Microstory 2626: The Horse Returned Home, Bringing Several Wild Mares

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August 31, 2526. Thank God for small miracles, the mining facility is fully intact, as is the mass driver itself. They used a lot of power getting there, and they didn’t start out at 100%, so they charge from the local mini-grid. Fortunately, it goes quickly as the geothermal generators are operating at peak performance these days. They spend their downtime getting to know each other better, Breanna and Cash have sex a couple of times, and Sorel enjoys breaks in a virtual oasis. They also prepare for departure, making sure they understand the procedures. The mass driver can fire them out at incredible speeds, including incredibly deadly speeds, so they have to be extra cautious. The pod is equipped with parachutes, but in case those fail, the rover actually has its own too, so they will be able to blow the bolts on the pod midair if they have to.

The world is falling apart, and maybe someone is to blame for that, but ignoring that one little apocalyptic eventuality, technology is fairly reliable, built with redundancies, contingencies, and redundancies. They fire themselves over the mountains and the chasm, and at the exact right time, the chutes deploy. They gently descend to the ground, landing only a few kilometers from the industrial vactrain depot. This is where the refined materials are loaded, and dispatched to the various domes in the northern polar region. Sorel looks at the map and finds their target. “This one.” He points to another spot. “If your hang-gliding friends landed somewhere around here, this is the dome they would have encountered first. But. It’s in a canyon, so there’s a chance they completely missed it, and just kept walking. If you know they don’t have a map, skipping it would be easy to do.”

“Still,” Breanna begins, “it’s the most logical place to start. Would you mind? They have passenger pods here too, so if you would rather go somewhere else, we can part ways.”

He shakes his head. “If this canyon dome is populated, they will be in just as much need of escaping. They could make for great customers. In fact, maybe better, because they’re less safe that close to the chasm than the more northern communities. They might be more willing to leave.”

“Okay, then we go there together,” Cash agrees.

Sorel drives the rover into the vactrain pod, and sends a message to the network AI, stating that they are ready to go. The tube closes up, and the pod slides away. Of course, the trip is a lot shorter than the one that brought them there, but it’s still not instantaneous, so the girls have sex again while Sorel occupies himself in his simulation. Once they finally arrive, the AI announces that it will not be able to let them out exactly at their destination. There is something wrong, and it has been sealed up. Instead, it takes them back up to the surface, and drops them off at the secondary depot, which leads to the outside. It’s farther away, and they will have to make their way down into the canyon from there, but it wouldn’t be so bad if not for the actual reason they have to do that. The main entrance was blocked because the dome....has been destroyed. Well, it has not necessarily been destroyed, but it’s not safe either.

“Holy shit,” Cash says as they are staring over the edge. The shape of the dome is still there, and in fact, may remain intact underneath, but it’s unclear how livable the environment would be inside of it. Molten lava has breached the canyon, some of it already having hardened into rock as it cooled. If the residents are still down there, there’s not likely a way for them to get out. The database doesn’t say a thing about who they are, or how self-sufficient they designed their community. They might be able to survive for millennia, or they need to be rescued today. Whatever the answer, the three of them are not equipped to help. Really, the only question on Breanna and Cash’s minds right now is whether their friends were there when it happened.

“Notus, Calypso, can you hear me?” Breanna asks into her comms. “Shimizu, anyone. Can anyone hear me? Anyone at all.”

Sorel looks down the way. “That hab. It’s for gondola ingress and egress. There might be survivors in there; perhaps your friends, or someone who saw them.”

They walk down there, and it immediately doesn’t look good when they round the corner. The entrance is wide open, exposing the habitat to the hostile outside environment. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any answers, though. They shut the door behind them and repressurize, then get a look around. Cash heads right for the logs. There aren’t any recorded reports, but there is still security footage. She feeds it into the auto-summarization software, and grabs the highlights. They watch when the lava breaches through the walls of the canyon, and heads for the dome. Shortly thereafter, the interior habitat cameras show the lone operator pull his helmet on, and bug out. It doesn’t even look like he warns the residents below what was happening. He just abandoned them. If they were using holographic imagery for their scenery, they might not have seen the lava, and if they didn’t think to include the right sensors—which would, admittedly, be quite odd—they might have sat there in ignorance for hours, or maybe even the last couple of days. They might still not know that they’ve become trapped. There’s no evidence that they tried anything to save themselves.

Cash rolls it back a little. Earlier that day, seven survivors appeared from behind a small mountain. “Oh, it’s gotta be them,” she notes. The operator came out of the habitat, and stood just outside the entrance, using hand gestures, likely talking to their friends. There’s no audio, so they can’t know exactly what he was saying, but the group turned around, and he went back inside alone. He obviously denied them entry, which was a dick move, but it possibly saved their lives.

Breanna lets out a sigh of relief. “So, they didn’t get in. Where did they go?”

“It looks like they went back where they came,” Cash replies, “but the cameras don’t see very far. They could have looped around to the other side of the canyon, or backtracked to the chasm.”

“Why would they do that?” Breanna questions. “There’s nothing for them there.”

“There might be,” Sorel says. He has the map up again as a hologram. “From where you lost them, they went northeast to get here. This area is impassable. It has all sorts of sharp rocks and hidden crevices; very hard to navigate, especially on foot. If they tried to head west, they would have hit that stone forest, and might have ended up all the way back where they came from before finding the trail that goes northwest, around the other side of the forest. Now, they could have skipped all of that if they had instead come towards this gondola station, and gone around the canyon’s east side, but it looks like that asshole didn’t direct them that way.”

“Sorel. We have to go look for them. Can you stay with us just a little bit longer?” Breanna begs.

“I would be happy to. Let’s get back in the rover.”

Microstory 2623: Move it to the Exits, I Hope You Have Found a Friend

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August 28, 2526. It’s been another day, but the survivors have made it to the top of the hill, which was harder than they believed, but it will give them their best chance of getting out of this alive, so no one is complaining. During the walk, Breanna and Cash taught everyone how to use their parachutes. The Levins were in awe of how the chutes were able to expand and retract with the push of a button. Base jumping was a not unpopular sport under their dome, but they never developed anything this sophisticated. The Breckenridgers were just in awe of the concept in general as they had not even dreamed of such technology. Everyone has done well, so Breanna thinks they’re ready to make the jump. She and Cash will not be able to help them if something goes wrong, but they’ll have the beetloid, which is evidently inclined to help people.

One by one, they help the other survivors launch. They get a running start, deploy their chute, jump off the cliff, and activate hang gliding mode. An electrical current is sent through the canopy to stiffen it up. This is the only way they’ll be able to cross over four kilometers without plunging into the depths. In fact, they might be able to go a lot farther, depending on the temperature and pressure on the other side. The gases would actually kind of be the holy grail for this sort of thing if the price for failure wasn’t death. If they remember Breanna and Cash’s instructions, they’ll stay aloft for long enough to reach the other side. From there, they will be able to continue northwards. They have beacons and comms, so if they end up separated—which they probably will, because it’s safer to let that happen than to try to stick together, and risk losing altitude—they will be able to reunite somewhere. They were all good students. They’re gonna be okay. Breanna couldn’t have asked for a better group, and while she won’t be around to get them all the way there, she got to see them through most of the journey.

“You’re not coming, are you?” The guy who Tertius saved from the cyclone is the last one, and the only one to see the writing on the wall.

“You should go. We’ll be right behind you, I promise,” Breanna lies.

He’s not buying it. “Why can’t you come with us?”

Breanna sighs. “We don’t have our parachutes. Well, we do, but not the kind that can be switched to hang glider mode.”

“I was born in Leviss. They had this thing called tandem diving. I never got a chance to do it myself before my family left, but...” He trails off, having said enough to get his point across.

Breanna nods. “We’re not equipped for that. Your suits are a different model, and don’t have the straps that we would need. We have some straps, but they’re worn out and too short.”

“We could rig something up,” he reasons. “Calypso is still in comms range. Let’s call her back, and figure this out.”

“It wouldn’t be safe. We didn’t want to lower your chances of making it across. If we were just base jumping together, I would go for it, but you need all the luck you can get to go as far horizontally as possible. It’s not worth the risk. We’ll be fine, we have education and experience in this sort of thing, so we’ll figure it out.”

“No, you won’t. You’re just getting ready to die. I was wondering what those looks of calm on your faces were about. Now I know. Now I understand.” He crosses his arms like a petulant child.

“That is not your concern,” Cash argues. “Tertius saved your life, and then it looks like he lost his. Don’t waste that gift. Get over there with the others, tell them we’re proud of them, and then keep moving until you find safety.”

Now he sighs. “Okay. Thank you...for everything.” He steps back, leans forward, but stops again. “Wait, the beetle.”

“Cash already suggested that,” Breanna says. “It can only hold one person, and before you ask, it can’t make two trips. It’s not designed to fly around. It’s just meant to hop from one part of a dome to another one nearby. It barely got Calypso back to us.”

“I took a look at its diagnostics,” Cash continues. “It’s running low on fuel, and the toxins are damaging its components almost as much as it would our bodies. Honestly, it might not make it across itself, and I certainly don’t want it trying to make it back up to higher ground. We can’t rely on it for another trip.”

“Over here, she and I stand a chance of finding another way,” Breanna finishes. “Now go on, git!”

“Very well,” he gets back into his stance, then runs off and flies away from them.

By the time he makes his jump, the first survivor has landed on the other side. They can’t see her from this distance through all the fumes, but the augmented reality is showing everyone as little dots on their huds.

The two of them stand on the cliff’s edge, watching those dots get farther and farther away. In under five minutes, everyone else has landed, including Notus. Breanna tries to make contact with them, but there’s too much interference. They’re on their own now, but she’s confident that they will do what needs to be done. The worst is behind them already. If they encounter any dangers up ahead like the ones they’ve already faced, then it means the whole planet is unsafe, and nothing would matter anyway. They continue to watch as the dots reconvene back on the ground. They’re surely close enough to communicate with each other by now, so everyone knows the deal. Even though it’s getting quite hot up here, Breanna and Cash don’t want to leave in case they see someone try to glide back to them. It might be possible, but more likely for an expert, which none of them is. There is just too much verticality to cover.

“We best be heading back down, eh?” Cash offers, feeling it safe to let them go.

“We best,” Breanna agrees. “Where exactly are we gonna go, though?”

“I suggest we head back for the nearest dome. There might be something there we can use. Hell, they might have left a rocket behind for all we know. This close to the safety zone, it would have been impractical for them to take it, but for us, it could be our only shot.”

“That would be cool, but I would settle for a couple new IMS units with working hang gliders.”

The two of them climb back down the hill, and walk back eastward along the edge of the chasm. They become tired, so they initiate the vacuum tent, which was too heavy to risk sending with the others. They climb inside and remove their suits to a great deal of relief. Then they look at each other. They’re alone together for the first time in a long time. Something has been brewing, but they have not had any opportunity to explore exactly what that might be until now. So they clamber to remove the rest of their clothing, frantically trying to help each other. And then, at last, at the very end of the only world they have ever known, they consummate their love.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 21, 2259

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Leona didn’t wake up from what was meant to be a nap until thirty minutes to midnight. Of course, by then, it was way too late to launch the AOC. The safest place to be for a time jump was either on the ground, or in outerspace. Somewhere in the middle just wasn’t worth the risk. She kissed Mateo goodbye, then left the grave chamber. Cassidy was there as well, getting out of her own grave, having also apparently slept for longer than she wanted. They crawled out of the ship, and jumped to November 21, 2259 together. The first people they saw when they arrived were Étude and Vitalie. The last Leona saw them was on Proxima Doma, when she and Mateo had to take the Insulator of Life to Bungula to revive Brooke and Sharice Prieto. Cassidy seemed more surprised than anyone. “Mom?”

Étude took Cassidy in a heavy embrace, which they held for minutes on end. While they were waiting, Vitalie and Leona shook hands, all professional-like. She seemed to know who Leona was, but didn’t have any strong feelings about her.

Cassidy finally breaks the hug. “Wait, mom, you’re so young. How do you know who I am?”

Étude sported a smile-frown hybrid. “I’m technically not the woman who birthed and raised you. I had to go back in time once to save a lot of people from disaster. My slightly younger self was the one who went to Earth on a mission, made a quick detour on her way back to Dardius to have you, and then took you back to Earth, in the past.”

Cassidy wasn’t afraid, but she was confused, and it was enough to make her take a half-step back. “If that’s the case, then you still shouldn’t know me.”

“I had my brain blended,” Étude explained.

Cassidy looked to Leona. “That’s the thing where someone gives you memories from an alternate reality?”

“Yes,” Leona answered.

This was all big news. They spent the next few hours catching up with each other. Vitalie wasn’t really Vitalie anymore. She too had been through a lot. Both of them had to take the immortality waters to survive certain death when they ended up trapped in another universe. Vitalie made the choice to stick around while Étude and a man named Tertius Valerius went back home. Vitalie spent four billion years there as an immortal, until finally coming back to this universe through The Prototype. She was only capable of retaining memories from the last fifty-six years of her life, however, which explained her somewhat distant reaction to encountering Leona.

While they were doing this, Leona was apparently not made aware that Pribadium was assigned to make sure the AOC was launch-ready. Mateo didn’t know what to say when she opened the hatch to grave chamber four, and found him still very much alive in there. She had experienced a lot of time travel stuff by now, but she had never seen anyone come back from the dead. She freaked out.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Mateo tried to promise her. “I can explain.”

“How are you here?” Pribadium asked. “Was your death a lie?”

“No, it wasn’t,” Mateo said. “The preservation coffin you’ve seen me in, that’s real. It’s future me...hopefully very, very, very far in the future, but my death is inevitable. Someone brought me back and saved me at the last second.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” she argued. “Then how do you have a body at all?”

“One day,” Mateo started to explain, “I will have to go back and actually die. It’s predestined. It’s already happened.”

“Why, though?” she pressed. “If they could go back in time and rescue you at all, why didn’t that just change the past?”

“Briar was wearing something called the hundemarke. I don’t know how it works, but the past can’t be changed when it’s involved. It prevents it. The extraction mirror is just kind of a loophole.”

Pribadium took a moment to digest the news. “Why aren’t we telling anyone?”

“Leona thought it was best, and I agree. The hundemarke is very delicate. What we know about the future, and what we tell people, can have really bad consequences. The less people know, the better. Everything has to happen how it happened. For as important as it is to not actively interfere with the inevitable, it’s equally important that we don’t try to force the inevitable. We just have to let fate take over.”

“I understand,” she said. “I have to check this chamber, though. Something weird happened.”

“You mean Étude and Vitalie? Leona kept the mic on her tablet open, and has been relaying the entire conversation to me, so I already know.”

“No, not that. I don’t know who those people are, so while it sounds like a strange story, their arrival doesn’t surprise me. What does interest me, however, is how Leona and Cassidy slept for nearly a whole day, and I suppose you as well. I was led to believe that we didn’t leave Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida last year because Leona and Cassidy didn’t feel like it yet. If I had known that it was actually because the stasis features of these grave chambers had possibly acted up, I would have taken a look at them earlier, but I was on a side mission on Waizidi.”

“The stasis features acted up?” Mateo popped the appropriate panel open, revealing the equipment that went over his head. “Ooo, I think that might have been me.”

“How so?”

He popped open the storage panel too. “I didn’t know about all the things that are in here, so I was familiarizing myself with them. I tried my best to avoid the stasis stuff, but I must have punctured a tube, or bumped a switch?” Mateo carefully looked around like a gopher, then crawled out, still not wanting anyone else to know he was there. “You should take a look at it.”

“Okay, you can hide in chamber six while I’m working. No one will be using it.”

Mateo did as he was told, and just went back to his Batwoman marathon. Halfway through his current episode, the new hatch opened up. The first thing he heard was Pribadium saying, “no, not that one!”

Three people were looking down on him: Leona, Étude, and Vitalie.

“Oh,” Étude said.

“Why are you in this one?” Leona asked.

“Hi, I’m Vitalie.” She showed him her hand.

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast,” he echoed a character from the show he was watching, who was quoting from Lewis Carroll.

“Are you still watching that show?” Leona asked.

“So...” Étude hesitated, “can I use this one, or no?”

“Why did you move?” Leona reiterated.

“Pribadium found me, and needed to check some things, so I hid in here.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone about him,” Pribadium assured Leona. She was standing up from grave chamber five, which was Cassidy’s.

“I won’t either,” Étude said.

“I don’t know who you are, and I don’t care,” a sassy but apathetic Vitalie added.

“All right, yes,” Leona said. “Let’s not let it get any further than this.”

“Let what get further than what?” Thor had come in. Mateo wasn’t worried, though. He was really good at keeping people’s secrets, because like Vitalie, he didn’t care.

“All right, no further, though. Jesus.” Leona was growing impatient.

“Do you guys want to hear about the stasis features?” Pribadium offered.

“It’s not something I did?” Mateo asked.

“No,” Pribadium answered. “They were both leaking, though. It’s not enough to put you out completely, but since you were already asleep, you didn’t wake up until the leak was fixed.”

“How was it fixed?” Leona questioned.

“I don’t know,” Pribadium admitted. “I think it was programmed to turn off.”

“Someone wanted to keep us in here?” Leona asked. “Who? Briar? Arcadia?”

“Oh, no,” Mateo realized. “It was Mirage. She knew Étude and Vitalie were coming, and that we would miss them if we left before today. She wasn’t trying to keep us in here, per se. She just wanted us to stay on the planet.”

“Oh, so it’s okay?” Pribadium hoped.

“Make sure it won’t happen again,” Leona instructed. “I’ll work on the rest of the pre-flight check, because I do still want to leave today. You two are still okay with coming?”

Étude and Vitalie nodded. The former elaborated, “Cassidy is safer with you, and I want to be with her, so yeah.”

“I go where she goes.” Vitalie jerked her head towards Étude.

So it was decided. Leona and Mateo would be going off to Glisnia to send off the latter’s future dead body. Cassidy would be going with them, along with her mother, Étude, and her friend Vitalie. Pribadium was going as well, as a much needed engineer. That didn’t mean that everyone was staying on Bida, however. A couple people were interested in starting a brand new adventure.

“This is the Emma González?” Leona asked, marveling at the vessel.

“Yeah,” Étude confirmed. “Kestral and Ishida gave it to us when we went to Gatewood for Cassidy.”

“So the two of them were doing okay?” Cassidy asked.

“They were going through some stuff,” Vitalie replied, “but I think they were going to be fine. We’ve not spoken to them since we left at sublight.”

“If you’re going on the AOC,” Goswin began, “then I suppose you won’t be needing this anymore?”

“What were you thinking?” Leona asked him.

“We don’t know,” Weaver answered instead. “We were kinda just gonna choose a random direction, and start flying.”

“To what end?” Thor questioned.

“The future,” Goswin said. “We’ve decided to not have a plan at all, but only if we have the means of doing so.”

“Fine with me,” Étude told him. “That there ship is yourn.”

“Anyone else wanna come?”

“We’ll come.” Eight Point Seven was walking towards them with a chained up Briar in tow. “Trinity wants him off this planet. Nowhere is as good a place as any. I’ve outlived my usefulness with Pryce’s animal tourism testing, so I’m a free agent too.”

“Were you guys gonna leave without saying goodbye?” Ellie and Trinity were now walking up. The former was likely at a music break. It was her last radio show ever. She had by now racked up thousands of hours of programming, which was enough to last a lifetime for her listeners. She never needed to fill time for the average radio listener, but for very busy time travelers who managed to carve out a little bit of time for relaxation and entertainment.

They began to say their goodbyes. People hugged those they were comfortable enough with to feel at ease doing that. They shook hands with those they weren’t as close to, but these often transformed into hugs as well. They were all friends here, except for Briar, and a little bit Thor. He let his guard down for a moment, and got in on the action as well, though. Mateo wished he could have been there in person, but he was able to watch from the security feed, and that was better than nothing. When it was all over, everyone took their places. Eight Point Seven’s consciousness was uploaded into the González, with Weaver serving as her humanoid engineer, and Goswin as the captain. Briar was stuck in one of the rooms, since the ship was never designed with a hock. Mateo was back in grave chamber four, which Cassidy was told was the culprit for the stasis malfunction. This gave her a good reason to not open it, though come next year, there was probably no reason she wasn’t allowed to know the truth, especially since everyone else on the ship already did know.

Trinity, Ellie, and Thor were the only ones to remain on-world as the two ships launched at the same time, but flew off in different directions. DJ Mount Alias was just closing her show for good as the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was breaking orbit, and preparing to engage the Radiant Lightning reframe engine. “For my last song ever, I’ve chosen something special. This is for a man I once knew, who’s being delivered to his final resting place after a hard, but far too short, life.” Easy Street started playing on the speakers, but stopped after a few seconds. “Just kidding. Friend, if you’re listening sometime in the past, I know what that song means to you.” She started playing Heat of the Moment, which was another traumatic song from Mateo’s past, as well as Leona’s. The Cleanser had tortured him with it during the Tribulation days. She stopped this as well. “That’s also a joke. I hope he appreciates it, or would have. This is the real last song. It’s not technically a single piece, however. It’s eight and a half hours long, and is perfectly designed to induce sleep. Hm. I just now realized that’s probably how it got its name. Live from the Reading Room on September 27, 2015, this...is Sleep, by Max Richter.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 20, 2258

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Perhaps death was inevitable, for anyone and everyone, and everything. Even those who managed to upgrade their substrates, or even transfer their consciousnesses to new ones, were going to end one day. Because the longer any given entity lives, the chances that something goes wrong increase. If people only lived for two weeks, most would probably survive that long, but as the lifetime expands, so too does the distribution. These were the ideas Mateo picked up on while he was waiting to return to his time period. Evidently, this philosophy magazine was left here to help him cope with his new situation. He decided to inject himself with the recovery solution while he was still in the future, and sleep it off until the next day. He had enough experience to know that when it came to time travel, the amount of time you waited to travel almost only ever had an impact on the amount of time you lived in the meantime, and rarely on the time you arrived once you finally did go through with it.

He could have stayed in his recovery room for five years, and still ended up back in 2258, though of course, he had no intention of waiting that long. He still wanted to see Leona, but he also dreaded seeing her again. What was she feeling now? How would she react to his unexpected return? Had she felt relieved when he finally died, because then she would never have to forgive him his indiscretion? Should he even go back at all, or was she better off without him? Older!Ellie came back into the room about a minute before he planned on finally getting out of bed on his own accord, making it look like he might never have made the choice without her nagging. He told her it wasn’t she who urged the end of his procrastination; that he had his own timetable, but he couldn’t tell whether she believed him or not. She led him down the nondescript hallway, placed him in the time chamber, and sent him on his way.

It was a few hours after midnight central when Mateo came back to Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, in the exact same spot where he died by the cliff wall. Had he landed on the top of the cliff, he would have had trouble navigating back to Homebase, but here, it was even more difficult. He trudged through the wilderness for hours, just going in the general direction of the campus, but never really knowing how close he was. It was more by miracle than skill that he eventually succeeded. The first person he saw was Goswin, planting flowers in the garden. He didn’t look like one of his friends had just died, but Mateo had to remember that that was two years ago for him. The mourning period was long over for everyone, except for Leona, and maybe Cassidy. He didn’t avoid Goswin because he thought he should keep his resurrection a secret, but because he wanted Leona to be the first person who saw him. As irrational as it might have been, it was important to him. So he started sneaking around, trying to get an idea of where everyone was, and hoping to find his wife alone somewhere. She was.

“Mateo.” She didn’t say it enthusiastically, or inquisitively. It was more of a statement of fact, or at least an assumption of fact. The man standing before her might not have been Mateo at all, but an imposter, like Arcadia tried to do with her two weeks ago.

He had to be patient with her as he tried to prove himself to real deal. “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” he said.

She was silent for a moment, but then gathered herself. “Report.”

“Extraction mirror. I don’t know who, or when, or even where I was. It didn’t look like Palace Glubbdubdrib, though.”

“Has anyone else seen you yet?”

“I don’t think so. I wanted to see you first.”

She considered her next move for a moment, then grabbed Mateo by the shirt, and dragged him across the hangar, into the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. No one else was in there at the time.

“Are you hiding me away?” he asked.

“I think we should keep it on the down low, for now.”

“People are gonna find out sometime.”

“Yes,” Leona agreed. “But not everybody. We can keep the circle tight. You and I are leaving this planet today, and I don’t think a whole lot of others are coming with us. I just need to hang onto the secret until then. Can you handle this?”

“Leona, I need to—”

“I don’t have time for apologies. I need you to get into grave chamber four, and stay there until I reopen it.” She kind of stuffed him down in there.

“How am I going to pee?”

“Are you kidding me? How long did you live here? Ramses thought of just about everything.” She pointed to one corner of the chamber. “Open that small panel right there.”

Mateo opened it and found a tube. He also found what looked like a resuscitator mask. He held one in each hand, and looked up at his wife with puppy dog eyes.

“You don’t need the female attachment. Just...I think you can figure it out,” she joked.

“Leona.”

She nabbed a tablet from the table, and dropped it down to him, presumably for entertainment. “Okay, I love you. Bye!” she said as she was closing the hatch, but then she quickly reopened it. “I mean...were I you.”

“Leona!” he repeated, but she couldn’t hear him, because these things were soundproof. He could have opened it himself, but maybe she was right. The best way to prevent Ellie from learning anything about what her future self was going to do was to prevent her from seeing the product of her choices. This version of Mateo might never see her again, nor necessarily anyone else on this planet.

He hadn’t really thought to open any of the other panels before, which was a huge failure on his part. Besides the urine tube, the chamber was equipped with a bedpan, and disposal chute, both of which had to be cleaned manually, which was possible, because it also had a freshwater line. It was stocked with emergency meal bars for an amount of time Mateo didn’t want to do the math to calculate, and various other essential tools. There also seemed to be a way to convert the chamber into a stasis pod, but he deliberately avoided all of that stuff so as not to break anything. Instead, he just went back to the magazine he found in the future.

After hiding her resurrected husband in the ship, Leona went back outside, and started making inquiries. Who was coming with her to Glisnia, and would they be ready to leave today? Cassidy was so in, but no one else expressed any interest, except for maybe Pribadium.

“Do you want me to go with you?” Pribadium asked.

“Only if you want to,” Leona answered. “We can handle it alone. The ship is almost fully automated.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Should those two be alone together?” Thor insensitively asked, referring to Leona and Cassidy.

“We’re okay,” Cassidy spoke up. “What do you think we were doing when we were alone the other day?”

Thor shrugged. “Something weird?”

“Pribadium, you’re welcome to join us, but I don’t want to pressure you. Ramses and Weaver both created excellent operator’s manuals, dumbed down enough for a 21st century girl.” Leona was about to say something about Pribadium being a great addition to the crew, with her genius-level intellect, and familiarity with current technological advancement, but she decided against it. She wanted this to be Pribadium’s choice, not something she did because no one else was around to do it.

“I just want to make sure I’m not butting in,” Pribadium said. “I quite like the AOC, and I think it would be interesting to see what Glisnia is like.”

“It’s not that great of a place,” Thor jumped in, “and it’s certainly not interesting.” That was rude, which everybody’s facial expression showed. “What? I’m just being honest. There’s a reason it has the lowest biological colonist signup rate. Everybody’s coming here, or going to Teagarden.”

“I don’t intend to stay there very long,” Leona explained. “The plan is to use it to deliver Mateo’s remains to Dardius, then head back to Earth.”

The room fell quiet. Not only was Mateo’s death sad, but they also didn’t want to talk about the fact that everyone who wasn’t volunteering to go to Glisnia was simultaneously declining an invite to Mateo’s services.

“All right,” Leona said after a respectful pause, knowing full well that Mateo was still technically alive. “I’ve had a pretty eventful last few days, so I need a nap. I’ll run a preflight check after I wake up, and then the four of us can go.”

“Four?” Goswin asked.

Oh, crap. She was referring to Cassidy, Pribadium, as well as Mateo, along with herself. “I mean three.” She laughed it off. “That’s why I need the nap.”

“I thought we were going to have our own memorial before you leave,” Goswin reminded her.

Oh yeah, that was another thing. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now it just seemed weird. They would be holding it but meters away from the supposed deceased, who was trapped in the ship, bored and unable to attend. “Well, I’ll think about it. It all depends on when I wake up.”

Most of the others nodded solemnly, while Thor was totally indifferent. But she knew he liked Mateo more than he wanted to let on.

When the group dispersed, Leona went straight back to the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and opened grave chamber four, where she found Mateo watching an episode of Batwoman.

“As far as I know,” Mateo began, “this show didn’t exist in my reality.”

Leona began to climb in. “It did not, no.”

“Do we need to talk?” he asked after Leona closed the hatch back up.

“Yes, but not about what you think. Honest hour? I don’t want to talk about that ever again.”

“Leona...”

“I’m serious. Cassidy and I are okay now. I just needed to get to know her. I can’t say I’m over it, but your death kind of...put things in perspective. My forgiveness is like a marble on a hill. Eventually, it will even out. Until then, however, the marble rolls a little closer with each passing second. Just let it roll, Mateo. Don’t try to make it go faster.” She removed a slip of paper from her pocket, and looked at it for the upteenth time, not yet showing it to him.

“What is that?”

“Proof,” she answered. “Briar couldn’t have killed you on his own. Trinity could have gone back and saved you, and actually did try that.”

“Oh, I didn’t know.” Mateo thought about it for a second, and had a realization. “He had the hundemarke.”

“That’s right.”

“Where did he get it?”

“He tried to throw me off the trail by referring to the culprit as a man,” Leona began, “but I had Eight Point Seven hack into his brain.” She presented the picture.

Mateo stared at it, not knowing what to say.

Leona continued. “I’ve heard stories, about terrible things happening that should have been prevented. Time travelers tried to stop them, but couldn’t. Because she gives the killer the hundemarke. So now we know the who. All we need is a why.”

That was a good question. She had never been nice, but had always exhibited a sort of obsession with Mateo. Why did Arcadia Preston finally want him dead?

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The Advancement of Leona Matic: October 4, 2211

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The Prototype powered down. The lights flipped off, and new ones came on, almost like the house lights at a theatre. All of the instruments and monitors were blank, suggesting that this was the end of their journey. They did apparently only need one more item on the list. Leona lifted her arm to check her tattoo, but it was completely gone. The regular Compass of Disturbance was sitting on the floor by her feet. Hopefully the Cosmic Sextant was nearby, because they probably wouldn’t find it otherwise. Vito walked over with confidence and opened the door. Hogarth and Leona followed him through. Vitalie took up the rear. A man was staring at them with wonder, in what looked like a cargo hold for a spaceship.

“Can I, uhh, help you?”

“We’re looking for the cosmic sextant,” Hogarth told him honestly.

“What is this thing?”

“The Prototype.”

“Oh.” He was in too much awe to fully process a machine suddenly just appearing out of nowhere. He tapped his comms badge. “Cargomaster Hargesen to Captain Prieto. Come in, Captain.” Prieto? As in, Brooke? Was this The Sharice?

“Go ahead,” an unfamiliar voice responded.

“There’s a, uhh...ship here. I guess that’s what it is. It just appeared in the cargo bay. They’re looking for a tent.”

“A tent?” the voice questioned.

“Yeah, for sex, apparently.”

“A sex tent?” the voice asked him after a pause.

“Yeah, look if you could just come down here, that would be great. I’m not equipped to handle this.”

“Why not, you don’t have genitals?” Okay, that one was definitely Brooke’s voice.

“Sorry about that,” the other voice said. “I’m on my way.”

A woman appeared in the form of a hologram. At the same time, Étude teleported in, holding Brooke Prieto, and a Maramon. “Brooke, is this your family?”

Brooke went over and gave Leona a great big hug. “She is, at least.” She nodded to Hogarth. “It’s nice to see you again, after all this time.”

“Likewise,” Hogarth replied.

“I recognize you two from The Warren,” Brooke said, looking at Vitalie and Vito.

“Brooke Prieto, this is Vitalie and Vito. Vitalie and Vito, this is Brooke, and our friend, Étude. Is this the famous Sharice Davids?”

“Please,” the hologram said. “Sharice Davids is my namesake, and my ship. I go by Prieto.” She and Leona pretended to shake hands.

“In another reality,” Hogarth interrupted the pleasantries, “you took our sextant before we could arrive, and it ruined our mission.” She immediately regretted saying that. “Sorry, I just went through a lot creating this timeline. From extending that game of Go, to hacking into your liveware. I’m exhausted.” This was all news to Leona.

“That was you?” Brooke asked her. “You hacked my brain.”

“I’m sorry, I had to.”

“That’s okay,” Brooke said. “I understand why you did it. I can take you to the sextant.”

Ecrin walked into the room and greeted the newcomers as well. “Is this it?” she asked the Maramon after she was finished.

“Yep,” he answered. “The Prototype.” Was Ecrin and this guy part of the team that fought against the Maramon all over the bulkverse? Did they work with Smith and Vito? Or rather were they going to?

“She’s all yours,” Leona said. “It doesn’t seem to be responding to me anymore.”

“I’ll give you the tour,” Vito said in delight.

“Go on, Relehir,” Ecrin said. “I’ll catch up.”

Vito and the Maramon went into the Prototype, while the cargomaster was asked to go about his business in one of the airlocks. Ecrin tapped her badge. “Holly Blue, Weaver. Please come down to the cargo hold.”

“Holly Blue and The Weaver?” Leona questioned. “You know, I always suspected that—”

“They’re one and the same?” Ecrin guessed. “It’s been confirmed.

Two different versions of the one person showed up, and the greetings had to start again. Evidently, this Weaver was the one from the alternate timeline where Leona and Mateo met all the way back in 2016. That was before the latter went back in time, killed Hitler, and erased himself from history via the butterfly effect. They weren’t fully vocal about how they had gotten her to this timeline, or why.

“I want to take this opportunity to thank you all for everything you’ve done. Over the years, I’ve—”

She was interrupted by a portal that randomly opened a few meters from them. Leona could see a younger version of herself on the other side. Little Paige was there too, as was Ida Reyer, Slipstream, Hilde, and another Hogarth.

Young!Hogarth hopped to it, and headed for the portal. “Bye, Felicia!” she jokingly said to the other Hogarth.

Future!Hogarth scrunched up her face with just as much fake disdain. “You said my line! Bye, Vicki!”

“See you in the red for—” Young!Hogarth tried to say.

“The moment has passed, it’s over.” The portal closed, leaving them with this older version of Hogarth, who was missing an ear. She jerked her head up at Leona, like a thug greeting another thug. “Yo, you got something for me?” she asked, also like a thug.

“What would I have?”

“Looks like a watch.”

Leona looked down at her watch. “This thing?”

“Nah, man. That just tells time. I’m talkin’ about the Paradox Ticker.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“You mean from the lockbox?” Vitalie asked. “There’s a watch in there.”

“That’s the one,” Future!Hogarth nodded.

Vitalie ran back into the Prototype, then came out holding one of the special temporal objects they found with the hoarder, who also had the home stone and Escher Knob. “This?”

Future!Hogarth was ecstatic. “Perfect!” She turned the crown carefully, then held it up to her temple, and pressed the button down. Seemingly painfully, her ear reconstituted itself completely. She breathed a sigh of relief. “Glad to be done with that chapter. You have my book too?”

Leona reached into her bag, and retrieved the Book of Hogarth.

“Great.” Future!Hogarth took the book graciously, opened it up, tore out a page, and handed it to Leona. “Here are the instructions for assembly. Remember, there’s a back side.”

The instructions were short, but to the point on how to put all the ingredients together to get Mateo back. Leona flipped it over. “There’s nothing on the back.”

Future!Hogarth tossed the Paradox Ticker in her bag, but carefully laid the book inside. “There will be. Now. It’s been real.” She threw her bag over her shoulder, and gave them all a salute. “Tell that demon in there to go fork himself. Don’t worry, he’s not evil, but we have personal beef.” She took a few steps back, shut her eyes tightly, and sent herself into a temporal displacement explosion on purpose.

“Wow, that was weird,” Sharice noted after a long silence.

“What was I saying?” Ecrin asked.

“Goodbye,” Sharice answered bluntly.

“Yes, that’s it.” She composed herself after that crazy timey-wimey stuff. “It has been an honor serving with you all. I wish good luck to you in your endeavors. Leona, I hope you get your husband back. Vitalie, I wish we had more time to catch up. Sharice, you will one day learn to play Go without cheating. Holly Blue, remember that you are responsible for what you invent. Weaver, remember how influential you are to your alternate and younger self. Brooke, I love you. You and your daughter take care of my ship. No explosions, please. And finally, Étude.” She deliberately faced the former Last Savior of Earth, and stared at her intently. “There are no words.”

Étude rolled her eyes.

Ready now, Ecrin fought back tears, and walked into the Prototype. With no warning, the door closed behind her, powered up its engines, and disappeared.

Vitalie squinted and frowned at the space the machine once occupied. “I left all my shit in there.”

They heard a loud clap behind them. Sharice had her hands clasped together, and looked different than before. She was no longer a hologram, but a physical individual standing before them. “With Ecrin gone, I am officially the only captain of this ship. Now that we have what we need, as do the Vespiarians, we will be departing in a half hour. Anyone wishing to remain here should disembark now.”

“Yeah, uhh...” the cargomaster struggled to fit back through the airlock hatch, which wasn’t open all the way. He tripped, and fell to his hands. “Oh, shit.” He got himself back up. “Yeah, sorry, yeah. I’ve decided to stay. Magic doorways to Earth, disappearing ships; if that’s the kind of stuff the communists have access to, I want no part of Bungula.”

“We don’t call ourselves communists,” Holly Blue explained to him.

“Right, sorry,” he apologized. “Who is going to Earth?”

“No one,” Brooke said to him. “The Sharice is going to Bungula. The Vespiarians are staying here on Vespiary.”

“Are we sure about that?” Leona was looking more carefully at the instructions that Hogarth passed off to her. “If there’s a way to get me back to Earth, that would be wonderful. I didn’t think it mattered, but it says here I have to assemble these in The Constant.”

“We can take them back.” A woman was walking towards them. “We’ve discussed things with our Plutonian team, and have decided to go back home. This experiment is over. Besides, I was told someone really was interested in this sextant.” She held it up in her hands.

“Yes, that’s what I came here for. Oh my God, I have everything I need.” Leona went over to take a look at the last object.

Brooke frowned at the woman. “Farhana, did we contaminate the experiment?”

“Technically, I suppose you did, but that’s not why we’re leaving. We’ve received word on new rogue planet detection technology. We’re starting a new project in true interstellar space.”

“Would you be able to leave in a year?” Leona asked them. “For reasons I can’t quite explain, I have to leave either today, or a year from now.”

“We’re leaving an automated contingency to gather data on the Oort cloud,” Farhana replied. “Which means we don’t have to strike the base. My team can be ready to go within the hour.”

Leona was grateful for the circumstances. “That would be amazing.”

“I would like to go as well,” Holly Blue said. “I have family I would like to see again on Earth.”

“You do?” Weaver asked her. Something was apparently different about their respective personal timelines.

“Yes,” Holly Blue confirmed simply.

“Where is this ship going?” Vitalie asked.

“Bungula,” Brooke answered.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri, one of the closest stars to ours.”

Vitalie looked at Leona sadly.

“It’s okay if you want to go, love,” Leona said sincerely. “I’m thankful for everything you’ve done, but like I keep saying, you owe me nothing.”

“I think I’m just ready for the next chapter of my life,” Vitalie added.

Leona smiled and nodded. “I agree.”

Sharice clapped her hands loudly again. “Great. Sounds like everyone has their assignments. You have ten minutes to get your affairs in order before we start the preflight checklist.”

Ten minutes was not nearly long enough, especially since both Holly Blue and the cargomaster needed time to clear out their rooms, and move over to the other ship. Sharice ended up extending the deadline by twenty minutes for them. The Vosa was smaller than The Sharice, but was now just as fast, excluding any temporal manipulation add-ons. The trip back to Earth would take them the better part of a year, which meant Leona would only be on it for the rest of the day. When she returned to the timeline, it should already be on Earth, or be very close to it. For some reason, though, it wasn’t.

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