Microstory 2049: Oklahoma

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Back in August, my papa was sitting in his wheelchair in the dining room. He was looking up at the map where he and my dad had placed stickers to show which states they had gone to. My papa was only missing two states. He had never gone to Oklahoma or Minnesota. It was hard for him to pick up objects, but he asked me to hand him a quarter. When he let go of it, it fell to the floor. It landed on tails, which he had decided meant that he would be going to Oklahoma. I think he knew that he didn’t have very much time left, because that is where he died. He was sitting in a blue camping chair, watching the sunset with his favorite people. My dad was sitting on his right, and I was sitting on his left. Grandma Daphne, Aunt Cooper, Uncle Currian, and my cousins, Nash, Osmond, and Thatcher were all there too. Even though we knew that it was going to happen, it was sad, especially since I was there to see it. Still, I’m glad that he was looking at something so beautiful when it happened, instead of just staring up at the ceiling, or something.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 262,398

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Today is the big day. Mateo isn’t sure why the happy couple waited 10,000 years to get married, but it’s got to be a record for the longest engagement. Then again, they could have waited ten seconds, and it still would have set the record since literally eight people are alive in the observable universe right now. It’s soon to be nine, as The Officiant is set to return to fulfill her duties within the hour. Until then, Curtis needs some help.

“Did you ask Asier?” Mateo asks him.

“Do you not know how to tie a bowtie?”

“I do not, but he seems like the kind of guy who would. I imagine he’s had to go to police union luncheons, and stuff.”

“You’re probably right.” Curtis tilts his head as he’s staring in the mirror, trying to figure this out.

“Honestly, you two don’t seem like the type to wanna dress up all formal-like.”

“Ya know, we never met,” Curtis says. “I had heard of you, the guy who only lived one day out of the year, but we never hung out. Were we friends in your timeline?”

“Umm...” Mateo has to think about how he would describe his relationship with Curtis’ alternate self. “We were friendly, but we didn’t hang out either. Other!You spent most of his time in the early to mid-21st century, and I blew past that pretty quickly. He was in that time traveler prison.”

“Really? That doesn’t sound like me. I have no interest in exposing our secret to the world.”

“He had a different upbringing, I’m sure.”

“Yeah.” Curtis nods, then drops his arms in defeat. “Could you go get him for me? Please?” He asks as if he feels bad about putting him out, even though it’s no big deal.

“Of course.”

Mateo leaves, and returns quickly with Asier, who does indeed have experience with bowties, though only on himself, so he has to wrap his arms around the groom’s shoulders from behind him, like a sexy golf trainer. He does a great job; it looks perfect. “Are you nervous?” Asier asks.

“No, this has been a long time comin’. I’m ready.” He flicks his tie and says, “snazzy.” Then he spins around. “All right, who has a coin?”

Mateo and Asier pad their respective pockets. “No money here,” Asier says. “It hasn’t been invented yet.”

“What do you need it for?” Mateo questions.

“I’ve not yet decided who my best man is going to be. I know, I should have asked earlier, but I forgot. It’s all happening so fast,” he jokes.” He sees their expressions. “I can’t tell if both of you want to be chosen, or if neither of you do.”

This is only going to get more awkward. “Let’s both do it,” Mateo suggests. We’re obviously skipping the bachelor party anyway, so we’ll both stand up there with you.”

Curtis smiles, and accepts. As it turns out, the ladies had the same idea, but then they realized how weird it was, everyone being in the wedding party, and not having an audience. Abigail chose to step down to fill that role alone. The ceremony was simple, uncontroversial, and nice. The reception was small, but fun.

Microstory 1862: Full Sets

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It wasn’t that big of a deal when I got started. Back then, we only had three channels, right? So people had to find other ways to entertain themselves. I mean, that sounds like people wished there could be more channels, so they wouldn’t be so bored all the time, but obviously no one was really thinking about that. They took up hobbies that people before them had done. Maybe it was the same old, same old, or maybe it was updated, but nothing is ever really new. It’s always just some kind of new sort of way of doing something that we’ve always done. I got really into collecting things. Our parents traveled a lot, leaving us to be raised mostly by my uncles. It wasn’t weird in those times for rich people to place their children in the hands of others. They didn’t want me and my siblings to get in the way, so we never went with them. Even once we were older, and didn’t need constant attention, we didn’t go on family vacations. In retrospect, my parents were kind of assholes. They were the ones who sent me down the path towards my dark and inescapable habits. They thought they were great, and it was true, we were so excited to see them whenever they finally did show up that we accepted whatever we could get. Ancient Greek coins? Parisian stamps? I’ll take ‘em. A magazine in a language I’ve never heard of, and will never be able to read? Yes, please. Toys, toys, and more toys; sign me up, please and thank you. We loved all the gifts, because they were coming from them, but we would have rather they had just been around more. I wish they could have raised me right, but I doubt they would have done a better job. That brings us to where we are today. My siblings ended up okay, but I never recovered. I took those coins, and those stamps, and those novelty toys, and based my life around them. I began to collect on my own, and like I was saying, it wasn’t a problem until it was a problem.

The word you’re looking for is hoarder. Some people become as such by not being able to get rid of things. They don’t deliberately order magazines just to stack them. They subscribe to a given periodical, and then just keep each one. I’m not like that. I am a discerning hoarder. I have a very particular compulsion. I don’t just want a whole bunch of cats, or even a whole bunch of dead cats. I want sets. I want every size of every color of a given series of highly absorbent towels. I want one of every item in a line of kitchenware from a certain brand. I don’t buy junk at random, and drop it all somewhere in my house. Each one has to belong, so I end up with a comprehensive—and truthfully, beautiful—collection to put on display. Because that’s the whole point, to showcase my collections to others. It’s not my fault that I don’t have a big enough place to do it right. If I lived in a mansion, you wouldn’t think any of this was weird. No, you would walk into my classic English literature room, and see my copy of Tarmides of Egypt, as well as all of his other works, along with his contemporaries. That’s what belongs there. And there’s a room for the stamps, and one for sports balls, and another for a generic license plate from every single unique region in the world, and so on, and so forth. That last one has always been my dream, I don’t actually have a complete set. If I did, I wouldn’t have the space for it, because I can’t afford that mansion. My parents were the ones who were rich, not me. So here I am in my wee little flat, where I look like a crazy person who’s oblivious to the state of her world. Whatever, my great-niece was telling me about haters, and that’s all people are. I regret nothing.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 5, 2363

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

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

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

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

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

“What year is this?” Sarka asked.

“It’s 2341,” Leona replied.

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

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

“It’s 1816,” Leona realized.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Can you fix him?” Angela begged.

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

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

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

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

“What are you doing?” Leona questioned.

“He’s not coming with us.”

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

“Whoa,” Olimpia said

“Yeah,” Ramses agreed.

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

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

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

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

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

“What do we do?” Leona asked.

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

“What if we don’t take off the cuff?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Get that bullet out, doctor.”

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

“Explain,” Leona demanded simply.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You don’t have to,” she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well, what were you thinking now?”

“Get me something out the back.”

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

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

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

Now Jeremy finally faced the right direction.

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

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

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

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

“How long have you worked here?”

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

“Really?”

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

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

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

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

“Perhaps,” Jeremy conceded.

“Are you happy..with this life?”

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

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

Jeremy squinted for half a second before letting go.

“You take care, ya hear?”

“Sir.”

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

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

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

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 3, 2028

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After Leona exited the homeportal, the first thing she did was look around for Mateo. He was nowhere to be found, so the second thing she did was consult her watch. May 3, 2028. This was the day she disappeared from her old life, and became a time traveler, at least in one reality. Her mind possessed memories from different realities, so the portal must have just chosen the most recent one. It likely did the same thing for Mateo. She should have realized they wouldn’t end up in the same place either way. His special moment was on a different date. Now all she needed to do was find a time traveler who could get her back to him. Hopefully someone in this restaurant would let her borrow a phone. She walked over to the counter to ask, but stopped when she realized she recognized the guy on the other side. “Allen?”

He slid his finger underneath his nametag. “Funny, my mom used to say that all the time. I never figured out why.”

She chuckled. “Is Richard here?”

Allen’s eyes narrowed. “My husband is in the back.”

This was Richard and Allen’s place. She had heard about that once. It was at Mateo’s memorial. They owned a restaurant together, which was fitting for them, but this building was much more than that. “When you say he’s in the back, do you mean he’s in the other restaurant?”

Allen’s eyes narrowed further. “He’s cooking up some salmon.”

“Ah, yes. So you know already. Good.” They heard the bell ring from the door opening. Leona turned her head to find her own younger self walking in with a friend. Fortunately, she wasn’t paying enough attention to see Future!Leona. This was the day she became a time traveler, and that was going to be stressful enough for her. “Let’s just say, she’s not my twin. It would be nice if she didn’t see me at all. Could you get me out of here?”

He smiled. “Come on back.” He opened the counter, and led her through the kitchen, to the other side, where the second half of the restaurant was. This was a secret dining area, designated only for time travelers, or time traveler-adjacent people.”

“What can I get ya?” he asked.

Richard stopped wiping down one of the tables, and stepped over to join his husband.

“I actually just ate breakfast.”

Richard looked at his watch. It was late afternoon.

“It was morning when I stepped through the portal. Anyway, I didn’t really mean to come to this time period. I could use some helping getting back to my husband. Who else set up shop in this little mall?”

“Salmonday Club is next door. Post office is down that way, across from The Switcher’s office. The Forger works in that one over there. Might try him if you’re not just lookin’ to send a message.”

“Hey, thanks!”

“No problem,” one of them said after she turned away. She couldn’t tell which one.

She opened the door to the Forger’s den, though this new location wasn’t a den at all. It looked more like a DMV. It was larger, and more professional. Duane was sitting in one of the waiting area chairs, carrying on a conversation with... “Julius?”

Duane smirked. “Oh, please, call him that again.”

“I’m sorry, I forgot. Saxon.”

“Yes,” Saxon said, “how may I help you?”

“I actually came in here to see the Forger. I need a ride.”

Duane stood up. “Sure, when and where do you need to go?”

“I don’t know,” Leona replied. “I ultimately need to get to March 21, 2014, but I need to find something first.”

“What are you looking for?”

“The Insulator of Life. Do you know of a moment in its history when I could take it without interfering in anyone else’s need for it?”

“Hmm. Have you tried the bank?”

“What bank?”

“Gregorios.” He leaned forward, and pointed in the general direction of the hallway. “It’s that way. It used to just be a regular bank for humans, but they shuttered the entire business, and the woman who owned it switched the whole thing over to a special vault where time travelers can keep their valuables, and access them from the future, or the past.”

“Well, who owns the Insulator?”

“No one can own something like that, but anyone who has used it before, according to their own personal timeline, can requisition it.”

“I’m one of those people.”

“Perfect. You do still have to be approved, so there’s no guarantee.”

“Okay, cool. Thanks for your help.”

“Wait. You come back with what you need, I’ll take you anywhere you wanna go...for a price.”

“What’s the price?”

“I need you to get me a ret-gone coin from the bank.”

“I think I can guess, but what exactly does one of those things do?”

“It’s incredibly dangerous, but I need it for a client, who’s willing to take the risk. You flip it. Heads, no one remembers who you are. It erases your entire timeline, past and future. You can do whatever you want, and no one will remember it long enough to do anything about it. You won’t be able to maintain a single relationship, but you can’t be stopped either. You’ll also be immortal. You hit tails, though, it is your memory that will be wiped; both retrograde and anterograde amnesia. Like the Insulator, no one owns the coins, and no one knows how many there are, but rumor is that Alexina is in possession of all of them. It’s impossible to know whether anyone has ever used one, and they’re each single-use.”

“What will I have to give her for it?” Leona asked.

Duane shook his head. “I don’t know. Obviously, you can decline. You’ll just have to catch a ride with someone else.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Thanks again.”

She walked down the hallway once more, and entered Gregorios Bank. Alexina was standing behind a pedestal deliberately, as if she had been waiting for her. “Hello,” Leona began. “I know you from the future.”

“Are we friends?”

“We have a mutual friend, but we didn’t talk much.”

“Oh, okay. How can I help you today?”

“I need two things, and you might not want to give them up. The Insulator of Life, I believe, is the only thing that can save my husband from two psychics who have hijacked his mind. I was told I would be allowed to take it as long as I’ve used it before, which I have.” Alexina seemed inclined to accept her plea. “This is the thing that I really need. Once I have it, I’ll then need to go find my husband, before the psychics make him do something else against his will. The Forger has agreed to provide transport...if I get him a ret-gone coin.”

“Do you know what a ret-gone coin is?” Alexina asked, noticeably upset about being asked something so despicable.

“He filled me in, yes.”

“There’s a reason I spent twenty years of my personal timeline hunting them down,” Alexina explained. “I didn’t want to use them myself, or have control over them. I wanted to keep people from using them. I’ve been trying to figure out how to destroy them ever since.”

“I have no personal interest in them either,” Leona told her. “The only question you have to ask yourself is whether you trust Duane Blackwood with one.”

“No, I have to decide whether I trust whoever it is he wants to give it to. I know he doesn’t want to flip it himself.”

“That’s a fair perspective. I can get by without his aid. I can find another time traveler. I can’t survive without the Insulator, though. In fact, the whole timeline can’t. The people who took over Mateo’s body are not going to do good things with it.”

“Your husband is Mateo Matic?” Alexina asked.

“Yes. What do you know of him?”

“I know he rescued one of my best friends from a prison he didn’t belong in with his bare hands.”

Leona didn’t say anything as Alexina was thinking hard about what she was going to do. After a full two minutes of this, she removed one of her earrings, and held out her hand. “Give me yours.”

“I’m not wearing an earring.”

“Your hand. Give me your hand.”

Leona did as she was asked.

Alexina used the sharp end of the earring to prick Leona’s finger, letting only two drops fall onto the pedestal. She then pricked her own finger, and dropped some of her blood. She looked back to watch the vault door behind her swing open on its own. Finally, she removed a key from around her neck, and handed it to Leona. “I took two drops of blood, which means you are entitled to two withdrawals. You are not entitled to any specific item, however. What you are seeking, you will only be able to find using your intuition. Walk into the vault, and pick a safe deposit box. Open it with this universal key, and see what’s inside. It might be the Insulator, or the coin, or something else, or nothing. A lot of the time, it’s nothing. Your blood donation only gives you access to the vault, not your desire. That’s up to you, and the covenant you’ve made with time.”

“I understand.” Leona walked into the vault, and took a deep breath. She didn’t waste too much time trying to look for the best deposit box. This was about her intuition, so the only way she was going to find the right one was if she just let it happen without thinking too much. She was right. The Insulator of Life was waiting for her inside the safe. She closed it back up, then quickly went over to the next box. Inside was not a coin, however. It was the HG Goggles. She had once used both of these objects in tandem, along with several other things, to bring Mateo back from nonexistence.

Alexina regarded the withdrawal as Leona was walking out. “Hm. Interesting choice.”

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly.

Curious, Leona placed the goggles on her face, and looked around. The room now appeared in an indigo tint. She could see lights dancing along the edges of the safe deposit boxes as the vault door was closing back up. The whole bank was a little more lit up than the rest of the building that she could see from in here. There was one particular spot over by the hallway that led to the bathrooms that was particularly bright. “Do you see that over there?” she asked.

“I’m not wearing the goggles,” Alexina said.

Leona crept towards it carefully, then stopped just centimeters in front of it. It was like a silent miniature lightning storm. She pushed her hand towards it, but nothing happened. This made a bit of sense, because spacetime anomalies were reportedly all over the place, but most people didn’t just accidentally fall through them. You had to have some means of opening them up. The goggles seemed to only be good for illuminating them. There were points of light among the lightning that looked like rescaling buttons in a photo editing program. They moved as well, but at their own pace, which was much slower than the rest of the lights. She took two of them with her index fingers, and deliberately pulled them apart. Yes, this was it. This was opening the tear. She stepped through, and found herself in the foyer of Fletcher House.

“Madam Matic,” a man said to her. He executed a manual flourish as he bowed to her reverently. “My name is Old!Declan Aberdeen. Your husband is waiting for you downstairs. I have contained him so that his psychic invaders can do no one any harm.”

“Thank you very much, Old!Declan,” Leona said to him. She walked down to the basement to find Mateo wasn’t alone. Arcadia was there as well, though she was glowing, so she must have been a psychic manifestation, rather than a physical presence. They were standing in some kind of glass chamber.

“Why did you go back to him?” Mateo was asking her. “Why are you working with your father?”

“I could say it was because he promised to undo my siblings’ deaths,” Arcadia responded after a beat. “I could claim I just want to make a better reality. The honest answer, though, is that I would do anything for a family member. If Zeferino showed up tomorrow with some conflicting plan, I would go along with that instead, because he was the last one who asked. I’m just no good on my own.”

Mateo stepped closer, and gave Arcadia a hug, even though she was theoretically not really there. “You don’t need to be with a Preston to not be alone.”

“That’s touching,” Leona finally spoke up.

They separated from each other. Can you see me?” Arcadia asked her.

Leona pointed to her goggles. “These let me see things like you, yeah.”

“I’m sorry, Leona.”

“I am too,” Mateo added.

“I understand what’s wrong with you now.” She reached into her bag and showed them the Insulator of Life. “So let’s fix it.”

Ramses Abdulrashid surprisingly walked into the room. “Can I help?”

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The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 12, 2189

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Paranoid about being caught with the plans for the teleporter gun from Harrison’s hand, the gang decided they would sit on it for at least a couple days. They didn’t even want to print it out in the synthesizer, for fear of it being discovered. They all agreed that it was best to move the files to an external drive, hide it in the recess of one of the bedroom pocket doors, and pretend that nothing had changed. If Ulinthra and Harrison started to suspect what they had done, they needed the evidence of their offense to be as modest as possible.

When they all woke up the next year, their unit was empty of enemy combatants, so they had theoretically gotten away with it, but they couldn’t know for sure. “Brooke, how are we doin’ on bugs?” Leona asked over breakfast.

“We’re secure. I don’t think Ulinthra wants it to be that easy.”

“Or she’s playing the long game,” Ecrin suggested. “Maybe she knows all about the coin, and the gun.”

“Maybe,” Vitalie said. “Maybe not.”

They ate a little more in silence.

Once Leona was finished, she wiped her mouth with her napkin, and set it to the side. “You guys ready for the call?”

“What are you gonna ask her about?” Ecrin stopped Vitalie from interrupting her. “I know it doesn’t matter on a quantum level, but it does on a psychological one. You have to have a good reason to contact her. Otherwise she’s going to start getting suspicious you keep randomly calling her to talk about...I dunno, the Raiders.”

“I’m open to ideas,” Leona said.

“We could use a vacation.” Brooke offered. “Ask her for some time off. I’ve always wanted to check out the West mountains, or even Costa Rica.”

“Any objections?” Leona looked around the table, like the chairman of the board. “Vacation it is.” She called Ulinthra, and tried her hand at a pleasant receptionist’s voice. “Hi, this is Leona Matic. My colleagues and I were wondering if we could, maybe, have a quick break.—Well, we were thinking a Boquete waterfall, or Costa Rica, if you’ll allow it?—Then how about you let us out of the arcology? It’s pretty stifled in here. Since we’re not allowed to enter the virtual worlds, we feel pretty trapped. These units are great for living in the 22nd century, but only when you ha—Right.—That’s true, but—Uhuh.—Yeah, we get it, but aren’t you busy with taking over the world anyway?—I understand.—I understand.—I understand.—Okay, I appreciate your support. Thanks, byeeee.” She hung up. “Flip that penny!” she ordered, trying to keep it light.

Vitalie flipped the penny into the air, but before it could land, a powerful force propelled it towards the side wall, along with everyone else. When Leona recovered from the explosion, she saw a woman crouched on the floor, trying to recover as well.

“Holy hell!” Brooke shouted.

“Are you okay?” Vitalie offered the woman her hand.

The woman accepted it. “I’m okay. I don’t understand why it always has to come with an explosion, though. Just once, I’d like to jump through time and space, and land on my feet.”

“Hogarth?” Ecrin asked.

“Do you know me?” the woman asked back.

“We go way back.” Ecrin started working it out in her head. “This is where you went, when you touched the compass. They told me about that.”

“What’s going on?”

“Leona?” Hogarth squinted. “Is that you?”

“Do you know me?” Leona echoed.

“Yeah, in 2025. You were with a, uhh. Sorry, I’m disoriented. You were with a little girl. I’m a genius, but I can’t remember her name.”

“Was it Brooke?” Brooke guessed.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Hogarth confirmed.

“That already happened,” Brooke reminded Leona. “Why don’t we remember her?”

“Eh, time, right?” Hogarth repeated the company slogan.

“Nah, she’s right,” Leona said. “If you saw Baby Brooke, it’s already happened to us. I remember going back to 2025, but I don’t remember you.”

“There’s a reason for that,” Ecrin said cryptically. “There’s a reason you don’t remember me from that time either. You’re the one who came up with the rules of etiquette for time travel, so I implore you to call upon them now, and not discuss the past.”

Leona could do that. “I can do that.”

“As can I,” Hogarth agreed. “But what year is it?”

“2189,” Brooke answered.

Vitalie was looking at something on the floor. “The year of the tail.”

“Huh?”

“It landed on tails,” Vitalie clarified. “We do nothing today.”

“That works, because we’ll need to figure out how this newcomer fits into all of this.” Leona directed her attention back to Hogarth. “Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?”

“Yes,” Hogarth answered simply.

“Have you ever heard of Ulinthra, or Arianrhod?”

“Arya Toad? I’ve never heard of her. I haven’t heard of the first one either. Is that a band?”

Leona laughed. “No. Ecrin, you vouch for her?”

“Oh, definitely. She’s good people.”

“Then we have to protect her,” Leona declared. “In fact, we have to get her to Kansas City. She’s the only one who can do it, if Ulinthra doesn’t know about her.”

“It’s not hard to escape Panama because Ulinthra knows who we are,” Brooke pointed out. “It’s hard because she’s halted all interarc travel for everyone.”

“We could use the teleporter gun,” Vitalie brought up.

“We’re still not sure if that will work,” Leona argued. “There could be components to that thing that don’t exist in our dimension. Maybe the synthesizer didn’t even pick up on everything.”

“Besides,” Ecrin added, “we agreed to leave that alone for a few days.”

“Right,” Vitalie said.

“A few days for us is a few years to her,” Vitalie reminded them. “What, is she just gonna hide out here all that time, hoping Ulinthra’s people don’t come in to make sure Brooke’s pod is still functioning?”

“If we’re brave enough to use the teleporter gun on her,” Brooke began, “why don’t we just use it on you three as well?”

“Because that would leave you alone,” Leona noted.

“So?”

“So we’re not leaving you behind. The teleporter gun is so we can banish her somewhere, not so we can escape.”

“I can take care of myself,” Brooke said. “You’re not my surrogate mother anymore.”

“Everyone can die, and Ulinthra likely will kill you. It doesn’t matter whether I’m your surrogate mother, your real mother, or just a friend, I’m. Not. Leaving. You. And like I said, the teleporter gun is dangerous, and we don’t understand it. If something goes wrong, I sure as hell would rather test it on her than anyone in this room.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Hogarth jumped in. “I wasn’t exaggerating when I said I was a genius. If you need me to take a look at this teleportational technology, I could probably get it working in perfect condition. But why is a year for me shorter for you than it is for me?”

They explained to her what Leona’s pattern was, and how the other three were now, if only essentially, trapped in the same boat.

“That’s not how it was in 2025,” Hogarth said.

“I was given a break so I could take care of Baby Brooke.”

“I’ve always hated that term,” Brooke mumbled.

“You love it.”

“So wadya say?” Hogarth asked. “Why don’t you show me that gun?”

“We just the plans for the gun,” Leona said, “that we can reupload to a synthesizer created by humans who don’t know anything about time travel.”

“That’s why you got me.” Hogarth smiled. “I’m not a chooser, or a salmon. I’m where I am today because I built a transdimensional portal from scratch, based on a brief glimpse of a natural spacetime rift. And I transported an entire town of thirteen hundred people to another planet before they were erased by time.”

Leona walked over to the door, pulled the drive out, and handed it to Hogarth. “Okay. If you do this, you’ll have to go somewhere else. Vitalie is right. We can be fairly certain they’re not listening in on us, but if they come in while we’re gone, and they find you, none of what you do matters. You’ll be locked up, put on my pattern, or killed.”

“I understand,” Hogarth said, taking the drive. “So where should I go?”

“She can live in the 329th floor,” Ecrin said.

“There are only 328.”

Ecrin shook her head. “Not exactly. Each arc was built with one secret floor, in one of the hanging towers, that the original designer could stay in without being disturbed whenever he wanted. I mean, all the towers have something underneath the bottom floor, otherwise you would be able to measure which one was longer than all the others, but they others are used for storage and maintenance. Only one of them has a finished and habitable section that’s about a hundred and seventy square meters.”

“And do you know which one that is?”

“I met him when he was young, and he told me how to read the code he was planning to hide in every arc. But I’ll need to see one of the official wall maps.”

“Wait, he hadn’t even designed them yet? They were just an idea?”

“He’d sketched them out, but no, he was just some high school kid I met when I was undercover for the IAC. I’m from the future, so I knew who he was. I’m confident the room exists. Guy liked to be the smartest man in the room, and thought he was inventing the future for everyone.”

“All right, I guess it can’t hurt to walk down the hall and check one of the maps. Just make it look like you’re looking for a good froyo place, or something.”

“While she’s doing that, Hogarth, would you like to print some new clothes. I can teach you how to use it.”

As Leona was showing Hogarth the machine, Ecrin opened the door to the hallway. Harrison’s voice came from it. “There was a report of an explosion,” he said.

“Really? That’s weird,” Ecrin replied coolly.

Leona silently gestured for Hogarth to stay completely silent.

“I need to come in and take a look,” Harrison urged.

“I don’t think you need to do that.”

Leona mouthed the f-word, and then the word hide. Vitalie stuffed her into the cabinet.

“I really must insist,” Harrison continued as Hogarth was hiding.

Even though Hogarth couldn’t be seen, Harrison’s sensors were too, well...sensitive. Leona needed a good distraction. For much of her life as a scientist, Leona often found herself boring to sleep by reading technical specifications, and searching for interesting hacks. It would seem this model of synthesizer was designed with a catastrophic flaw. The programmers sent out a patch over the air years ago that prevented it from being a further problem, but it was still possible to exploit the error, if one knew what they were doing. Leona had removed the general safeguards two days ago, in order to have the option to build unauthorized objects, like firearms. She hadn’t used it for that yet, but the safety protocols were still down, so the dangerous feedback loop could be triggered manually. She used all of her strength to bend the nozzle bundle in random directions, and hastily programmed the machine to print outside its parameters. Then she waited for it to heat up, hoping that Ecrin could stall him long enough.

Brooke was watching from a neutral zone, and seemed to be picking up what was happening. Leona could hear Harrison push past Ecrin, but the machine wasn’t ready yet. Brooke thought fast. “We wanted to blow you up. We were gonna lure you to the kitchen, then overload the food synthesizer. We tested it, and it worked, which is what our neighbors heard. But if you come in here now, you will die, because we have figured out how to control it. We still have one more printer left.” Apparently warning him what Leona was planning to do was part of Brooke’s crazy scheme.

“Shut it down,” Leona could hear the android say.

“He has Ecrin,” Brooke said in defeat. “Turn it off.”

Leona disengaged the power, and stepped out from around the corner. “We’re gonna stop you one day.

“Let her go,” Brooke ordered, stepping back further back into the livingroom.

Harrison released Ecrin with no argument.

“Duck,” Hogarth shouted from behind them.

Leona ducked down, but looked up to see Harrison get shot with something. His body stiffened, like he was being electrocuted. Then parts of him started disappearing randomly, some of which appeared only a few meters away, one of which was embedded in the wall. In a matter of seconds, Harrison was destroyed, and in dozens of pieces, spread out who knows where.

They all looked back at Hogarth, who was holding what looked like a teleporter gun. “Yeah,” she said, nodding. “I can fix this.”

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The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 11, 2188

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Vitalie was hyperventilating as midnight central approached. Ecrin was doing better, but appeared to be keeping her anxiety bundled inside. They had both traveled through time before, but always by their own will. They had to sit down from the fatigue, which was a symptom of Leona’s flavor of time travel, but something that she learned to overcome after the first dozen or so jumps. Three...two...one, and it was over. They were suddenly now standing in September 11, 2188. They looked over to the corner where Brooke’s Snow White pod was just opening up. It jolted her awake with an accelerated recovery serum, which was only designed for certain crew on sleeper ships that needed to react to a dire cataclysmic event. It wasn’t meant to be used for standard revival, even after only one year in hibernation, and it definitely wasn’t meant to be used over and over again. The best recuperation regimens called for at least one day of limited activity, and no operating of heavy machinery. If Brooke had to go through this for more than a few days, her body could be permanently damaged from the stress, and her organs might eventually give up on her. Her upgrades may give her an advantage to combat those medical issues, but the downgrades Ulinthra performed on her more than likely ruined all that. They needed to end this quickly.

“I think I have an idea,” Vitalie said as they were eating breakfast after a good night’s sleep. “I was thinking about it all yesterday, but I didn’t want to say anything until I had it all worked out.”

“And what would that be?” Ecrin asked.

“Okay, so you—wait, is she surveilling us?”

“Probably.”

“No,” Brooke said. “I installed a communication blocker on my body after Ulinthra’s doctors downgraded my systems. I also placed an anti-tampering device on it, so even if they figured out how to turn it off, I would know. If we were being streamed or recorded, I would know.”

“Where did you install it?” Leona asked. “Did they not find it while they were preparing you for your first time in the stasis pod?”

Brooke cleared her throat. “Ya know, even at the turn of the 23rd century, there are still some places that people are too embarrassed to search.”

“Oh,” Leona said.

“What? I don’t get it,” Vitalie griped.

“It’s in her vagina,” Ecrin explained.

Brooke cleared her throat again. “Vitalie, you were saying something?”

Vitalie couldn’t help but let her eyes drift downwards when looking at Brooke, but she composed herself, and moved on with her plan. “So Ulinthra can repeat the day?”

“That’s right.”

“At the end of everyday, say midnight, she goes back in time in her own body, and does it all again. But since she knows what’ll happen, she can make changes at will.”

“Yes.”

“Which means that we can never know whether we’re living in the day she does this first, or the day she does it for the second time.”

“Well, since she’s the only one with memories of what she calls her Round Ones, we are—for all practical purposes—always living through her Round Twos. We always have to assume that she has the advantage of knowing what we’re gonna do.”

“Okay,” Vitalie continued. It was clear that she understood all this perfectly, but the others needed to follow her all the way to understand what she was proposing they do. “That makes her the only variable. She’s the only one who changes things, so everything we do, we already tried the first time around, but just don’t remember. Our choices are only affected when we interact with her.”

“All right...”

“We can use that. We have to talk to her every day. We have to call her, summon her here, or go to her evil lair. The way she speaks to us, the things she says, will determine whether B.F. Skinner’s cat is dead or not.”

“Schrödinger,” Brooke corrected.

“Huh?”

“Schrödinger was the one with the cat in the box that could be dead or alive, so it’s both until you open the box and find out. Skinner was the one with pigeons and rats.”

“Then who’s the guy with the dog?”

“Pavlov.”

“Whatever. But yes, that’s what I’m talking about. She, and she alone, determines how the day plays out.”

“But what does that matter?” Ecrin asked. “So we talk to her everyday. What, are we going to ask her whether we’ve had that conversation before, or not?”

“It doesn’t matter what we talk about,” Vitalie said, smirking. “We just need her to have an affect on the coin toss.”

“What coin toss?”

“We flip a coin. Everyday, after our talk with Ulinthra, we flip a coin. Heads we go after her, tails we just hang out all day.”

Leona winced. “Well, that means fifty percent of the time, we flipped the same side on her Round One, and whatever we do, she’ll be prepared for, just like always.”

“True,” Vitalie said. “But that also means fifty percent of the time, the coin toss on any given day ends up differently, because we only toss it after Ulinthra does something. She can’t help but be informed by her yesterdays, just like normal people. Even something so innocuous and minute as saying the dog jumped over the fence instead of the dog hopped over the fence will alter exactly when we toss the coin, and how it lands.”

“Like Leona said,” Ecrin began, “half the time we, quote-unquote go after her, she already sees us coming, and has a way to best us. And even if she doesn’t see us coming, we still have to contend with her army. Power or no, she’s too powerful for the four of us.”

“Again, that’s true,” Vitalie said with a sort of nod-shake hybrid. “Look, if you want to scrap any offensive moves against her, and just try to find a way to escape Panama, I’m all for it. Just recognize that she still has her time power. The coin toss plan still helps with that.”

“She’s right,” Brooke finally spoke again. “If we have any hope of fighting her, or leaving Panama, we need to not repeat the same mistakes—whatever they may be—that we made on these Round Ones. Ulinthra is our only way of doing that, since we don’t know anyone who has her same power.”

Ecrin still wasn’t convinced. “I just don’t think we should be talking to that woman any more than we have to. If we can sit in this unit all quiet-like until she gets bored, and moves on, that’s the ultimate outcome. I’m not saying that’s gonna happen, but I just hate that bitch, and I want to avoid her.”

“We all do,” Leona said. “As do many others in this world. We are in a position to stop her, even if that means we escape to Kansas City, and tell some people what we know. I like the coin idea. Let’s start now. I’ll call her, then we’ll flip. Heads we decide what we’re gonna do. Tails, we hold a service for Paige. Ecrin, are you okay with that?”

Ecrin hesitated. “Yeah, we have to do something. Chance is our only...chance. At least now we have a little control over it. Make the call.”

“Brooke?”

“Do it.”

When Leona called Ulinthra that evening, she asked if they could speak with Harrison. She acted as if they thought they could reason with him, and get him to switch sides. Ulinthra giggled, and indicated that they had tried this before, but it didn’t work. The Harrison she knew from an alternate reality no longer existed. This was evidently an entirely different program that she simply gave the same name as her original android assistant. That was good. This time was easy. She had revealed not only that they had called her during her Round One, and that this was her Round two—which prevented her from going back in time and changing it yet again—but also that Vitalie had flipped tails. If they had landed on heads, and done what they were planning to try now, Ulinthra probably wouldn’t be letting Harrison come again.

“All right, Brooke. He’s on his way. Vitalie flips that coin, and it’s heads, you should probably go. We don’t know how this thing will affect you.”

“I understand.”

“Ecrin. Your upgrades have been...”

“Removed completely. I’m human, and safe.”

“This is ready, so flip, Vitalie.”

Vitalie flipped the coin, which they had to manufacture in the synthesizer, since coins weren’t really a thing anymore. They chose a standard United States penny, since that was Vitalie’s calling card. “Be the penny,” she said as it rose and fell in the air. Heads. Brooke left.

Fifteen minutes later, when Harrison knocked on the door, Ecrin and Vitalie hid in the other room, so they wouldn’t be seen. Leona backed herself against the wall, so the door would hide her when she opened it. Harrison immediately realized she was there, though. He pulled the door away from her, and grimaced.

“Hey, toaster!” Brooke’s voice shouted from the hallway. Then they heard her pull back the hammer of an old projectile gun.

Harrison frowned and opened the door again.

“I’ll be fine,” she said to him with sass, but that wasn’t meant for him. She was sending a message to Leona.

Leona decided to accept the possibility that she was about to hurt her friend. She activated the device, then peeked out from behind the door. Harrison was standing there, and not moving. She looked over his shoulder at Brooke, who was holding her head and chest. “Brooke.”

“I’m fine,” she said with a hoarse voice. “I’ll be fine. Just do what you need to do, and make it quick. I don’t know how long he’ll last. Or me.”

“Come back out!” she order to the other two. They came out with tools, and started working on Harrison’s hand, removing what they were looking for faster than they thought they would. They still needed to scan it, though, and they weren’t sure if the synthesizer was working perfectly. The device Leona used to freeze Harrison might have had unintended consequences on anything else electronic.

They placed the tiny little weapon he had embedded in his hand in the synthesizer, and programmed the machine to scan it, so they could make one of their own later.

“Is he gonna wake up?” Ecrin asked with a worried look. “This is goin’ pretty slow.”

Leona looked back at Harrison, still frozen. “If he wakes up, we’ll just kill him. Ulinthra will never know what we took, until it’s too late.”

Once the scan was complete, they put the piece back in Harrison’s hand, and everyone got back into position. Brooke’s job was the hardest. Harrison was an artificial intelligence, capable of measuring his surroundings to the precision of a millimeter; possibly even more. If Brooke didn’t return to the exact state she was in when Harrison was frozen, he would notice that she moved, and realize that he had lost time. That was why Leona had to reprogram his internal chronometer while the device they stole was being scanned. This was also why Brooke distracted him. If he had been looking at Leona when time stopped for him, her puny human brain wouldn’t have been able to get her back to the right place.

Brooke breathed in and out deeply, so she could push down her pain long enough to get back to where she was. “I’m ready,” she finally said.

“Are you sure?”

“Do it now, please. Goddammit.”

Leona deactivated the device, restarting Harrison’s functions. Leona could hear a tussle in the hallway. When she came out from behind the door, she found him hovering over Brooke, pointing the gun at her head.

“Please don’t,” Leona begged.

He grimaced at her again. “I couldn’t if I wanted to.” He helped Brooke up from the floor, almost like a gentleman. “Ulinthra programmed me with the three laws of robotics, like an asshole. Anyway, I guess our conversation is over. You just called me here to kill me.”

“You’re her greatest weapon,” Leona lied.

“Quite.” He adjusted his jacket with the Picard maneuver, and headed for the elevators.

“Are we good?” Brooke asked after he’d gone, having recovered from the device.

Leona went into the synthesizer’s memory, and found the plans for the teleporter gun that they had just taken from Harrison. “We have it.”

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