The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 7, 2489

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The Vellani Ambassador did not return to Castlebourne until the evening of July 6, 2488. Before the new crew could use it outside of training purposes, Ramses had to get into the slingdrive, and find out why the navigation system was still off. There was something he was missing, and he now believed he understood what it was. “It’s us.”

“Us?” Leona questioned.

“We’re a variable that’s not being accounted for. We may never be able to account for it. I think that our temporal energy is mixing with the quintessence, and interfering with its normal operation. Think about it, you jumped forward a year and a day to get to the Goldilocks Corridor, then another year and a day when you came back. It’s based on our pattern. It’s...including that in its calculations, for some reason.”

“You don’t think you can fix it?”

“I don’t know that we need to,” Ramses replied. “Is this our ship anymore?”

“That’s a good point,” Leona said. She looked around at the ol’ girl. She had served them well, but they had been training a replacement team for years now, even though Team Matic only came up with the idea days ago.

The year that the slingdrive was off-limits was not wasted. After three plus years of hard work, Mateo’s daughters were nearing the completion of their studies, and Prince Darko had already decided that they were fully ready for the field. During this past year, even though they weren’t allowed to jump into FTL, Mirage took the time to train the cadets in ship operations. They were delegated responsibilities, and no longer needed the aid of Ramses or Leona. It was time to make good on their mandate, and rescue as many people as they could from the tyranny of the Exin Empire.

“Okay,” Leona said with a sigh. “I’ll tell Mirage that she can upload herself.” Mirage was waiting to do this while Ramses worked, but his job here appeared to be over. Team Matic was once again aimless. They would have to find something new to do.

“Whoa, we still need you here,” Hrockas insisted an hour later at their daily briefing.

“One day at a time?” Ramses questioned.

“You get a lot done in that one day,” Hrockas reminded him.

It was true, Ramses had become exceedingly great at maximizing his presence in the timestream by setting up multiple projects for automation that would continue on while he was gone. Then, when he came back a year later, he would inspect them before moving on to the projects for the next interim year. The sky was positively littered with orbital defense platforms. One of the moons over Castlebourne was being converted into a sort of Death Star-like thing while the other moon continued to serve as a shipyard for a growing fleet. Some of the battleships and battledrones would stay here to defend the homeworld while others would be transdimensionally shrunk, and sent off to the Goldilocks Corridor to aid in the conflict against the Exin Empire. Ramses had done more for this world than anyone besides Hrockas himself, and the former had a hard time acknowledging that. He was too humble.

Azad and Costa were here too, having been fully read into the situation, in regards to time travel and whatnot. They had their own jobs here now. Azad was on defense, and Costa on offense. Hopefully, this star system would never be attacked, and the two of them would have nothing to do, but it was best to be prepared. “I still need to learn from you,” Azad told him. “This technology is way beyond anything we used a century ago, even ignoring the superpowers you all have.”

“Same goes for me,” Costa agreed.

“I always write manuals,” Ramses explained. “Or rather, I have them written by my AI. I don’t type them up myself, like an animal. The point is, you’ll be fine, wherever I end up.”

Hrockas offered Prince Darko a job, overseeing all internal security of the planet, but he had yet to accept it. He wasn’t sure whether there would be any more teaching opportunities, and if there were, he couldn’t do both. He was invited to the meeting anyway. “Let him rest if he wants to. People like us see time differently. Keep in mind, it’s only been a day for him since last year. He probably never gets breaks. Not even, like, an hour. Do you sleep anymore?” he asked Ramses.

“Occasionally,” Ramses answered.

“We have a number of relaxation domes for you to choose from,” Hrockas pitched. “Some of them are opaque with permanent nighttime holography, and we’re equipped with hibernation sedatives for the ultra-sleepbound.”

“I can control my own neurotransmitters and hormones,” Rames explained. “I could fall asleep right here, right now, in seconds.”

“Really?” Azad asked, intrigued. “Do it,” he goaded.

Ramses smiled, considering it. Then he leaned back a few centimeters, shut his eyes, and drifted away.

“Computer, is he asleep?” Hrockas asked.

“Affirmative.”

“That’s wild,” Azad said excitedly.

Leona looked over at her engineer. “To clarify his point, I believe that he is done. He has some...personal projects that he’s been putting off, and you should be able to operate without him at this point. He’s not designing any new ships or satellites. He’s just having them built. There are multiple people in this room qualified to carry on his legacy. That’s what this meeting is really about, actually.” She looked over at Team Kadiar. “Have you settled on a...hierarchy, for lack of a better term?”

Mirage stood up. “I’m the ship. I will become the Vellani Ambassador. While aboard, I serve as captain. Dubravka is my lieutenant, and while on an away mission, she will lead the team. Kivi is the primary negotiator while Romana handles team security. Lastly, Tertius controls everyone’s memories.”

“I’m also security,” Tertius adds. “I’m not a mindreader, per se, but I might be able to detect an infiltrator or mole in the population that we’re visiting. So I will alert the team to that, if it comes up.”

Mirage nodded in agreement. They had been discussing this for months.

“Sounds good to me,” Leona said. “I believe that I’m ready for handoff.”

Jesimula Utkin opened the door from the hallway, and strode right in. “What about me? Could I join you?”

“On the VA?” Mirage asked. “Doing what?”

“It sounds like you need a coordinator on the ground,” Jesi answered. “I’m quite capable of managing large batches of information. I used to hunt for cures all throughout time and space. Did you think I was just guessing?”

“You’ll need to go through proper training,” Dubra said to her. “Even Tertius went through basic.”

Jesi laughed. “I can handle myself in a fight.”

Darko stood up, and tried to look imposing. “Can you? Hit me.”

Most people in the room couldn’t quite tell what happened, but before too long, Darko was on the floor, and Jesi was on top of him, holding him in place. She leaned down, and kissed him on the forehead. “Tap out.”

He tapped twice against his leg. “Who taught you that?” he asked after she graciously let him get back to his feet.

Jesi smirked, and looked over at Leona. “I was trained by the Crucia Heavy of The Highest Order. She taught me everything she knew.”

Leona stood up quickly. “No shit?”

“No shit,” Jesi answered.

“Ever since we met?”

“And then some,” Jesi said.

Leona stared into Jesi’s eyes, perhaps looking for any hint of deception, or maybe even using some kind of psychic connection. “Mirage,” she began, “I am bound by my oath to recommend Jesimula Utkin for this assignment most ardently.

That seemed to be good enough for Mirage. “Very well.”

The meeting continued on for a little while. Hrockas offered Darko the head of security job again, but Mateo had the bright idea to suggest Kallias Bran, who had less experience with hand-to-hand combat, but more experience with police work. He would be better suited to the position, which shouldn’t involve any physical confrontation. That freed Prince Darko to found a training program. Who his students would be, and what their goals would be, were questions that they weren’t going to worry about asking quite yet.

Only after the meeting was over, and everyone else had left, did Mateo wake his friend up. “Did that help?”

Ramses quivered into his stretches, and looked around at the mostly empty room. “Yes, actually. That was a brilliant suggestion. Who was that again?”

“It was Azad who told you to sleep.”

“Remind me to thank him.” He yawned and stood up. “What did I miss?”

“Nothing you care about,” Mateo replied. “Leona said you have personal projects that you’ve delayed in service to others. I’m bored. What can you tell me about them?”

“Two major projects, which are related, but not inherently interdependent. Only one of them is ready. The other may never be. At any rate, they will be limited to the team. I mean it, I don’t even want Romana to have them. I believe that only the six of us are built to withstand the technological upgrades that I’m working on. I have a working prototype of the first one that I’ve been hoping to test, if you’re willing to be my guinea pig once more.”

“I’m in,” Mateo said sincerely.

Ramses offered his hand, then teleported them both to his lab. He looked around to make sure that no one was watching before approaching a wall. He started to make weird gestures in front of it, sometimes reaching out to caress or tap the surface, and stepping back a couple times to give it a strange look. Finally, the sound of a pocket door sliding open came from the perpendicular wall, but nothing changed visually. Still, Ramses pivoted, and walked straight through what was apparently only a hologram.

Mateo followed. They were in a new section of the lab. There wasn’t much here that was different from the main section, but some of the items looked more advanced, while others looked less complete. “We couldn’t have just teleported right inside?”

Ramses shut the door behind them. “Permanent teleporter suppressant. We couldn’t escape here either. It’s completely self-sufficient. All it shares with the main lab is that hidden door, and the regolith between the walls.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about it before? Does anyone else know?”

“Because you didn’t need to know before, and they still don’t.”

“I see.”

Ramses started to walk to the far end. “Take off your IMS; every layer of every module, and lie face down in your birthday suit.”

Mateo removed his suit, and walked over there buck naked. The table was mostly solid, but there were conspicuous and symmetrically placed openings throughout.

“Please read this,” Ramses asked.

A hologram appeared underneath the table’s face hole. It detailed what was going to be done to him in clear, unambiguous language. Even an idiot like him could understand it, and after finishing the brochure, he was now more interested than ever. “Can I see the needles?”

Ramses took a beat. “Probably shouldn’t.”

“Okay.”

“Do you consent?”

“I do.”

“And are you ready?”

“Absolutely.”

“You read the part where it says it’s gonna hurt?”

“Get on with it.”

“Brace yourself. Literally. Hold onto those handles.”

Mateo gripped the metal bars. The robot started swinging its various arms into position, which he could hear, but not see. One of them started lasering into his neck, and worked its way down his spine. Other incisions were made on his wrists, shoulders, ankles, the back of his knees, and even his mons pubis. The cuts hurt, but the implantation of the devices hurt even more. It was over surprisingly quickly, though the spinal implant took the longest. Another round of lasers sealed him back up, and it was all apparently over.

“How do you feel?”

“Ready to throw my IMS away,” Mateo said.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. Only the procedure has been tested. You need to learn how to activate the nanites.”

“I think I have it figured out.” Mateo could still feel the implants underneath his skin. They were too deep to protrude and be noticed by others, but he was acutely aware of them. The one against his brain gave him neural access to the whole network. He could sense them tucked away dormant in their little gel matrices. These were not his first nanites. In one go, he released them. They spread all over his body until he was fully encapsulated in only a few seconds. It was like something out of a scifi movie. Then again, that described their whole lives these days. He was now basically wearing an Integrated Multipurpose suit, except that it was extremely thin, with only one layer needed, reportedly vastly stronger than his last suit, and on him at all times. One thing seemed to be missing, though. “I still need a PRU to breathe, drink, and eat.”

Ramses held up an injector. “Collapse the facial segment so I can inject you with the life support pocket dimension array. It goes in your mouth.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 6, 2488

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Last year, Mateo spent all day with his three daughters. They went all over the place together, including multiple adventure domes to continue their beta testing commitments. This was what the girls did when they weren’t training with Prince Darko, or relaxing in one of the relaxation areas. The four of them also spent some time in the sunrise pod, which Romana had described the year before. Today, they were all planning on getting a looksee at what Hrockas was tentatively calling Weldome. It was kind of a ridiculous name, but a vital aspect of this planet being a vacation hub. If someone wanted to visit using relativistic ships, it would take them roughly over 100 years, depending on where they started from. Even with a reframe engine, which the stellar neighborhood was developing, it would take a couple of months. The Weldome was packed top to bottom with surrogate pods. Visitors could cast their consciousnesses across the quantum network, and arrive in their pod in minutes.

Weldome—or whatever better name someone managed to come up with—was finished in its original state decades ago, but it wasn’t perfect. A visitor would be expected to show up in a generic cybernetic template, and could print a simulacrum of their face later, or transform their appearance using onboard hologram generators. Alternatively, they could request a clone of their real body by first transmitting their digital DNA ahead of time. This would take months to complete, which in a society of effective immortality, that would be okay for some. People certainly had a history of planning their vacations months in advance. But Ramses knew it could be better. He had written a compression algorithm, which used a technological time bubble to accelerate the development of a clone at alarming speeds. To save on power, this process still took about an hour, but the consciousness lay dormant in the temporary memory core, so the user couldn’t really tell the difference anyway. This was revolutionary technology, and while quantum casting was commonplace elsewhere, no other planet did it so fantastically. This could give Hrockas the edge he needed to become the owner of the number one destination planet in the galaxy.

It was time to test this. Hrockas was in touch with someone he once knew on Earth, who was willing to give it a shot. He was currently in a lab in what was once known as North Korea. The oppressive government collapsed centuries ago, with the southern border being erased from the map. The area was now just as much of a utopia as everywhere else in the world. There was one major special characteristic, where the rules were not the same as other places, though. As stated, quantum casting was ubiquitous, but there were all sorts of regulations and policies that governed how this technology could be used. One aspect of it was that people were still not allowed to permanently send themselves across interstellar space. They had to be using their new substrates as surrogates, even if the transference was permanent in all practical terms. Korea was different. The old body could be destroyed immediately, while the destination could be selected as the truly permanent housing unit for the consciousness. This was controversial, though probably where the law was headed worldwide. As Project Stargate propagated colonization efforts further and further into the Milky Way, it was becoming less reasonable to force people to treat Earth as some sort of homebase, instead of just another planet in the network.

For now, Costa wasn’t planning on destroying his original body on Earth, but because of its unique laws, Korea was still the best place to test any new casting technology without as much scrutiny or interference. He was nearing the end of his hour right now. They were watching the pod put the finishing touches on his new clone body when an alarm went off on Ramses’ watch. “The sentry satellites. They’ve picked up an object entering the star system. Looks like we have company.”

“Are the defense platforms ready?” Hrockas asked.

“It depends on who’s here, and how powerful they are.”

“Take the Dritewing,” Hrockas asked. “You already have authorization.”

Ramses teleported away, and while Mateo wanted to watch the test of the new casting system, he also knew that his friend needed a wingman. He teleported too, to the restricted shipyard where the battleships were kept, along with other related vessels and weapons. The Dritewing was the flagship of the Castlebourne fleet, though it had no current crew, and Hrockas had no idea how to start an army, nor a security contingency. He never thought that he might need one, and mercenaries weren’t really a thing anymore. He was mulling over plans to ask for a group of soldiers and officers from the stellar neighborhood to be stationed here on a permanent basis. Mateo wasn’t even sure whether he had begun discussions with Teagarden, or if it was still only an idea. For now, Mateo and Ramses were on their own. Since Hrockas had the automators build these ships without the team’s involvement, it was lacking in certain superadvanced technologies, namely a teleporter. They had to launch from the ground the old fashioned way, and wait to intercept whatever had invaded their borders in realtime.

Ramses jerked his head around as he was watching the screen, and the sensors. Mateo didn’t know what he was seeing, but it must have been interesting. “It’s a person.”

“How are they surviving out there without a ship?”

“I’m guessing they’re suited up.”

“Can any jetpack move that fast?”

“They may have been going this fast when they stepped out of their ship. Newton’s Law of Inertia. If there’s nothing out there to slow them down, they won’t slow down. Computer, show me their path, and projections.”

A curvy line appeared on the map, eventually turning from white to blue, presumably to show where the flying person was expected to go in the near future.

Ramses’ eyes opened wide. “They’re kissing atmospheres.”

“Why?”

“To slow down. They don’t want to be going this fast. They’re trying to stop.”

“Can we help?

“Sure, we can match speed, and then one of us can teleport out there.”

“I’ll put my helmet on,” Mateo volunteered as Ramses was inputting the new heading. The mysterious visitor was almost through to the other end of the solar system when they were situated for rescue. It was important that they were moving at the exact same speed as the target, or teleporting to them could result in sudden death, being no better than ramming them with the ship at the equivalent difference in speed.

It was easy for Mateo to make one quick jump out there, grab the man who had fallen overboard, and to teleport right back to the bridge of the Dritewing. “Computer, full stimulant,” Mateo heard the stranger order while their respective helmets were still touching for a conductive link. The man breathed in deep with his eyes closed, then opened them. He reached up and removed his helmet. “Thank you for the rescue, or I won’t go down easy. Which is it?”

“It was a rescue,” Mateo assured him. “We mean you no harm.”

The man was apprehensive, but open. “I appreciate that.” He shifted his gaze between Mateo and Ramses. “Report.”

Ramses stepped forward. “You’re on the Castlebourne Battleship Dritewing. We launched to investigate when our sats detected your arrival. We thought you might be a threat. Are you?”

“What’s Castlebourne?”

“It’s the planet we’re on our way back towards.”

“What’s your name?” Mateo asked.

“Officer Azad Petit, mechanic of the Teagarden Recon Frigate Twenty-Four. We were trying to get to Barnard’s Star. It was above my paygrade, but my superiors received word that it was no longer off-limits, so they wanted to check it out.”

“When did your ship launch?” Ramses asked.

“It was 2380.”

Ramses nodded. “That makes sense. In 2369. Leona divulged to the higher-ups that Gatewood was abandoned. It was only a matter of time before they decided to see for themselves.”

“How far off course am I?” Azad asked. “I was living in my IMS for two months.”

“Why?” Mateo asked.

“Ship blew up,” Azad replied. “I have no idea how it happened. In fact, I don’t know that it was destroyed. That was just my guess. I happened to be servicing an airlock at the time, and some kind of explosion knocked me clear of the debris, and slightly off-course. That debris might have ended up where it was going, and I guess I just missed it by a degree or two.”

“Gatewood is roughly on the way out here, yeah,” Ramses confirmed. “Castlebourne is about a hundred and eight light years from Earth. Very smart, trying to use aerobraking maneuvers to slow down.”

Azad shook his head. “I don’t know that it would have been enough. I was trying to find a route that would take me into a complete orbit around one of the planets, so I could start to sort of ping-pong my way back and forth, but I don’t think that would have happened. Thank God you spotted me.”

Mateo shrugged. “Saving people is kind of our jam.”

Azad nodded graciously as he walked over to look out the viewport as they were reentering orbit. “Are those geodesic domes?”

“Yes, tens of thousands of them,” Mateo answered.

“How long has this world been here in secret?”

“It’s not a secret,” Ramses corrected. “Teagarden is aware of it. We’ll land, and I’ll take you to see the owner. He’ll be happy to have a new beta tester, if you’re interested.”

“Beta tester for what?”

“This is a destination world, full of adventure, relaxation, and exploration. You could spend a lifetime here and not yet see everything.” While the concept of life expectancy had become essentially meaningless thanks to advancements in health, medicine, and consciousness transference, among other related technologies, lifetime had taken on a new meaning. Whereas before, it was vague and never more than an estimate, it was now standardized to precisely 120 years. It was all very complicated, and the rules were still arbitrary, but basically, researchers arrived at this number by calculating the expected lifespan of an organic human being in a semi-controlled environment with only certain medical interventions. The archetype for this individual could take regular medicine to treat particular issues, and prevent other issues, but this did not include medical nanites, whole-body diagnostics, or advanced implants. Mateo wasn’t sure if such people still technically existed, but they were probably somewhere, defiant of the status quo, and nostalgic for simpler times.

“I need to check in with my superiors,” Azad said, almost apologetically. “I went AWOL.”

“Did you set the explosion?” Ramses asked. “Did you know it was gonna happen?”

“Of course not!” Azad insisted.

“Did you turn off your communication system while you were adrift?” Ramses pressed.

“No, I was sending out a distress signal the whole time.”

“Then you’re not AWOL,” Ramses reasoned. “You’re either MIA or KIA, but you’re not AWOL.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Azad admitted while clearly still nervous.

“I’m certain that Hrockas will give you access to a quantum terminal,” Mateo told him. “Terminus!” he exclaimed. “That’s what they should call the dome with all the clone pods, and stuff.”

“Yeah,” Ramses agreed, “that’s better than Weldome.”

After they landed the Dritewing, Ramses held out his hand towards Azad to teleport him to Castledome. Azad reached back, saying, “um...hello. We shake with our right hands where I’m from. Has that much changed in a century?”

“No, I just made a mistake,” Ramses covered. “We better get on the train.” They were so used to just being honest about their superpowers, it was easy to forget that the majority of the population didn’t know anything about them. While The Edge meeting determined that the vonearthans would be given certain upgrades, they were framed as quantum leaps in technological advancements. It was never the plan to publicize the true origins of them. Mateo, Ramses, and Azad got on the train, but the rest of the group was still in Terminus, or whatever they ended up calling it, so they just went right back there.

The quantum casting test subject had arrived while they were gone, and was currently in the acclimation room. This was a safe space, designed with a calming aesthetic, and access to medical supplies, if needed. By the time the three guys showed up, Costa was fine. This room was more of a precaution than anything. Casting could be disorienting, but shouldn’t require a lot of recovery time or tools. From here, a normal visitor would move on to one of the orientation rooms, which was also where they would receive their housing information, and the appropriate access codes. Costa wasn’t going to go through all that, though. He was just here to make sure that the transmission was successful. They had no reason to think that it wouldn’t be, but these pods had to be thoroughly tested before the Earthan government would allow full-scale networking incorporation.

Azad was the last to step into the room. He immediately stood up straight, and pulled his hand into a salute. “Sergeant Whinawray. Officer Azad Petit, reporting in after an unscheduled long-term absence. Your orders, sir!”

“At ease, Officer,” Costa replied.

Azad struggled for a moment, but did manage to relax.

“I take it you two know each other,” Ramses said, trying to cut the tension with humor.

“No orders,” Costa went on. “I need to sleep, and I’m guessing you do as well. We’ll debrief in the morning unless we, or someone else, is in immediate danger.”

“Not to my knowledge, sir,” Azad replied.

“I’m retired, Officer,” Costa clarified. “No sir necessary.”

“With respect, sir, that’s not how it works,” Azad contended.

Hrockas turned to address one of the hospitality bots. “Assign them both Imperial Suites in the Palacium Hotel.”

“There is only one Imperial Suite available,” the bot explained. “You weren’t yet sure whether it should be one of the unique units, or a class.”

“Do we have a Royal Suite available?” Hrockas pressed.

“Yes,” the bot confirmed.

“Great. Officer Petit, you’ll be in one of the Royal Suites.”

“That’s really not necessary,” Azad said.

“Sir,” Hrockas began, “this planet is designed to accommodate hundreds of billions of people. There are currently about a couple dozen. We can spare one Royal Suite. I can’t have it getting out that one of my first customers slept in a paltry king-sized bed, or something. Don’t forget to fill out your feedback card, though, thanks!”

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Extremus: Year 76

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Jaunemus, as Lilac told everyone it was called, is more oblong than Earth’s moon, Luna. It is made up of different elements in different ratios, and is believed to have formed via co-accretion, which is to say that it coalesced at roughly the same time as Verdemus, using a shared accretion disk at the dawn of this star system’s creation. This is relatively rare in the galaxy as most co-accretion events will happen for icy or gas giants, but not as easily for terrestrials. Luna, for instance, was formed due to an impact event instead. Due to its less spheroidal shape, its high centrifugal forces from rapid spin, and its significantly shorter distance to its host planet, the surface gravity of Jaunemus is extremely varied. All in all, however, an object will never be greater than seventy-five percent as heavy as it would be on Luna, which is already 16.6% its weight on Earth. Once the Kamala Khan scanned the entire surface of the planet, the Verdemusians agreed that the logical next step was to scan the Jaunemus too. It quickly found an anomaly. The sensors could detect no energy readings, but it picked up on a spot that was sitting at exactly the same gravity of Earth. That would be impossible naturally. The camera didn’t see any visible signs of human intervention, but there has to be something here, likely hidden below the regolith.

Eagan is maintaining his duties in the hock building, watching Ilias Tamm, having taken over for Lilac, who has better things to do with her life now. She and everyone else are landing the Kamala Khan now for a new mission, to investigate the Jaunemusian gravity anomaly. Belahkay will remain on the shuttle in case something happens. The rest have each put on the armor modules and helmets of their Integrated Multipurpose Suits to begin the search. “You good?” Lilac asks him.

He holds up the a-okay sign. “Yes, but I should be asking you that.”

Lilac returns the sign, and swings it around to get the group’s response. One might assume that Spirit would have become Tinaya’s second in command, but she didn’t want the job. “Okay. We go out two at a time, since that’s the maximum number of people who can fit in the airlock. I’ll go first with Niobe. Spirit and Totle will be next.”

“I’ll go first,” Tinaya insists. Without bothering to wait for a response, she phase-shifts right through the hull of the shuttle, and gently drifts down to the ground. She holds the a-okay sign back up so others can see her through the window. Then she begins to walk around on her own.

Following their airlock procedures, the rest of them follow suit, though on their own vectors. It’s not particularly organized, but this is a search party, on the hunt for something unnatural, like a trapdoor, or even just a small sensor array.

“Naya, where are you? Where did you go?” Spirit questions.

Tinaya turns around. “I’m right here!” She starts to wave her arm.

“Can’t see you.”

“I’m waving!”

“No. You’re not.” Spirit starts to point. “One, two, three...four, including myself.”

Tinaya points to her own self. “Five.”

“Tinaya! What are you talking about? Are you invisible?”

“I don’t think so.” She was looking down as she was walking, but now she looks up as she’s turning around again, away from the group. Before her is a large structure, obviously built from the same stuff that the moon is made of. It’s several stories high. There is no way they would have missed this. She is invisible, as is whatever this place is. Niobe is even further along than her. She’s closer to the structure. “Niobe, you don’t see the building in front of you? You’re about to run into it.”

Niobe stops. “I am? I don’t see a thing.”

“Walk forward slowly,” Tinaya suggests. “Hold out your hand, and feel for it.”

Niobe does this. Her hand ends up passing right through the building, and then the rest of her.

“Are you inside of a building?” Tinaya asks.

“No. I’m...it’s...there’s nothing here.”

“It’s your glass,” Lilac guesses. “You walked through a dimensional barrier, and didn’t even realize it. Anyone else who tries is just going to miss it entirely.”

“Okay. I’ll investigate, and report back.”

“No, you won’t,” Lilac argues.

“Yes. I will. I’m in charge.”

“You may as well be on another planet,” Lilac goes on. “We can’t help you. Come back out, and we’ll have Belahkay build a magic door for us.”

“On it,” Belahkay agrees.

“I can’t get hurt, I’m made of glass,” Tinaya jokes ironically.

“Don’t do it,” Spirit says.

“Come stop me. I’m already through the wall.” She’s standing in a dimly lit hallway now. There appears to be a dead end to her right, so she shrugs, and heads for the left. As she walks, she reports to the group what she’s seeing, as boring and nondescript as it is. Walls standing on the floor, holding up the ceiling. There’s nothing interesting here, until there is. She finds herself in what looks like a giant’s library, except inside of storing books on the shelves, it’s artificial gestation pods. Thousands and thousands of gestation pods. It looks like that one scene in The Matrix.

“Are they occupied?” Belahkay asks.

“Hold on, let me get closer.” Tinaya approaches the nearest stack, and looks through the view window. “It’s...it’s Omega Strong.”

“Really.” Spirit says, not sounding much like a question.

“This one is Omega too. And also this one. They’re all Omega.”

“Maybe they’re not really Omega,” Niobe offers. “Maybe they’re Anglos, from Project Stargate.”

“Does it matter which?” Aristotle questions.

“Yes, it does,” Niobe contends.

“I found a terminal. I’ll research what’s going on here.” Tinaya steps over to it, and starts browsing. None of these systems is secure. As secretive as these operations are obviously meant to be, you would think that someone would at least password protect it, even if it’s not quantum encrypted. “I found the main systems,” she says. “Life support...now on. Dimensional veil...off.” As she’s looking through more of the data, which mostly includes health and quality tracking information for each of the Omega clones, her friends walk through the front door, and meet up with her. By the time they arrive, the atmospheric generators have finished making this chamber breathable.

They remove their helmets. “Find anything else?” Spirit asks.

“Yeah, I was just about to talk to the little virtual assistant.” She presses the button, and says, “bloop,” at the same time.

An Omega hologram appears next to her. He sizes her up, as well as the group. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Neither are you,” Tinaya points out.

“Yes, I am,” Hol!Omega volleys.

Tinaya breathes deeply. “Report.”

“I don’t know your security clearance,” Hol!Omega replies.

“Clearance Level Crystal,” she replies, phasing her hand through the nearest pod, then pulling it back out again.

“Interesting. I still can’t tell you anything,” Hol!Omega says apologetically.

“Okay.” Tinaya claps her hands. “Belahkay, prepare the warhead. We’re blowing this place to smithereens.”

“No, don’t do that,” Hol!Omega begs. “Fine, I’ll tell you. Just stop threatening violence. Jesus.” He throws up a second hologram, this one showing the Anatol Klugman, which is waiting in its hangar under the surface of Verdemus. “After years of debate, the council of Extremus finally decided to build a warship to deal with the threat of the True Extremists, who have been discovered to be the descendants of a time travel event that seeded life in a region of the galaxy known as the Goldilocks Corridor. Here, they have built what is now known to be the oldest self-sustaining civilization in this reality of the universe. At first, we believed them to be isolationists, who were only on-board Extremus to divert the ship to a new vector, away from their dozens of worlds. We have since learned that an ever-growing faction of purists are building an army with the intention of destroying Earth, and the rest of the stellar neighborhood. To our knowledge, they currently intend to leave Extremus alone, but that’s obviously not good enough for us. We can’t just sit by and watch our brethren die in a holocaust.

“My original self, Saxon Parker attempted to broker a peace treaty, but he was ultimately killed for his efforts, along with a number of my Anglo brothers, who were originally put in place to operate the Project Stargate colonization ships. Since the Anglos are not equipped to fight a war, they have returned to their responsibilities. It is up to us to put a stop to the Ex Wars.”

“I thought that it was called The Bears War,” Tinaya points out.

Hol!Omega frowns. “If someone called it that, they’re either an Exin themselves, or heard it from an Exin spy. It is their term for it.”

Tinaya looks over at Spirit, who begins to seethe. “Thank you for telling me that. Now I know who in the Bridger section cannot be trusted.”

Tinaya is choosing to trust that Spirit is being honest about that, and isn’t the Exin spy that they should be worried about. She nods. “Go on, Omega.”

“The Anatol Klugman was designed for an army of clones.” Hol!Omega looks down at a line of pods. “My clones. As you know, I was created as any other Anglo, but I renounced my calling, and struck out on my own. Saxon took my place, and his reward for this was a horrific and painful death at the hands of an enemy who knows no honor. I vowed to donate myself to the cause in the most literal and profound sense. I will pilot the AK to the Goldilocks Corridor, and wage war with them to keep them away from Earth. The way I see it, it’s the least I could do.”

“The Klugman,” Belahkay begins, using Tinaya’s helmet’s speaker to stay in the conversation, “it doesn’t have a reframe engine. Why waste the time moving at only relativistic speeds?”

“A number of reasons,” Hol!Omega responds. I wanted to maximize the real estate in the ship so that more Omega soldiers could fit. Secondly, a reframe engine poses a safety risk. It’s honestly a wonder the one on Extremus wasn’t damaged by the micrometeorite strike that took out our engineering section decades ago. It’s a very delicate piece of machinery, which requires constant maintenance at scale. This need would be disadvantageous during a battle when every fighter counts. Lastly, a reframe engine is unnecessary to accomplish our goals. Using data from the future, we know when the Exin army will launch their assault on the stellar neighborhood. Before they do this, their soldiers will be scattered on various worlds populated by innocents. We wish to contain the theatre of war to their staging planet, and they will only be at that location during a relatively short window.”

“You speak as if you are Omega Proper. Are you not but a copied version of him, while the original remains on the Extremus?” Spirit asks him.

“I am the uploaded consciousness of the original Omega...not a copy. There is no other on the ship at the moment. As I’ve said, I have dedicated myself to this. No mission matters if this one is not seen through.”

Spirit closes her eyes respectfully, and nods once.

“Your plan,” Aristotle begins to say. “It will fail.”

“I’m sorry?” Hol!Omega questions.

“I know the campaign of which you speak,” Aristotle goes on. “The Exin army overwhelms your ship in days, and moves on to their goal with barely a second thought.”

“How is that possible?” Tinaya asks him. You’re only from about eighty years in the future. It will take much longer for the Klugman to arrive, and begin this campaign.”

Aristotle stands fast, and says nothing for a moment. Everyone waits for his answer. “I was not always in the time period where Team Matic found me. I do not speak of it for the dangers of intervening in the timeline, but I believe that I can stand by no longer. Omega, your warship will fall, and your clones will be annihilated. I urge you to reconsider your strategy.”

“What would you have us do?” Hol!Omega asks him.

Aristotle breathes deeply. “Your choice to protect innocent lives by localizing the battlegrounds is a noble one, but by allowing your enemy to concentrate its forces, you also allow them to maintain their home field advantage while limiting your own access to resources. They will be exhausted in the midst of a bombardment of fighters that you cannot hope to stave off. You may be underestimating their ground weapons.”

“I didn’t think that they would have any ground weapons,” Hol!Omega admits. “They never planned on fighting so close to home.”

“They are more prepared than you realize. They have been planning a defensive for millennia, fearing the wrath that the stellar neighborhood may descend upon them one day. That’s why they’re so pissy and violent,” Aristotle explains. “A more effective approach would be to pick them off where they live, while they are off-guard and not expecting hostilities. But I understand that you would never do this—I would not either—so I instead suggest taking your resources with you. I can aid in this effort, and will agree to do so.”

“What do you mean?” Hol!Omega asks.

Tinaya is very worried, especially since Aristotle just rather casually suggested putting civilians at risk. They still don’t know how old he is, and they have clearly not heard everything he has been up to. “Yeah, what do you mean?”

Aristotle hesitates to answer again. But he does. Boy, does he? “They have a staging planet…so take one of your own with you.”

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Extremus: Year 75

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Eagan Spurrs is not a man, and that is not a derogatory way to put it. Artificial intelligence is a complex subject. There is no clearly defined point when a robot becomes truly self-aware and conscious. There are ways to test this, but no one here is qualified to do such a thing. Not that they would have to anyway. Eagan fully admits to being artificial. Research into the field of AI started in the 20th century, and by the end of the first quarter of the 21st, generative AI was the hottest form on the market. These were extremely sophisticated programs, which could answer unique queries, often in ways that would not inherently give their true origin away. They were used to analyze and synthesize vast amounts of data to organize people’s lives and work, and teach users about various topics, but they couldn’t actually do anything. Humans were still needed to implement any ideas that their collaboration produced. The natural evolution of them was the realization of something known as Performative AI.

PerAI is an offshoot of GenAI, and in fact, requires the latter in order to function. A request is fed into the system, and a response is formulated. This response is sometimes an answer to a question, but it also sometimes requires the manipulation of other systems. For instance, one might ask a GenAI how to write the code for a website. A PerAI could come up with that answer too, but also plug the code directly into the coding program itself, and even debug it. Further advancements allowed PerAI to be incorporated into robotic substrates, so that they could perform physical tasks in the real world; tasks which they hadn’t necessarily ever been asked to do before. That’s when the general population really started taking notice. All of the sudden, all of your chores could be done by someone else. Your handy dandy personal robot could wash your dishes and clothes, mow the lawn, and buy your groceries. This solved a lot of problems in the world, even if it took a little time to be adopted. But in the end, who would bother spending all their time on work that bored them, tired them out, and prevented them from enjoying their life? Only people without the money. Fortunately, that problem was eventually solved too, thanks in no small part to the advent of General Intelligence, but that’s a topic for another time.

Eagan is a PerAI with an android body. It took Tinaya and Belahkay a few frustrating minutes to figure this out, though. Being such an old technology, neither of them was initially aware of Eagan’s limitations. He can tell them why he was created, and what his job is here, but not why, or why anyone built the structure. Who was supposed to live here, and who decided that? It’s his responsibility to welcome new residents, and teach them how the megablock works. Or rather, it was going to be his job. Ever since the time mirror exploded, no one else will be coming here, leaving Eagan without a purpose. He’s not even been allowed to enter the interiors unless accompanied by a human, which is why he’s been staying out of the elements in this wikiup.

There’s another question, which they will likely never get an answer for. When Belahkay’s crew first showed up here, they scanned the surface of the planet. That was how they found the settlement in the first place, and started getting involved in the survivors’ lives. The megablock is the biggest above ground structure across the globe. It should have been easily spotted by the Iman Vellani’s sensors, so why wasn’t it? According to Eagan’s information, construction began eleven years ago, so it should have already been visible a few years ago. Belahkay dispatched a drone scout to explore the buildings while the two of them had lunch together. Once the survey was done, the three of them left the area with the images and specifications to report back to the group. Everyone else was just as surprised, and couldn’t explain it, but it did prompt them to find out whether there was anything else hiding around here.

Most of the visiting starship crew are gone by now, but they left them with a shuttle to use as they wished. The Kamala Khan has been slowly flying all around the world unmanned, looking for energy signatures, right angles, and even lifesigns. For the last several months, nothing has come up, besides a heavy water processing plant under the ocean, which will help refuel their fusion reactors. Today, the shuttle has detected something else. It’s an underground complex, hard to detect with the shuttle’s limited sensors. It’s running on very low power, presumably due to the now absence of a human presence. But that’s just conjecture. The group has not yet uncovered what the purpose of this facility is. They’re going down to the main level right now. It’s a long ride.

More than a kilometer underneath the surface, the elevator stops, and the doors open. They’re immediately struck by what’s been hiding down here. They stare up at it, gradually walking forwards to the guardrails, and then they keep on staring. “It looks like the Extremus,” Lilac points out.

“It’s a battleship,” Tinaya determines. “Look at that exterior weapons array. That down there looks like the entrance to a fighter bay.”

“Why the hell are they building this?” Belahkay questions.

“Who are they?” Aristotle asks.

They all look over at Spirit, who rolls her eyes. “For the last time, I didn’t know everything. SCR&M. Safety, Compartmentalization...” she says, stopping before the last three words of the mantra. The Bridgers were there to maintain order in the event that it was necessary, but we didn’t have our fingers in every pie. That was... Tinaya’s purpose.”

“Lataran was also a spy,” Tinaya reminds her. “Now she’s the Captain.”

“Yes, and either she was keeping this whole thing a secret, or the other Bridgers were keeping it from me. All I know is that I don’t know what this is.”

Belahkay moves over to a console, and starts flipping through the information. “I think I know why we weren’t able to detect this before,” he soon says. “It’s running off of extremely low power, prioritizing frugality over speed.”

“Why would they need to do that?” Tinaya asks. “If this planet, with its abundance of resources, is nothing more than staging grounds, why not get it done?”

“The megablock,” Spirit realizes. “That’s to house, and probably train, an army, and maybe even raise them. That would take time. Getting the ship done quickly wouldn’t be necessary, so you may as well save the hydrogen.”

“Wait,” Niobe jumps in. “Who were they planning to fight?”

Tinaya and Spirit exchange a look, and simultaneously say, “the Exins. We believe this world to be relatively close to where they live.”

“It makes sense,” Aristotle figures, “to find the one world perfectly hospitable to humans to prepare for an attack.”

“Belahkay, keep doing what you’re doing, and report in when anything interesting comes up,” Tinaya orders. She didn’t set out to become the leader here for their tiny little group, but whenever a decision has needed to be made, they’ve routinely looked to her to make it. Everyone just fell into their roles. “Niobe, you can stay with him. Spirit, there are three more levels. Explore with Lilac, stay on comms. There could be people living down here for all we know, or more Eagans. Totle, you’re with me.”

“Where are we going?” Aristotle asks her.

“Into the ship, of course,” she replies.

They step into the second elevator, but this one is fully exposed, and running down the side of the hangar. They then have to get into a third elevator in order to go up into the ship. They begin to search it with flashlights, but the lighting systems turn on by themselves to show them the way. Tinaya was right that there is a hangar bay here, but it’s for transport shuttles, not fighter jets. They are apparently troop transports for ground assaults. The fighters, on the other hand, are designed to shoot out of tubes that litter the hull everywhere there is not some kind of gun to protect the battleship itself. They find the bridge, the engineering section, and a few staterooms, but the rest of it is taken up by stasis pods. Tens of thousands of fighters can sleep here in wait for the long journey ahead of them. Belahkay would be the one to figure out where exactly they were going to be sent, and how long it would take them to get there, but unlike the Extremus, this is not a generation ship. The people who were meant to live here would lie down one second, then wake up the next, but it would be decades later in realtime.

Who were all these people expected to be? The battleship could accommodate the entire current population of Extremus, and still have plenty of room to spare. Even if every security officer and reserve soldier were conscripted into this, there would be absolutely no need for this much space. There was never any reason to build something quite this large unless they had more time to build their army. Or perhaps they had some other means in mind, like cloning. The ethical ramifications of this whole endeavor is making Tinaya’s head spin. Lataran was keeping this from her, and the Extremusian people. This is not what the mission is about. If the Exins were going to attack, then protecting the ship they already had is the only thing that ever made any sense. This thing is new. If it had been built in the past with plans for it to meet up with Extremus before it flew out of range, that would be one thing. But they’re in the present day, with no hope of catching up without a new time travel event. None of this makes any goddamn sense. They need answers. They need to contact their people, now more than ever. This is no longer an extended vacation. Now it’s a mission.

When they’re done searching the whole place, they meet back up with the rest of the group on the mezzanine level. “Anything interesting? Any people?” Tinaya asks.

“Just some labs and offices,” Lilac reports. “Nothing of note. No people.”

“You?” Niobe asks.

“It’s a sleeper ship,” Tinaya answers. “No crew quarters. Everyone in that megablock could fit in here. It was...disheartening to see.”

“We didn’t come all the way out here to wage war,” Spirit agrees.

“It’s fully operational,” Aristotle continues. “We could teleport out right now, and go. The automators are still building a few things, but all vital components are done.”

“Belahkay?” Tinaya prompts.

“I can confirm everything that you’ve been saying. The weird part about it is that it doesn’t have a reframe engine. The Goldilocks Corridor, their destination, is 216 light years from here, straight back down into the galaxy. It was gonna take them 216 years.”

“I didn’t think that we were that close to the Milky Way,” Tinaya remarks. “We should be pretty deep into the void by now, given Captain Yenant’s new heading.”

“We’re not far.” Belahkay acts like he didn’t realize that the rest didn’t know that.

“We also found out the name of the ship,” Niobe goes on, building some suspense. “It’s the Anatol Klugman.”

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