The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 22, 2504

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“Who here likes music?” They were back at the Matic house now, sitting on lawn chairs in the front yard. Pacey had convened them, evidently thinking it was funny that they tried to break out of the simulation by examining blades of grass. While they were waiting to listen to his spiel, Mateo was looking at the grass himself since he wasn’t around for that test before. “I’m prepared to offer you a new home in a new dome,” Pacey finally started to say. “It’s basically a city, though the residences are minimal. It’s all about music. All the greats are there. Do you wanna see a live show with Elvis Presely? We have that, as an android who looks, acts, and sounds exactly like him. I can get you front row tickets. You can always have front row tickets. Any show from any artist, past or present.”

“What is this?” Marie questioned. “What are you doing here? Are you seriously asking how we would like to live as prisoners?”

“I mean, would you rather I just decide for you?” Pacey asked. “Seems weirder.”

“I remember you,” Leona pointed out, “but I don’t. You were...on a ship.”

Pacey sighed. “You were prisoners on that ship. You broke free, broke into my lab, and tricked me into giving you my technology.”

Their memories weren’t all there yet, but the most relevant ones seemed to come up when they were most needed. If they once had an adventure involving a ball of rubber bands, seeing a rubber band ball here would probably bring it back to the surface. But for now, it mostly had to do with their time on Castlebourne, and now Leona and Marie’s brief stay on a ship commanded by that Angry Fifth Divisioner who could not give his vendetta against them a rest. “What are you talking about?” Leona asked. “I didn’t trick you into anything. Yeah, I went in there to steal it, but you gave it to me instead.”

“You said that you were going to use it to protect a population in another universe,” Pacey said.

“Yeah, and we did,” Ramses interjected. “The Ochivari can’t get in there anymore.”

“Fair enough,” Pacey accepted, “but I told you not to use it for anything else, yet you did, didn’t you? You created something called a slingdrive, and you even managed to develop it enough for miniaturization and interdimensional pocketing.”

Mateo stood. “You’re right, he did, which is why we should be able to leave whenever we want. Right, guys?”

Pacey rolled his eyes. “I obviously put a dampener in the dome. You ain’t goin’ nowhere. So sit back down!”

It seemed unlike Pacey to get all riled up and intense like this, so Mateo did as he was told.

Pacey continued, “I don’t want to hurt you, which is exactly what would have happened if I had tried to extract the technology from these bodies. I might have asked you to switch to new ones, but that wouldn’t have solved the problem of you having this technology. You would have rebuilt it.” He dismissed it immediately as soon as Ramses opened his mouth to argue. “Even if you promised not to. Something would come up, and you would have to break our agreement. You already did! I asked you to use it once, then you explored your options. You can’t be trusted, so I’m keeping you on this planet. That is not in question. Your only choice now is which dome you want to live in. Some are obviously off-limits, like The Bowl and The Terminal. I thought Underburg was the best idea, because it’s pleasant, and inoffensive, but I guess you didn’t like how nice it was. So I’ve come up with some other ones, which is why I ask, do you like music? Melodome is the Music City...the real one.”

“How do you have control over all of this?” Angela asked. “Where’s Hrockas, and the rest of the staff?”

“They’re on the real Castlebourne,” Pacey answered. “That’s all I’ll say. Even though I’m gonna erase your memories again once it’s time to wake you up in the new dome, I don’t want there to be any memory of you understanding where you are in the cosmos. I can’t delete memories, I can only cover them up. It’s an ethics thing. I actually follow rules, even if I’m the one who came up with them.”

“What are our other options?”

“Boyd,” Romana scolded.

“What?” Boyd asked her. “He has the power. I recognize power, I’m a pragmatist.”

Pacey smiled with only a slight bit of relief, knowing that this didn’t mean everyone was on board. “Well, you can also just live in the Palacium Hotel; have any suite you want, whenever you want it. I’m sure you’re aware of all the amenities, like the swimming pools, the game room, and the spa.”

“Boring!” Boyd complained.

“There’s also Tokyo 2077.”

“I’m not familiar with that one,” Olimpia noted.

“It’s what Tokyo looked like in the year 2077. Your lives would be as interesting as you want them to be. I can even implant the Japanese language in your brains, if you don’t already speak it.”

“I don’t like city environments,” Olimpia said. “What else you got?”

“You’re not seriously entertaining this idea?” Mateo asked her, shocked. “He’s the bad guy here. We can’t just roll over.”

“What choice do we have?” Boyd posed. “As I said, he has the power. Don’t antagonize the antagonist. Isn’t that one of your rules?”

“Technically, it’s mine,” Leona said. “And technically I agree.”

“Et tu Brute?” Mateo didn’t know where that phrase came from. He just hoped that he was using it right.

“Yesterday, we thought that we were hopeless because we were in a virtual simulation, where we couldn’t even trust our own minds.” Leona paused dramatically. “That doesn’t appear to be the case. So we are not hopeless. Put us in whatever dome you want,” she said to Pacey. “We’ll get out again.”

“You’re welcome to try, but you won’t remember any of this.”

“Go on with your options,” Ramses spat.

Pacey wasn’t perturbed. “Canopydome might be nice. It’s a rainforest, but there are nice places to stay.”

“What if we refuse to choose?” Mateo asked.

“Then I’ll choose for you, and you might not like it. And if you continue to piss me off, you might really not like it.”

“We can’t just let him control us,” Ramses argued. “We have to fight.”

“You’re changing your tune,” Romana pointed out.

“It’s not hopeless anymore,” Ramses explained. “We’re physical, I didn’t know that. I can’t tell you all what to do, but I will say that I’m not going to choose my own prison. I reject it on principle.”

“I have a nice place lined up for you,” Pacey said. “Maybe pack a coat or two.”

“Do your worst,” Ramses volleyed.

“He doesn’t speak for all of us,” Angela said, trying to be clear on her concession.

“He speaks for me,” Mateo told him.

“Then you won’t all necessarily be together anymore,” Pacey decided. “But don’t worry, because most of you won’t remember each other anyway.” He glared at Mateo. “Most of you,” he repeated. “Some of you might even not be alone.” He stood there for a moment, in apparent deep thought. “Okay, I have your assignments. Go to sleep.”

His command was ineluctable. He said it, they did.

Mateo woke up with a start. It was dark, but he could see the foreboding crooked lines of bare tree branches above him. He was in the forest. It was soft and dry. He could not bring himself out of an intense feeling of fear. At first, he thought it was due to a nightmare, but he couldn’t remember having one. No, he was afraid of something here, in the real world. He darted his eyes back and forth, but he daren’t move a muscle. Something was around him, lurking...biding its time. He didn’t know what it was, but it was incredibly dangerous. This whole world was dangerous. Even if he managed to clear the most imminent threat, another would be right there in moments. He was so uncomfortable, though, on a root maybe. The more he adjusted his position—the more sound he made—the more enemies would be alerted to his presence, and his location. They weren’t just enemies, though. They were monsters. There were all monsters.

He could remember what happened now. The current antagonist dropped him under this dome with full memory of all that happened in the dome before. He even found himself being able to distinguish the true experiences from the implanted memories that Pacey used to reinforce the illusion. As Mateo lay there, still too fearful to make a move, he found his old memories returning as well. His unremarkable origins in the 1980s, growing up with his adoptive parents, being turned into a time traveler, unintentionally erasing himself from the timeline, exploring space, fighting villains, changing the past. He was Mateo Matic, husband to Leona Delaney, and father to Romana Nieman. And he had to get back to all of his friends. Get up. Get up!

Mateo sat up, at first thinking it prudent to stay on his rear, but realizing that to be the most vulnerable position. At least when he was on his back, he was theoretically concealed. So he quickly shifted to a crouch. He looked around, not seeing anything in the foliage, but knowing that they were there. Pacey never specifically said where he would be sending him, but there was only one place it could be, given recent developments. Hrockas named this one Bloodbourne. Take every horror film killer, and stuff them in one metropolitan-sized environment. That was the idea, to incorporate visitors into a world full of real danger and violence. On Castlebourne, there were safeguards in place, chief among them being every visitor’s ability to have their consciousness transferred to a new substrate whenever the old one became too damaged. It wasn’t so much an ability as a requirement. It was just as illegal to let oneself die permanently and for real as it was to kill someone else. According to Pacey’s cryptic words, though, this wasn’t really Castlebourne; it was somehow just very similar to it. Perhaps those safeguards weren’t around. The only thing to do now was to find a way to survive.

Something was in the brush. There could be rabbits here, like that common trope in fiction where that was what it turned out to be; a misdirect for the audience to let their guard down just before the true jumpscare emerged. Or it could be something genuinely frightening. Mateo didn’t want to stick around and find out. There was no reason to approach the shaking leaves, like the idiot protagonist in a movie. The only choice was to run. Cautiously, but still quickly. He took off, deftly dodging tree trunks, and avoiding getting his feet caught in exposed roots. Where was he running to? Well, the scope of these domes were limited. They each had a radius of 41.5 kilometers. So if he just kept going in any direction, he would eventually hit the wall. Now, whether he would be able to find an exit, or if there was even one to find, was a different question. Either way, it was the only logical way to go. Of course, he could already be next to a wall, and running in the complete opposite direction, which would mean he would have to travel the full 83 kilometers, but there was no way to know that.

Perhaps this was the wrong call. Maybe movie characters had the right idea by investigating one unknown at a time. His running has evidently awakened a number of monsters in the area. At first, only a couple of them showed up, but then more. And more, and more, and more. Pretty soon, two dozen creatures were chasing after him. He couldn’t run from them in a straight line either, because some of them were actually ahead in his path. So he was zigging and zagging, and desperately doing everything he could to avoid being caught by even one of them. Then he saw something in the corner of his eye. It was a human, and something about her figure made her seem less threatening than the others, even though there were plenty of human killers here. It was the mask, or rather the lack thereof. Most horror genre killers wore some kind of mask, sometimes to conceal their identities, but also to instill dread in their targets. For franchises, it was a way to become iconic, and differentiate themselves from their competitors, even though the formula was pretty much the same throughout all of them.

She wasn’t wearing a mask of any kind, and it didn’t look like she was looking to attack him. No, it looked like they were chasing after her too. Pacey said that not all of them would be alone for their assignments. But it wasn’t Leona or Romana. Not Olimpia, nor either of the Walton twins. Holy crap, it was Paige. Paige Turner, at an age that he had never seen her before. “This way!” she cried.

She seemed to know what she was doing better than he. Mateo turned when she did. They rounded a thick grove of trees, and found themselves coming up on a cliff. He couldn’t see the elevation just yet, but based on the beautiful scenic view beyond, it was probably pretty high. “You got a plan?”

“Don’t stop!” she replied.

He trusted her, though to be fair, it could have been a shapeshifter. Those belonged in horror films too. Just as he leapt over the edge, she stopped for half a second. This was just enough time for him to get ahead of her. After she jumped, she reached for Mateo’s shoulders and held on, digging her knees into his back. He wasn’t one to make a good guess at a falling height even when he was in the middle of it, but it was surely over fifty meters. He maybe could have grabbed some branches below to break his fall, but Paige might get tangled up in them, so he stayed on the straight path, and just let himself crash land on the relatively smooth ground below. He lay there for a few minutes while the nanites flowing through his body started to affect their repairs. It didn’t sound like she was worried, so the monsters probably hadn’t taken a leap of faith behind them. Once he was healed enough to move just a little, he turned over on his back. She was sitting next to him, still catching her breath. “It’s nice to see you, Paige.”

“That’s not my name,” she responded. “I go by Octavia.”

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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 2058: Off Another Cliff

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My worst fears have come to life. Fiction is as bad here as I was worried it would be. That goes for print media as well as film and television. You make up stories, of course, but there’s no beauty in it, no thrill. When I was first starting out as a writer, I was accused of always getting right to the point. The tales themselves were interesting, but I wasn’t telling them in interesting ways. I wasn’t keeping the audience engaged. That’s how it is here, but with everything. I started to read a book that was narratively similar to The Grapes of Wrath, but it played more like a list of things that happened. John drove himself and his daughter to the abandoned shack in the middle of woods where he recalled hiding when he was a young boy. It was dirty, but still standing, so they cleaned it up, and stayed the night. They ate blueberries for dinner, and also for breakfast the next morning. In my world, that excerpt would be expanded across two or more pages. What were they feeling during the drive? What were they thinking? They were running from the anti-authorities, so were they scared? The book made me feel nothing. I don’t know, I just can’t get into anything. Everything I’ve tried has been so boring, it makes me want to jump off another cliff on the off-chance that it sends me to another universe. That’s not exactly how I ended up here in the first place, but it was what ultimately led me here. My landlord doesn’t own a computer, and since I don’t have a job yet, I can’t afford one of my own. I’ve been using an old phone of hers that still works with DataWave. For any possible readers from any other universe, that is what they call WiFi here. Anyway, writing these little posts is hard enough on the little screen, I wouldn’t be able to create an entire story with it. Maybe when I get a job, I’ll buy a real machine, and start making up my own stories. I’ve not been a writer since I lived on my Earth, but maybe it’s time. I think y’all need to understand what true creativity looks like.

Microstory 1751: Spirit of the Lynx

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When I was a boy, I had no identity. All of my classmates had some kind of online persona, which represented who they were, and what they enjoyed. Their usernames reflected these attributes, be it a love for football, or all things Star Wars. I didn’t care about anything in particular, or have any special way of setting myself apart from others. I suppose that’s what it really comes down to, that I was not special. Ya know, I liked watching the news, and not because I wanted to become a reporter when I was older, but I’ve always been more interested in the goingson of real life than fiction, or other forms of entertainment. But NewsBoy1994 seemed like a dumb and boring name that I didn’t want to use. One day, I was flipping through my favorite news and documentary channels, hoping to learn something new, when I came across a nature show about the lynx, and it gave me an idea. Maybe I am a lynx. And not because of the animal’s particular behavior, or the way that they look. Maybe it’s just arbitrary. I could call it my spirit animal, and claim to others that I just really like lynxes. I felt like a fraud, but no one else appeared to have any problem with it. He likes lynxes. Whatever, doesn’t matter to me. I didn’t get ridiculed or questioned, and everything went well. Over time, these creative online identities faded away. Social media allowed you to connect directly to your friends and contacts, but also just say things for the world to absorb at will. Real life has become trendy. People can read your posts if they want to, and on their own time. Many are using real identities now, because for most, it’s the closest we’ll get to fame, and we don’t want to hide ourselves under a layer of anonymity. Our friends can’t find us if they don’t know enough about us. Even then, is PermaLynx94 the guy you’re looking for, or some random stranger who also happens to like lynxes?

I shed my lynx identity, and moved on with my life. It was a lot easier for me than for others, I imagine. Some still probably weren’t too butthurt about it, since they were no longer so obsessed with the pastimes of their youth, and were glad to grow up. I didn’t care at all, because I never really cared about lynxes. It’s probably better now that people have to look deeper than my name if they want to know who I am. I got into hiking, which is something I never thought I would do. I probably would have tried to figure out some kind of clever walking pun back in the day if I had realized who I was at a younger age. I still like the news, and don’t care for fiction. I don’t have a problem with it on principle, but I watch Star Wars, and just don’t feel a damn thing for those people. This week, I’m backpacking alone in the woods, in the freezing cold of Canada. This is where I find my zen, away from people, and all of their noises. Things are going fine until I slip on a wet rock, and over the edge of the cliff. I hang onto a root, just hoping it doesn’t give. The drop is bout about six meters down, so I’ll live, but I’ll break bones, and not be able to leave. I have to find a way to lift myself up. Now I wish I had once identified as PullupDude69. As I’m hanging there, mere moments from a slow death, a lynx trots up and stares down at me. We study each other’s eyes, and don’t move a muscle. Suddenly, I’m no longer on the brink, but in some kind of tranquil and balanced serenityscape. We watch each other for an eternity, and then my spirit animal graciously provides me with the strength I need to pull myself up, and survive.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: February 11, 2341

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There were eleven Cassidy cuffs, and twelve people. The time of requirement was over, though, so no one had to put one on if they didn’t want to. Leona grew to be quite comfortable with the Bearimy-Matic pattern, but there was no guarantee Jeremy would want to have anything to do with them anymore. According to their calculations, The Warrior was the last person with the power to transition them back and forth between the main sequence and The Parallel. It hopped from Jupiter to Nerakali, but seemed to end with him. Kivi pointed out that this didn’t mean no one could control them anymore. He didn’t use that power very much, and it wasn’t the only use of the primary cuff. Before they made the jump to 2341, Leona and Ramses worked on the cuffs to make sure no one could use them without their full authorization. Someone had to take ownership of the primary in order for them to function properly, so it had to be someone committed to the pattern, and to the team.

Bran, Aeolia, Siria, Dalton, and D.B. had never become full members of that team, and didn’t express any interest in joining officially now. So their numbers problem was instantly solved right there. Now they just needed to pose the question to the others. Ramses said he was tired of being left behind, and going off on tangents. He wanted to stick to his best friends, and not let anything take him away again. Jeremy also wanted to keep going like this. He didn’t know what they were going to do with their time, but it didn’t make sense to live one day at a time, and his original pattern forced him to isolate himself from others. This was the best solution. Olimpia said she had to stay, so her voice wouldn’t have to echo anymore. Leona explained that this didn’t mean she had to stay on the team. She could wear her own cuff, and just go off to live her life. Each one was perfectly capable of operating on its own. Her reaction to this truth made it clear that the suppression of her time illness wasn’t the only reason she wanted to stay, so they dropped the subject, and pretended like this was her only choice. Angela and Kivi didn’t give reasons, but they too chose to remain.

So now they were seven. After saying their goodbyes to their other friends, who had their own lives to lead, they synced up the cuffs, and made the next jump. It was February 11, 2341. Leona revealed that they were now back on track. Had Anatol never pushed them back to the 16th century, based on the number of temporal jumps they had since made, this was the date they would have ended up on. The question remained, what were they going to do? The pattern was one thing, but were they just going to relax by the sea for the rest of their lives? The primary reason they wore the cuffs before was because someone had intel about people needing saving, and how to go about doing it. Even Anatol had served them in this capacity, in his own twisted way. Now they had no purpose. Now they only had time.

Near the end of the day, they were still sitting around the table in the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which was parked on an ocean cliff. They weren’t saying anything. They expected to start discussing their plans for the future, but no one seemed to have any ideas. “Did Anatol have any friends or family?” Olimpia asked finally, breaking the silence.

“Well, not that we know of,” Leona answered. “Why?”

“I’m thinking about retaliation,” Olimpia furthered. We defeated him, so who might come for revenge? Isn’t that always what happens?”

“It was a draw,” Mateo reminded her. “Yes, we convinced him to give up, but he still made his own choice. I don’t think anyone would have anything to be vengeful about, it’s not like we killed him with the hundemarke. Like Lee-Lee said, he seemed to be rather alone. As far as I can tell, Juan Ponce de León was the closest thing he had to a friend. The Sergeant was a rival, and we all know how complicated frenemy relationships are. But still, if he was as close to someone as we are to each other, they haven’t revealed themselves yet.”

“That is who I’m worried about, someone we don’t even know exists,” Olimpia maintained. “You didn’t know how many Prestons there were in the beginning, did you?”

“I can’t recall,” Mateo said honestly. “I think I met Nerakali without knowing she was related to Zef.”

Leona stood up, and addressed the aether. “If anyone has anything against us, they might as well present themselves to us now! There is no point in dilly-dallying!”

They all looked around, waiting for a portal to open up. None did.

“I believe all of our enemies have been defeated,” Ramses figured. “Or turned to our side. I don’t think there is anyone left.”

“We are rather close to The Edge,” Kivi said casually, but also made it sound like she was talking about a capital-e edge.

“Is that a concept we’re supposed to know about already?” Angela questioned.

“The edge...of time travel?” Kivi put forth, thinking it would trigger something in their memories. “The year 2400?”

“What are you talking about?” Mateo asked.

“Is there some sort of event in 2400 that prevents time travelers from existing?” Ramses continued. “Like the Panikon?”

“I don’t know what that is, but it’s not some kind of temporal barrier. It’s just kind of...the end of our history.”

“Explain,” Leona pretty much demanded.

Kivi laughed. “People travel through time for what they believe to be various reasons, but it really all comes down to the one reason. They wanna see something interesting. They wanna save people’s lives...or troll on them. They like being around people who don’t understand what the universe is really like.”

“That changes in fifty-nine years?” Angela guessed.

“I don’t have all the details about how it comes to pass, but more than one version of me lived naturally on the other side of 2400. The humans become aware of advanced temporal mechanics, and begin to use it to develop their technology. Travelers don’t often visit the timeline past this point, because they’re not unique anymore, and life isn’t as exciting. Death has been conquered, and from what I gather, the reframe engine becomes public knowledge, and then ubiquitous. It’s not illegal to jump as far into the future, but it’s not done very much, as far as I can tell. I hear they call it the Edge.”

“Love, how quickly will we get there?”

“Assuming we stay on the Bearimy-Matic pattern?” Leona assumes. “Eight more jumps.”

“Is that bad?” Angela asked the obvious question.

“No,” Kivi said confidently. “The world changes in that year, but the world changes every year, doesn’t it? It never stops changing. It’s easy for a traveler to forget that normal humans still experience time travel. They watch the shaping of the timeline as well, they just see more detail.”

“We still need to figure out what we’re doing with our lives. This changes nothing,” Olimpia noted.

“It changes everything,” Leona contended. “We came here under the assumption that our problem is that there could be people out there who need our help, but we don’t know where and when. But this new information is suggesting that they probably don’t exist. Even if they do exist, they’ll probably not exist by next week. We have eight more jumps before the humans start taking care of themselves completely. We’ve always known about this. That’s why the Savior of Earth program was shut down a century prior, and why Anatol sent us back several centuries.”

“Are you suggesting that we recreate what he did to us?” Ramses asked.

“Maybe not quite as far as that,” Leona thought. “But there must be some time period that isn’t protected by someone else. The Salmon Runners have the end of the 20th century, and beginning of the 21st. Camden and the IAC are in the middle of that, and Mercury’s crusade is near the end of it, parallel to Serkan, Ace, and Paige. I’ve never heard of anyone protecting the mid-20th century, though.”

“Except for the Saviors,” Mateo said.

“Right,” she admitted. “I suppose the whole timeline is covered; that’s what the powers that be do. We keep having the same conversation about what we’re meant to do with our lives, and it never gets resolved. We just end up being distracted by some new or old antagonist.”

Angela spoke, “I think we all need to acknowledge the fact that life was a lot easier when someone was telling us how to live it. If we’re right, and there are no more bad guys, angry at us for what we did to someone else, then it’s up to us to come up with ideas. And I believe what we’re saying now is that those ideas don’t come from this region of the timeline.”

“Unless we go to other planets,” Jeremy said as if everyone was thinking the same thing.

“Those are pretty well taken care of too,” Leona tried to explain. I think there’s at least one traveler in every colony in the stellar neighborhood.”

“So we go beyond it,” Jeremy offered.

“Leona shook her head. “Operation Starseed launched in 2250, which means it’s nearly a hundred light years away from Gatewood by now. While that is indeed beyond the neighborhood, there hasn’t been enough time for a culture to develop to the point where they need our help. If they’re young enough, and expected to advance on their own, they’re probably being secretly protected by the artificial intelligence assigned to their planet. If they were made aware of their own Earthan origins, then they probably don’t need to be protected. We would be looking for a culture in the middle, who was eventually left alone by its AI, and is still struggling to learn from their mistakes. I don’t think those cultures exist yet.”

“Then we’re already on the path to reaching them,” Jeremy argued. “The Bearimy-Matic pattern should get us there pretty quickly according to the dimension of time, and the AOC should get us there quickly in the dimensions of space. We just need to wait, and then find the right planet. Maybe we look for a world that looks like a less advanced version of Earth.”

“I know exactly where you can find a world like that.” A man was standing at the bottom of the steps. No one seemed to have seen him arrive, suggesting he teleported in. He had a gun trained on them.

“Milford?” Angela asked, fear in her voice.

“I have been looking a long time for you.”

“How did you get out?” she asked him. She stood up, and backed away. Ramses stood as well, and made sure he was standing between them.

“There was new management in the afterlife simulation after you left,” Milford explained.

“Ellie Underhill, yes,” Angela said, thinking she understood.

Milford shook his head. “She and her friends disappeared. Someone else took over after her. He found me in the red, woke me up, and gave me the gift of resurrection.”

“What was the red level again?” Kivi asked the group.

“Static,” Milford answered instead. “People think that being shelved is the worst punishment after the black death, but nothing is compared to the torture of being in a room for centuries, unable to communicate with anyone, or do anything. That is the true hell, and I will never forgive you for putting me there.”

“I didn’t put you there,” Angela shouted. “You murdered me, and then when you died yourself, you suffered consequences for it. I had nothing to do with that decision. That’s on you, buddy. What are you even doing here? This has nothing to do with you!”

“You’re right,” Milford agreed. “I don’t care what’s happening here. I’ve only come to put you back where you belong. I regret accidentally killing you. Don’t forget that I didn’t mean to do it, and now I have the chance to undo it. I’m sending you back to 1816, so we can restart our lives together.” He shot Ramses, knowing he would fall down, and give him a clear shot at his true target. Unfortunately for him, Ramses wasn’t the only one who wanted to protect her. While Mateo was going after the shooter, Jeremy stepped in as the new shield. Whereas Ramses was hit in the shoulder, Jeremy’s bullet landed right in his chest. He didn’t die, but it didn’t look good.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, November 9, 2247

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The next mission took them to Varkas Reflex, where an egress window opened up, not to bring someone else in, but to send them to the main sequence. They stood by patiently until the timer transitioned them over. They found themselves standing in the control room for a launch pad, where a pretty small ship was waiting. Hokusai was at the controls, operating the buttons, while Loa stood next to her as an assistant. They looked over. “Uhh...do you want us to scrub the launch, errr...?”

“No,” Leona said casually. “That version of Leona needs to go where she’s going, as do Sanaa and Eight Point Seven.”

“Okay,” Hokusai said. She leaned into the microphone. “Launch in eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, good, luck.”

Unlike the rockets that silly ancient humans used to get off the surface of the planet, the Radiant Lighting shot straight into the sky without sound, and without damaging the surrounding area. The hull, and pad, both glowed, but that was about it. It disappeared from sight quickly, and went on its way towards Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. It would arrive in less than a year. There, Past!Leona would have a few adventures with Trinity Turner, Ellie Underhill, and a few other people, until Mateo showed up seven years later, and further complicated matters.

Hokusai made sure everything was still going smoothly, and then finally exhaled. “All right. Report.”

Leona took the explanation. “We’re from as far into the future as 2278, but we went back to 2019, and have been moving forward on a new pattern ever since. These are our new team members: Jeremy Bearimy, Angela Walton, and Olimpia Sangster.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Hokusai Gimura, and this is Loa Nielsen. We just watched Leona, Sanaa, and Eight Point Seven leave for a planet called Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida.”

“I remember her telling us about this,” Angela said. “Sounds like a beautiful place.”

Hokusai agreed. “We may go ourselves one day. Don’t say anything if you know something about our future that contradicts this.”

Leona pantomimed zipping her lips shut, not that it mattered. Nothing about what they knew of Hokusai and Loa’s future prevented them from one day traveling to Tau Ceti. They, in fact, did not know much about what would become of them. They lost touch.

“Do you need help with anything?” Jeremy asked. “Or were we just sent here to watch the launch?”

“Who sent you here?” Hokusai asked.

“Nerakali,” Leona answered. “She sends us on missions. People usually come to us, but sometimes we go to them. And sometimes we’re not expected to do much. This could be more like a vacation, just so we can relax, and catch up with old friends.”

“I see.” Hokusai nodded.

“Who’s hungry?” Loa asked. “We were just about to eat.”

“We don’t want to impose,” Leona said.

“Nonsense,” Loa assured them. “It’s not like food is a scarce commodity. Can you imagine a world like that?”

They gathered in their home, and started eating a lovely lunch together. It was cooked by a friend of theirs, who liked to do it the old-fashioned way, instead of using a food synthesizer. It was his passion. Loa asked them about this new mission they were on, so they took turns explaining how it came about, and how things were going now.

“Yeah,” Hokusai agreed, “I can’t imagine it’s a sustainable pattern. A lot of people needed help with a lot of things in the past, but not so much anymore. But you seem to suggest that you have a choice of patterns now. How’s that, just by switching off these special cuffs of yours?”

They hadn’t said anything about dying, and going to the afterlife simulation, which made their patterns a little more complicated, and a lot less tied to the whims of the powers that be. The cuffs alone weren’t completely necessary, but they were a good excuse. It was just better for them to not reveal any secrets about how life and death worked in the universe. “Yes, the cuffs. We could suppress Jeremy’s pattern, and return every year, like we used to. Or we could suppress mine and Mateo’s pattern, and come back every Tuesday and July. Or we could suppress both, and just be present all the time, or even go wherever in the timeline we want, assuming we find a traveler to help. I don’t know why we haven’t done that. Surely Nerakali wouldn’t try to stop us.”

“I know why we can’t do that,” Mateo’s anger was bubbling, just a little bit. The pot would have needed to sit on the burner longer for the water to be considered boiling. “The Superintendent. He’s responsible for everything.”

Like all these people, Mateo had free will. He wasn’t in complete control of his own life, but he wasn’t helpless either. That was just how the world worked. You’re always bound by responsibilities, and urges, and biological imperatives. You live under social expectations, and community rules. You can’t just do anything you want to do, and you are not omnipotent. Perhaps salmon were a little bit more beholden to a higher power than others, but that power is generally not abused. Except in cases like this. I won’t allow the argument to be rehashed, and I’m getting tired of writing myself into the story, so while Mateo has traditionally been free to speak his mind on the matter, that changes here.

Everyone’s memories of the last few moments were erased, and the rest of the conversation was able to continue. They didn’t talk about their present, or even current, lives. Nearly everyone here had a life before time travel, so they shared stories about those times, when they were ignorant, and things were normal. Jeremy and Olimpia didn’t have many stories like that, but they did their best. While their respective lives revolved around something they couldn’t control, there were days when they could just live in the moment, and be happy. Once the party was over, Hokusai and Loa went off to do their own thing. That was when Nerakali showed up, sporting a somber expression. She sat down at the table with the transition team, and started picking at the remaining food.

“Are you okay?” Mateo asked, concerned.

She took her time responding. “You picked up on something that I’ve known for quite awhile.”

“What is that?” Leona prompted.

“There is an expiration date on this whole mission series, just like Étude, and the Savior of Earth program. It’s also why Beaver Haven Correctional only goes for so long, and why time travel in general dies down eventually. The future belongs to the vonearthans, and the starseeders. It’s not that you can’t travel that far into the future. Plenty of us do, but there’s a lot less activity than there is in previous centuries. The troublemakers don’t find it fun anymore when the rest of the population has their own superpowers, and the helpers like us don’t have anyone to save anymore.”

“Where are you going with this?” No, now Mateo was concerned.

“I’m saying that it’s over. I put off this conversation, but those dumb farmers were the last mission, realistically speaking. I could keep transitioning people for you, but I wouldn’t have much reason to, and you wouldn’t be serving much of a purpose. My other teams are experiencing similar problems, but it was easier to tell them, because I didn’t have personal relationships with them.”

“It’s over,” Jeremy echoed, nodding his head with his hand cupped over his mouth.

“It feels like we weren’t doing it for very long, but I know you had a lot of missions under Jupiter’s supervision,” Nerakali continued. “I’m sorry I didn’t have some special series finale as a send off, but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Danger sort of always just fades away, slowly to be replaced by safety, compartmentalization, redundancy, and modularization.” She was referring to a characteristic of space travel that was designed to lower the chances of something going wrong, but the idea had wider implications.

“What do we do now?” Angela asked. “I’m centuries old, but I feel like all that time, I was just preparing for this part of my life. Can we go back? Can we start a pattern?”

“Everything’s been taken care of,” Nerakali said with a single shake of her head. “I can’t tell you what you should do from now on. I can only tell you what I’m going to do. I’ve been the ultimate procrastinator, and it’s time to face the music.”

“Nerakali?” Leona asked, assuming they would all know what question she didn’t want to ask.

No one said anything.

“Nerakali,” Leona repeated, “how many steps do you have left?”

Nerakali smiled. “One more. If I try to travel away the next time, the universe will just straight up not let me. I’ll be within the hundemarke’s spatio-temporal range. Trapped. Trapped in the inevitable.”

“Well, that’s okay, because—”

“Don’t tell me, Leona, what you know of my future. I know it has something to do with Ellie Underhill. It’ll make it easier if I go in blind.”

“Why did you bring this up?” Leona went on. “You can put off that last step all you want. We’ll take you to a safe planet, and protect you from harm. You can live centuries just fine, I’m sure.”

“It’s like I said,” Nerakali contradicted, “it’s over.”

“Don’t do this.” Leona wasn’t ready to say goodbye.

“I’m not going to be doing anything,” Nerakali said. “I need Mateo to do it for me.”

“Me? Are you asking me to kill you?”

“You did it for Boyce, and my brother.”

“Yeah, and I don’t wanna do that again.”

Nerakali nodded, acknowledging his feelings. “I don’t need you to push me so much as I need you to erase my memories just before I fall. Someone else can push, if they want, or I can try to rig up some kind of Rube-Goldberg Jigsaw death machine.”

“Okay, I’m not saying I approve of your suicide,” Mateo began, “but why would you need someone to erase your memories?”

“Because I love you, Mateo,” Nerakali explained. “I have to go back to 2107, and be your worst enemy. I have to be trying to take revenge for my brother’s death. I can try to pretend, but it would really help me out if you just...make me hate you again.”

“I don’t understand why you have to do this,” Leona said. “We already know that our actions have altered events in the main sequence.  Zeferino died twice, even before our transitions began, which I don’t really understand, but it happened. When he stabbed himself, his body didn’t disappear, and return to the Colosseum.”

“That’s complicated,” Nerakali said. “I don’t actually understand it myself, but I was told to ignore that apparent paradox. That doesn’t mean we make another one. This is what I want. Please.”

Mateo did indeed know about her future. Death was a lot less problematic than everyone throughout history thought it was...or at least the atheists. The truth was that the afterlife existed. People didn’t go up to sit on clouds and play the harp with angels, but their consciousness persisted, and Nerakali was no exception to that. He didn’t want to erase her memories, and he didn’t want to kill her, but he knew she would survive it. She already had.

Fortunately, Mateo knew quite a bit about what he could do given Nerakali’s brain blending abilities. He didn’t have to erase her memories, and in fact couldn’t if he wanted her to be a good person when she went up to Pryce’s afterlife simulation. All he needed to do was suppress them, and let their return be triggered by something. This could be a code word, or a gesture, or an image...or a traumatic event. Back in 2107, The Warrior didn’t kill Nerakali instantly. He stabbed her through the chest, and only decapitated her once he managed to get his hands on the hundemarke, which was what prevented them from changing this event. Mateo could work with that. Once she experienced that first wound, there was nothing she could do, and she no longer needed to hate them. Her memories could come back in those final seconds, so she would be able to take them with her.

“Okay,” Mateo said. “I’ll do it.”

“Mateo,” Leona said. “We have to talk about this.”

“It already happened, Leona,” Mateo argued. “She’s ready. We have to respect that.”

“Thank you, Mateo,” Nerakali said warmly.

“Just me,” he demanded. “No one else needs to see this.”

Nerakali transitioned them back to The Parallel one last time, but then the group stayed behind while Mateo and Nerakali took a dimensional gravity platform towards the nearest remote cliff. The surface gravity on this planet was far too high for them to stand on. Certain buildings were designed with lower gravity, and this platform was just a mobile version of that. They drove out there in silence, only speaking once they arrived.

“You know what you’re doing?” Nerakali asked.

“Exactly,” Mateo said. “Take all the time you need, though.”

“As you said, I’m ready.” She started tapping on her Cassidy cuff. Then she took it off. “Let’s switch. You still need my brain blending powers to do this, but before you push me off the ledge, you’ll need to steal the cuff back, so I don’t take it with me. Press this button here on the primary, and it will release yours from my wrist.”

“I understand.”

“I’m really grateful for this,” she said sincerely. “I just wish I would die feeling that way. I wish I could die remembering myself, and who I became, and how I grew.”

He smiled. “You will. I told you...I know what I’m doing.” Without another word, he reached up to her temples, and stuffed the last however long amount of time into the darkest parts of Nerakali’s mind.

When it was over, she had changed. She looked at him with a seething hatred. “You.”

“I love you too, Nerakali Preston.” He tapped a button on the primary cuff, which unhooked the one he usually used from her wrist, and summoned it to him magnetically. Then he pushed her off the edge, and watched her disappear.

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