Microstory 2251: Happened Only After They’ve Happened

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

Microstory 2244: Living With Other People

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I took a look at the new place where I think we’re gonna move into. It’s really nice and new. The couple who originally commissioned it to be built ended up going through a divorce pretty much right after it was finished, reportedly because of the stress of building it. I don’t wanna gossip, though. It has five bedrooms, a finished basement, and a near finished attic. It’s not dusty and cobwebby up there, but you wouldn’t want to carry up a bed, and sleep. It’s not the kind of place that I would normally even consider, but things are different now. It’s not just about me anymore. It’s important for it to be this big. It will be easier to fortify while still maintaining privacy for each of us. Members of our security team will actually be able to live inside the house with us, instead of just being posted in a car on the street. Everyone will have their own bathroom, which I think is the biggest problem with living with other people. If you can just have your own space to clean up and take care of your business, it makes it a lot easier to deal with everything else. Well, anyway, I put in an offer, and I’ve not heard back yet, so there’s no guarantee that it’s even happening. We’ll see. In other news, I managed to schedule my next surgeries. They’ll be happening in eleven days, on a Monday. In the meantime, I’ll be sending samples to the surgeon, and occasionally going in. While Kelly no longer works for me, she’s still trained as a lifecare assistant, so I won’t have to drive to the lab every single day, or anything. I think that’s about it for me today. I’m having lunch with Jasmine and Leonard tomorrow, so that should be fun.

Expelled: Exploited (Part III)

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Elder was able to rig up a holographic bathroom. At first, it was nothing more than a partition that gave the user some much-needed privacy. Over time, with little else to do, he added more and more to the program, including the highly requested feature of a noise-canceling system, as well as some scent-masking. Eventually, it looked like they were in one of those extremely fancy and expensive bathrooms that only the wealthiest of people used. It wasn’t like a holodeck, so they couldn’t touch the double basin sink, or the clawfoot tub, but it made them feel a little less confined. This tactic was quickly expanded to the entirety of the tent, allowing them to pretend that they had more space than they did. They could transition views between a number of different environments. It could look like they were sitting in the middle of a serene forest, against a backdrop of mountains, or even in the middle of outer space. That one wasn’t used very much, but it was there if they wanted it. They could also use this to make the tent appear to be transparent, allowing them to see what the real world outside looked like. The imagery was bleak, and a little depressing, but it was often better than the claustrophobia-inducing opaque walls.

In addition to these cosmetic changes, Elder had a lot of other work to do. In order to transmit objects from inside to the outside, and back again, there was a small built-in airlock. It had to be flexible, so it could collapse into the pack where it was stored, of course, but it was enough in a pinch. He was able to program a tube of starter nanites to head out onto the regolith, and begin building them a larger, and more permanent, living structure. Once it was finished being constructed, they would finally be able to stand up, and walk around. It was hard to get exercise in this thing, so they were desperate for more options, especially since this planet featured fairly low gravity. Bicycle crunches were probably saving their lives, but they were becoming increasingly sick of them.

Bronach Oaksent claimed to be only a few hundred meters away, but he was nowhere to be seen. There were a number of geological features nearby, which could easily conceal him, particularly well if he had built his own shelter mostly underground. He could also be in a very small dimensional generator, which would be incredibly easy to hide. Even before he built the nanofactory, Elder designed a pebble drone, based on the kind of rocks that were present on this planet. Tiny cilia that were invisible to the naked eye pressed against the surface, allowing it to roll along in search of Bronach’s hiding place. It was a very slow process, but it used very little power, and each one could operate autonomously. Indeed, a larger drone design would be easier to spot, so this was the best way to do it if they didn’t want to get caught.

True to his word—in this sense, at least—Bronach never reached out. Elder didn’t detect a single radio signal, so he wasn’t trying to communicate anywhere else either. Elder would even be able to tell if he were using some kind of quantum messenger, which would be difficult to transport with its relatively high mass, or maybe not if his dimensional generator theory were true. There was still so much that they didn’t know, and it still wasn’t priority. Their focus was on survival. What he really needed was a real lab so he could start working on that time machine. Debra had wanted to leave Extremus, but she made it quite clear that she would prefer it to this.

“Don’t worry about the time machine right now,” Debra argued. “Just get me a place to stand up, and then a place to sit down. You are building chairs, right?”

“Of course I am,” Elder replied, “and I’m not worried about the lab right now. I’m just talkin’. The nanites are busy on the structure; me discussing the future doesn’t slow that down.”

“You should have brought more nanites,” she tried to reason.

“The amount of time it takes for them to replicate is negligible compared to the time it takes to actually build what we need. Packing more would not have significantly sped up the process. In fact, it might have slowed it down, because it would have been more difficult to get them through the airlock pocket, and on its way to the worksite.”

“The worksite is right there.” Debra pointed. The tent was pseudotransparent on one side right now, so they could watch the construction progress. The other sides were showing the ocean surrounding an atoll.

“That’s miles away to a nanite. Scaled up, that would be like if you drove around the equator of the Earth,” Elder tried to explain for the upteenth time. He hadn’t had to say that specific thing to her before, but she was one of the least educated people he had ever met. She didn’t listen. She seemed to think that the nanites were magic. If she knew their breakdown rate, she would...well, she wouldn’t understand that number, but if she did, she would throw a fit.

“I’ve never been to Earth.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I really don’t.”

“Stop fighting,” Rita interjected. “This is a stupid conversation, and I’m over it. Elder, how long until we can teleport into the new structure?”

“We’re not teleporting into it,” Elder contended. “We have precious little temporal energy left in the teleporter gun, and we need to save it.”

“If we’re so low, how are we ever going to go back in time?” Debra questioned.

“I will be able to harvest more with greater resources,” Elder clarified. “It would sure help to have some stored to catalyze the process, though, which is why I’m having the nanites build a docking cone. That’s mostly what still needs to be finished. It’s right there.” He pointed to it. A metal cone was gradually materializing towards them.

“And the time until it’s complete?” Rita reiterated.

“Only a few more days,” he answered. “I know what you’re gonna say next, but bear in mind that solar is our only source of power at the moment. The shelter would take even longer if I had the nanites build a fusion reactor at the same time, even though having fusion would eventually make them go faster. Plus, the basalt and sedimentary rocks have to be pulverized and reformulated into a sort of concrete to create the airtight seal that we obviously need. There is not as much metal in the regolith as I would like. But as soon as they’re done, we’ll have nine square meters to spread out in. It will all be worth the wait, I promise you.”

“And a real bathroom?” Rita asked hopefully.

Elder hesitated to answer. “Not quite yet. It’s coming, but think about it, how complicated the fixtures in a real bathroom are. There is a room walled off for it, but we’ll still be using our portable toilet, and rubbing ourselves down with dayfruit...” He trailed off, his mind scattered to a million pieces. Sometimes a keyword would switch his train of thought to the wrong track, even if he was the one who said the word. He went back to contemplating his latest project to solve one of their problems. Each of the five leaves of the dayfruit was packed with its own natural substance. They were using the sugar and salt leaf regularly, programming every other fruit to produce one, and every other fruit the other. The second leaf gave them an alcohol-based sanitizer, which could be used to disinfect wounds in a medical situation, as well as a body cleanser when water was scarce, as it was here. The third leaf was a soap for when water was plentiful enough. The fourth was basically a GMO super-eucalyptus, which had countless benefits, from toothpaste to a moisturizing topical ointment. The fifth and final leaf was a sort of user’s choice. If not programmed for something each time, it would just grow empty. Well, not empty, but layered, so it wasn’t completely useless, since it still functioned as toilet paper, but Elder wanted more out of it. He wanted to program it to produce a certain chemical compound.

Unfortunately, they were stuck with an inert fifth leaf. It was a heavily regulated trait, generationally encrypted by the institution that designed the dayfruit strain in question. In this case, that governing body was part of Extremus. No one here had the authentication factors, not even Lieutenant Suárez. When he had time, Elder had been trying to hack into it, but even geniuses had their limits. These seeds required a password for certain modifications, and if he wanted to subvert them, his only option might be to write his only version of the fruit from scratch. That was not out of the question, but they weren’t there yet. It would demand certain chemicals to even begin anyway. Digital DNA was useless without the organic material to begin the synthesization process. Nothing could come from nothing. Not even their world of temporal manipulators could this maxim be subverted.

“Old Man,” Rita shouted. “You’re in your head again.”

“No, you were telling us to rub dayfruit on our bodies,” Debra clarified.

“Right.” He cleared his throat. “I meant the sanitizer. We’ll have to keep using the sanitizer until we can find a source of oxidane.”

Rita nodded, but Debra was confused, as usual.

“Water. We need water. If we find a significant reservoir, we may be able to stop having to recycle our waste.” They added sugar to their drinking water to get rid of the urine taste, but...they could still taste it.

Rita shook her head. “When we go back in time, and get back on Extremus, I’m going to lobby for a change in policy. Earthan space explorers wear those standardized integrated multipurpose suits all the time. They debated doing that on the Extremus, but it was never our plan to ever go on spacewalks, so they ultimately decided against them. I think that was a mistake. We would be so much better off if we could go outside right now. I should be wearing an IMS. From what I hear, they’re comfortable enough.”

Elder shook his head to mirror her. “I should have packed one in my emergency kit. I guess that’s not why they’re on the recommended list, because the people who need them the most are already wearing them to be prepared at all times.”

“Could you fabricate one now?” Debra asked. She was being genuine this time, not critical or argumentative.

“I don’t have the materials,” Elder replied. “And...I wouldn’t know how to make one. It’s not the library, I don’t think. Do you know how to harvest and contain monopoles? I’m not saying that to mean. It’s just so far above my paygrade.”

“Well, that’s one layer,” Rita began, “but a vacuum suit doesn’t have to have it. The other layers alone would work well enough on their own, unless you think you might get shot out there.”

Elder looked towards the horizon. When Bronach left them, this was the direction he walked, implying that that was where his own shelter was—which was why he was concentrating the pebbledrone search in that region—but that could literally have been a misdirect. “We don’t know that that man doesn’t have projectile weapons. And anyway, no,” he went on. “The nanites aren’t constructing the structure out of the best materials possible, just what they can find. We do not have what we would need for additional clothing of any kind. We never will, not here.”

They all three sighed at around the same time, and went back to watching the docking cone inch towards the tent entrance, one conical section at a time. It really was slow, though, so they eventually broke out of the group trance, and started focusing on their own things. Later that evening, they watched another episode of Sliders together. It was the one where they go to a world that is free from the war because of a virus that only kills Kromaggs. It made Elder uncomfortable, but he tried not to show it. The ladies still didn’t know that much about his past.

A couple of days later, the cone was finished, and they were in the new structure. Rita couldn’t stop breathing a sigh of relief, and Debra teared up a little. Elder sat down on one of the built-in benches against the wall, and didn’t stand up for almost three hours. They didn’t call him Old Man for nothin’. Lying down, sitting up, and crawling were not good for his back in the long-term. Now that they had more space to move around, he was able to get some real work done. Their new airlock still wasn’t big enough for a person to step through, but that wasn’t the point. His hands could move faster than the nanites. He was able to collect building material, and build some larger equipment in here. The progress of their shelter continued to get faster and faster. He cut out some windows, and forged silica glass to protect them. They hadn’t experienced any dust storms, or these might have been too dangerous to consider.

With more space and more time, he was able to build larger drones too, which were able to travel farther from their immediate vicinity, and perform more detailed surveys of the land. They found deposits of magnesium and aluminum, and trace amounts of others, like silver and copper, which were vital components of some desperately needed technology, like better solar panels, and a fusion reactor. It took months, but these drones also found subsurface ice only about forty centimeters under the regolith. For simplicity’s sake, they ignored the first site, and focused on one that was a little farther away, but on higher ground, so a basic aluminum pipe could transport water from the boiler structure, down to them via gravity.

It was starting to feel a little like home, but only a little. They remained firmly in favor of finding a way back to the ship in the past. Debra talked a lot about their ultimate goal of traveling to Bronach’s location, but the other two were hoping to avoid it altogether. Rita was anyway. Elder still had plans for the fifth leaf, though if he never figured it out, he might be able to find a way to synthesize everything he needed in the normal way, especially with this silica for lab supplies. He was no chemist, though, that was the problem. He was counting on the dayfruit’s ability to formulate a programmed compound for him, rather than him having to mix it by hand. This plan wasn’t vital to their survival, but not having the weapon could prove fatal one day. He had relinquished his morals once; he could do it again if it was necessary.

They were on this dead planet for five whole months before Elder was even able to begin manufacturing the time machine, and it was shortly thereafter when he hit a snag. Harvesting temporal energy wasn’t as easy as he thought it would be. He might only have enough for one person for one trip with a smaller design.

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Microstory 2104: People Are Animals

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My job is going well so far, but I’ve only been doing it for one day, so we’ll just have to see. This place is open 24/7, which equates to a crew of five janitors. Each of us works six hours straight with no breaks, except to use the restroom. When one leaves for the day, the next one comes in. A fifth person sleeps on location, and can fill in if someone is sick. We don’t get paid to take time off, though we can if we need to, but we have to coordinate with each other, and the fifth guy will substitute during that time too. In the meantime, he gets paid for the entire day, whether he has anything to do or not. He’s the one who trained me, because he’s been there forever. The job is simple and tedious. You start at the top floor, and work your way down. Different janitors have different methods to get the work done. Some use the carpet sweeper all the way through, and then go back up to mob the bathrooms, and other tile areas, and then go back up again to collect the trash. Others prefer to focus on one floor, and complete all of the necessary work at once before moving on to the next one. They may not do it the same way every time, and our employer doesn’t care. They want it to be as clean as possible as much as possible. The work that the regular workers do here requires concentration, which means that they require us to be quiet and out of the way, which is why we don’t use vacuum cleaners. Fortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of collaboration, at least not in person, so we’re not constantly tripping over the staff, making it easier to stay invisible.

For one hour at 11:00, they are all having lunch together upstairs. We are not allowed to go upstairs. I’ve not even seen their cafeteria yet, because we’re expected to eat on our own time, but the other janitors have caught glimpses of it over the years, so they know that that’s where everyone is going. Apparently, a sixth person handles that entire area alone, and isn’t part of my team. I suspect that, in addition to eating, they’re having some kind of building-wide meeting. I still don’t really know what exactly they do there, but it must be pretty sensitive stuff. They lock everything up in their special desks, even when they’re only leaving for the restroom. I’ve yet to see a single piece of paper that isn’t still blank. The regular workers are usually really focused on their work, and don’t pay me any mind, not in a sort of disrespectful don’t fraternize with the help sort of way, but more like they’re trying to stay out of my way just as much. I think they’re aware that I’m on a schedule of my own, and they appreciate not having to worry about the mess. And when I say mess, I don’t mean that these people are animals. Honestly, I don’t think we need to clean up as often as we do. They don’t eat at their desks, or do anything else that would make my job harder. I barely have to empty the carpet sweeper, but that’s what’s in the job description, so I’m going to keep doing it until they ask me to do something else. I was under the impression that I was going to get a lot dirtier, but the really gross places, like the boiler room, are handled by a different team too. All in all, I think I’m going to be okay here. I know what I’m supposed to do, and how I’m supposed to do it. They even let us listen to headphones at a low enough volume to hear the environment. I don’t really report to a boss. My coworkers are treating me as one more person in the collective. The woman I’m replacing worked here for 48 years before she retired with six-figure savings. I’ve never dreamed of having that much money. I’ll let you know if anything changes, but I think I’m just going to stick around for now.

Microstory 2086: And Even Chaotic

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I have been trying to figure out, not only where my co-worker went, but also where everyone else has gone. One person has mysteriously disappeared from Kansas City every day for the last month and a half. None of them showed signs of wanting to go somewhere before their disappearance, they leave no trace behind, and the authorities have not categorized any of them as suspicious. One thing they seem to have in common is that their respective friends and family aren’t extremely surprised by the development. The cops eventually stop investigating entirely, because none of them is a child, or someone else at high risk, like a dementia patient. They’re all self-sufficient adults who have been known to be a little bit flaky and unpredictable. They also come from different jurisdictions, so no one but me has any hope of seeing any of this as a pattern. In some of the stories I was writing before I disappeared from my own world, I came up with this organization called the Kansas City Metro Corps. It’s a police agency that operates in all of Kansas City, even across state lines, which to my knowledge, is not something that exists in the real world. There are federal agents, of course, but no one that can carry out investigations regularly between only two states. They might do it occasionally, but in that case, two different departments will have to liaise with each other, which can be complicated, disorganized, and even chaotic. They don’t have anything like the KC Metro Corps on this Earth, so no one is talking to each other, or seeing the connections.

I have been doing my own investigating, and I’ve come to a startling discovery that made me throw up in the middle of my shift. Don’t worry, I made it to the bathroom in time, because I was already in the break room, but I don’t know if I can live with myself anymore. It’s me. I’m the cause. I don’t know how I’m doing it, but it’s definitely me. Tracing the disappearances have been difficult, because no one witnessed anything strange happening, so their true locations aren’t so cut and dried, which is why I didn’t see it before. But if I add myself to the map along with all the others, and adjust for people’s hypothetical movement after the last person to see them loses sight of them, then I am at the epicenter. Every disappearance happens from that point, and has continued outwards in a spiral formation. The pattern would be beautiful if it weren’t so sickening. They all happen early in the morning, which makes sense, because that’s when I first arrived on this world. So I’ve already missed today. I’ve not heard anything yet, but I’m sure whatever mysterious force is causing this has struck again, and I have an idea of where. I can’t save that person, or anyone else we lost before, at least I might not be able to, I don’t know. But I know that there’s a chance for me to save whoever is meant to go missing tomorrow. I’m taking the day off, which is something that I didn’t want to do this early on at my job, but I don’t think I have any other choice. I’ve asked the high school girl to fill in for me, since it’s Teacher Planning Day. I’m going to the store today to gear up. I don’t know what I’ll be going up against.

Microstory 2080: It’s Frickin’ Perfect

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I’ve been writing kind of long posts recently, especially that one from Monday last week. I’m particularly tired today, though. I had so much to do. I had to work first shift, and then go to several appointments for my apartment search. My real estate agent was great. She doesn’t make as much money in her job as the kind that sell full family homes, but she was committed, and she understood what I was looking for. There was one particular unit that I am very interested in. You can see the entire thing from one spot. A single room quadruples as a kitchen, living room, bedroom, and office. One door leads to a closet, and the other to a bathroom. I think they said it was 27 square meters in area, which is about 290 square feet, if you like to use the WRONG measuring system. The way the building manager tells it when we met him, there was a bit of an error when calculating the number of units that could fit within the length of the complex. Every floor has this tiny little thing that they tacked on in the corner. It’s too big to be just a storage closet, or something, but not big enough for most people’s needs. I am not most people. It’s frickin’ perfect. I can already picture the layout. The building is a little farther from work than I would like, because I would prefer to walk, but I think I can invest in a bike, and still avoid buying a car. I don’t know what I will do in really bad weather, but it might be worth it.

Microstory 1976: Nuts or Chips

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Leonard: Did anyone follow you?

Ophelia: Yes. The Mississippian Militia is right behind me, as are all of this guy’s friends, and my sixth grade math teacher.

Leonard: Okay, good.

Ophelia: I know how to lose a tail...which I didn’t have. Nobody is looking for us.

Leonard: Yeah, I’m not seeing anything on the news, but I don’t know enough about this territory to say if that’s typical. This feels a bit like a police state.

Ophelia: Not really. It’s just that, as far as anyone is concerned, nothing happened in that apartment hallway yesterday. There’s a hole in the brick, but I doubt anyone’s gonna notice. Our team may have even literally covered it up by now.

Leonard: We have to get the hell out of this place, and back to the U.S.

Vogel: I can get us all someplace safe, and smuggle us out of the city.

Leonard and Ophelia: *simultaneously* Shut up.

Vogel: Look, you’re gonna have to trust me at some point. I know Mississippi, and I know Memphis. You both are obviously highly capable, but still untrained. Let me help.

Leonard: We can’t trust you. We weren’t in that hallway accidentally. We’ve been looking for you for over a week.

Vogel: I’m not surprised, but you haven’t asked me any questions, except for who shot at us, and why, so whatever you think I did, you’re obviously not certain I’m guilty.

Leonard: We’re certain enough. *to Ophelia* What did you get?

Ophelia: Mostly nuts and chips. There wasn’t a great selection at the inconvenience store. All of the sandwiches looked bad.

Leonard: *tosses Vogel a bag* I prefer nuts. Eat your chips in the bathtub. Turn on the sink faucet. My partner and I need to have a private conversation.

Vogel: *reluctantly heads for the bathroom*

Ophelia: The window?

Leonard: Doesn’t exist. *turns on the TV, and raises the volume*

Ophelia: What the hell are we gonna do?

Leonard: I may have an idea, but it’s risky. I can find us a guy.

Ophelia: You know someone? Aren’t you from, like, another planet, or something?

Leonard: Agent Altimari has contacts here. *points to the bathroom* She found him when the rest of us couldn’t, which made Reese suspicious, so she had to explain where she got the information. I have the name of her supplier here. It’s no guarantee. The last we heard, he was trying to get out of the state himself, so he may already be gone.

Ophelia: Worth a shot, I guess. We don’t have a lot of options. Who is this supplier, and do you have his phone number, or something?

Leonard: I have a dead drop location. Someone is gonna have to stay with our detainee while the other goes out. You got the burner phones too, right?

Ophelia: *tosses him one of them* You sure we can’t reach out to anyone else on the team? Not even Agent Parsons?

Leonard: It’s not that we can’t trust him. We can’t be sure he hasn’t been compromised in some other way, like a tapped phone. Now, how do you work this thing?

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 11, 2398

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It’s been a month since Angela, Carlin, Moray, Petra, and a small crew of scientists started their relativistic journey to the Oort Cloud. For them, however, it’s only been an hour, and nothing interesting has happened. The four of them are in the middle of a game of Bridge, but that’s about it. Now Angela’s bladder is yelling at her, so she’s taking her break and heading for the head. When she opens the door, she runs into someone she assumes to be one of the research scientists. She doesn’t even look up at his face. “Oh, apologies. I’ll go find another facility.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, madam,” the man says as she’s trying to walk away. That voice. She would recognize it anywhere, even a thousand years from now. It’s the man who put her in prison, Tamerlane Pryce.

She spins around, a little too whimsically than she would like, given the tone she wants to present. “They were right. You’re here.”

He’s genuinely confused. “Someone told you I would be on the rocket?”

“No, I mean, this reality. I don’t know why you’re on the rocket.”

“I’m here to save your life,” he says cryptically.

She folds her arms. “How? Did a seer four million years ago tell you that it would blow up?”

He chuckles. “We don’t have seers. That’s by design. No time travel, no fortune telling, no temporal manipulation of any kind...except for the thing that controls all of that, of course.”

“Of course,” she mocks. “I would love to continue this conversation, but I really do have to go.”

“I meant what I said,” he calls up when she tries to turn away from him again. “You shouldn’t use the toilet.”

“Excuse me? You’re trying to tell a woman what to do with her body?”

He nods as he’s preparing his explanation. “Exactly four months ago, Earth realtime, you imbibed three cups of water while stranded in the village of Vertegen, on the Svalbard archipelago.”

“Yes, we surmised that they were three types of immortality water. That’s why I’m here, to buy time for my friends to find the rest, so Marie isn’t killed.”

“That’s not why I had the villagers give you the water,” Pryce says. “Something worse happens in your future, and I feel responsible for you, so I didn’t want you to die, but that event cannot be changed. What I mean is, the sequence of events leading up to it can’t, but I could alter the outcome. Fortunately, you came to my reality, and provided me with the perfect opportunity to do just that.”

“Okay. Let’s say I believe you. Why won’t you let me pee now?”

He shrugs with both his shoulders, and his chin. “Isn’t it obvious? The waters don’t last forever. Your body purges them from your system, just as they purge anything else you consume...unless it’s permanently detrimental, like a pathogen. If you pee today, Marie will die. Actually, she’ll already be dead, because the whole point is that you would be trying to save her life in the past. You don’t have much time left. I calculated incorrectly, and didn’t give you very much time to reach all eleven immortality waters before the first ones expire. You can do it, but you have to hold on for the next several hours. Your friends are already on the path that will lead them to a permanent solution.”

“We don’t need any solution that you came up with,” Angela contends. “I lived in your world for centuries, but I eventually broke out, thanks to my new family. We’ll break out of this one too, especially now that I know it’s yours.”

Pryce smiles sadly. “The afterlife simulation is not my world. Now, before you argue, I really mean it. I’m a different version of the man you know. He went back in time, and created a new timeline, one in which no one ever really dies. I was born in that one. I never did any of the stuff that he did.”

She’s taken aback by this, but his story isn’t completely implausible. He certainly wouldn’t be the first alternate self she’s met. There have been so many in the Third Rail alone; it’s like a magnet for them. She herself has an alt who goes by their middle name. “You just said you felt responsible for me.”

“I do. I feel personally responsible for all the people he’s hurt. If he’s not going to make up for his mistakes, then I guess I have to.”

She takes a deep breath. “Horace Reaver was a serial killer in one reality, then a rich douchebag in the next, and a hero in the next. I want to trust that you’re like that, but there’s no reason to believe versions of people in subsequent timelines are always better than their Past!Selves. It could just as easily go the other way. Maybe you’re not the man I knew, but that doesn’t mean you’re an improvement.”

“You’re right, but I can give you this.” He pulls a water bottle from behind his back like it’s Excalibur. “Energy water isn’t the most difficult kind to procure, but in the political climate surrounding the Dead Sea and Birket, I would prefer it if you didn’t risk your freedom by trying to go back there to steal more.”

Angela peers at it. “How do I know that isn’t just tap water from a suburban house’s kitchen sink?”

“I went through a lot of trouble to get you the three first immortality waters. The first one is from billions of years ago, the next is from another universe, and the next is from another galaxy. If I couldn’t even sneak into Birket to get this one, I certainly couldn’t have gotten the others, and the whole endeavor is moot.”

She keeps her eyes narrowed, but accepts the gift. “I can’t drink this yet. If I remember the order, I need waters from the Bermuda Triangle and North Pole first.”

He nods. “The others will handle that. This is a good faith gesture, don’t drink it until you get back to Earth. But remember, you can’t go pee. I haven’t had a doctor examine you, so I can’t say for sure it would purge your system of what you need to keep, but if I were you, I wouldn’t risk it.”

Now that he’s been talking about it so much, it’s all that she can focus on. The pressure is worse than ever, though that’s clearly only a psychological reaction. Assuming she believes him in the first place, how long can she last before she explodes? “Thank you...I think.”

He smiles, “that’s as much as I can ask. I better go hide again. I’m a stowaway, after all. Try to keep yourself busy. Maybe activate your acute stress response. When your body is in a hurry, it shuts down digestion, because it knows that it can’t take a break when you’re running from a saber-toothed tiger."

Angela watches him disappear, then she returns to her cabin to stash the Energy water in her refrigerator. Then she goes out for a jog. It doesn’t work.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 2, 2398

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Leona wakes up in a hospital bed. Her husband’s is the first face she sees. The nurse’s is the next. She tries to speak, but it doesn’t feel like her voice is coming out. The nurse hands Mateo a cup of water so he can hold it under Leona’s chin, and help her sip. Quenched, she can utter the only pertinent word right now. “Report.”

“There was an explosion,” Mateo begins to explain as the nurse is leaving to get the doctor. “They don’t know who, and if they know how, they’ve not released this information to the public. The investigation is going slow. The fact that the crime took place in a crime hole is causing some jurisdictional issues. Normally, an internal investigative team would be expected to handle this on their own, but when neighboring areas are at risk, external forces are willing to come in, which they have to, because—”

“Because I drained the swamp of nearly all staff, and absolutely all security,” Leona recalls. “I don’t regret it.”

“This being the case, police would usually try to get consent from the owner of the crime hole to step in, but since you were incapacitated...”

“They have it,” Leona says. “Anyone with the authority to investigate crime has my consent and support to do what they must.”

“I’ll text Winona,” Mateo says, taking out his device.

Once he’s done with that, Leona says, “go on.”

“Cheyenne and Marie were hurt; Cheyenne the least. She was conscious, and able to inform the rescuers that only the three of you were in the building at the time. Is that a fair assessment?”

“As far as we knew, yes. We kept a few staff to help with the transition, but we asked them not to come in today—”

“It’s the second of November,” Mateo interrupts.

“We asked them not to come in on that day,” Leona amends. “We wanted to walk the space, and envision the changes. Is it destroyed? Is the whole thing gone?”

“It is, yes. It was a massive explosion.”

“That’s a silver lining. We were just discussing how we would prefer to knock it down, and rebuild from scratch...assuming we haven’t lost ownership over it.”

“No one has said as much. I don’t know how it works.”

The doctor comes in and performs a basic examination on Leona. She has multiple bruises, a head laceration, and both of her legs are broken. She cracks a joke about this being a blessing since she didn’t have to cut them off, like last time. He doesn’t think it’s funny, but if he knew that she wasn’t lying... She’s going to make a full recovery, but the healing process is going to take some time. She will be confined to a wheelchair for the next three months at least, maybe even longer. She would be able to transition to crutches sooner, but there’s little point in trying that when both legs need time to heal. Leona is taking it surprisingly well. Again, if he only knew the kinds of things she has gone through, he would understand that this is not life-shattering news. It sucks, but if all else fails, she should eventually be able to just transfer her consciousness to a new body.

Shortly after the doctor leaves to let Leona get some rest, there is a knock on the door. Mateo answers to find Kivi on the other side. She steps into the room quietly, and looks around cautiously. She opens the door to the bathroom, like she’s expecting another person to be here. Then she settles her gaze back on Leona, and finally exhales.

“Are you looking for another bomb?” Leona asks.

“No, I was looking for the people who did it,” Kivi replies.

“What made you believe that they were in here? You don’t think that one of us did it, do you?”

“Of course not!” Kivi says. “I think I’ve overestimated how much control I’ve developed over my psychic abilities. I want to catch the people who did this to you, but my heart just wanted to make sure my friend was okay.”

“That’s sweet,” Leona says. “Thank you.”

“I better get back to the team.” Kivi lifts her watch up, and speaks into it, “code orange. Stand down.”

“Code orange?” Mateo asks.

“Like a detour sign?” Kivi explains. “These are not the droids we’re looking for.”

“Why do you know pop culture references from the wrong reality?” Leona questions.

“I dunno.” Kivi starts to back out of the room casually. “Why is a tree good? Why is the sunset good? Why are boobs good?”

Leona narrows her eyes at her. “I love you.”

“Love you too!” Kivi calls back just as she’s stepping out of view.

Leona manages to get a little bit of sleep before Ramses abruptly invites himself into the room. “She’s asleep,” Mateo tries to whisper, but it’s too late.

“I’m up.”

“Good.” Also without asking, Ramses lifts the bedsheets, and slides Leona’s hospital gown up to get a look at her legs.

“Oh good, you’ve graduated from medical school at last,” Leona jokes.

“I just need a quick look.” Ramses feels Leona’s upper thighs, and sticks his fingers down her casts.

“And a feel.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s your body; you built it for me.”

Ramses rolls his eyes. Then he takes out his version of a Star Trek tricorder, and scans her legs. “Yeah, I think this will work, but I can’t promise.”

“What will work?” Mateo asks, growing impatient.

“Did anyone tell you that we’re planning to raise the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from the bottom of the ocean?” Ramses asks them as he’s checking Leona’s lymph nodes for an as of yet unknown reason.

“Yeah, what does this have to do with my wife’s medical condition?”

“Do you remember what happened to you when you teleported yourself into orbit? Did you die up there?”

Leona realizes what Ramses is thinking. “Oh. You think if I break the planet’s atmosphere, I’ll regain my transhumanistic upgrades, and reactivate my healing nanites, which will repair my legs.”

“That’s the idea,” Ramses confirms.

“Is that even a thing?” Mateo asks.

“Only one way to find out.” Ramses and Leona high five each other.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 1, 2398

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Kivi drops her bag on the bench, and opens her locker. She starts to undress. Paula Strand walks in to start doing the same, and gives her a bit of the stink eye. There is a hierarchy within the ranks of a tactical team. When Paula first started, she was at the bottom, and when her direct superior was promoted to the position of Lieutenant, she too moved up to become the Engineer. But even though Kivi is the new guy around here, she now ranks higher, because she officially entered the team as the Spotter. Hurst actually took a demotion when he decided to replace Paula as Technician, but he doesn’t seem to have any problem with that. It’s a special skill set, so it all works differently than what you might find in a military setting, where a rank determines one’s leadership level and pay grade, with specializations being a separate category. Here it’s arbitrary, really, that a Spotter ranks higher than an Engineer. Paula is taking it personally.

“So, you’re back. How long will you be gracing us with your presence this time?”

“I’m here indefinitely,” Kivi answers.

Paula scoffs. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“I’m sure you’ll retire before me, so you won’t be seeing it.”

Paula scowls now. “If we’re still working on the same team as my retirement approaches, promise to shoot me in the head.”

“That’s not my job. All I would be able to do is help Corolla shoot you.”

Paula tries to hold back her laughter, but she can’t help it. She knows that Kivi didn’t join the team to throw her weight around. Beyond the Leader and Lieutenant, no one generally gives commands. It really only happens in an emergency situation, when the two leaders aren’t around, and somebody has to make a decision. It makes it easier and safer to always know who that person will be without any argument. Paula needs to learn how to be an engineer, and Kivi needs to learn how to spot.

“Look, this is all new to me, but I’m committed now. I don’t wanna be anywhere but here. There’s some bad people out there, and some missing people too, and I think our new directive can do some real good in this world. Don’t you agree?”

Paula sighs. “I do. It is nice to know that we have a clear goal in mind. One of the most frustrating things about being on a tack team is you never know why you’re being sent off on missions. Now we know what we’re trying to accomplish, and I hope you know that I do appreciate that you bring that to our table in a way that no one else can.”

Kivi tugs on her shirt, and slams her locker shut. “I appreciate you saying that,” she says with a smile. She turns to head for the stall before the morning briefing, but that smile turns quickly into a frown. She’s struggling with this whole thing—not the decision—but the baggage, and the lack of honesty, she comes into every government room with. This seems right. This feels right. This must be where she belongs. But when she was born a few months ago, this job would not have been on her list of future pursuits, so it feels strange at the same time. She may be experiencing impostor syndrome. Her apparent psychic abilities give her the edge that she will need to be a great Spotter, but her lack of true experience—in anything—might sow doubt in her heart every day, and that could become debilitating.

Tactician Hartwin Seegers comes into the locker room, a hand over his eyes. “The briefing is starting early. There’s been an attack. This is an all-hands-on-deck situation.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 13, 2398

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The tack team, as it turns out, was on Meredarchos and Erlendr’s trail the entire time. It’s just that Kivi just picked up other people’s scents along the way. It was the original spotter, and newly appointed technician, Manuel Hurst who figured it out. All he did was draw a line from Kansas City to Los Angeles. He then added blue dots that designated places they had gone to, and red dots for reported activity that fit the modus operandi of their target. The dots matched. The rest of the team feels like this validated Kivi’s participation, but she sees it a different way. If they had just gone straight to these places, and looked for the bad guys using traditional means, they may have caught them sooner. She kept distracting the team from the real mission, wasting precious time.

“I know it bothers you now,” Arcadia says, “but you’ll forget about it eventually.”

“How?” Kivi asks.

“You’ll save so many missing persons, and catch so many bad guys, that you’ll remember your trial period as exactly that; a trial. Now that you know that other scents can distract you from the one that you’re going for, you can figure out how to focus.”

“Can you teach me?”

“I don’t know about that. I never had to learn how to use my powers. They were always just...there. I was all but a sociopath, which meant I never had to worry about things like distractions. And then when I was thrown out of The Gallery, I did whatever I wanted. I didn’t have any goals, so there was no way to fail.”

Kivi frowns.

“Bottom line, you just need practice. I think this is a great place for you. This isn’t me, but you belong on this team. I don’t recommend going back to Team Matic, or that software company you were helping with. That’s just my opinion, what do I know?”

“I should think you know a lot,” Kivi muses.

Arcadia chuckles, and then heaves.

“Are you okay?”

She runs into the bathroom, and retches for the second time today as Kivi holds her hair for her. “Ugh,” Arcadia says as she’s wiping her lips. “This new body is irritating. How do you humans live like this?”

Kivi gets a thought. “Umm...women have been living like this for hundreds of thousands of years.”

“Well, it’s annoying.” Arcadia isn’t picking up what she’s putting down.

“I said women have been living like this.”

“What do you mean, that men don’t get sick?”

“Of course they do, but I’m talking about morning sickness.”

Arcadia glances at her watch. “It’s 12:45.”

Kivi rolls her eyes. “I guess your endocrine system doesn’t keep good time.”

“Honest hour, I don’t know what the endocrine system is, except that it’s the thing that Gary Busey is going to pull out of my body if I put that straitjacket on him. Remember, I was literally made out of clay.”

“Well, you’re not made out of clay anymore, you’re living in Leona Delaney’s body. That must be different for you.”

“Don’t remind me, my morning sickness is the least annoying thing that’s—wait. Morning sickness? Are you trying to tell me...?”

I’ll go buy you a home test,” Kivi volunteers.

“It’s not possible,” Arcadia says.

“I assure you, it is.”

When she returns twenty minutes later, Arcadia takes the test into the bathroom, and carefully follows the instructions. Near as she can tell, they’re just like they are in the main sequence. You pee on a stick, and look for a symbol after a minute or two. Not that she’s ever concerned herself with such pedestrian matters. Like she mentioned, her original body was made out of clay. She had all working outward parts, but her internal organs were a different matter. They weren’t nonexistent exactly, but they weren’t the same either. They had minimal function, and were mostly there for show. Honest hour again, she had never even had sex before she came here, and met Vearden Hayward. She was told, and believed, that she could never get pregnant, no matter which body she was in. It wasn’t just her womb or hormones, but her mind. It wasn’t fit for motherhood, so it could never be. She was supposedly designed that way.

It was the same for all the Preston clay children. Zeferino had a way with the ladies. As far as she knows, he never abused his power, but he did enjoy the occasional recreational...event. Nerakali would be a better comparison, but she seemed to have no interest. There is no precedent for this situation. A pregnant Preston? That’s absurd.

Kivi nods as they’re waiting for the results. “That may be true in the main sequence. If you jumped into someone else’s body, maybe you really couldn’t have children, even if that person normally would. But this is the Third Rail. The rules are different here. Why did you not use protection?”

“I guess when you spend thousands of years without so much as considering something as a possibility, you don’t let go of it, even when the variables change.” She buries her face in her hands. “I can’t do this. When Athanaric told me that I couldn’t have children, he was discussing it on a neuroglandular level. When my father said the same thing...he was talking about it psychologically. I’m a garbage person. Vearden and you guys have made me better, but I’ll never really get that stink off of me.”

“I don’t believe that,” Kivi says sincerely.

The alarm goes off.

“You read it.”

“Okay.” Kivi takes the stick, and compares the readout to the chart imprinted next to it. Rip it off like an adhesive bandage. “Arcadia, you’re pregnant.”

Arcadia grabs the stick, and looks at it herself. Then she pulls the second stick out of the box, and goes back into the bathroom. Guessing that Arcadia may be in denial, she bought three more boxes of three different brands, which Arcadia proceeds to pee on until she runs out. That’s eight tests in total, the girl is pregnant.

“Are you going to tell Vearden?”

“Of course I will, what kind of person do you think I am? Oh, wait...”

“In my—albeit limited—experience, sooner is better than later.”

Arcadia looks down at the pile of tests and boxes. “Would you mind disposing of all this in such a way so as to prevent anyone else at this blacksite from seeing them?”

“Consider it done. What are you going to do?”

“Do you know where he is?”

“Last I heard, he was still with Marie at the hospital in Chicago.”

“Then I’m going to Chicago.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 28, 2398

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Most everybody is somewhere other than the third floor lofts. Leona and Ramses are in the lab. Alt!Leona and Andile are helping Angela with her new business on the first floor. Heath is giving the McIvers a guided tour of Kansas City. Kivi is off doing something on her own, and Leona Reaver is holed up in her apartment. Marie is alone in her and Heath’s unit, so Mateo takes this opportunity to knock on the door. “When did you last speak with your handler?”

Marie frowns, uncomfortable at having to have this conversation, but not angry at him for starting it. “I’ve been informed of the development. You’ve not told Leona?”

“Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“I wanted to hear what you had to say about it.”

“You want me to justify my actions?” she figures.

“Some of them.”

Marie sighs. “I had nothing when I first came here. Heath makes it sound like this romantic story where he believed in me the whole time, and we fell in love at first sight. It wasn’t that easy, and it took much longer than that. I was homeless for a bit, sleeping in an empty lot before I ever felt safe telling him anything. I needed money, and I needed an identity. Winona had already set up her forgery operation by then, so that’s who I ended up with. Can you imagine how different my life would have been if I had just found a different forger? I can. I think about it all the time. She asked me a lot more questions than she did you, Mateo, and I didn’t have any good answers. She gave me what I asked for, free of charge, and I should have known right then that it wasn’t just pity, but I was on the hook. She started asking me to do things to pay her back. Little things at first, then more dangerous, and she came to realize that I was far more educated and skilled than any normal person could achieve within a single lifetime.

“I honestly don’t remember how we broached the subject, but I remember I gave her as little information about where I come from as possible. I didn’t just spill the beans about everything all at once. She’s been squeezing more and more out of me ever since. One day, she noticed a few extra people stepping into my condo, and she questioned me about you. It was her idea to have her forge your papers too. She had shut down by then, as it was an only temporary assignment years ago. She finished re-setting up her den just hours before we arrived for help, and you were her only recent clients. That’s what put her on the radar of legitimate law enforcement, because they noticed unusual activity in the system. She’s the daughter of a U.S. senator, but she’s not invisible. She decided she needed help, so she concocted this plan to get into bed with you by upgrading your credentials to SD6. To protect you, I...manipulated the situation to put a greater target on Leona, since she has actual training in the field.”

“This all checks out so far, but it doesn’t explain everything that’s happened to us.” He’s not judging her for what she did to get by. They’ve all done things. He’s only questioning her choice to keep it from them. The government has been weird with them from the start, which doesn’t make sense, given her position. Why wasn’t she honest? “They keep following us around the globe. Why is that?”

She’s seething just a bit. “They don’t trust me to report back on you, which they’re right not to. I’m trying to keep you out of it as much as possible. They’re following us because they hope you will eventually be more forthcoming about our origins and abilities.”

“What do they know about us already?”

“They know that we’re time travelers, and that we don’t have control over it. I’ve told them that you’re cognizant of certain special locations around the world that can give us temporary control. We are now looking for this special water in the hopes that it can somehow get us back home.”

“These claims are rather accurate,” Mateo points out.

“Yes, it’s very easy to omit information, but it’s not easy to lie to them outright. If I make a claim, it better be true, to some degree.”

Mateo nods. Now for the real question. “Why lie to us?”

Marie is reluctant to answer, or maybe she’s unsteady in her self-awareness. “This life; this...secret agent shit, it teaches you not to trust people. You get really comfortable hiding things from others, even when you love them. Heath knows absolutely nothing. I sold my intellectual property, that’s true, which mostly explains why we’re so rich, but it doesn’t account for all the money. I get paid for this work. I get paid very well. I just have to go in the field every once in a while.”

“Field work, doing what?”

“Various things, usually unrelated. At least that’s what I thought, but now we’ve found out that Senator Morton was involved, I’m starting to think there’s some kind of secret civil war in the government, and it’s all connected.”

“If there’s a secret war,” Mateo begins, “our team is at the center of it.”

“Yes. Unless...”

“Unless our arrival here is but a fraction of the story, and plenty of other travelers have made their way into this reality.”

“Yes, we may be only part of a statistic. I’ve been trying to find that out, but Winona doesn’t give without getting.”

“Then let’s give,” he suggests.

“What do you mean?”

“She wants answers, and you haven’t been able to give her very many, because you’ve had to protect us. But the thing is that we’re here, and we can protect each other, so let’s give her whatever we need to in order to get what we want. She may know where my cousin is, and not even realize it. She may know the location of a reality transition point, but not understand its nature.”

“You want to tell the rest what I did?” Marie asks, up to her eyeballs in anxiety.

“Well, only the core group. Andile, the alternates, and the McIvers don’t need to know anything about all that.”

“That’s how it starts,” Marie says, “the lying. You start justifying what you’re saying, and what you’re not. Then it just gets worse from there.”

“You’ve had to carry this burden on your own for four years, and I would love to share the load, but I am not smart enough to help. We need the others. Leona, Ramses, and Angela can tell us what to do. Truthfully, Kivi is literally unreliable, and Heath...”

“Heath is still an outsider to you.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t help it.”

“That’s okay, I get that. Either way, can we wait a little while longer?”

“Okay,” Mateo replies diplomatically. “Whenever you’re ready.”