Orthogradient: Quino and Rosalinda (Part III)

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Quino and Rosalinda covered their ears as Treasure screamed her way into a portal, and disappeared, hopefully back home. They held their hands in place, because the plan was for her to return to this very moment. If she had listened to Quino’s pleadings, she would be a few years older, and a little more age appropriate for him. Something must have gone wrong, though, because they waited for a couple minutes, and nothing. He dropped his arms in defeat. Rosalinda smiled at him sadly, and patted him on the back. They didn’t speak. They could only hope that Treasure moved on with her life, and forgot about them, not that she had gotten hurt, or worse, and couldn’t come back. They were going to be stuck here forever, but it wasn’t going to be that bad. There weren’t any dangerous people or aliens, and the Strongbox was stocked with enough supplies to get them through the next few weeks. They both stepped forward to admire the view. They were on a grassy cliff, overlooking the beautiful scenery below, and in the distance.

“Wait!” a masculine voice shouted to them from down the hill behind them, and through the trees. “Don’t leave without me!” He came out of the forest, running as fast as he could, and struggling with it.

“It’s okay!” Quino shouted back. “Catch your breath!”

The man stopped, grateful. He rested his hands on his knees, and panted. He squinted at the sun, and held up one finger.

“We won’t leave without you,” Quino added, “...and also can’t.”

“What?” When Quino tried to explain that they were just as trapped there as him, he dismissed them. “Hold on.” He mustered a second wind, and started running again, but quickly fell into a jog.

They might have gone down to meet them halfway, but even though Quino wasn’t a real soldier, one thing he learned from the ones he worked with was that the first rule of warfare was to always maintain the higher ground. The other first rule of warfare was to force your enemy to come to you. They didn’t know if this man was an enemy, or not, but they had to assume as much for the time being.

The stranger finally made it up to them. “What did you say?”

“We can’t leave,” Rosalinda clarified.

“That thing behind you can’t do it? I guess I assumed that that’s how you got here yourselves. There’s no one else on this planet.”

“It only works with a particular pilot,” Quino said, obviously not about to mention Treasure by name, and hoping that even this wasn’t too much information.

“Well, shit.” He set his hands on his hips, and looked out at the view as he finished the last of his panting.

“How did you get here, friend?” Rosalinda asked. “We were to understand that this world was not populated by any intelligent species.”

He looked back where he had come from. “I sure hope not. I was trying to figure out how to make a campsite when I saw your ship fly overhead. I dropped the sticks, and started running right for it. Then I heard someone scream? Was that your pilot? What happened to her?”

“She had to go somewhere else,” Quino said.

“My name is Rosalinda James. This is Quino Velsteran.”

“Adalwin Tillens. Welp, if I have to live here for the rest of my life, at least I won’t be  here alone.”

“We’re not staying,” Quino assured him without offering him a way out of here, which should come eventually.

“Neither am I...hopefully.”

“How did you get here in the first place?” Rosalinda asked him.

Adalwin sighed. “There’s this group of people who can do what your friend can. They...leak portals out of their skin, and fall into them. They can bring people with them, and I was in need of escaping a dangerous situation, so I asked for help. I was with them for a little bit before I failed to get back to them in time, and they left without me.”

“They didn’t wait for you?” Rosalinda questioned.

“Yeah, there must be something wrong with you,” Quino added, thinking that he and Rosalinda were on the same page.

“I meant,” Rosalinda began, “if there is nothing dangerous on this world, what was the rush?”

“Oh, they don’t have control over it,” Adalwin clarified. “It just happens. They have to stay close to one another if they want to go to the same place. They’ve become separated from friends that way. I don’t know what it’s like when you do it, but for them, it’s like this psychedelic waterslide, which branches off into different directions, so you have to hold on and be careful. Stay with your sliding buddy, they would always say.” He sighed again. “I should have listened.” He perked up. “But you’re here now, and everything is going to be okay again...right?”

Rosalinda was hoping that Quino would agree, since she was obviously on board with helping this man. “Right,” she said herself, giving up. “We’ll get you out of here, one way or another. Come on, Qui-qui, let’s see if we can figure out whether this thing stores bulk energy, or what.”

“Yeah, come on, Qui-qui,” Adalwin encouraged jovially.

“You don’t call me that,” Quino warned as they were walking up to the Strongbox.

They stepped inside, and started looking through the computer. There actually was a little bit of bulk energy in the reserves, but none of them knew enough about how this stuff worked to know whether it was enough. Besides, Treasure wasn’t only essential to the operation of the machine because she could power it, but she also navigated it. According to Treasure’s teacher back in her homeworld, Thack Natalie Collins, traveling the bulk either required extremely precise mathematical calculations and-or foreknowledge, or psychic capacity. Anyone could figure out how to go where they wanted, as long as they had the right tools at their disposal, but people like Treasure had this gift naturally as an extension of their ability to utilize bulk energy. Quino and Rosalinda were not practiced enough to be comfortable navigating on their own, even if they could figure out how to get this thing running. Or maybe it wasn’t practice at all, but mental zen, or whatever. See? They didn’t even know.

“I’ve done it a few times myself,” Adalwin said. “Perhaps I can be your navigator.”

“Navigate us where?” Quino pressed. “Back home, or to one of the worlds you were on before? We’re not trying to go to any of those places. We’re trying to go to...” Quino trailed off before he said something too specific about Treasure.

“Salmonverse,” Rosalinda said. “That’s where we should go. Only there will we find someone who can help. They have all sorts of time travelers there. Someone will know something. If we try to go where...our friend is...” She gave him a look.

Quino understood. She wasn’t an idiot. This man was a stranger, and he couldn’t be trusted. Voldisilaverse was vulnerable to attack. Treasure’s mother’s home brane, however, was equipped with people who could combat a threat, including an unknown one. “Yeah, you’re right.” He kind of kicked at the console, but not angrily. “We still have no way to get this moving, though, if there’s even enough of that stuff.”

“I may have some on hand,” Adalwin volunteered.

“Bulk energy?” Rosalinda questioned. “Why would you have any of that?”

“As I said, we’re watersliders,” Adalwin started to explain. “And water is sticky. It stays with you. That’s why the originals can’t stop falling into their portals, because their bodies just keep producing it against their will. They think they could be free if they drained themselves of literally all water, and replaced their blood from donors, but I don’t think that’s medically possible. Anyway, I’m not like them, but just by accompanying them a few times, I have some liquid bulk on my body. It’s not enough to turn me into a full slider, but it may be enough to add to what you already have.”

“How would you go about doing that?” Quino asked, even more suspicious of him. “You gonna pee into the engine?”

Adalwin laughed. “No, it’s nothing crazy like that.” He kept laughing for a moment before dropping into his serious face. “No, I would bleed into it.”

“We’re not going to let you do that,” Rosalinda contended. “Neither of us is a doctor, and I’m sure that Tr—our friend is on their way.”

“It’s okay.” Adalwin slipped a knife out of his pocket, flung it open with a flick of his wrist, and chuckled when they tensed up into defensive positions. “It will all leak from one cut. All I’ll need is a bandage. Surely this Strongbox has a medkit.”

Quino tensed up even more. “I never told you what this was called.”

“What?” Adalwin asked.

“The Strongbox. I literally just named it. I only told two people.”

Adalwin dismissed it as a concern. “Heh. Time, right? I’ve heard of it before.”

“Funny, five minutes ago, you were just guessing that it was a means of escape,” Rosalinda pointed out. “Which is it, you’ve heard of it before, or you were only hoping that it would save you?”

Adalwin dropped the act, and tossed the knife from one hand to the other.

Quino took out his sidearm, and trained it at Adalwin.

“The blade really is for me,” Adalwin insisted. He turned the tip downwards, and sliced his own forearm open. It was small, as he promised, but that wasn’t the point.

It was not worth the risk. Quino would rather die here than put Treasure in danger. This man lied about who he was, and that alone was enough to make Quino wary of him, even though they would never learn the truth. He had to protect his love, whether she would want him to or not. She may never look at him the same again, but she’ll be alive. He would always shield her from danger. He squeezed the trigger, and let the bullet strike right into Adalwin’s lying throat.

Adalwin—or whatever his real name was—reached up and tried to push the blood back into his body as he was choking on it. A lot of it spilled out anyway, and dropped to the floor, as did the blood from the cut on his arm. The lighting in the Strongbox intensified slightly, and the engine revved up. He was right about one thing, his body had some bulk energy in it. And apparently this machine was designed to absorb it no matter where it came from, or where it landed. Adalwin backed himself against the wall, and slouched down towards the floor before he died.

Quino breathed heavily through his nose. “I’m sorry.”

“I can’t blame you,” Rosalinda replied. “I couldn’t have done it myself, but—but, hey.” She turned his chin towards her when he tried to look away in shame. “But I wanted to. Like he said, time has little meaning for our lives anymore. We’ve already met people who knew who we and Treasure were before we showed up. He could have done the same thing, but he played dumb. He was hiding something, and something tells me it wasn’t that he once called his neighbor a dirty word. He was hiding something big. Big and bad.”

Quino nodded, but still wouldn’t look her in the eye. “I’ll bury the body and clean up the mess.”

“You can bury the body,” Rosalinda agreed, “but I’ll clean up. We’re in this together.” She eyed the bulk reserves, which had gone up slightly. “Actually, you go ahead and go out to dig the grave. I have to do something first.”

“Okay.” He didn’t see what she was looking at, or guess what she was thinking. He grabbed a power shovel from the storage locker, grateful that someone thought to pack tools. He probably wouldn’t have thought of it since he had never once set foot on real soil until he met Treasure. He was going to dig a shallow grave to make it easier, but this dirt was soft, and not too difficult to cut through, so he decided that it was better to go the normal depth. The shovel’s motor did a lot of the work. When he was finished, he went back to drag the body down the hill. It was waiting for him outside the Strongbox, propped up against the exterior hull. It was a lot lighter than he expected. There was something unusual about the skin, and as he inspected it, Quino realized that the hole in the neck was bigger than it should have been. “What did you do?”

Rosalinda was still scrubbing the blood from the floor, and she didn’t stop. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“His blood. It’s been drained. It’s all gone.”

Rosalinda stopped scrubbing, but still didn’t look up. “I did what I had to to get us out of here. Treasure is a time traveler. If she were ever coming back, she would have done so already. It doesn’t matter how long she spent out there, she would be here now. I’m sorry, but we both know that.”

He looked up at the bulk reserves, which were now full. “We still don’t know how to navigate this thing.”

She went back to her work. “We’ll figure it out. I don’t care where we go, but we’re not staying here.”

Quino stepped back through the hatch, but stopped for a second. “There are worse worlds than this. If we do manage to leave, I’m sure we’ll become acutely aware of that.” He left again, and carried Adalwin’s body to the grave. He gently placed it down on the bottom, and then climbed back up to fill it up. He scattered the excess around, so no one would suspect that anything was here, and even planted a few grass seeds to cover up the evidence eventually. He didn’t say a few words, and Rosalinda never came down to visit the unmarked grave. Once they were both showered, they quietly went back to the controls to see if they could do something productive with them.

They found Treasure Hawthorne standing at the entrance. “I’m back. Sorry if you were waiting and worried. Thack told me to return eight hours late. She wouldn’t say why.” She smiled as she was taking a trinket out of her pocket, then extended her arms towards Quino. “Here. I made you something.”

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Microstory 1974: Team Alpha

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Generated by Google Workspace Labs text-to-image AI software

Micro: What do you think of these names? Team One? Team Prime? Team Alpha?

Anaïs: Not the most common practice. They usually just use colors, but I’ve heard of this technique before, to prevent anyone from feeling subordinate or inferior.

Micro: I think we all know who the B-team is here. We’re stuck at the second location.

Anaïs: I’m stuck at the second location. Parsons is still mad at me for being cagey about my past. You’re here, because I need a babysitter.

Micro: I would have been at the computer either way, poring over all this data, looking for anything that might help us catch this guy, and whoever he may be working for.

Anaïs: Do you want to be in the field?

Micro: It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. I just think these equality names are funny. Being part of a group doesn’t mean that everyone is the same, and being equal doesn’t mean that either. It’s okay to just call it like it is. Someone ought to always be in charge.

Anaïs: Well, many would agree with you. Hold up, what is this?

Micro: What? *looking over at Anaïs’ screen* Let me check what it says here.

Anaïs: [...] Does that mean what I think it means?

Ophelia: *through the radio* Team Lead, this is Team One. We have eyes on the target. He’s heading upstairs.

Reese: *through the radio* Team One, this is Team Lead. Hold fast. [...] Team Prime, do you have a visual?

Sasho: *through the radio* Negative, Team Lead. We can’t see the front.

Reese: *through the radio* Okay, Team Alpha, go, go, go. Take him down at his door.

Anaïs: What do we do? We don’t have time to verify any of this?

Micro: Better safe than sorry. If we’re wrong, we have a better image of this guy now, so if he gets away today, we’ll get him again. Make the call.

Anaïs: You do it. Parsons may have told everyone not to trust me.

Micro: *into the radio* Team One, if you can hear me, male, clear your throat, and female, smack your lips. *the sounds come through* I’ve switched us to a private channel. When I give the word, tackle the suspect, and pull him to the floor. All three of you need to get to your stomachs, but not too soon.

Anaïs: Is this going to work?

Sasho: *through the radio* You’re clear, Prime A. You’re pointed right at ‘im.

Reese: *through the radio* Shoot only on my command.

Micro: *into the radio* Team One, DROP! NOW!

Sachs: *fires rifle*

Sasho: *through the radio* I lost visual! There’s too much dust!

Micro: *into the radio* Team One, we’re still on private. Please respond.

Ophelia: *through the radio* We’re here. We’re okay.

Micro: *into the radio* Apprehend the suspect, and run. Lose all trackable tech. Do not proceed to the agreed upon rendezvous point.

Leonard: *through the radio* What’s this about?

Anaïs: Are you gonna tell them?

Micro: That Sachs is a traitor? *into the radio* Wait for me at the Salmon Civic Center.

Microstory 1973: Team Prime

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Sachs: This one?

Sasho: Magazine latch...

Sachs: And this one?

Sasho: Band axle pin...trigger rod...pusher spring.

Sachs: Ehh...?

Sasho: No! Return spring.

Sachs: There you go. You’re getting better, faster.

Sasho: God, I haven’t used flashcards since the ninth grade. *chuckles* I probably should have used them in college. Maybe then I wouldn’t have flunked out. Hey, you don’t need a degree to be a spotter, do you?

Sachs: Not where we work. If you were to join the military as an officer, then yes, but not just to be a spotter. That’s just a requirement for everybody. I suppose you could be a member of the enlisted forces, but I wouldn’t recommend it. That’s how I started it, and it took a lot of hard work for me to become a sergeant.

Sasho: I’m not seriously thinking about it. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I mean, I’m too old to join the military, right?

Sachs: You have a knack for this. Look, a spotter in the military isn’t the same as it is on a tack team. You’ll have a lot more responsibilities out here. In the army, my spotter just spotted. This is an elite squad, and you gotta be able to make up your own rules. You’ll always have a leader, of course, but it’s a far cry from the chain of command.

Sasho: I dunno. Maybe I should just go back to the jail.

Sachs: I can’t tell you what to do, but if I were you, I would pursue this.

Sasho: *nodding* Hey, so I was wondering...

Sachs: You can’t ask me that.

Sasho: No, okay. Sorry.

Ophelia: *through the radio* Team Lead, this is Team One. We have eyes on the target. He’s heading upstairs.

Reese: *through the radio* Team One, this is Team Lead. Hold fast. [...] Team Prime, do you have a visual?

Sachs: No. We can see into the apartment, but not the storefront, or the stairs.

Sasho: *into the radio* Negative, Team Lead. We can’t see the front.

Reese: *through the radio* Okay, Team Alpha, go, go, go. Take him down at his door.

Sasho: What do we do?

Sachs: *closing the bipod* Follow me. We need to get a better vantage point. They’re not gonna make it into the apartment. *leads him down the roof* Wait. You stay here. You’ll see them through that window in five seconds.

Sasho: Team One will be blocking the shot. We have to get across to the other roof.

Sachs: That’s where I’m going. Spot from there.

Sasho: I don’t know how to do that!

Sachs: I believe in you. Just tell me what you see, and where you see it. These rounds can break through the brick. *Hops over the alleyway*

Sasho: He’s gonna shoot through the wall?

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 21, 2398

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Marie and Mateo are sitting across from each other in the two non-cubby seats while Ramses continues to do his work. They came here yesterday early morning, pretty much immediately after their run-in with Winona Honeycutt and her merry band of mercenaries. They were able to do this, because Ramses has been a lot more busy than they realized. He was able to rig up a make-shift temporal engine that can process what he calls temporal hydroxide; the apparent scientific name for water infused with temporal energy. He secured a few samples of the Death water, then injected the rest into this special new engine, which spirited them out of Türkiye airspace, and into the Atacama desert. Apparently, Body water could be found here, but only on February 9, 1972. This was just before a massive storm hit the area, delivering rainfall after a reported 400 years of drought. It’s one of the easier immortality waters to get to, but the absolute most difficult to pinpoint. If you can find water originating anywhere in a five kilometer radius, it should work, but it has to be enough, so good luck.

They’re obviously not here to look for Body water, which still no one knows the purpose of. They just needed a safe, remote place to work. They had one teleportation jump to use, and this place was on Ramses’ mind. He slept last night, but woke up bright and early to get back to the grind. He needs to be one hundred percent that this is going to do what they need it to. Unfortunately, that’s impossible, because they can’t exactly run it through human trials. Marie is okay with this. She knows that she’s taking a huge risk just by being here, and a bigger one by trying it. “Can you stop that?”

“Stop what?” Mateo asks.

“You’re bouncing your leg. Not only can I hear it, but I can feel it in my seat. This floor isn’t perfectly sturdy.”

“Sorry, I’m just nervous.”

“Why are you nervous? This is happening to me.”

“Yes, and I love you.”

She smiles. “Do you remember when we met?”

“Yeah, I was dead and fine with it, which surprised you, and all the other dead people you were in charge of orienting.”

“I could tell that you were special. Other people ended up in the afterlife to no surprise of their own. They had been given the privilege of time to accept it. But you weren’t just all right, you acted like you knew what was going to happen.”

“I didn’t. The afterlife simulation was a really well-kept secret, even amongst my people.”

She shrugs. “I guess you were just used to weird stuff.”

He nods. “Yeah.”

Ramses comes up from his little lab, which is mainly meant as an engineering section for the vehicle, but it’s the best space for his needs. “You left your phone when you came to check on me. Leona sent another coded message.”

Mateo glances at his watch. “Oh, crap, I was supposed to initiate.” He takes it, sees that she and Angela are still okay, then sends one back, letting her know that they’re fine too. They’ve been dealing with some scifi shit as well, but it’s not enough to warrant the away team’s return home, or their bug-out protocol.

“Are we ready?” Marie asks Ramses.

He grimaces just a little.

“Are we?” she asks again.

“I’m ready. Now it’s up to you.”

“Oh, great, it’s my responsibility again.”

“It always has been.”

“I know.”

“There is no time limit,” Ramses says. “You can wait as long as you need, or back out until I literally press the button.”

Marie sighs. “I don’t have infinite time. At some point, this cluster of cells is going to become a person, and it will become immoral to abort it.”

He nods. “I understand.” He looks around. “Um...if you still want this, I recommend we go to the cockpit. You should be lying down, and while the cubby seats recline, it would be better with more space.”

“That’s fine,” she says. “Let’s just not call it that. How about...the bridge?” After Ramses goes back downstairs to grab the machine, the two of them slow-walk up to the front. He goes in first, and Marie stops at the steps. She looks back at Mateo. “Are you coming?”

“Do you want me to?”

“I do,” she answers.

There are three steps down to the bridge, in between the pilot and co-pilot seats. Mateo sits on the first step, and holds Marie’s hand. After he places the target electrodes on either side of Marie’s belly, Ramses sits in the other seat, and calibrates his little machine. He does so carefully, so as to give her more time to cancel her request, but also to make sure it’s set up correctly. They only have one chance at this, and there is no guarantee that it will work. The fact is that she might die. Ramses Abdulrashid is an extremely intelligent and accomplished engineer, but he’s not a doctor. If something goes wrong, the first aid kit sitting open on the console might be their only hope. She’s consented a million times, but they’ve come down to the wire. In a matter of seconds, they will be at the point of no return.

He decides to give her one more opportunity. “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

“I want this to happen,” Marie says quite formally. “I want an abortion.”

Ramses places his hand over the button. “I don’t know what it’s going to feel like physically, and I certainly don’t know what it’ll be like emotionally. It might be...jarring, like getting the wind knocked out of you. But we’re both here for you.”

“Okay,” she says, readjusting her position ever so slightly. “Do it.” She squeezes Mateo’s hand tighter.

“In five, four, three, two, one, mark.” He pushes the button.

Marie jolts and shudders.

“Are you okay?” Mateo asks.

She holds up her free hand. “I’m fine.” Her voice is tight, suggesting that she’s feeling a tightness too. “It’s just...oh, it’s cold. It’s really cold.”

“Is that normal?” Mateo asks Ramses.

“I don’t know,” he replies honestly, just as concerned and helpless.

Marie begins to do some measured breathing exercises, and relaxes as they go on. She exhales one last time, just as water is dripping onto the floor. She starts to cry.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 20, 2398

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They took it slow. Marie first drove them into a more rural area of Germany, then had to return the controls to Ramses, so he could fly them over some of Eastern Europe, taking a little bit of a scenic route to avoid Czechian airspace. When they landed in Ukraine, they drove to the nearest dock, and floated for a little bit until submerging, and going the rest of the way through the Black Sea underwater. They reached the shores of Türkiye at around 4:00 in the morning on June 19. They weren’t at a port, though, because then they would have to register as visitors. To sneak in, they arrived at the most underpopulated area they could find, and performed a little trick.

The Olimpia can’t just transition from water to ground seamlessly. It has to roll up a ramp, and of course, that ramp has to be big and sturdy enough to accommodate it. That wouldn’t work here, so they needed a work around. In aircraft mode, it’s best to fly up as fast as possible. Vertical take-off and hovering takes a lot more energy than a normal runway launch, and forward propulsion, because it’s not drawing in ambient air to power it, among other reasons. But they can spend some fuel to make this happen, allowing them to essentially hop out of the water, and land on the road. They can’t fly as high as they would during a real trip, because then radar could spot them. Again, it’s not ideal, but necessary in this situation to meet their objective. They had to get into Türkiye undetected, and make it most of the way across the country, also undetected.

They hid in dense vegetation most of the day, but didn’t feel compelled to wait until nightfall, because they wouldn’t reach any street cameras until about halfway into this leg. Now it’s 4:00 in the morning again, and it’s time to get a sample of this Death water, hoping that it can do what Ramses believes. If not, they’ll just travel to Croatia via the Mediterranean Sea. They’ll actually probably head that way while he works.

“Hurry up, and get what you need,” Marie whispers. “This area opens to visitors in about two and a half hours, but who knows when a staff member might show up to...I dunno, pick up trash, or whatever?”

Ramses drops his bag on the ground, generating a clanking sound.

“Shh,” she whispers loudly to him. “What is in there?”

“This.” He pulls out a metal tank that’s probably large enough to fit five gallons.

“What the hell is that?” Mateo questions.

“Do I have to answer that for you, or is it rhetorical?”

“I thought you only needed a tiny sample,” Marie complains.

“We only need a sample,” Ramses agrees, “but we don’t want to come back here in the future, do we? While we’re at it, we might as well stock up. I don’t now how useful this stuff could become.” He dips it in the pool, and lets it fill up.

“It’s poison,” Marie reminds him.

“Well, I don’t plan on using it for that. If we happened to be in the Atacama Desert instead, I would take as much as I could of Body water.”

“What does Body water do?” Marie asks.

“No one knows.” As Ramses is lifting the tank up, and holding it while Mateo screws on the lid, they hear a commotion nearby.

All of the sudden, a strike team descends upon them, flaghlights and firearms drawn. A figure of authority, face still blocked by shadow, steps closer to the trio. “Is this it?” the forger, Winona Honeycutt’s voice asks. “Is this what gives you your power?”

“You’re going to spark an international incident if you try to take it,” Marie says, stepping towards her.

“It looks like you’re taking it,” Winona replies.

“We were thirsty.” Ramses struggles to lift the tank up to his mouth, then partakes when Mateo steadies it for him. If his theory is correct, it shouldn’t be poisonous without some good old fashioned temporal energy.

“Hand it over,” Winona demands.

Mateo screws the lid back on, and begins to place it in the bag.

“I said, hand it over,” she repeats more earnestly.

“Remember how I told you we would do anything to protect ourselves and each other?” Mateo asks her.

“Stabbing yourself isn’t gonna help you this time,” Winona explains. “We have a medic on standby right here, and our own doctor back on the plane.”

“I don’t intend to stab myself. I’m reminding you that you’re out of your league.”

“My dear,” Winona begins. “It is you who is out of his league. My father and I are playing chess, while you’re playing checkers.”

Mateo chuckles. “Then neither of us can win. We’re not using the same pieces. We’re not even on the same game board. Your advantage is an illusion.”

“My advantage looks like a battery of guns,” she counters, indicating her people.

That’s true, Mateo is really just stalling, and it sounds like he and Ramses did so for as long as necessary. They hear an explosion in the distance. Lights fill the sky. Everyone looks over to find more explosions, and more lights. Someone has set up a fireworks show. It’s incredibly odd timing. In any reality, he would assume it was a cognizant friend, or even a future version of himself, creating a diversion, but here, it must just be a coincidence.

Whatever the cause, it’s enough. Mateo feels himself being pulled over the edge of the pool, and into the water. A surge of energy overwhelms his body, and snaps him away, delivering him to the ground beside the Olimpia.

A woman comes around the corner holding a gun. “Stop right there!”

Marie stands up, and hits her in the forehead—not like a boxer, but with the precision of a grasshopper. She falls to the ground, unconscious. She stands with her friends for half a moment. “No jokes about how fitting it was for a woman to get into a fight with another woman.”

“Fight?” Mateo echoes. “That was a savage takedown.”

“We gotta go.” Ramses opens the door, and climbs in, followed by Marie and Mateo. “Hey, Olimpia, engage Escape Pattern Alpha.”

“Acknowledged. Initiating.” The plane takes off, and heads for the dark skies.

“How did we teleport?” Marie asks.

“I’m the one who teleported,” Ramses answers her. He shows them a syringe. “This is why I’m confident I can make the abortion bullet—”

“Don’t call it that.”

“I’ve figured out how to synthesize temporal energy,” he continues. “It’s only temporary, so I could inject you two too, but I think I have a better idea.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 1, 2390

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There is no stealth in space. If you’re generating power, then you’re generating heat. There is nowhere to dump all that heat, except to radiate it away, which others can detect. According to Ramses’ research, some ships in this reality can shunt it to another dimension, but on its own, this takes a lot of energy, and can still be detected in other ways, so it’s not really that useful. Pilot Fish protocol was not about making themselves completely invisible, but hiding themselves in the chaos of a larger vessel; a very large vessel. The WTD was enormous, and radiated a ton of waste heat. It also had lots of other little ships flying around, executing repairs, and whatnot. It was rather easy for a tiny lifeboat such as the AOC to attach itself to a remote part of the hull, and sit there quietly. No one and nothing knew that they were there, which was good, but it was the easy part. Presumably, the Warmaker Training Detachment was presently in the middle of the beginning of a new war. While it was out here, there was no telling where the rest of the detachments were, or whether they would ever be rendezvousing with each other anytime soon. Fortunately, they only needed to cross paths with the SWD once. The team’s AI knew what to do when that happened. It would detach itself from the first ship, and attach itself to the next. They didn’t know if it would happen within the next year, but they figured it would occur at some point in the next few days from their perspective. It turned out to be one day realtime.

When the team returned to the timestream, they learned that the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had been pilot fishing the Security Watchhouse Detachment for almost the entire year. This was perfect, because it was even more massive than the WTD, so their chances of being caught eventually had actually gone down. Everything was going according to plan. They were going to make their way to Dilara Cassano’s office, reveal to her that she had a special time power, and a destiny in another reality, then all go home together.

“Wait, who are you again?” Dilara asked. She was sitting in the same place they had always seen her, in the breakroom area.

“Mateo. This is Leona, Ramses, Olimpia, Angela, and Marie.”

“Angela and Marie are twins?”

“Alternate selves,” Angela clarified.

Dilara yawned. “I remember you people looking older.”

“Eh. Time, right?” Ramses noted

“Right,” Dilara sort of agreed. “Did you need some...antiquated technology, or sanctuary...?”

“We want your help getting home,” Mateo requested.

“There’s nothing left for us here,” Leona added. “The main sequence is where you belong anyway.”

“How do you figure?” Dilara questioned.

“We’ve seen you there,” Leona claimed. “You have the ability to cross back into old timelines, which means you necessarily also have the ability to travel to parallel timelines.”

Dilara stared at her, and then looked one by one at the rest of the team, like she was waiting for someone to give away that this was some kind of prank. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We know,” Mateo said. “It happened in our past, but in your future.”

“Do I go on adventures in this future?” Dilara pressed. “Do I exert a lot of effort?”

Mateo leaned his head back in confusion. “I mean, I think so...”

“And I’m walking?”

“What?”

“This person who you think is me, does she walk?” Dilara continued.

“Yeah, she walks,” Leona confirmed.

Dilara opened a panel on her armrest, and pushed a few buttons. The chair gently flew out from under the table, and began to hover before them. “I can’t walk.”

“You what?”

“I have literally never walked,” she said, though it must have been a lie. “I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m not your girl. I don’t have any powers, and I’m not going to be going on any adventures.”

“They can’t cure whatever’s stopping you from walking?” Angela suggested.

“Mother says no. They tried when I was younger.”

“Can we speak to her?”

“She’s dead.”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Ramses said. “At the very least, you can strap an exoskeleton on her, and have her simulate walking. There is no way a reality this advanced can’t find a way to fix her.”

“I don’t need to be fixed,” Dilara contended. “I’m fine sitting down, thank you.”

“I’m sorry,” Ramses said sincerely.

“There’s also the matter of this.” Dilara reached up to her necklace, and pushed another button. A hologram flickered off, leaving a much older and wrinkled face behind. “I know what it’s like to change your age of appearance.”

They all stared at her, unsure what to say. Mateo looked to the floor behind them. “The football. You say you can’t find a record of it being a sport that ever existed before, yet you know what it is.”

“That’s right,” Dilara agreed.

“Mateo...” Leona began without finishing.

“You are our Dilara Cassano,” he realized. “You’ve just lost your memories. I don’t know how, or whether it was done on purpose, but that’s why you’re older than we knew you, and it probably partially explains why your mother claimed you couldn’t ever walk again. I don’t have all the answers, but the main sequence is not part of your future. It’s in your past, just like it is for the six of us.”

“Except it should also be in your future,” Dilara reasoned. “Because you want to get back there, whereas I don’t think I care to get those memories back, if they even exist.”

“They exist,” Mateo assured her, “and no one’s going back now. You were our last hope. If anyone else had the ability to cross realities, we probably would have heard of them by now. I mean, maybe if we were able to find Jupiter, or Jupiter, or one of the other Jupiters...”

“There may be another way,” Olimpia said, nervous about bringing up whatever it was she was thinking.

“What would that be?” Leona asked.

“I don’t wanna say anything without any more information.” Olimpia answered. “I was just hoping you could...point me towards that library database that you used a few days ago, Mateo?”

Mateo wanted to respect her wishes, even though he also wanted her to just say it. “Yeah, I’ll take you.” He offered her his hand. When Olimpia took it, he turned his head back to Dilara, who was resituating herself under the table. “Thank you for everything. I apologize for the confusion.”

“It’s quite all right.” Dilara reinitialized her youngification hologram.

Mateo escorted Olimpia to the library. Nothing had changed since last time. It was still completely empty. He tried to look over her shoulder as she began her search for whatever she was searching for, but she looked right back with a look. All he caught were the words mysterious war before he agreed to literally back off, and walk the perimeter. It wasn’t long before he started to get a feeling. It didn’t hurt, but he knew it wasn’t great either. It felt like waves of energy pulsating on the side of his forehead. When he turned his head, the waves stayed in place, so now they were on the other side of his forehead. He did a one-eighty, and now they were hitting the back of his head. Something external was out there, doing this to him. Again, it wasn’t painful, but he instinctually prepared himself for an attack of some kind.

The attack came in the form of a bullet, right in his shoulder joint. At least that was what he assumed it to be. He heard a loud explosive sound, and felt a sharp pain in his chest. It didn’t last very long. The pain went away to be replaced with another wave of information, reminding him that there was a bullet wound there. It happened several more times after that. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Somebody wanted him dead, but Mateo was getting the feeling now that that wasn’t going to happen. Ramses’ upgrades were just too good. He didn’t know if he could heal as fast as superheroes did in movies, but he was still standing even after all this, and the pain was gone.

A figure rounded the corner. “You think I wouldn’t recognize you, didn’t you?” It was the security guard from years ago. He was still patrolling the same area. He walked forward, and placed his gun against Mateo’s head. “You can hologram your face in whatever form you please, but I can still tell. You have a certain smell.”

“Hey, that rhymed.”

“Shut up!”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“I said I would, didn’t I?”

Mateo shrugged. “People changed their minds. It’s been six years.”

“No, it’s been one year.” He reached into his bag, and pulled out the mangled remains of the Cassidy cuff that Mateo forced upon him to make sure he didn’t leave him trapped in a time bubble.

“It took you that long to figure out how to get it off?”

“I don’t have any friends!”

“Sorry, dude.”

“It doesn’t matter, it’s just time. I told you that you shouldn’t ever come back, and now you’re gonna face the consequences.”

“Look at me,” Mateo said. “You’ve already shot me several times. Why do you think it hasn’t killed me yet?”

The man tugged at Mateo’s shirt. “Body armor.”

“No. Armored body,” he corrected.

He frowned, and loosened his grip on his weapon while he looked away. “This isn’t a hologram, is it?”

“No.”

“You people have technologies that we have never seen before.”

“Which is weird,” Mateo said. “I mean, consciousness transference? That’s not easy, but it didn’t take us as long as faster-than-light travel. It’s like you just skipped over a bunch of developments that would have been really helpful to your lives.”

“Or they were deliberately withheld from us.”

“That would sure make sense. I personally know the people who invented FTL where I come from. It’s taken them until recently to even begin thinking about sharing that with everyone else.”

“You’re trying to get back there, aren’t you?”

“We weren’t before, but we are now. Unfortunately, the tech we used to come in the first place has been lost to us. We’re working on it.”

Now the security officer lowered his arm completely. “Take me with you.”

“What?”

“It sounds like you have purpose. I want that too.”

Mateo sighed. “You wouldn’t be the first stray we took in.”

“Please.”

“Mateo!” Olimpia came up from behind him. “I found him.”

“Found who?”

“The guy who’s gonna get us back home,” she said cryptically.

“How’s he gonna do that?”

She presented her tablet. “Medavorken Alon.”

“Is that a band, errr...?”

“He was a famous Comradiant in the People’s Army of the Independent Triangulites For The Independence of Triangulum.”

Mateo couldn’t help but laugh, “wwwwhat?”

“The Triangulites?” the security guy questioned. “They were wiped out centuries ago.”

“Who are you again?” Olimpia questioned in return.

“Go on,” Mateo prompted.

“He went missing...before all that happened. They say he went into a deserted building alone, they heard a loud horn, and then it blew up.”

“So he’s not missing, he died,” the security—

“What is your name?” Mateo asked.

“Summit Ebora.”

“Well, Summit, we know he disappeared because of the horn. It’s The Transit. That’s your idea?” Mateo asked her. “You wanna hitch a ride?”

“They’re the only people who can do it,” Olimpia said. “And we know exactly where they’re gonna be, when they’re gonna be there.”

“The problem is that we don’t have a time machine,” Leona said, having teleported to their location. The rest of the team was there too.

“A time machine? I can get you to a time machine,” Summit claimed.

“Now, is it an actual time machine, or just an amusement park ride in the bulk store?” Angela joked.

“I don’t know what that is,” Summit said. “It’s an actual time machine, which can get you back to the 21st century.”

“Great!” Mateo said enthusiastically. “Leona, that’s your birthday present. I didn’t get you anything else.”

“Kind of an irresponsible gift to give to a thirteen-year-old,” Angela joked more.

Leona shook her head and half-scoffed, half-laughed. “I’m gonna get you back for that.”

“Thirteen-year-old or not,” Marie began, not joking, “you’re the captain.”

They waited patiently for her decision.

Leona waited to respond, considering the dangers and ramifications. “Very well. We’re going back to the past.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 5, 2363

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Everything had to happen fast, or the team was going to lose everything. Mateo wasn’t raised to be a fighter. His parents taught him to try to reason with people, and understand where they were coming from. Ever since he became a time traveler, very rarely was he expected to use physical violence to solve his problems. Today was one of those times when it was absolutely necessary. Before this Milford asshole could try to shoot Angela again, Mateo reached back, and took one swing. He clocked him right in the jaw, knocking him out instantly. Angela, meanwhile, gracefully fell to her back as Jeremy collapsed on top of her. She instinctively wrapped her arms around his chest, and applied pressure to the bullet wound. Though Ramses was significantly less hurt, he too required medical attention. Olimpia sat him down to tend to him.

“Do you remember Hammer’s pager number?” Mateo asked his wife.

“I shouldn’t need it. We forget, but Jeremy is salmon. Sarka should come. He has to. I know we were resurrected, but he has to.”

Everyone froze, waiting for a portal to open. They often did that, and were usually met with either disappointment, or relief, depending on what they were expecting. This time, the powers that be actually delivered. A portal did open up, and Dr. Baxter Sarka did appear to them. He too was salmon, which meant he didn’t have very much control over how he ran his practice. The PTB even decided what medical supplies would be available to him for any given case. He never knew what he was going to get until he opened his black bag. “Dammit!” he shouted.

“What the hell is this crap?” Leona questioned as she was examining the contents over his shoulder.

“What year is this?” Sarka asked.

“It’s 2341,” Leona replied.

Dr. Sarka shook his head as he was removing something that kind of looked like pliers from his bag. They may have actually been true pliers. “Nothing is sealed, nothing is sanitary. The nature of my tools is largely determined by the time period in which my patient happens to be at the time. These are not 24th century supplies. Do you have alcohol on this vessel?”

Mateo had already retrieved their own first aid kit, and immediately handed it to him. It wasn’t equipped with surgical instruments, but it did have rubbing alcohol. Sarka got to work, cutting Jeremy’s shirt, wiping the blood away, and disinfecting everything he could.

“It’s 1816,” Leona realized.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Sarka didn’t stop working.

“That man on the floor over there?” Leona tried to begin to figure this out. “He claimed he was trying to send Angela to 1816. He seemed to believe shooting her with his gun would do the trick.”

Mateo had retrieved that too. He knelt down, and presented it to Sarka, just in case he had ever seen anything like it before. It was a gun, absolutely, but it was of an unfamiliar design. It looked like modern tech was attached to an antique artifact. Steampunk was probably the best term for it.

“Never seen it before,” Sarka said. “If it was meant to send him through time, it didn’t do a very good job at it, and this certainly looks like a real bullet wound. As far as I’ve ever seen, transporter weapons begin to dissolve on impact, and only leave superficial wounds. This is a potentially fatal injury.”

“I think it’s working,” Leona continued. “I just think it’s slow. I think he’s supposed to die first, then be transported to the past, and somehow be revived? I don’t know why it would work like that, but it would explain your medical bag.”

“Yes, I would call this early 19th century medicine.”

“Can you fix him?” Angela begged.

“With what they gave me to work with?” Sarka presumed. “It’s a toss-up.” He was nothing if not honest.

Everyone’s cuffs began to beep, indicating that they were going to make their next pattern jump in five minutes. “Oh no,” Olimpia exclaimed. “Will he come with us?”

“The cuffs are linked to the AOC,” Leona answered. “Everyone inside should come with. We’ve seen it before.”

Making an executive decision, Mateo began to drag Milford’s unconscious body to the steps.

“What are you doing?” Leona questioned.

“He’s not coming with us.”

“Good idea,” Leona said. “But you’re never gonna get him all the way up to the airlock. Not alone, not in time.” What the others hadn’t noticed was that Leona had quickly inspected the transporter gun after Mateo set it down on the table in front of her. A dial specified a year. She grabbed it, spun it to a random new destination, and shot Milford in the forehead.

“Whoa,” Olimpia said

“Yeah,” Ramses agreed.

“If he wasn’t crazy, then he was just dispatched to...” She took a look at the dial. “Fifteen-sixteen. If he was crazy, then...I suppose I just murdered the man who shot two of my friends, and tried to shoot a third.” Leona surveyed the room. “Does anybody here think I should be butthurt about that?” No one vocalized a reply, but they didn’t seem to think she should feel butthurt. “How are we doing, Sarka?”

“He’s stable, for now. I don’t think I should be in the middle of a procedure when we jump to the future. I’ll resume in a few minutes. It’s not too terribly deep, so it shouldn’t be hard to pull it out.”

So they waited, and they jumped, and then Jeremy howled in pain. Sarka tried to find the source of the issue, but nothing about his chest wound had changed. Then Angela noticed something. “Doctor, his arm.”

Sarka lifted it up. The skin under and around the Cassidy cuff was glowing red, like it was burning. Jeremy never stopped crying out in pain, but he quieted down a bit.

“He must still be linked to 1816, and that jump did not do him any favors,” Sarka assumed.

“What do we do?” Leona asked.

“If you take off that cuff, and he dies, he’ll jump to the past, and end up in whatever condition this time bullet is designed to put him in.”

“What if we don’t take off the cuff?”

“He could still die, but you’ll jump with him,” Sarka warned. “Like I said, I’ve never seen this tech before. I don’t understand why it needs to be a real bullet. They usually aren’t, because there’s not generally any reason to spirit someone away when they’re just going to die anyway.”

Hoping to find some answers, Leona opened up the gun, and dropped the remaining three bullets on the table. “White. They’re white.”

Mateo approached, and looked for himself. “The color of resurrection.” He was quite familiar with it, as were half the people here.

“These things don’t just send you to the past,” Leona explained. “They send you to Pryce’s afterlife simulation. Either you wake up in the simulation itself with a whitecard attachment, or automatically in a new body.”

“I don’t think you killed that guy, Leona,” Mateo said, just in case she actually did feel butthurt. “Not permanently.”

Jeremy was still in pain, but he was whimpering now. He didn’t want to interrupt their conversation.

“Get that bullet out, doctor.”

Sarka got back to work. He reached into the hole with his pliers, and started feeling around for the metal. Something seemed to be wrong, though. “Shit.” He removed the pliers. There was no bullet on the other, but the tip was covered in a whitish-red fluid.

“Explain,” Leona demanded simply.

“It did dissolve,” Sarka began. “I don’t know if it was the time jump, or if it would have happened anyway, but I imagine instead of collapsing upon impact, it was designed to burrow itself into the target, and dissolve in the body, so someone like me couldn’t take it out. I am now almost sure that the reason he hasn’t jumped back yet is because of that cuff. and it’s connection to all of you.”

“Okay,” Leona said confidently. “All I have to do is modify the settings to make his primary, instead of mine. That should be enough to send us all back with him. We’ll deal with the repercussions later.”

“No,” Jeremy insisted. Without warning, he reached over with his good hand, and removed the cuff from his arm. He disappeared pretty much instantly.

They all just kind of sat there, regarding the space where Jeremy once was.

“That’s okay,” Leona said finally. “All we have to do is get back to 1816. We have friends, we can make that happen.”

“We have to help Ramses first,” Olimpia reminded them. “He was shot as well.”

“I think I’m fine,” he contended. “The bullet went through and through. I’m just glad it didn’t hit Angela after it came out.”

“Still, you need to be treated. I do at least have a sewing ki—” Before Dr. Sarka could finish his sentence, he disappeared as well. Being not salmon, Ramses apparently didn’t deserve the PTB’s medical assistance. Yet they had seen plenty of exceptions before.

“That’s also okay,” Leona said. “I can sew.”

“No,” Angela asked. “Let me do it. I’m the one at fault here.”

“You know that none of us blames you, right?” Mateo asked.

“You don’t have to,” she said.

“Let’s just say it was your turn,” Mateo told her. “We’ve all brought bad juju to the team. It’s like a rite of passage now. I can’t tell you how many bad guys I’ve unwittingly summoned.”

“All right,” Angela allowed, but she wasn’t completely convinced, or relieved. “I’m still going to be the one to sew him up.”

After Angela was finished, Olimpia agreed to stay with Ramses on the ship while he recovered. The other three then went off in search of someone who could send them back in time to 1816 so they could retrieve their lost comrade. If all went according to plan, he would spend less than a day there before being able to return to his rightful place on the team. They decided that their best option would be to go to Dardius, where everyone they met would know about time travel, and they could speak freely. To their surprise, they didn’t even need to find a specific person with time travel abilities. Scientists had long ago figured out how to use the Nexus for such purposes. They even had a pretty good idea of Jeremy’s arrival date. After putting on authentic blending-in clothes, they stepped down onto the platform, and waited for the tech to send them to a settlement in pre-union Missouri.

They spent a few hours searching for Jeremy by canvassing the area with an artificially antiquated photograph of him. They were able to find him working at a tailor. It seemed to be his job to roll up the cloth, and clean the equipment. He seemed to be trying to mind his own business, and not make any trouble. Mateo asked to go in alone while the ladies waited outside.

“Evenin’,” the tailor greeted him at the door.

“I’m lookin’ for a new suit,” Mateo said. He tried to lock eyes with Jeremy, who wasn’t paying any attention.

“What you’re wearing looks to be pretty nice. Get it in New York?”

“That’s right,” Mateo lied. Now he was just staring.

“Well, what were you thinking now?”

“Get me something out the back.”

“Nothing out here is of any interest to you?”

“I want something...different. You must have...patterns that most men don’t wear.” He tried to hit that word pretty hard, but Jeremy didn’t blink. “Perhaps something in salmon.”

“I’ll have my assistant look for you. Boy!”

Now Jeremy finally faced the right direction.

“No,” Mateo said. “I want your eyes. You are the artist, correct?”

“Very good, sir.” The tailor left to find something that Mateo didn’t care about.

Even as Mateo approached, Jeremy still didn’t seem to recognize him. “What’s your name?”

“Job, sir.” He was afraid to make eye contact.

“How long have you worked here?”

At this, Jeremy couldn’t help but chuckle. “All my life.”

“Really?”

“Just about as long as I can remember. I’m touched, you see. I can’t recall a single thing from my life past five weeks ago.”

“You must wonder,” Mateo guessed, “who you were before. You must have left someone you cared about behind.”

“If they cared about me,” Jeremy reasoned, “they could have found me. My story was in all the papers.”

“Perhaps...you come from a distant land.”

“Perhaps,” Jeremy conceded.

“Are you happy..with this life?”

“Happy is the life you make, sir. I believe God took my memories for a reason. The physicians can find no brain damage. As far as they can tell, my mind has chosen to forget. This is my life now.”

Mateo placed a hand on his good friend’s shoulder. Milford wanted to get his ex-wife back to this year, so they could restart their life together. She was never meant to remember anything about the future. In Jeremy’s case, he wasn’t originally in the 19th century, so all of his memories were taken. Philosophically speaking, this wasn’t really Jeremy Bearimy at all. It was a new man, and this new man, Job wanted to stay. Mateo could see it in his eyes. “I’ve been there, brother.”

Jeremy squinted for half a second before letting go.

“You take care, ya hear?”

“Sir.”

Before he left, Mateo placed his purse in Jeremy’s hands. In it were 20 half eagle coins, each worth five dollars. “For the conversation.”

The tailor returned before Mateo could exit the shop. When he asked his assistant where the potential customer was going, Job didn’t have an answer. He took a peek in the purse, and just said, “I quit.”

It was hard, leaving him behind, but Mateo was confident that it was the right thing to do. Could someone like Tertius Valerius, or a version of Nerakali, restore his memories? Probably. But was that ethical? He would never get the answer to that question. He would just have to move on, and hope that it wasn’t all a mistake. When Leona and Angela asked him what was going on, he simply repeated Job’s words, which were a mantra he often said himself, about their own lives. They made their way back to 2363, and never saw Jeremy again.

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