The Advancement of Mateo Matic: February 9, 2399

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Leona, Tarboda, and Roeland ate at a sidewalk restaurant that reportedly serves the best adobo in the country. It was the first time Leona ever had it, so she has nothing to compare it to, but it was really good. Roeland talked about himself during the meal. Back in the main sequence, he was known as The Stillness. He could travel forwards or backwards in time, but only after standing in one place for a long period of time. The longer he waited, the further he could go. His record is two weeks, during which he found himself severely dehydrated, but he didn’t do that on purpose. As the story goes, he experienced a miscommunication in a not-to-be-named wartorn country, which resulted in his incarceration in an extremely inhumane prison. He was given no food, and no water the entire time. He couldn’t even sit down in the cage. He had only recently discovered his ability, so he didn’t know what he was doing. More specifically, he didn’t know how far back in time that amount of stillness would take him.

Roeland ended up millions of years in the past, stuck in the mesozoic era. He could either stand around for another two weeks to get back, or make multiple, shorter jumps. But there was a problem with the second option, because he had no way of knowing what year it was, and more to the point, when the extinction level event that would inevitably end the reign of the dinosaurs would come about. While he was confident that he would not need the entire two weeks to clear the death, destruction, and mayhem, he didn’t know the minimum amount of time. He wasn’t particularly good at math, and there were too many variables anyway. It’s not like he could look at the creatures around him, and find out what period that was. Jurassic and Triassic; the only two words he knew that had any relevancy, and they were unhelpful. Funny tangent, based on his description, Leona is pretty sure he ran into Siria Webb while he was back there. This was before a dinosaur tried to eat him, forcing him to jump early.

He wasn’t quite fast enough, and Roeland was severely injured in the attack. Plus, he didn’t make it anywhere near civilization. His best guess is that he landed about 50,000 years ago. A family consisting of a human woman, a neanderthal man, and their child, tended to his wounds. Neanderthals are evidently called primaceans in this reality, which he only learned later once he had recovered enough to continue on his way back to the future, and discovered that everything was different because he was no longer in the main sequence. He has found no way to return home, but has made a life for himself here for over sixty years, the most recent of which he’s lived in this beautiful place to enjoy his retirement. He reiterated the lie that he’s here alone, insisting that no one else is on the recursive island, even though the satellite is still registering a time traveler there.

At the end of the night, Roeland returned to his isolated home, and the other two checked into a regular hotel for the night. The next morning, they walked to the Talisay Municipal Hall to see about getting permission to visit Vulcan Point. The people in charge were extremely hesitant to even entertain the idea. Roeland and his daughter—she knew it—went through a lot to convince the government to let them become residents there. The whole reason they eventually agreed is because the Harlows agreed to have no visitors over, even for a few hours. They live in a little hut with no running water, and no electricity, and they do not disturb the wildlife. They boat and walk to the city once a week for supplies, carrying all of their waste with them, including what would normally go into a toilet. The fact that they could not honestly say that they were friends with the Harlows did not help their case. In the end, they had no recourse. These people do not want them here, so they have to leave.

They’re on their way back to the airfield when Leona stops. “Wait.” She swipes through the screens to make sure that she’s seeing this right. “I can’t believe this.”

“What? What is it?” Tarboda asks.

“There’s a missile heading for my satellite. At least that’s what...yep, there’s no other object that it could possibly be on course to intercept.”

“You have a satellite?”

Leona dials her phone, and waits for Aldona to answer. “You didn’t know anything about this?”

“I don’t know anything, ma’am. I’m just the pilot,” Tarboda says.

She believes him. Aldona answers. “Hey, Al. You’re tryna shoot me down.”

“I’m sorry, it’s out of my hands. They told me they were going to refuse to let you put it up there, but I guess they found out that you deployed it anyway. They didn’t even tell me they were sending a high-orbit missile, or I would have called you. I imagine we detected it at the same time.”

“When you were talking to them about it, did you tell them that I’m a great friend...and a terrible enemy?”

“I...didn’t know that myself,” Aldona replies.

“Welp, you’re about to find out...and so are they.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to initiate the satellite’s defenses.”

“Leona, if you go to war...”

“They started it,” Leona contends.

“Okay, but they didn’t.”

“I’m trying to help them. I’m trying to help you. I went on vacation, and kept working. The updated design for the lunar H3 refinery should have crossed your desk about an hour ago.”

“It did, and it looks perfect, but that doesn’t mean—”

“Goodbye,” Aldona.

“Don’t do this.”

“Goodbye,” Leona repeats right before hanging up. She sighs as she’s accessing the satellite’s secondary protocols. She releases the decoy, then teleports the rest of it to the other side of the planet, turning it into a darklurker for a time until she can figure out a more sustainable solution. It’ll keep orbiting using a relatively hard to see EM drive, but it won’t be doing any scans for the foreseeable future. Still, it’s better than losing it altogether.

Tarboda is grimacing. “What did you just do?”

“I released something called a leechcraft. It’s going to find one of their satellites, latch onto it, and lure the missile to destroy it instead. Go ahead and call someone to warn them. It won’t matter, they can’t stop it.”

“Nope. I’m good. I’m with you,” he assures her.

“If that’s true, then we’re both gonna need to go somewhere to hide out.”

“I have some friends in a nonextradition country. You ever been to Croatia?”

They don’t make it one meter towards Croatia before they’re hooded and sedated.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 9, 2398

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Okay, new plan. As it turns out, it’s a good thing that Amir Hussain is such a common name, because there are a few others in the penal colony. It takes them a little bit of time, and a little bit of them breaking into a records room, but they think they have found the right impostor for the job. He actually wants to leave the colony, and start a new life in Usonia. The real Amir Hussain—or rather, the one they’re assuming the two senators are trying to transport as a refugee—is already gone, having been teleported to The Olimpia just as it was coming in to free all of them. He and the rest of their friends should be safe and sound by now. He would have explained to them who he was, and they would have dropped him off somewhere else around the world, given him a little starter money, and returned home.

They weren’t trying to trick Birket, per se, but since no one on the team appears to have actually escaped, their enemies shouldn’t suspect a thing, and they will hopefully accept the other Amir as a decoy. He looks enough like him, given the poor quality of the photo, but maybe there are better ones out there. The Honeycutts may have deliberately made this difficult on them, for whatever ridiculous reason. If so, then they’ll see right through the ruse. The didn’t explain any of this to the new Amir. They’re pretending to legitimately presume that he’s the one they have been looking for this entire time. They’ve almost convinced themselves of as much. Right now, they’re waiting outside of the rundown transition building, which is where release requests are processed.

A man gets on the speaker. “Leona Matic, Marie and Heath Walton, Kivi Bristol, and Amir Hussain, please come inside.”

They walk in to find the building cut in half. Their side is bare, with only chairs up at the barrier, allowing them to communicate through bulletproof glass. The other side is part of a sliver of land where the true citizens of Birket live. A woman is rifling through some papers, and doesn’t bother looking up when they walk in. “Please sit in the order that you were called, starting from this chair here, to that one down there.”

They do as they’re asked.

She keeps consulting the documents, but finally does look up at them. “One million U.S. dollars.” She smiles in a strange way before adding, “each.” Not even Leona knows what she means by that. “That is how much it has cost to get you out of the Birket Penal Colony. I have never seen a bid that high, not even close. But apparently it comes with a...” She looks back at one of the pieces of paper. “...relatively large jug of Dead Sea Water?”

Leona clears her throat to show that she’s not deaf, but doesn’t say a word.

“We don’t like stealing here, but one jug of saltwater is still just one jug. It’s not worth five million dollars.” She continues to wait for them to respond, but gets nothing. “Though, I suppose the payment is more to get us to keep quiet about the whole thing...which I’ll honor. We need to repair and remodel half the blocks in the colony, and that money will contribute nicely to the fund.” She waits once more, but is neither surprised nor perturbed by the silence. “We don’t care if you have any belongings. You won’t be returning. A guard will open that door way down there in ten seconds. You’ll then have ten seconds to get through it before it closes again. Good luck.”

They jump out of their seats.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 31, 2389

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Mithridates couldn’t stop laughing when twelve-year-old lookin’ Leona reached out to him from the Suadona to prove that she had gone through with her promise. She just sat there with her emotionless face, waiting patiently for him to get ahold of himself. Finally, he was able to stop and apologize, explaining that it was just so funny, this little girl being so serious and jaded. He then reiterated his own promise to become an agent of peace in this reality. He was the fifth Preston she had met. One stayed an antagonist, though became a little more understated than he was in the beginning. The next ended up one of their greatest friends. The third’s true motivations were never clear, and if Leona was a therapist, she might have diagnosed her with bipolar disorder. The fourth was a much more obvious villain, who literally no one mourned after he was murdered twice.

Mithri appeared to be a villain from the beginning, but other than this body changing bargain, they didn’t really have any proof of anything he had ever done. His lonely planet was where some kind of automated transporter sent them once they entered the galaxy, but that didn’t necessarily mean that he was in charge, or really anything else about him. There was more than one original member of The Fifth Division, and in all this confusion, she had forgotten to ask after them. He smiled, and pretended like he was going to give her an answer, but then just didn’t. He wouldn’t even say anything more about how he grew up while he was in The Gallery dimension, or what his job there was, if anything. He simply thanked her for her cooperation, and ended the call.

Leona placed the Suadona in orbit, and just left it there for the next year. It was unlikely that Mithri would do anything to it, and he would surely protect it in his own way. Trust the devil you know, and all that. Come the next year, she logged herself into the simulation to check on her friends.

“Leona, why do you look like that?” Mateo asked.

“What are you talking about? It’s just...” She looked down at herself. “Oh.”

“Did you do what the Preston guy asked?” Ramses questioned.

This was a mistake. She thought the system would just use her normal avatar, but for some reason, it scanned her current substrate, and drew from that instead. “I had to. Unless he lied, he’s going to help end the conflict and hostility. I think it was worth it.”

“That’s not what we discussed,” Mateo insisted.

“My body, my choice.”

He sighed. “That’s an unfair spin.”

“I get it, you don’t wanna be married to a twelve-year-old.”

“You’re not twelve, you just look like you are. But yeah, it’s weird.”

“Well, it would have been weird if I were married to someone who looked fifteen!” she volleyed.

“Well,” Mateo began, stammering as he tried to continue, “yeah, that...makes sense! Ramses, did you figure out how to do it from your end?”

“Do what?” Leona asked.

“Yes, I have control over my own systems,” Ramses said.

“You’re gonna transfer your minds anyway? The whole point of me doing it is so you don’t have to,” Leona complained.

“We’re not going to let you look like this on your own,” Olimpia reasoned.

“As I’ve already explained, this was my choice.”

“And we respect that,” Marie said, “so respect ours. We’re tired of being in this simulation. It’s boring. Ramses was only allotted so much memory to construct with.”

“I can get you more memory,” Leona said.

“We want to be out in base reality,” Angela clarified. “That’s not something you can argue against.”

She was right. If they wanted to take on new bodies, it was their right to go through with the download. This wasn’t forever for any of them. They could always build even newer substrates, or find a proverter back in the main sequence to fix these ones. She had to concede to their wishes, and help them complete this task. “Fine. Just let me make sure that everything looks good on my end.” Before she could log out, she felt something jerk her whole body. There were different ways to connect to a virtual construct, but the best way to do it was to suppress the user’s physical movements, so that neural commands were sent to the avatar instead. That way one’s real legs didn’t start flailing about when they were really just supposed to be running inside of the program. Still, there was a failsafe to this technology, which allowed that user to feel someone trying to shake them awake, or stabbing them with a knife, or something. Something was what was happening to the ship in base reality, and Leona had to investigate.

“Computer, report!”

“Lightyear engine is offline. Fractional reactors are offline. Low impulse drives are offline. Maneuvering thrusters are offline.”

“I get it, everything’s offline!”

“Interior artificial gravity online. Life support online. Lights are online.” So sassy.

“Are we being attacked!”

“Not anymore.”

“Who was it, and what are they doing now?”

“The Warmaker Training Detachment is presently matching our orbit, and has done nothing since targeting and destroying our propulsion systems.”

“The lightyear engine is offline, but what about the standard teleporter?”

“The teleporter is located in a deep interior section of the ship, and is currently still operational.”

“Make a jump to the surface.”

“Hull integrity is at—”

“It doesn’t matter, we’ll be in the atmosphere by the time it’s ripped apart.”

And ripped apart it was. Though the detachment was obviously only trying to prevent them from escaping, damaging all means of propulsion necessarily meant causing destruction all over the vessel. The Suadona would have survived enough to be towed into the Warmaker, but will never go anywhere on its own without extensive repairs. The fact of the matter is that it was over, and it was time to abandon ship. Fortunately, they had no strong feelings for the cruiseliner.

Leona spun around, hoping to quickly explain the situation to the team, but they were already coming out of their pods. Ramses had transferred their consciousnesses to their replacement substrates. It was pretty creepy, this group of naked minors standing around together. They all sensed the awkwardness. “You’ll get dressed later. Let’s get to the AOC first.”

“Wait!” Ramses ordered.

“We don’t have any time,” Leona argued.

“Exactly,” he agreed. “You can teleport with your mind now. Let’s go.” He disappeared. Apparently, there was no learning curve to their new temporal abilities. They deliberately built Ramses’ lab far from the hull so as to protect it from an attack like this, and they did the same with the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, though they kept them far from each other for similar reasons.

It was a rush, transporting themselves from where they were, right to where they wanted to go. Obviously they had teleported before, but never by sheer force of will. Until now, they had always relied on technology, or other people, but now they were in control. Now they had the power. Ramses had done did good, even if they had to start using these bodies a little too early.

“Hey, we ended up taking some extra power resources, right?” Marie asked.

“Yeah, they’re in storage down in engineering,” Leona answered. “We have more than we ever have before. We won’t need to refuel for a long time now.” She looked up. “Computer!”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Execute escape program Leona-nine-one-one.”

“Initializing decoys,” the computer responded. The central hologram popped up to show them their progress. While Leona was alone in base reality, she didn’t spend that entire time doing nothing. She was busy preparing for this very eventuality. The Suadona was a beautiful thing. It was capable of getting them anywhere in the supercluster in only a few years—or from their perspective, three days. But alongside that, it was big and threatening, and while nowhere near as powerful as the detachments, it could competently hold its own against an enemy. This was why the Warmaker essentially destroyed it without any warning, and why they were far safer just leaving it behind, and returning to their true home. The AOC was small, inconsequential to these people, and easily underestimated. It was not undetectable, however, and the best way to avoid such detection was to confuse all sensors from being able to distinguish it from other things.

Leona designed and built decoys. They were watermelon-sized drones that only served one purpose: emit a hologram that made each one look like a copy of the AOC, and transmit a false signature that also made each appear to be the real AOC. The reframe engine was slow compared to the types of propulsion people in the Fifth Division were used to using, but these decoys should still distract the Warmaker long enough for the team to make their escape, and not be followed.

They watched on their own hologram as the drones teleported themselves to various points in the space surrounding the planet. At random intervals, they then darkbursted in all directions, shutting off their holograms and transmitters at the same time to make it harder for them to be found. While they were doing that, the real AOC was escaping at reframe speed, its crew hoping their opponents never figured out which one they ought to follow.

“Captain Matic?” the computer asked.

“Yes? Are they following us?”

“No, sir, but we picked up a data transmission. It’s a message from the Warmaker.”

“Can they detect us this way?”

“No. Anyone in the area with an antenna would have received it. It’s unencrypted.”

“Play it.”

The battleground hologram disappeared to be replaced with an image of Xerian Oyana. “Crew of the Suadona. I’m sorry it has come to this. In your absence, power has reverted back to us. Against my advice, the others have decided to launch a full scale attack against the Denseterium, and the Fifth Division proper. We detected your presence in orbit over Earth, and I was unable to prevent them from including you in the first shots of this new war. I hope you find a way to survive, and I regret that our relationship deteriorated to a state of hostility. I’ve always admired you, and I appreciate all you did, and tried to do, for the supercluster. If we ever cross paths again, I promise not to be a driving force of opposition, but I can make no such promise when it comes to the other leaders, and their decisions. Please. Be careful, and just go away. Stay safe, and stay out of it. We are not your problem anymore.”

“Did he just say this is Earth?” Angela asked.

“Are we going to do that?” Marie asked at around the same time, barely registering that her alternate was also speaking. “Are we going to heed his advice?”

“Well,” Mateo began, “we’re going to be careful and safe, and we’re going to do our level best to stay out of it, but we can’t go away without getting back in it first. The only way out is through. As far as we know, Dilara Cassano, a.k.a. The Arborist is still on the SWD. If we want to go home, we have to retrieve her.”

“Can we even get to the other detachments?” Olimpia asked. “We’re so far away now, and we’ve lost our lightyear engine.”

Mateo looked over to his wife, who closed her eyes and sighed. “Computer, go back to the site of the attack. Once you’re there...initiate Pilot Fish protocol.”

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