Microstory 2045: North Dakota

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Before my papa was born, his parents would go to a forest called the Roosevelt National Park, which is located in North Dakota. It isn’t that far from the border to Montana. Papa never went there himself, but on my grandpa’s birthday, who was dead, papa wanted to honor him with a family trip. We took a plane over there, and stayed in tents. We ate outside, and we hiked, and I swam in a lake a little bit. I know that it’s a really beautiful place, but I don’t have very good feelings about North Dakota. This is where my papa started getting sick. I hope I don’t cry while I’m presenting this slide. My papa had a real hard time on this trip. He had trouble walking, and he felt very weak all the time. I remember seeing him twitch while we were sitting around the campfire. He was also talking kinda funny, like he was trying to talk with his mouth full. We didn’t know what was wrong with him at the time, but we hoped that it would just go away. He took it easy for the rest of the trip, and then we just went back home. The problems started getting worse after that, so he went to the doctor, and he was eventually diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Most people just call it ALS, because that’s hard to say.

Microstory 2044: Nevada

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Even though he hasn’t been to all fifty states, my dad travels a lot too. He is a photojournalist, so he takes pictures for news websites. He works as a freelancer, so he doesn’t just work for one site. He usually stays around where he lives, but he sometimes has to go out to other areas. Actually, the reason that he and my papa met on the train in Kentucky is because he was there to photograph the completion of a new college outside of Louisville, which was partially funded by someone who lived in his part of Virginia. He usually only leaves the state when there’s a connection to the local area, but a few years ago, in the year 2020, he wanted to go to Nevada. Dad also went to college, and met friends. One of his friends was a soldier who lost one of his legs in the war. He lived in Nevada, and wanted to raise awareness for something called veteran healthcare, so he set about to take the longest hike on a single leg. He carried a pack on his back, and only used a cane to support himself. He walked 17 miles all in one day! Isn’t that impressive? I couldn’t even do it with two legs. My dad was there to photograph the whole journey, so he also walked the 17 miles. My papa went on the trip with him, but he didn’t do much hiking. He dropped them off at the beginning of the trail, and then picked them up at the end. I stayed here with my cousins, since I had school.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 10, 2401

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A part of Mateo expected the sight to be more spectacular; that they would see countless worlds suddenly appear in the sky, but obviously it wouldn’t look like that. Even he knew that all those planets would all be ripped apart if they suddenly came close enough to each other to be seen by each other. There was nowhere you could be where you could witness more than one planet appear out of nowhere. Even if you could, Mateo wouldn’t be in such a place. The whole point was that the main sequence would be spared the Reconvergence. Nothing should change here.

“That’s not entirely true.” Mateo, Angela, and Marie spent the night in the nearest arcology to Stonehenge. Bhulan has just shown up.

“What do you mean?” Mateo questioned.

“You’re not in the main sequence right now. You’re in the Sixth Key.”

“So it didn’t work,” Angela assumed.

Bhulan stared at her for a weird length of time. “There are two main sequences now. The original is fine, right where it was before in Salmonverse. This one is a copy.”

“That’s not what I asked for. The Omega Gyroscope was meant to read my mind, and do what I wanted. And don’t tell me that it was an accident, like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, because I didn’t even consider this outcome. I wouldn’t have thought that would be a thing. I’m not—how you say—creative.”

Bhulan nodded, and stood up, pointing to his jacket hanging over the chair. “Were you wearing this when it happened?”

“Yeah,” Mateo answered. “Let me guess, I’ve been unknowingly wearing the Jacket of Duplication this whole time, or some bullshit like that.”

“It’s not the jacket,” she said with a shake of her head. She reached into one of the pockets, and then another, where she found the knife that Mateo used to replicate parts for the Olimpia, and also fail at fixing Heath when he was on the brink of death. He kind of forgot that it was in there. “Oh, crap. Are you serious? I forgot about that.. Like I said, I wasn’t thinking about making a copy of anything. I was trying to save the main sequence the headache of the Reconvergence stuff.”

“This is a temporal object,” Bhulan said, shaking it demonstratively, but not angrily, “just like the Cassano Cane, and the Omega Gyroscope. Sometimes they interact with each other, whether you mean for them to, or not. Who gave this to you?”

“The natives on an island we ended up on once,” Mateo answered. “They were...mysterious, and noncommunicative.”

Bhulan nodded again. “This is the same place where Angela got her immortality waters, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Angela confirmed. “That didn’t work. Or it did? Marie is alive, but I never found Activator water, so that whole ordeal is confusing.”

“I can’t explain how Marie survived what happened to her,” Bhulan began, “but you becoming immortal would not have done it. Yes, she’s an alternate of you, but you had become two independent beings. There was no reason why she would not have been able to die. The only thing that Time and Existence waters do is prevent someone from preventing you from existing and becoming immortal, and Marie has nothing to do with that anymore. I don’t know who told you it would—”

“We were just...desperate,” Angela explained. “And it seemed to work, so we figured that it was inevitable.”

“Bottom line,” Marie jumped in, “what does this mean? What can we do, what should we do? Why are you here?”

“I’m not here to talk about the main sequence, or the new main sequence,” Bhulan said. “That’s just something I noticed you were confused about. I’m here for that.” She pointed to the corner where Mateo had leaned the Cassano Cane and Omega Gyroscope against the walls. The latter was still hovering over the former. “They need to be destroyed, and I finally figured out how. The Reconvergence has not technically happened yet. The Keys were turned ahead of time, in case there was a delay or complication, but all the other parallel realities will collapse, and everything in them will be destroyed. This whole thing with the Third Rail started because I was there too early. I showed up at the beginning, but I should have appeared at the end. This is my chance.”

“Any objections?” Mateo asked the girls. “Go ahead,” he told Bhulan when they shook their heads. “It’s only here because Alyssa disappeared on us when I used it...incorrectly, and don’t know who’s supposed to have it.”

“I appreciate you not pushing back.” She walked over and reached for the cane, and as soon as her fingers wrapped around it, Ramses Abdulrashid appeared out of nowhere, and wrapped his own fingers around it. “Um...excuse me.”

“I need this,” Ramses said.

“Report,” Mateo asked.

Ram looked at him, but did not let go of the cane. “I don’t have long here, so I’ll just give you the highlights. I survived Phoenix Station. I found Olimpia stuck in the Sixth Key before its big bang. I was forced to join the Shortlist’s meeting for The Edge. I escaped, and now I have a new mission...which requires my use of the Cassano Cane.”

“Nuh-uh-uh, buddy,” Bhulan argued. “I have to destroy these things.”

Ramses pursed his lips, and then let a puff of air escape to make a popping sound. At the same time, he flicked the Omega Gyroscope off of the cane, letting it fall to the floor, and begin to roll away. The glow emanating from it shut off while it was doing this, so it didn’t get far before becoming entangled in the hundemarke chain that had been hidden inside while it was active. “You can destroy anything you want, but you can’t destroy this cane.”

“This is my only shot. Once I do this, I’ll be dead, and I won’t be able to take anything else with me.”

“Then I guess you won’t be the one to destroy it, if anyone even is ever. Let. Go.”

Ramses was not letting up, and neither was Bhulan. They did not want to cause physical harm to each other, though; that much was clear. Mateo cleared his throat. “Bhu. It was your mission to destroy the hundemarke, correct? Then someone gave you the Insulator of Life, and someone else gave you the Omega Gyroscope, right? You have the hundemarke. No one here wants to see that used again, and we don’t really care about the gyroscope. So just go with what you have. Rambo obviously needs that for something that none of us understand.”

Bhulan frowned and considered her options. In the end, she chose the path of least resistance when she let go. “Fine.”

“Will we ever see you again?” Marie asked Ramses.

“I don’t know, but I was there. In the Third Rail, when you didn’t know I was. I was watching over you, and now I just have one thing left to do. When I come back, I’ll give you this.” He opened his other hand to show them an antique rosary. It was once Mateo’s, before he was ripped out of the timestream during Arcadia’s expiations. When the Superintendent returned him decades later, he made him an atheist instead of Catholic, and they never saw the rosary again. He only would have cared about it because it was his once-mother’s centuries prior.

“I don’t need that,” Mateo told Ramses. “It’s not mine anymore.”

Ramses smiled. “Trust me, you’re gonna want it, if only to keep it out of the hands of someone who would abuse its power.” He tucked the cane under his arm to free that hand so he could hang the metallic beads from it. “They call it the Mateo Rosary. He closed his fist over the cross, and disappeared, making it seem as though it was the rosary what done it.

“I’m not familiar,” Marie noted.

“I’ve never heard of it either,” Bhulan said, “but I don’t think it was just a teleporter. It probably also belongs on the list of objects that I would want to destroy.”

“You’ll have to settle for what you have,” Mateo told her. “I promise, I’ll do everything I can to make sure the cane, the rosary, and anything else like them, don’t fall into the wrong hands.”

Bhulan picked up the two objects, and disentangled the hundemarke, placing it around her neck. “I don’t doubt it.” She focused on the gyroscope, presumably trying to reactivate it. “I think Ramses did something to this. It’s...dead.” She looked pleased.

“That’s good, right?” Angela guessed.

“Yeah, that means it won’t be able to stop me from doing what I have to do.” Bhulan breathed a sigh of relief. “I die to save quintillions.” She disappeared as well.

“Whoa, does anybody else feel a little tired all of the sudden?” Marie posed.

The room around them changed. The furniture was moved around enough to cause the three of them to fall to the floor, and they were no longer alone. A couple was sitting on the couch with their young child.

“Sorry to disturb you,” Mateo said, standing up, massaging his coccyx.

“I recognize you,” the man said. “Why do I recognize you?”

“I recognize him too,” the woman corroborated.

“I just have one of those faces,” Mateo answered, not knowing the truth himself.

“We’ll leave you be,” Marie told them. “Apologies for the intrusion.” They left the unit, and stepped over to the nearest convenience terminal against the wall next to the elevator. “April 10, 2401. We jumped in time, just like we used to.”

“It wasn’t just like it,” Angela pointed out. “It wasn’t midnight central.”

“Yeah, it was,” Marie contended. “Well, it’s about fifteen ‘til one in Kansas, but close enough. It obviously happened because the Omega Gyroscope is finally gone.”

“What do we do now?” Angela questioned. “Where do we go?

“We have to find a way back to the real main sequence. That is where my wife is.”

“Are we sure about that?” Marie asked.

“No, you’re right, we’re not. In fact, there could be two of them now. Damn, I wish Ramses had stayed long enough to give us some details about that damn meeting.”

“If this is the Sixth Key,” Marie began, “then you know what we have to do, and it’s not looking for Leona.”

Mateo sighed, and nodded. “We have to assume she’s safe, but Olimpia may not be. I don’t know where to start with that trail either, though. Any ideas?”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 7, 2399

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About a week ago, a building in the middle of Manhattan, New York City, New York appeared out of nowhere that the people are calling The Superscraper. It was national news, but no one on the team—nor anyone affiliated with them—was paying attention to anything going on in the world. Their own concerns overshadowed anything in the public view. Not even Winona was apprised of the situation, though her father has been closely monitoring this development. The government is not allowed to go in, though, because while the building is located within the borders of the United States, it’s not technically a part of it. It is a Microsovereignty. It is Leona’s Microsovereignty.

The building is unlike any other in the world. It’s more like something one might find in the main sequence, or the Parallel. The Fifth Division doesn’t really do planetary structure as most everyone lives in space, but they would be capable of such an architectural feat. It’s a thousand meters high, and 180 meters wide, which is about half the size of a standard main sequence arcology. Depending on how high the floors are, you could serve hundreds of thousands of people here, or more. Who built this, and why? Leona had the idea to do something like it at some point, but a whole lot of other stuff got in the way, particularly all of her death threats, so she abandoned the idea, and the Microsovereignty itself.

Mateo and Leona only know now that anything happened to this place because it’s where Alyssa wants to meet. The whole area has been cordoned off by the International Relations Bureau, which normally wouldn’t be responsible for such matters, but it’s one of few exceptions. The two of them were placed on a list, because Leona no longer looks like herself. If she had access to temporal energy, she might be able to create the illusion of her real face, but as it stands, Alyssa appears to be the only one with such power. That’s why she didn’t need to put herself on the list, because she’s made herself look like Leona.

The outside is incredibly impressive, and the inside is just as, though still barebones, unfurnished. Alyssa, who still looks like Leona, greets them in the lobby. “Thank you for coming.”

“Hm.” Leona has interacted with people who look exactly like her before. One of them, Arcadia isn’t even an alternate version of her. She’s not sure why she’s so unsettled by it, but she would prefer it if Alyssa turned it off.

Alyssa seems to sense this. “Oh, sorry about that.” She drops the illusion, and goes back to her own face, which is weird too, what with Leona also looking like that. Everything and everyone needs to go back to the way they were.

“Are you feeling any better, or are you still against us?” Mateo asks her.

“I was never against you,” Alyssa tries to argue. “I’m brainwashed. Now, I know what you’re gonna say, if I’m aware of that, why can’t I just counteract it?”

“Neither of us thinks it should be so easy,” Leona tells her. “The mind is complicated, and space and time travel adds an extra dimension to it, because who knows where the technology that did this to you comes from?”

“I certainly don’t,” Alyssa promises.

“What’s changed then? Why are we here?”

“I would like to make a proposal,” Alyssa begins. “If you agree to cease all attempts at bringing temporal energy back to this world, I will bestow one of you access to your bodily alterations so that you may use them at your discretion. I don’t care which, though I know which one of you I would choose.”

“We weren’t trying to bring back temporal energy,” Mateo contends. I had to get out of range so I could bring my wife back.”

“Yes, I understand that,” Alyssa says. “I sensed your escape, and I sensed the bubble rushing out to keep up with you. Before you get mad, I did not personally make that happen. I am the Gyroscope’s caretaker, not its master. It works as long as I don’t leave for 50,000 years. No, I’m not talking about that, you were poking at the bubble before, and you still are. It has nothing to do with your little space excursion.”

Mateo and Leona exchange a look to see if the other has any idea. “We have no clue what you’re talking about. All we’re doing is observing it.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Alyssa requests.

“We’re not lying. We came to this world without powers. Our only concerns are Angela and Marie, and what happens to them when they get back.”

“They will be afforded exceptions as well,” Alyssa says. “I want them both to live as much as you do.”

“If you can make an exception for them—” Mateo begins before Leona hushes him up with a short shake of her head.

“So you are poking the bubble?” Alyssa presses.

“No, we are not,” Leona explains. “He just likes to poke holes in people’s arguments. If you’ll make an exception for Angela and Marie, and do whatever you could to help Arcadia, we would be grateful.”

“What’s wrong with Arcadia has nothing to do with me,” Alyssa reveals. “I’m afraid I can’t help her, though I would. You’re all my friends. I still want to be part of the team. I just have other loyalties now.”

“We understand.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, we do. We’ve been doing this a lot longer.”

Alyssa nods, agreeing to disagree. “Have you decided which of you will get their abilities back?”

“You’re still going to give that to us, even though we’re not...poking the bubble?”

Alyssa laughs. “I promised a gift, I’ll give you a gift. I suppose I should ask you to not poke the bubble, whether you have been doing it already or not.”

“Give it to her,” Mateo says of his wife. “She needs to look like herself.”

Alyssa regards Leona. “Is this amenable to you? You won’t be able to teleport.”

“I want this building,” Leona clarifies. Powers are great, but something tells her that this tiny little nation will soon be far more valuable than being able to jump around the globe a few hours faster. “Give me back my face.”

“Very well.” Alyssa reaches behind her back, and pulls out a cane with a giant-ass diamond at the top. It’s the Dilara Cane.

“Where the hell did you get that?” Leona questions.

“Dalton Hawke let me borrow it.”

“That is what sent us to this reality, did you know that?” Mateo asks.

“Hmm.” Alyssa examines the object. “He taught me how to make exceptions with it, and to maintain myself as an exception. He didn’t say anything about other realities.” She points it at Mateo. “Do you want I should send you back?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: February 13, 2399

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Labhrás moved Leona and Tarboda to a much nicer room, with cots to sleep on, clean running water, and control over the lights. They also allowed them to have a shower, and eat some real food, instead of this reality’s version of hard tack. The door was still locked, but he promised to let Tarboda go at the right time so as to avoid any run-ins with the authorities. The exchange was on, so they all had to get a good night’s rest. It was hard to tell when it was bedtime since Leona had yet to see a window, so they just turned in when they felt tired.

It’s the morning, and Tarboda is gone. Leona is at the exchange with her future grandfather, the two smelly brothers, and a few other goons. Or maybe they’re henchmen. There’s a difference, apparently, and they would probably be offended by being called the wrong one. Labhrás altered the conditions a little bit. Leona is in chains, and she is wearing a hood, but the shackles were bought at a magic shop, so they only appear to be locked, and the hood is see-through. They still want to make it look real while Leona finds out who’s really after her, and why. They’re standing on the docks, which is a truly unique locale for a ransom exchange. Really, no one has ever thought of that before. Why don’t criminals meet at the docks more often?

Leona still doesn’t know where she is. It’s cool, which implies they’re still in the northern hemisphere, and she can taste the salt in the air, so the body of water to her left is an ocean, rather than a lake. That tells her that she’s not in a landlocked region, which rules out places like Kansas. She never thought they were in Kansas, but it would have been nice. As far as she’s aware, her grandparents emigrated out of Ireland, and went straight to Topeka, so it wouldn’t have been the craziest of developments. Then again, they’re in a completely different reality now. Labhrás has probably never even heard of Topeka, and maybe not even Kansas City. None of that has happened yet, and all this timey-wimey stuff is weird and complicated, so maybe it never will. Maybe everything they’re doing now will negate her existence, kind of like what Mateo did to himself when he killed Adolf Hitler, but worse because it would happen in every timeline for her, and she wouldn’t even have the satisfaction of killing Hitler.

“Are ya still with us?” Labhrás asks.

Even with this hood on, he could tell that Leona was stuck in her head. “I’m fine. What time is it?”

“Half past they’re feckin’ late,” he answers. “Pardon my English, Madam.” Hm. What is England to him?

“Doesn’t bother me. That’s not even a real word,” she jokes.

The smellier brother waits for a solid minute before responding with, “yes, it is.”

We don’t wait much longer before a well-dressed man carrying a cane shows up. He’s kempt and confident, and does not seem embarrassed by his tardiness. Leona doesn’t recognize him. Now that doesn’t mean he’s not the one who put a price on her head, but she’s still getting the impression that the true force behind this mess is still living incognito. This guy’s just a lackey. “My name is Connell Arrington,” he announces. British accent; British name. Where are these people from? Happy cliché day, anyway.

“You don’t look like you’re carrying very much money on you?” Labhrás notes.

“Everything is electronic these days, my dear.”

“That’s not what we agreed on. We want untraceable bills.”

“Impossible. You’ll take what you can get, or you’ll get nothing.”

Labhrás just fumes.

Connell goes on, “you identified yourselves as the Bounty Hunters of the Old World. As a result, we are unaware of your specific designation. What is your name?”

“Labhrás Delaney.”

Connell’s eye twitches. He looks over at Leona. “You would give up your own kin for a bit of cash?”

Labhrás looks over at Leona as well. “We are not related.”

Connell twitches again. “You expect me to believe it to be a coincidence that you are both named Delaney?”

“Her name is Leona Matic,” Labhrás tries to clarify.

“Pull the hood off, please,” Connell requests.

Smelly Goon One does so without waiting for Labhrás’ go-ahead.

“Did you not tell him your unmarried name?” Connell asks Leona.

“Do we know each other?” Leona asks, undeftly changing the subject.

“You and I have never met,” Connell begins. “Neither have you and the man I work for. Yet you have wronged us both, and we are here to collect on your sins.”

Leona narrows her eyes at him. “Which sins?”

“All of them,” Connell replies.

“Who are you to make me answer for all of them?”

“We are...in a great position to do so. That is what gives us the right.”

“How are we related?” Labhrás questions, frustrated at the tangent.

She’s been avoiding eye contact, but that’s no longer viable. “It’s complicated.”

“Is it?” Connell asks. Then he has a realization. “Ah, I see. Who is he, then; your son? Great great great great great grandson?”

Labhrás is super confused now.

“You’re my grandfather,” Leona corrects while continuing to look at Labhrás.

“How is that possible? You may be older than me!”

“Time travel, old chap!” Connell says jovially. “She’s from the future.”

“I’m not from the future,” Leona contends. “You are. I don’t know why you go back in time, or how you do it, but it has to happen, or I never exist.”

“Is that all it would take?” Connell asks. “I believe we’ve found our solution.” He twists the handgrip of his cane, and pulls out a gun, instead of the usual sword. He shoots Labhrás in the chest, and then ducks away to avoid gunfire from the henchmen.

Leona catches Labhrás as he’s falling to his back, already coughing up blood. She removes her shackles, and tries to apply pressure to the wound, but he’s not going to make it. “I’m sorry. I would have told you if I thought that this might happen.”

“I’m sorry,” he struggles to say. “Ta...Ta...”

“Thanks? Are you trying to say thanks?”

He shakes his head. “Tarboda. Tarboda is dead.”

Leona’s face falls. Tarboda was not a great friend, but he could have been one day, and he did nothing to deserve that. “You’re no grandfather of mine.” Connell is still in a firefight with the rest of Labhrás’ people. She stands up, and ignores the flying bullets. She walks across no man’s land, and approaches him.

“I thought you would disappear before our very eyes,” he says to her.

“That’s not how it works, you bleedin’ eejit. Now take me to your boss.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 6, 2395

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Dalton Hawk looked different. Sure, his face was the same, and he was at about the same age as he was when they last saw him, but he held himself differently. He stood up straighter, which made it all the more interesting that he was also carrying a cane. Upon closer inspection, they saw that this was unlike any cane any of them had seen before. A humongous diamond was affixed to the top of it. Leona realized as he was walking towards them, though, that she had indeed seen it before, just not in its completed form. A long time ago, Dilara Cassano, a.ka. The Arborist asked her and her then team to procure the diamond for them as payment. She used her ability to muster a version of Horace Reaver from an old timeline, along with Lincoln Rutherford as a bonus. They were both apparently paradoxed out of reality after the former deliberately erased Tristesse Ulinthra from all histories.

“You can?” Mateo asked. “Aren’t you just a body hopper? I mean, I don’t mean to say that’s all you are, but...”

“It’s fine,” Dalton promises, “no offense taken. And no, I don’t have that ability anymore; not since I was reborn from the afterlife simulation.”

“What can you do now?” Leona asked.

Dalton spun his fancy cane like a professional baton twirler. He ended by moderately gently dropping it on the floor, where it stood up to gravity. “I can’t do anything, but I can use this.”

“What can it do?” Angela pressed.

“It invokes and harnesses a special flavor of temporal energy. I should be able to send you anywhere, anywhen. Or I could give you powers, take them away, saddle you with a time affliction. I could theoretically rewrite reality to my will.”

“What do you do with it?” Olimpia questioned, worried.

“Nothing much so far,” Dalton answered. “I’m still figuring out how it works. It comes with a learning curve, and a downside.”

“Doesn’t everything?” Ramses asked rhetorically.

“I can’t use it on myself,” Dalton explained. “Well, I could, but then I would lose the cane, because someone else would have to do it for me. My arm doesn’t reach that far.” He demonstrated the idea by holding the cane from the bottom, and trying to point the diamond at himself. Humans weren’t anatomically set up for that. The thing was too long.

The Presidents and Vice Presidents looked amongst each other. “We don’t know who he is,” Skylar told the team. “We’re assuming he’s good people because of your reception of him, but could you confirm that?”

Leona shrugged. “We don’t really know him that well, but he seems cool.”

“We can help you then,” Lucy said. “Have you tried reflecting the energy off of a mirror?”

“Yes, I have,” Dalton replied. “It just consumes the mirror. It doesn’t care that it’s reflective.”

“Our mirrors are different,” Oliver told him. “If we were to be transported to the barrier at the edge of the metro, we could show you right now.”

They took each other’s hands, and teleported to Stilwell, Kansas. It sat on the southernmost edge of the dimensional bubble they were in. Beyond this was nothing, or maybe they just couldn’t get to it. The team had never actually questioned anybody what happened if they tried to cross over. Surely someone had tried in the last 370 years. It was weird to see. The barrier was a mirror, just as Oliver had described it. They could watch themselves as if they were in a giant dance studio. The image faded as they looked upwards, and eventually gave way to the sky and clouds.

“It goes all around,” Kostya explained. “It used to be the entire dome. You could stand here and watch things happening miles and miles away, on the other side of hills and buildings. We don’t know who did it, but we don’t think it was the man who made the snowglobe itself. We think one day the reflection will disappear completely, and we’ll be able to expand beyond the borders.”

“Some people think that,” Oliver contested. “It’s kind of a religious thing.”

“How do you know that this will reflect temporal energy,” Dalton asked.

“We’ve seen it before,” Skylar answered. “That’s all we’re gonna say about it.”

Dalton smiled with little confidence. “I’ve sat through trigonometry class multiple times.” He turned his cane, and aimed it at the barrier. A blast of energy came out of it, bounced off of the barrier, and landed in Olimpia’s chest. She disappeared.

“You better have sent her somewhere safe,” Angela warned.

“I did. The only question was whether the reflection would work.” With that, he shot her with energy too. He then proceeded to do the same for Marie, Ramses, Leona, and finally Mateo.

Mateo woke up on the ground. He didn’t think it was possible to be knocked unconscious in this new body, but then again, temporal energy was probably some pretty powerful stuff. He got himself to his feet, and looked around. No one else was there; not Leona, nor anyone else. He was completely alone in the middle of a field. He gazed up at the sky, and saw the stars, but there was something odd about them. He kept staring, looking for what was wrong. As he adjusted his angle, he realized that there was a slight distortion in the light coming down from them. The sky wasn’t perfectly transparent. A dimensional barrier was between the land and the heavens. He was still in the Fourth Quadrant. What evil trickery was this?

Before he could teleport to civilization, to figure out what was going on, he felt something wrap itself around his waist. He looked down to find a lasso, or perhaps a whip. It tugged him backwards, through a tunnel of flashing lights. He landed on his feet when it stopped, but couldn’t get rid of the momentum without falling on his ass. It didn’t really hurt, though. Ramses reached down, and helped him off the floor.

“Where are we?” Mateo asked.

“The Parallel. I’ve been here since yesterday.”

“What’s yesterday?” Mateo went on.

“It’s just been a day for me. Whatever Dalton did, he sent us to different points in spacetime; I believe to different realities. I came here last year. You were simply thrown forwards in time one year. The others are elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere,” Mateo echoed. “Elsewhere is where?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m still looking into it.” Ramses turned and addressed a woman who had been watching them. “There’s your proof of concept. Please allow me to seek the others.”

She seemed very unappreciative of their inconvenient situation. “We will not allow you to travel through time...in any reality. We will let you seek the others, but you must wait until you catch up to them on your own before you may bring them here.”

“What if they’re not on our pattern anymore?” Ramses tried to reason. “What if they’re a day behind, or a day ahead, or centuries in the past? What if we never catch up to them?”

“We will not allow you to travel through time,” she repeated like a robot. “You must wait until you catch up to them on your own.”

“Real mature, asshole,” Ramses said. “He pulled one device off the counter between them, and handed it to Mateo. He then grabbed the second device.

“What are these?” Mateo asked him as he was following his friend out of the room.

“What you’re holding is basically a kin detector. Obviously we all have unique DNA, but the way I engineered our clones was consistent across the six of us. That thing will alert us when it senses another one of us in the same moment of time. It even works across realities.”

Mateo flipped a switch on the side of the detector. An alarm started to blare, and until Ramses could take it away from him, and turn it off, Mateo thought he was going to lose his hearing.

“Sorry, I should have said don’t push any buttons.”

“Does that mean someone else is here?”

“No, it’s still not calibrated to ignore you,” Ramses replied. “That’s why it was so loud, because you’re so close to it.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“But we don’t know when we’re gonna find the others. Maybe never.”

“This universe is not exactly a unified empire. We’ll find someone who can help us eventually, I promise you that. I would modify it myself, but it is so far beyond me, Matty, like you don’t even know.”

“Why did Dalton do this to us?”

“I don’t know that it was on purpose. He may have looked confident, but I could see anxiety in his eyes. He had little experience with that cane. There’s every chance the first time he tried to use it had somehow backfired, and trapped him in the Fourth Quadrant in the first place. We should have talked to him more.”

The two of them were given a full suite to stay in, but they ended up just sleeping in the same bed, so they could both hear the alarm. Neither knew how faint the volume would be once it did go off. Ramses said it could even potentially be infrasonic. Of course, that was a relative term for them now. They were capable of seeing a wider range of frequencies on the light spectrum, and of hearing a wider range of sound frequencies. Also due to their new bodies, they didn’t need to sleep much, but they did need a little. Their skin could absorb and convert solar radiation into chemical energy, but as it was organic, it was only so efficient at this conversion.

They woke up a couple of hours later, fully rested. The friend detector log did not indicate that they had missed their window. It was still April 6, 2395, at least inasmuch as that meant anything in this reality. “Can we go anywhere in the universe, or do we have to remain close to Earth?”

“Comparatively speaking, it shouldn’t matter too much,” Ramses answered. “Other realities are further away than you or even I could fathom. Plus, we don’t know where Dalton might have sent them. It could be Earth, or somewhere else. Why? Was there somewhere you wanted to go?”

“I was just thinking about checking in on Flindekeldan. I know it’s stupid, but I’m feeling a little nostalgic.”

“Better leave them out of it. Besides, that’s particularly far away. In no other reality is that populated. I doubt anyone’s that far out, and we don’t need to test the limits of this thing.”

“I understand.”

“As do I,” came the voice of another Ramses. He hadn’t bothered to knock on the door. He waltzed right into the bedroom, and outstretched his arm. “Pleased to meet you, Ramses, I’m Parallel!Ramses.”

“Likewise,” Ramses said rather unconvincingly, but surely rather innocuously. “Here but for the lid of Schrödinger’s box stand I.”

Parallel!Ramses chuckles. “If that’s the way you wanna look at it, then I won’t try to stop you.”

“Oh, I’m sure you understand it better,” Ramses said, worshiping him with a wave of his arms. “We’re not worthy.” It was starting to look a lot less playful.

“I just wanted to make sure these accommodations are too your liking,” Parallel!Ramses began. “I see that you two have finally hooked up. I always thought it might happen.”

Mateo looked back at the bed, and then over at his Ramses. “Really?”

“He’s messing with you.” Ramses retrieved the friend detector from the nightstand. “This thing is amazing, but I have feedback.”

“And I would love to hear it,” Parallel!Ramses lied. “Unfortunately, I have a lot of work to do. It’s a big universe out there, you understand.”

Ramses squinted at his alternate self. “I always knew I would become you...if I ever got power. That’s why I try to stay away from it.”

Parallel!Ramses glided back towards the door. “It would seem as though you chose wisely.” He left.

“Well,” Mateo said awkwardly. “That was a pointless conversation.”

“He was trying to gloat,” Ramses said, still staring at the space his alt once occupied. “He thinks he’s finally won.”

“Has he not? He has all that power. I don’t want to compare the two of you, but if this really is all you ever wanted...”

Ramses finally looked over at his friend. “He doesn’t have everything he wanted. He barely has anything. He doesn’t have you and Leona. He believes that these arbitrarily restricted devices will keep us from ever getting out of this reality. He believes you’re stuck here with him.”

“Are we?”

Ramses rifled through his bag until he found his toolkit. He removed one small tool, and flipped it in the air before catching it again. He used it to pry the casing off of the lasso dimensional extraction device. “We’re not just gonna bring our friends here. We’re gonna go to them, and even if we end up in a reality not of our choosing, we’ll be together.”

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