the middle of nowhere, with only a tiny little convenience store for drinks and smokes. I walk up to the counter and find that I recognize the clerk. It’s the man from before. He’s grinning at me, and then he asks if he can touch my bladder.

Microstory 249: Perspective Twenty-Four

Click here for a list of every perspective.

Perspective Twenty-Three

I love dogs, and dogs love me. That whole stereotype about dogs hating mail deliverers has more to do with someone encroaching in on their territory. It’s not the fact itself that we deliver the post. It’s just that the dogs have never gotten a chance to get to know us and make sure we check out. But there’s something different about me. I never consulted an expert or anything, but I did read some things on the internet. Some people were just born lucky, and give off the right pheromones to make animals feel at ease. Dogs just know that I’m not a threat, and I don’t even have to introduce myself to them. Though, sometimes I do, because I like making new friends. Most people would probably think my job is extremely boring, but its tedium is exactly what drew me to it. I get a ton of exercise, and I listen to music all day. As I’m walking by the houses, I like to come up with little stories about them; what kind of people they are, and what problems they’ve been dealing with. One resident hunts vampires at night. He’s cut ties with everyone he knows so that he can focus on his calling without worrying about people asking questions. The couple next door secretly knows what he does, but they’ve never spoken with him about it. A woman who lives on the next block drowned in her bathtub, but somehow figured out how to recorporalize her ghost body. So she’s just kept going with her life as if nothing happened, and never told anyone. Things get awkward when people ask her out to dinner, because she can’t eat food anymore. These stories have been going on for weeks, and I often go over them again when I’m not on shift. It’s like watching TV, but without all the worry about my brain rotting away. But there’s this one woman. I don’t have to make up a story for her. I think she peeks through her blinds and tries to find some contrived reason to be outside when I come round. She’s the town gossip, always trying to tell me all the current juicy goings-on. What’s worse is that she thinks, as a mailman, I have great gossip to tell her. At first I pushed her away, but now I’ve started relating to her my fictional daydreams. Obviously I stick to the more believable ones, leaving out the supernatural, and she certainly eats them up. I feel a little bit bad about misleading her, especially if it could end up doing harm to her innocent neighbors. But it’s just so fun. What should I tell her next?

Perspective Twenty-Five