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During the team’s interim year, the pocket dimension generator belts they
left behind explored the galaxy on their own. They did so while
holographically invisible, in case the next encounter was with someone less
kind than Renata and Quidel. The belt stack was able to visit nearly one new
spot a day, for a total of 360 slings. When the stack arrived somewhere new,
it had to wait for the coherence gauges to return to the violet. In the
meantime, it took that opportunity to scan the region, providing Ramses with
the data that he needed to rule out Spiral Station. The majority of the dots
on the map were crabitats, but not all. Obviously, they started with the
most remote since those were most likely to be what they were looking for.
Besides Extremus, there was Verdemus, which created its own outpost around
nearby stars. Some people from the Sixth Key had established a presence in
this reality, and it didn’t look like they were hurting anyone, so the team
decided to leave them be.
Every day, the belts would chip away at the map, gathering enough
information to check each dot off. Now that they were back in the
timestream, they elected to give the belts a break since the chances of
being present when they found their target were low, and they really didn’t
feel like going on another adventure. Ramses built them such a nice
multidimensional home to live in, they decided to simply relax. The search
was probably going to take years, so what was the rush?
Romana slammed her palm on the couch. “Downbeat!”
Everyone giggled. They actually weren’t even playing Downbeat, but trying to
contrive the rules to another fictional game called Hassle the Fishmonger.
“No? I didn’t just win?” Romana questioned.
“Not unless you’re holding Mateo’s hand,” Marie suggested.
“Oh, good idea. I’m writing that down as a new rule,” Mateo said before
taking his daughter’s hand in his.
They looked at each other before saying, “downbeat!” simultaneously. And
then, as if it had been the magic words, the proximity alarm went off. A
security feed appeared in front of the doors that led to the simulated
backyard. A giant object had appeared before them, the technicolor webbing
still fading away.
“Spiral Station,” Leona said, standing up.
“They must have been looking for us while we were looking for them,” Olimpia
figured.
Without doing or saying a single thing, the station wrapped itself in bulk
energy, and slung away.
“What the hell was the point of that?” Mateo questioned.
“They left something behind.” Ramses was tapping on his tablet. “It could be
a bomb. Executing emergency teleportation.”
For about thirty minutes, they waited thousands of kilometers away, but
nothing happened. Ramses had dropped a sensor buoy near the gift. It needed
time to assess the threat level, but he was quickly confident that it
contained no explosive materials. His best guess was that it was some kind
of communication device, so they pulled it inside. He set it on the table
and pressed the blinking red button. A hologram of Franka appeared behind
the table. The sphere itself turned invisible to declutter the image.
“Greetings, Team Matic. Word around the membrane is that you’ve been looking
for us.”
Mateo stepped forward. “We have.”
“To what end?” Franka asked.
“Our slingdrive system,” Ramses began. “Someone pointed out that it
can’t take us absolutely anywhere. It can only travel to a technological
establishment, however remote. We were hoping you could fix that.”
“So you used the limitation to build a map of the galaxy, which pinpointed
our location, albeit in an unlabeled manner. That’s clever,” Franka
acknowledged.
Ramses looked awkwardly at Romana. “I’m not the one who came up with that
either.”
“We’re guessing that you don’t have the same restrictions,” Leona said.
“We do not,” Franka admitted.
Dutch suddenly appeared behind her. He waved at the camera. “Hi, guys!”
“Hi, Dutch,” a few of them replied.
“Hi,” Romana said too, but in a very different tone. Not again.
“Okay, I’m talking here,” Franka said to Dutch, shooing him away without too
much anger. She looked back at the team. “I’m afraid that bulk tech was my
brother’s responsibility. I don’t know if you heard, but he kind of died?”
“We could have mourned together,” Leona argued, “but you abandoned us in the
middle of nowhere.”
“You threatened me!” Franka volleyed. “I don’t like to be threatened!”
“Well, I’m sorry, I regret it!” Leona explained. “Which I would have said
earlier, but we couldn’t find you!”
“Well, I’m sorry too!” Franka shouted back. “When you have this much power,
it’s hard to remember how much normal people matter!”
“Well, okay!” Leona caught her breath. “I’m done with this sphere. You need
to come back so we can have a real conversation.”
“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” Franka argued. She then tried to continue.
“We’re busy,” Dutch interrupted again.
“Thanks, Dutch, I got this.” Franka rolled her eyes in a way that suggested
she liked having him around to keep the mood light, but it could be a bit
much at times. “I brought you this intergalactic communicator so we could
stay in contact, but Dutch wasn’t lying. We really are busy. I promise, it’s
nothing you wouldn’t approve of, but you have your own destinies to fulfill.
You are more boots on the ground, hands-on, street level people. And
you...ya know, don’t exist most of the time? We have to stay out of the
Milky Way galaxy, because it might cause a severe shift in the balance of
power. The people there need to develop as they are for the most part.
Project Starseed can’t have—forgive me for using this word—gods saving them
all the time. They need people like you...with your limitations, your
restrictions...your rules. I bet you’ve been trying to decide where to go.
My advice? Go anywhere. Someone there will need you.”
“What about the Oaksent?” Mateo asked her.
“We’ve been monitoring the situation,” Franka told him. “It seems that you
were...” She trailed off, and mumbled inaudibly.
“What was that?” Leona pressed. “We can’t hear you. There must be dark
matter interference.”
“You were right!” Franka admitted. “The situation was a lot more nuanced
than just the hypothetical assassination of one man. They are evidently
fixing their own problems. A faction has broken off, and is on its way to go
to war with Castlebourne, but it will take them long to get there and find
it, and by the time they do, the balance of power will make their efforts
fruitless. But instead of it being unfair and easy, the Castlebourners will
have done it themselves. Thanks to people like you who made little changes,
instead of sweeping decisions. The truth is, mom and dad, I admire you. And
we can get to know each other better, but we can’t spend time. Our paths
diverged before any of us were even born. One day, we might be able to team
up again. I can see the Vellani Ambassador reuniting with the Iman Vellani.
I see them working with The Jameela Jamil and Spiral Station. And I see Team
Matic at the center of it. But for now, please stay in your corner. They
need you, even if they don’t know it.”
“Wait,” Ramses said, worried that Franka was about to log off. “Is there
anything you can do about my slingdrives? I know you didn’t design it, but
surely Séarlas left behind operator’s manuals.”
“Why would you wanna go where there isn’t anyone else around?” Franka posed.
“I would like the option,” Ramses contended.
Franka sighed, and seemingly considered it. “When you return to the
timestream next year, open your little map, and take note of a ping that you
didn’t see before. That will be a beacon that I left in a remote region of
the galaxy. You can go there for respite. But I’m not granting you access to
all of time and space. This is the best I can do.”
“Well...thank you then,” Ramses said, having been hoping for a lot more.
“I better be going,” Franka said.
“Bye!” Dutch jumped back in. “You should go to Be—”
The call was disconnected.
“Well, that was weird,” Mateo said.
“We should try not to think of her as our daughter...because she isn’t,”
Leona said to her husband. “She had different parents, who looked like us,
and would make a lot of the same decisions as us, but were not us. We didn’t
experience that, and we don’t have the right to treat her as family.”
There was an awkward silence, which Olimpia decided to break. “I think I’m
gonna take a nap.”
“Yeah, me too,” Angela agreed. “Let’s all take an hour to do whatever we
need to do, be that a nap, a talk, or a nice bath.”
Half an hour later, Mateo and Leona were in the former’s room, exhausted
from having been talking about their feelings, when the slingdrives powered
up. They ran out of their unit, and back into Marie’s. Most of their
teammates were doing the same. Angela was fully naked, dripping wet from her
shoulders down, and trying to dry herself off with a hand towel. Ramses came
out last from his lab. “Who did that?”
“I did.” Romana was walking up the steps from Marie’s basement.
“Where did you bring us?” Leona questioned.
“The only logical place,” Romana answered enigmatically.
“Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida,” Ramses announced, looking at his device.
“Is this because of what Dutch said at the end of the call?” Mateo asked.
“This is obviously what he meant. Trust me, I looked through the colony
catalogs, looking for an alternative, and this was the only place he could
have possibly been trying to say before he was so rudely cut off.”
“Yeah, that’s probably true,” Leona agreed, “but that doesn’t mean we had to
come here, or that you could make that decision without our input.”
Romana brushed it off. “Ugh, I’m so bored. I can’t take another game of
Cones of Dunshire. It’s too thinky thinky.”
“The people who live here...” Leona began, trailing off, not knowing how to
word it. “They’re not—oh my God. I don’t know how to put it. From the
outside, they basically look like hermits, but instead of crabitats, they
live in small pockets on the land and sea. Some do live in rotating
cylinders, coins, and hammers, but up in orbit, because they don’t see their
relative proximity to be any less isolating on a daily basis. No, that’s not
right. They participate in community, but they technically live separately.
They utilize technology efficiently, to make it so they don’t have to work.
They otherwise worship nature, which makes sense given that this world is a
miracle. I’m being really general here, but that’s to give you an idea of
how they live. They don’t reject technology, and they don’t hate outsiders,
but we probably shouldn’t meddle in their affairs.”
“Hold up,” Marie said. “Romy, you’re the one who sent us to Proxima Doma
too. Is this the same thing? Did someone tell you to bring us here?”
“Yeah, Dutch,” Romana reminded them.
“I mean someone other than that. Did you meet a seer, or...?”
“It’s nothing like that,” Romana defended. “No more secrets. This is just
our next stop. You don’t have to read anything into it. It’s just...we’re
just...Doctor Who.”
“Doctor Who?” Leona asked. “How’s that now?”
“The Doctor doesn’t have to do anything,” Romana reasoned. “Everytime
he goes somewhere, he pretty much always knows all the stuff. He’s not
seeking out new life and new civilizations. He’s just flying around, and
whenever he shows up, he helps whoever happens to be there. The writers gave
up on contriving reasons for him to do that. It’s just the premise, and
that’s enough. Let’s make that our premise. Let’s check out Bida for a
little bit, and when we’re done, we’ll pick somewhere else to go. You don’t
have to wait for someone to hand you a mission, should you choose to accept
it. That’s what my sister was trying to tell us. She’s not my
favorite sister, but it makes sense to me now, and I think I agree
with her.”
Leona nodded. “It’s not a bad idea. The problem is that Bida has become
almost entirely decentralized. That’s the consequence of extreme advancement
in a post-scarcity economy. It’s why people like Linwood Meyers exist. Most
aren’t misanthropic, but they lost their reasons to work together.
Basically, everything that needed to be done is done. Some people will
continue to look for new adventures, and new knowledge, but for a lot, a
cabin in the woods is enough. They stand upon Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
alone because there is not much room at the top of a pyramid. So the people
here probably don’t need us, and even if someone does, the chances of you
landing us exactly at that settlement, instead of any of the other twenty
million plots, are incredibly low.”
Romana held out her hand, but not in friendship. “I’ll take that bet.”
Leona smiled. “What are we betting?”
“If I win—if we’re where we’re supposed to be, helping the right person or
people—you make me your navigator. As Captain, you reserve the right to
veto, as I trust your judgment and wisdom, but as navigator, I initially
choose our mission, every time.”
“And if I win?” Leona asked.
“If you win...you get infinite favors.” Romana seemed confident that she
wouldn’t have to worry about the gravity of that offer.
Leona smiled wider now. “Okay.” She shook her daughter’s hand.
By the end of the day, Romana was the team’s navigator. It wasn’t even that
hard. She cheated.
