The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 4, 2456

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What they didn’t know before was that Kineret had a young daughter. She had been living in a remote bunker in the south with a nanny, but her mother’s relocation request finally went through. Kineret and Primus Mihajlović were busy with work off-site today, so Olimpia had agreed to babysit. Shay was sitting on the floor right now, playing with the model-sized Vellani Ambassador. Ramses was actually inside of it, in the middle of testing the habitability of the dimensional miniaturization technology that he had reverse-engineered from the box in the Goldilocks Corridor. The air was breathable, and the inertial dampeners were reportedly working okay. Propulsion was another thing, but given that it was literally a million times smaller than it would be in full form, that probably wasn’t necessary anyway.

Olimpia was sitting on an undersized chair in the playroom, elbow on her knee, and chin in her palm, watching the little girl play. But there was another reason for this game. “How you doin’ in there, bud?”

Communications were tricky too. It was garbled and weak, but they could still hear each other, and that was better than nothing. “Little nausea, but the dampeners are compensating. They don’t work perfectly great for any ship while it’s in gravity, so I’m not surprised. Nothing has fallen off my desk yet. Is she still swirling it around?”

“Jzhhoooooo! Jzhhoom!” Shay was exploring space with the toy ship.

“Sure is,” Olimpia replied.

“Great,” he said.

“Listen, I’m hoping that you can make a replica of the VA for her to keep. She seems to like it quite a bit.”

“That will not be difficult,” he answered.

There were three doors in this room. One led to the hallway, one to the bathroom, and the last to a closet. All of these opened at exactly the same time. A different man was on each side, and they were all very confused. Olimpia instinctively grabbed little Shay, and pulled her to the only wall that didn’t have any doors attached to it. She dropped the Ambassador as a result.

“What just happened?” Ramses questioned.

“Get out here immediately,” she demanded. Olimpia didn’t know everyone who lived in this bunker, so maybe someone might open the entrance, but not the bathroom door, and not the closet. Those were both empty. She had checked them, because she was a good babysitter who knew that Shay was in particular danger of a political attack.

Ramses appeared, and spun around when Olimpia pointed. “Who the hell are you people?”

The one who somehow ended up in the bathroom tightened the towel around his waist, held his hands up nonconfrontationally, and took a step forward.

“Don’t move,” Ramses insisted.

“Okay.” He breathed deeply. “I believe that you and I have met. My name is Elder Caverness, and I am currently training under the Transit Army. Is this a test?”

Ramses held up a finger. “Stay there.” He swung around so the other two men could see the finger. “All of you.” He then reached into his pocket to retrieve his handheld device. He was looking through the little database that the team had curated over the years, detailing everyone they could remember meeting, even before becoming time travelers. “Elder Caverness. Right, yes. I saw you get on the train, I was there.”

“You’re Mateo’s friend.”

Ramses was still suspicious. He held the device up to his ear after dialing a number. “Yes, this is Ramses Abdulrashid?” He waited for a response. “Yeah, one of the visiting alien people. Listen, did a giant spacetrain appear anywhere? Today, I mean?” Short pause. “Okay, thank you.” He hung up. “The Transit didn’t show up today. How are you here?”

“I don’t know.” Elder looked over his own shoulder. “I was in a bathroom, but not this bathroom.”

“I know you as well,” said the man standing in the closet doorway. “You were both there the first time this happened to me. It was just a minute ago, but we were somewhere else.”

Ramses eyed him. “Of course. You were in the Nexus. “You’re a long way from home too, unless this is your universe. Was the world ending when you left?”

“No.”

“Then maybe not. What about you? I don’t know you.”

The third man, the one by the main door, was also holding his hands up. “Hey, man, I’m just a gardener. I work at a nursery. I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, with the Nexus, and the universes, and all that.”

“This sounds like Westfall,” Olimpia pointed out.

“Yeah, you called it that last time,” closet guy said.

“Is that a band, errr...?” the guy they had never met at all before asked. Maybe he too was from Salmonverse, but just didn’t know about time travel.

“Okay. Elder Caverness, and...Bay...”

“Baylor Alexanderson,” he reminded him.

“Yeah. Baylor Alexanderson. And you are?”

“Late for work.”

“What is your name, sir?” Ramses was not in the mood to joke at the moment.

“I’m Dutch Haines.”

“Dutch Haines,” Ramses began, “you’re from another world. I don’t know why you’re here, or who brought you, but you can’t go home unless whoever it was decides to send you. I’m sorry. We have zero control over it.”

Dutch looked down the hallway that he decidedly had not come from. He looked back at Ramses and shrugged. “Okay, cool.”

Ramses looked over at Olimpia. “I don’t think these guys mean us any harm, but your job is to protect the girl, so go somewhere else to do it. This room has been compromised. Take the ship, please.”

Olimpia knelt down to retrieve the Ambassador. She handed it back to Shay, then lifted her up against her hip, and teleported away.

“Whoa, shit!” Dutch exclaimed. Baylor was surprised too, but Elder wasn’t.

“Yeah. We can do that.” Ramses tried to think about what to do next. Protecting the girls was as far as he could figure out, but without Leona to make decisions, the decisions fell upon his shoulders. He wasn’t sure that he was up to the task. Ochivari were bad guys, this much was clear. He knew to fight them off if they ever showed up, but humans? How would he deal with this? What would the Captain do? He tilted his head to think, acutely aware that the men were still watching him, awaiting the answer to that question. What would she do? She would test them. He pointed. “Stand in a line, facing me.”

The three of them looked amongst each other, and agreed in their respective heads that Ramses was indeed the man in charge. Even if he wasn’t qualified, they didn’t know that. So they got in the line, and stood there patiently.

Ramses cleared his throat, and stared at them, focusing on their eyes. He wasn’t trained to study microexpressions, but maybe his intuition would show him the light. “Ochivari,” he stated plainly.

Elder furrowed his brow, disgusted by the name of their enemy. This was not surprising as the last time they saw him, he was going off to learn how to fight them. Plus, he even said that he was supposed to be training with the Transit Army. The other two didn’t react at all. He may as well have spouted a nonsense word to them. Either that, or they were sociopaths who he couldn’t read. Olimpia had confided in him that the Ochivari were using human allies to infiltrate this world so their plans could be carried out undetected. It felt wrong that this should be the case with these other two men. The way they showed up here, it probably was Westfall. The Ochivari had a weird and violent way to travel the bulkverse. It was noticeable; conspicuous. They couldn’t just quietly appear in a closet. They could, however, walk down a hallway, having arrived in this world at some other point. Elder and Baylor were probably okay dudes, especially the former, who Mateo would vouch for as a friend. Dutch, on the other hand, could be the enemy. This was why Leona didn’t want to tell anyone about the human infiltrators, because they did not know how to handle them yet. The only possible way probably involved getting one of them to confess, and using them as a baseline to suss out any others. Then again, the odds that they would show up at the same time were low if they were here for the same reason.

“All right, we’re gonna go on a little trip,” Ramses decided. He offered his hand to Dutch, who took it more out of curiosity, not knowing that he was about to be teleported to the wrong side of a set of metal bars. He came back for Baylor and Elder, relocating them to their own cells, right next to each other. They didn’t complain or question it. It was the only logical course of action, even considering what Ramses knew of them. He told the jail guards to treat them with respect, but to not let them out without authorization directly from the Primus. Then he left to relay the information to her.

“Why would you be worried about them if they’re human?” Naraschone questioned.

“Some humans are bad,” Ramses answered. “You know that as much as I. The reason you have jail cells in the bunker is because you sometimes have to lock people up. We’ve not been able to verify this information, but according to the Ochivar that Leona and Angela interviewed, some humans are bad enough to be working with them.”

Primus lifted her chin, but kept her eyes contacted with his. “We always knew that that was possible, especially after learning that they were from another universe. If there are an infinite number of them out there, it stands to reason that a handful of people would find themselves in accordance with the aliens. The statistics make it essentially impossible for there not to be.”

“Your team interrogated the Ochivar years ago,” Kineret pointed out. “Why are you only telling us now?”

“They were worried what we would do with this information,” Naraschone explained for Ramses. “Every single person in the world has now become an enemy.”

“No, there are people I’ve known my entire life,” Kineret reasoned. “If we can trace someone’s background, we can rule them out.”

Ramses shook his head, reluctant to argue. “No, you can’t. Bulk travel is time travel. Infiltrators may have shown up years before the war started, or centuries, or longer. Half the people on this planet may be the descendants of those who originated on some other version of Earth. You would never know. There’s no way to tell.”

“Surely there is,” Naraschone determined. “There’s something different about you, isn’t there? Given enough data, could you not find a way to detect—forgive me—foreigners? You should be able to use yourself as a baseline.” Hm. She came up with the same word that he had for this problem.

“We possess genetic data from nearly everyone on the planet,” Kineret continued. “We would have to requisition it, but that shouldn’t be too hard, given the fact that we’re in wartime. Compare it to your own DNA, look for differences.”

“My DNA is different,” Ramses explained. “I’m posthuman.”

“Well, what about our new prisoners?” Naraschone asked.

Ramses nodded, not because he agreed that that was the answer, but because it was technically a possibility. “I can take samples today, and I can start to run some tests, but I am no biologist.”

“Aren’t you the one who grew the bodies that you and your team now inhabit?”

“With the aid of centuries of prior research, and an AI. To do this, I would need to devise new technology. I’m not saying that I can’t do it; just not today. It would take me a year, and by then, your prisoners will no longer be locked up.”

“He’s right,” Kineret admitted. “We will not be able to hold them all year.”

“We won’t have to,” Naraschone decided. “If I’m to understand this correctly, only the Ochivari have the means to transport themselves to other universes, which is why we’ve never been able to allow them to roam free. We can keep these three people without actually locking them up. There is no legal time limit for how long you’re allowed to accommodate guests.”

“They can travel the bulk,” Ramses began to explain, “they just can’t control it. There is no guarantee that they will still be here next year when Olimpia and I return.”

“We’ll store the samples, and cross any bridge we must when we come to it,” Naraschone decided. Kineret was right, we’ll be able to request access to the global DNA database, but we would probably not be able to get it done by the end of today anyway. Let’s plan on starting this plan in one year’s time.”

There was a slight pause in the conversation. “Now that that’s been discussed, could you please transport me to my daughter?” Kineret had to make her job her number one priority, but she also had a responsibility to her family, and it was time that she personally made sure that Shay was okay.

Ramses held out his hand, but Naraschone reached for it instead. “First, transport me to the jail in the Executive Bunker. Then take Kineret to her daughter, and stay with them for support.”

“Very well, sir,” Ramses replied.

A year later, Ramses returned, and immediately began to work on the problem of detecting bulk travelers. It took the whole day for him to start getting the idea that this was not a DNA problem, but something else. He needed to be looking at the subatomic level. That could take even longer, so there was no time to waste.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 3, 2455

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When Mateo and Leona finally had the time to meet back up in their bunker room together, they both said, “I need to leave,” at the same time. They were surprised by the other’s declaration, and certain that it couldn’t have been for the same reason. They were right. They spent all evening talking about their respective missions until the end of their day when they jumped forward to the future. They then went to sleep to get their full five hours before waking up to have breakfast with their friends, Carlin included. He was vital to both operations, so he needed to know what was going on too.

The tension in the air was undeniable. Even though they didn’t know that they were coming together for a meeting, everyone seemed to feel that that was part of the reason they were here, not just to eat. Leona sat up straight to speak. “Olimpia saved our lives a few days ago when she used the Sangster Canopy to break through the dimensional membrane that separated Salmonverse from Fort Underhill. This was especially impressive since that membrane was particularly thick. Hogarth Pudeyonavic designed her artificial universe this way on purpose, in order to protect it from intruders. The way I understand it, that’s what makes it a fort. Someone evidently figured out how to replicate that technology, and-or extend it to our home universe as well, which was why we couldn’t just turn our ship around to escape.

“We must do the same, for this universe. What Angela and I learned from the Ochivar we interrogated was that they are not going to stop coming. This is a playground for them. They’re testing their infiltration methods, but it could worsen. They might later test weapons of mass destruction, or ultimately their sterilization pathogen. Time in this brane does not match up with time in theirs, which means that they could come here from any moment in their history. We believe that these invaders are coming from relatively early on in that history. The ones that the locals have detained as prisoners of war would therefore not be armed with the same knowledge that the future Ochivari we and our friends have encountered had. They’re young, and dumb, and people like that are reckless, and unpredictable. Shutting them out completely may be this world’s only hope. So I have to go back to where we came from, approach the Angry Fifth Divisioner who keeps trying to kill us, and get him to lead me to whatever actually intelligent person or group that he’s working with. Carlin, I would ask you to...relapse me there.”

“Me as well,” Marie offered.

“I was about to volunteer,” Angela argued with her sister.

“Like she said,” Marie began, “she’ll be confronting a dangerous man, who is probably working with a more dangerous group of people. She needs a fighter.”

“I am a fighter,” Leona reminded them. “I can go alone.”

“Oh, yeah?” Marie asked. “What happens when you need to defuse a bomb while keeping an angry horde of crazed zombies at bay? Can you do both at the same time?”

Leona gave her a look, and held there for a moment. “I’ll give you a million dollars if I find myself in a situation where there’s a bomb, and a bunch of zombies.”

“How will you pay?” Marie questioned. “You’ll be dead. I’m going with you. We don’t separate; not completely, not anymore. After what happened to me in the Third Rail, and Olimpia in her kasma, I won’t allow it. Carlin, you remember that. I’m telling you to never relapse only one of us somewhere. If she tries, you come to me immediately afterwards, and send me exactly where she went. Leona, you can’t prevent that.”

“She’s right,” Carlin agreed. “I don’t like people being alone either. You could order me to stand down, and I’ll just ignore that.”

Leona sighed. “Okay. I’m sorry, Angela, but she’s right. She’s better suited for this mission. You’re both smart and capable, but she was a spy, and we may need to spy.”

Angela folded her arms. “She wasn’t a spy, she was an asset. Totally different.”

“You can come with me,” Mateo suggested.

“Where are you going?” Ramses asked.

“I have my own mission,” Mateo began. “Speaking of the Third Rail, I once disappeared from that mine in Russia. Carlin can show me what happened; how I ended up with a solid block of timonite in my stomach. I don’t think that I just skipped over time. I think I went somewhere, and spent time there. It’s been long enough. I have to recover those memories. I am getting the feeling that it is of vital importance. I don’t know why, but now is the time.”

Angela took Mateo by the hand. “I would be honored to accompany you.”

“You’ll likely run into your past self,” Ramses pointed out.

“That’s probably why you lost your memories in the first place,” Olimpia conjectured. “You did it on purpose to prevent a paradox.”

“That’s the reigning theory,” Mateo concurred.

Ramses looked over at Olimpia. “I suppose the C-team will stay here to man the fort, huh?”

Leona scoffed. “Ramses, we’re on the front lines. Don’t downplay that. These people need you. Now that the breach detector is done, you need to start working on the breach predictor.”

“Good point.” He bobbled his head. “Some might even say that we’re on the most important mission out of the three groups.”

“Carlin?” Mateo started. “You’ve not actually agreed to relapse us yet.”

“You’re right, I’ve not,” he replied. “That’s probably because I wouldn’t know how to get you back. I’m not a boomerang thrower.”

“We discussed that last year,” Leona said. “I can always go to the nearest Nexus, and plead my case to Venus Opsocor. Mateo has a psychic bond with a woman named Amber Fossward, who can link him up to a bulk traveler. We’ll find a way back.”

“Those sound like very unreliable and vague strategies,” Carlin determined.

“I will admit to that,” Leona replied. “We always find a way, though. I’ve decided to stop worrying about it. Remember, someone wants us here. They set in place a series of events that led us to this planet on a day that, according to the local calendar, matches our pattern back home. It couldn’t be a coincidence; the odds are too low. If we had never left, it would be June 3, 2455.”

“That’s even more vague,” Carlin pressed. “You’re putting your faith in a higher power, like some dumb Santien trying to cleanse the population.”

“I hardly think it’s that,” Leona insisted, “but it’s not your concern. You only need to help us get out of here. Please?”

For some reason, Carlin looked to Olimpia for guidance. She nodded her head slightly. “Okay. I’ll send the four of you to your two missions. But I take no responsibility for what happens after that.”

“We would never blame you for it,” Mateo assured him. “You should know us better than that.”

“You knew me when I was a child, and children don’t have very good memories.” That was a decent point. They had missed so many years of his life. He was practically a stranger to them now. But he was a McIver, and that was good enough for them to trust him with this. “Are you going to tell the Primus where you’re going?”

“We won’t get into specifics,” Leona answered. “She doesn’t need to know, in case it doesn’t work out. We’ll just tell her that we’re going off to find help.”

“Okay.” Carlin stood up. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

“Thank you,” Leona said. “Oli, could we talk?”

“Sure,” Olimpia replied.

“Leona?” Ramses asked. “Could we talk?”

She laughed. “Sure. Just give us a minute.”

Leona transported Olimpia to the same place in the Gobi desert where she and Angela discussed the ramifications of the Ochivar’s claim that some of the exo-universe infiltrators were human, and would be more difficult to detect. If neither Leona nor Angela ever managed to come back, someone else needed to carry the burden of that information. She was free to dispense it as she felt was prudent, but Leona gave her some advice in this matter. It was a very delicate and sociopolitically charged situation. Once they were done with that, she met with Ramses in his lab on the Vellani Ambassador.

He presented her with a PRU, which stood for Portable Resource Unit. It was a special backpack that could be affixed to, or detached from, their integrated multipurpose suit. There were four components: oxygen, water, food, and other supplies. One side was flexible, capable of conforming to the body of the user as they moved around, while the other sides were more rigid and durable. They were not wearing them when they were spirited away to the Garden Dimension, but stored on the Ambassador. He had been lobbying for them to keep them on at all times, as well as the helmet, which could magnetically attach to the outside for a real turtle look.

“Okay,” she relented. “I will take them with us. But you’re the one who designed our bodies to be able to survive in the vacuum of outer space.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t design them to help you survive the equilibrium of interuniversal space apparently, though. And anyway, that’s not the reason I brought you here, or why I’m so excited.” He was smiling widely. “These are special. I modified them myself with miniature dimensional generators. They now come with three months’ worth of water and the liquefied dayfruit that comes through your feeding tube.” He flicked the food tube that was presently collapsed into Leona’s IMS collar.

“Dayfruit smoothie, my favorite,” Leona said sarcastically. This variety of the versatile food took a lot of the taste out of the daily nutritionally-complete food, and drinking it from the tube made it impossible to switch to other flavors, since it logistically had to come from one storage container.

“It beats dyin’,” he reasoned. “The oxygen tank is a lot larger too, which places less strain on the carbon scrubber, though that has also been upgraded, as have the surface ramscoop nodes.” Theoretically, a regular person could survive for weeks in outer space with nothing more than their suits, and a resource unit. There were minute amounts of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon atoms in the interstellar medium, which the PRU’s ramscoop could suck up, and process for power, air, and even food. To Leona’s knowledge, no one had ever tested this, though, because that would be insane.

“Yeah, you’re right,” she acknowledged. “Did you modify the other three that we need for the two away missions?”

“Of course. I modified them all.” He reached over his shoulder, and tapped twice on his own PRU. “I need you to convince the other three to wear them now. I’ll take care of Olimpia. I’m sure we’ll all need them at some point, and I would feel better if you had them at any rate.”

Leona nodded. “Marie and I will operate at PREPCON three, I promise.” This preparedness condition required the user to be wearing the suit in its near entirety, as well as the PRU, with the helmet attached to its dock. The higher levels didn’t demand quite this much readiness, and for the lower levels, the helmet was on the user’s head. A member of the crew of a ship who was on duty was expected to be ready to be shot out of an airlock, or a hull breach, at all times, but that wasn’t necessary while they were simply walking around a planet with an atmosphere. This was the space travel equivalent to the DEFCON system.

“Thank you.”

Leona ordered the rest of the members of the away teams to report to Ramses for a short training session regarding the new PRUs. Meanwhile, she met with Naraschone and Kineret about what they were doing. She told them that they needed to investigate ways to stop the Ochivari from being able to come here at all, but that she couldn’t explain more than that. They planned on relapsing after everyone was finished packing up, but Ramses’ bulk portal detector went off. Mateo teleported Carlin right to the location in a rare opportunity for him to get to the scene within moments of an alert. The teleportation should have made it a quick detour, but Carlin was required to report to an after-action debrief. Fortunately, Mateo was able to jump them to the Defense Bunker too. He was asked to participate anyway, but it only took them about an hour, after which they were able to return to the Executive Bunker.

“Will it hurt?” Olimpia asked.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Carlin said to her. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. There was something going on between them, but it seemed rather nascent.

“Yeah, but I don’t want it to hurt my friends.”

He smiled. “People report that it’s jarring, but not painful.”

“We’ll be all right,” Marie promised.

“Have you thought about exactly where you wanna go?” Carlin asked the group.

Mateo handed him a piece of paper. “These are the coordinates to the Russian mine. I don’t know for sure that I traveled through time on that day, but it’s likely.”

“I don’t need this. You’re the navigator, as my teachers would call it. I’m just the engine. Concentrate on your destination. Mrs. Matic?”

“I have a few options in my head. I too am unsure, but I’m hoping that crossing into a bulk aperture sufficiently qualifies as a time travel event. We have to locate that angry Fifth Divisioner who trapped us in the kasma. He must be somewhere close. If not, there are other, less than ideal options where we’ll have to go the long way around.”

“Okay. Say your final goodbyes,” Carlin advised.

They hugged and kissed each other, then separated into their pairs to either make their way back to their own pasts, or stay exactly where they were. Ramses and Olimpia watched, fearing the worst for their loved ones, but hopeful that everything was going to work out. “Okay,” Olimpia said after they were gone. “It may all be up to us now.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 2, 2454

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Ramses’ new bulk portal detection device was not ready by the time the team’s day ran out. He was able to program his AI to do some things during their interim year, but there was still some work left when they returned in 2454. While he was focused on that, the Primus asked Leona to exercise her diplomacy muscles for them.

“I don’t have any significant diplomacy experience,” Leona tried to explain.

“Is that not what your ship is for? It’s called the Ambassador,” Primus Mihajlović pointed out.

“That was how it was designed,” Leona went on, “and that’s how it was used recently, but my team and I aren’t on it because that’s our job. We just sort of lucked into possession of it. Whoever you’ve been using for your diplomacy with the Ochivari prisoners of war are better equipped than I.”

“We would be grateful,” Kineret began, “if you would at least try. We’re getting nowhere with the prisoners. We’ve passed laws in recent years that forbid us from detaining extraterrestrial POWs for longer than four months. We actually watched a lot of Ochivari die after we placed them in a communal area of the facility to let them attempt to return home on their own. Fortunately, Carlin has been here to prevent the bloodshed, but we’re running out of time. We’ve not been able to capture anyone recently, so this could be our last chance to get answers for  a while.”

Leona nodded respectfully. “I’ll have Angela or Marie see what they can do.” She turned around to look for the Walton sisters when she saw her husband. “What is it?”

“Nothing, I’m just standing here,” he replied.

“I know all your faces, Matt. You’re yearning for something. Do you think you should run this interrogation instead?”

“Absolutely not. It has nothing to do with that. We’ll talk later, in private.”

“If there’s something I need to know...” the Primus said.

“It really has nothing to do with it,” he assured her. “It’s personal. My mind is distracted. Go do your thing,” he said to Leona. “I’ll see ya tonight.”

They shared a couple pecks on the cheek, then went their separate ways. Leona and Angela teleported a few thousand kilometers away to a particularly cold region of the planet, which they would have referred to as the Northwest Territories. There was no name for it here. It was just the Subarctic North. This was where all of the Ochivari prisoners were being held, as far from civilization as possible, to protect the humans from them. They also discovered that Ochivari didn’t like the cold. They didn’t wither and die from it like a movie monster, but they were very uncomfortable anywhere outside of their climate controlled cells, so there was less danger of them trying to escape. Of course, they had to keep each prisoner separately, or they would be able to transport each other to a different universe. This would always result in some fraction of the travelers dying, but this was a risk that they were used to taking, so the humans had to take measures to stop it. Unless the time limit was reached. They had passed similar laws when it was just themselves on this Earth over the centuries, and as angry as they were about the alien invasion, the populace felt obligated to maintain some sense of their own integrity, and to treat their prisoners of war with care and dignity. The Ochivari still had rights, even if they would not extend the same courtesy to the humans.

Primus Mihajlović, who asked the team to call her Naraschone in person, but her title in the company of others, called ahead to let the prison know that two consultants would be arriving to speak with the prisoners. The guards let them in, and directed them to the underground cells. This place was powered by a thermonuclear generator, so it was self-sustainable, and mostly cut off from the rest of the world, for security purposes. The people who worked here lived in a nearby once-abandoned, but now revitalized, formerly indigenous village. For the most part, the only travel that occurred to this location was to drop off new prisoners, or to fly away from having just dropped off prisoners. They even grew their own food in aquaponic towers, further cementing themselves as a stable isolate. So they were very excited to see the new faces. Some of them were a little too excited, but Angela and Leona didn’t let it bother them, because it was understandable given their circumstances.

“I’ll just be right outside,” the guard said, closing the door behind them.

A polycarbonate window was installed in the middle of the room. On the other side was an Ochivar who was already sitting at his table up against the window, ready to talk. He was reportedly just as closed off about their motivations, and other details regarding their culture, but he was less nasty to the humans than his compatriots were. “Who the hell are you?”

“You don’t already know who we are?” Leona asked, pulling Angela’s seat out, and then sitting down next to her.

“No. Should I?”

They were famous in some circles, but not his, unless he was just playing it close to the vest. “We are not from this world. We hail from Salmonverse.”

Ochivari looked different, so their microexpressions would be hard to read without more exposure, yet it was apparent that he recognized the name. He tried not to let this on. “Okay.”

Angela met Leona’s eyes, and nodded. She would begin to lead the conversation. “What’s your name?”

“Nilstedd,” he answered courteously.

“What was the name of the man you killed when crossing over into this world?”

He hesitated with this one, likely surprised that she would show interest in such information. “Kuhsakego.”

“Were you two close?”

He hesitated here too, but less so, wanting to maintain what little power he had left here. “We trained up together. We always knew that we would be wing-locked one day. They discouraged us from becoming friendly for this reason.”

“Were you in love?” Angela asked.

“It wasn’t like that,” Nilstedd answered.

She believed him. “But you did care for him, and you regret his passing.”

“It is our way.” He averted his gaze, suggesting that he did not agree with his own statement. “It is the only way.”

That wasn’t true, but Angela wasn’t there yet. “We’ve noticed something. Well, others have noticed it, and relayed it to us. We have not met enough Ochivari to have any impression in this regard, but it’s become known that you are all men. Are you a single sex species?”

“Of course not. Our mating rituals are more complex than you could ever understand.”

“Where are all the women?”

He scoffed.

“They must be weak,” Angela said dismissively, trying to get a rise out of him.

“They are not weak. They are just too important!” he argued.

“So it’s just about propagating the species,” Angela guessed. “They stay out of the fight, so they can make more fighters.”

“I shall say nothing more of it.” He turned away even more.

“Have you heard of the Krekel?” she asked him.

He appeared determined to stop revealing information to them, but he couldn’t help but react to this. He spit on the far end of his table, as close to Angela’s as he could without phase-shifting it through the barrier.

“They’re like the Tok’ra, who are technically also Goa’uld, but not evil. That’s all they are; those who made different choices.” She shrugged. “You’re Krekel.”

“No, I am not.”

“You can be,” she reasoned. “You can escape your cell whenever you want. Krekel can travel alone.”

Nilstedd crossed his arms defiantly. “They’re lying.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did you ever see them do it?” he questioned.

“My father was a slaveowner,” Angela suddenly said. “I grew up with massive trust issues. I had to work really hard to get over them. The Krekel told me that they can wingsing their way through portals. It’s not a trick, it’s not a lie. It’s true. I’ve been sent here to tease information from you, but if you escaped right here, right now, I wouldn’t stop you. I encourage it.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Music. Music is a language of love. For you to do what you do, and survive, you have to develop contempt from your partner, not because of its inherent value, but because of what you were saying. To lose someone you love; for him to die by your hands—or wings, as it were—would be a burden that you could not bear if you let yourself care about him. So you suppress all love, to protect yourself from disappointment, loss, and loneliness. Music brings us together. The way the Krekel I met described it, you can open a portal by focusing your energy on breaking free from the world that you’re on, while they open one by focusing on where they want to go. They seek connection, while you seek escape. That’s why it kills you.”

“I would sure like to read the scientific paper where you’re getting all this brilliant insight,” he volleyed.

She smiled. “I can’t. I briefly looked over the laws relevant to this war. The locals aren’t allowed to study how you operate. It’s illegal, because it’s unethical. They can’t encourage you to kill each other. So no, I don’t know that much about how your wing battle thing works, but I know that it’s not pleasant. If it were, Kuhsakego would be in the cell next to you.”

“What are you trying to do here,” Nilstedd demanded to know, “get me to turn on my own people?”

“No,” Angela answered sincerely. “I’m just trying to get you to tell me why you’re here at all. What’s so special about this world? It’s just another Earth. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want you to sterilize everyone, but why haven’t you yet? Why are you fighting in the first place?”

He appeared to laugh. “Look around, human. Do you know what the global temperature is? Do you see how much pollution there is in the air? The oceans? Do you know how many unevolved species have gone extinct? Does it have a stable ozone layer? Are these people barreling down a path towards their own self-destruction?”

“No,” Leona answered in Angela’s stead. “They’re fine. The environment is fine. So why are you here?”

Nilstedd was watching Angela during Leona’s response, but he turned his head now. “We’re not here to end the human race in this universe. We’re here to train.”

“To train for what?”

“For you,” he answered simply.

“Me specifically, errr...?”

“People like you, who travel the bulk, causing trouble for us. You can’t combat sterilization in kind. You fight us with guns, and other weapons. We need to know how to fight back, to protect our interests. So we found a universe that’s just advanced enough to give us a real challenge while being primitive enough to not absolutely decimate our forces.”

“These are field tests?” Leona questioned, horrified. “You don’t actually have anything against these people? By your own definition, they’re innocent, and you’re killing them anyway?”

He shrugged. “Orders are orders. Some were sent in ships, others were sent to test out various infiltration and subterfuge techniques. That’s why some of the people we dispatched are human.”

Leona had to actively hold Angela in place when she stood up to teleport away. “No. We can’t tell anyone what he just said.”

“Why not?”

“Come with me,” Leona ordered. She took Angela by the hand, and transported them both to the Gobi Desert.

“They have a right to know that some of the people they’re looking for will look human, and not Ochivari,” Angela argued.

“The right people have a right to know, but we have to be careful about this. Think about it, Ange. Right now, their enemy is obvious; unmistakable. If they have to be on the lookout for enemies who look just like them, they’ll find ‘em, whether they’re real or not. Neighbors will turn on neighbors. People will become suspicious of their children’s teachers. Constituents will lose trust in their leadership, and the entire civilization will crumble to dust. In my day, some conspiracy theorists believed that the government was run by lizard people. They once tried to attack a military base, convinced that aliens were being housed there. Imagine how bad it would get if this kind of stuff were true!”

Angela sighed. “You’re right. This situation requires finesse and tact. I don’t know if we’re up for the job. It puts us in an awkward situation too. We’re invaders, from another universe. What makes our team different? Why should they trust us?”

“There’s another option, but it will be neither safe nor easy. I got the idea just as Olimpia was rescuing us from the kasma. Perhaps the only way to protect this Earth is to seal it up tight. Now more than ever, we would have to return to where we came from.” If the answer was in Salmonverse or Fort Underhill, then they needed to get back to find it, not only because that was their home. Their enemy would want something in return—probably their deaths—but there was no reason to fret over it now. Priorities.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 1, 2453

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The team transported the Sixth Key delegates, the Primus, and her assistant to the Executive Bunker on the other side of the world. From there, they watched the battle that the Transit and the Cormanu were fighting against the onslaught of Ochivari ships. The local squadrons watched from orbit, but did not participate. The public watched as well through minimal satellite feeds, though most of the cameras that were pointed  away from Earth were limited to military and governmental use. After only about fifteen minutes of the shooting, they all disappeared through a technicolor portal. No friend or foe was left on the battlefield. The theory was that the Transit was trying to spare the locals by moving the fighting to another universe, but it could have just as easily been more like the other way around. No one sent them a message, and when the team returned a year later, they still hadn’t heard from anyone, but a lot had changed. Carlin was now a folk hero.

In all this time, they never got a chance to find out what his time powers were, which appeared to run in the family. Apparently, he was kind of like a walking homestone, but with fewer limitations. He could send anyone back to any point in their life just after they departed from that moment using teleportation or time travel; not only the first instance. He was able to return all of the delegates to where they were when the Tree of Life first pulled them to the nucleus. Leona respectfully asked why he didn’t do that before, and he said that he wasn’t certain of the extent of his abilities. He didn’t know that he could relapse across universes, but Thack was able to check to make sure that everyone was back to where they belonged as if they had never left.

“Are you sure you want to use that word?” Mateo asked.

“I like it,” Carlin insisted.

“Well, it’s just that it has negative—”

“I understand. I like it,” he repeated.

“Okay.”

“I could relapse you too,” Carlin offered, “now that I know that I can even do it from all the way out here.”

“Can you do it to yourself?” Mateo asked him.

“No.”

“Then it’s a no for me too. We’re not gonna leave you behind. Though, perhaps Thack would like to go home?”

“She says that she must remain here for a certain amount of time,” Carlin explained. “I offer a way out to her every day.”

“Does it drain you of energy, doing what you do?” Mateo went on.

“It’s invigorating,” Carlin revealed. Even though the orbital battle last year was fought against an armada of ships, it wasn’t like they were the only Ochivari in the universe. More kept coming through smaller breaches on the surface of this planet. Whenever a new arrival was detected, the government would fly Carlin to that location to have him dispatch of the threat. They actually gave him a special hypersonic jet to accomplish this. He might need to travel anywhere in the world to complete his missions, and he was beloved by all for his efforts. Many were coming out of the bunkers, and trying to return to their normal lives as a result. Though, the government wasn’t sure whether that was the right call. One thing that helped them know when an Ochivar had snuck in was because there were fewer humans around for them to blend in with. They had yet to figure out how to detect the portals themselves, and were hoping that the team could help them. “I love all the sudden travel, though I know that the natives are hoping that you can make that simpler.”

“Are you up for that?” Leona asked Ramses.

“What, me? Of course, why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, you almost died from equilibrium exposure,” she reminded him.

“Well, I had to test what it was like to be exposed in the equilibrium,” Ramses explained. “And now I know...it’s worse than a vacuum.”

“Next time, wear a helmet,” Leona suggested.

“Aye aye, Captain.” He was trying to keep it light, but Leona wanted to be a little more serious, so he nodded, and added, “I really will. I need to get the Ambassador back up to the surface, and re-embigify it, so I can start working on the detector in my lab.”

“Go ahead,” she allowed.

“I’ll go with you,” Angela offered. They both jumped away.

Soon after they were gone, Thack Natalie Collins entered the room. They were in the executive bunker situation room, where the military usually planned and led the war efforts. It was originally designed to support the continuity of government in the event of a total collapse of civilization, which hadn’t happened yet. However, they were always on the cusp of complete failure, which was why most of Primus Mihajlović’s supporters kept begging recently for her to begin operating out of here fulltime. The second major tactical  assault was all the reason they needed to basically force her to finally accept that, so she and Kineret had been down here for the last year, as was Thack, who was presently serving as a cultural advisor. “Welcome back to reality.”

“We weren’t sure that we would jump at all,” Leona told her. “Being in other universes makes it complicated.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Thack claimed.

“Would you know about the Transit, and the Cormanu?” Mateo pressed. “Where did they go when they left here?”

Thack smiled in a way that made it seem like she was about to school them on the subject. “Psychic abilities are interesting. For the most part, we’re not talking about knowing things without learning them, though that’s definitely part of it. The majority of psychics are limited by their connection to others. That’s what it is; the links that bind us together. Now, you would think that this means I should be able to find our friends wherever they are, especially since I have formed close personal relationships with the Hawthornes, however, I believe that they have traveled beyond my scope. They have gone to a universe where no one else lives. Yes, I’m connected to the people that I already know, but not to anyone else there, because they don’t exist. You’ve been to a handful of branes yourselves, and you’ve always found people to already be living there, such as the one we’re in right now. But most aren’t like that. Most are dead, or lifeless anyway. In the infinity, I think most can’t even harbor life at all, meaning that you can’t go to them, or you’ll just straight up die. I can tell you for a fact that our friends did not end up in one of those extreme scenarios, because I see their futures. But there are plenty of others out there where life is safe, but never evolved. And again, I can’t see them. If you were in the middle of a fight with the Ochivari, you would probably try to go to one of these places, so the conflict did not endanger the lives of innocents.”

“I would if I could, yes,” Mateo agreed. “But just to clarify, you can’t watch them remotely, even when you concentrate, and you can’t guess when they’ll return, if ever?”

Thack shook her head. “I’m saying that I don’t know where they went when they left,” she explained, quite careful with her language. It probably wasn’t safe for them to know too much about the future. She faced Carlin. “Mister McIver, I will be leaving today. Please prepare to relapse me back to Voldisilaverse.”

“I’m ready, we can go right now,” Carlin replied.

“No, no. Mister Abdulrashid needs time to build his little device. When we’ll go, he’ll take measurements of the bulk energy that you’ll be tapping into. That data will be vital for the goal of detecting arrivals as they happen.”

The Primus walked into the room with Kineret, having heard enough from the hallway. “Will we ever be able to predict them, so we can dispatch a team ahead of time? We’re always worried that some remain...somewhere.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Thack repeated herself from earlier.

Naraschone seemed to be used to having to allow Thack her secrets. “Anyway, the military requires this room for a battle exercise for one of their new fighter jets.”

This was where the team happened to be last year when their proverbial hourglass ran out, and they were sent forward in time a year. They weren’t entirely sure when it would happen, since their original pattern was tied to midnight central in Salmonverse. This was a version of Earth, and the bunker was located in Colorado, so their best guess was that it would be the same, using the local time zone borders, but it happened at 22:00 instead, when it was only 23:00 in Kansas. They did not know why.

“We were just leaving,” Thack said respectfully.

As they were exiting, Mateo pulled Thack aside since this was evidently his last time to talk to her. “When I was being possessed by Amber and Sanaa, two others managed to sneak into my mind. One was Meredarchos, I’m sure you’ve heard of him.”

“I have,” Thack said, nodding.

“The other; they were crying for help. Would you have any idea who that could be, or would you not know anything about that?” Hopefully that didn’t come off as harsh.

“It could be a number of people,” Thack answered. “It could be me. It could be one of the people on any of the bulk traveling machines that were here last year, or of the people who travel using other means. It could be you, from your future.” She looked away from him as if her own words had given her an idea. “Or from your past.”

“No, I would remember that,” Mateo insisted.

“Aren’t you missing some personal time? Think back.”

Mateo winced, not knowing what she was talking about, but then he realized that she might be onto something. He did disappear once, from the Third Rail, in the Russian mine where they were looking for timonite to rescue Trina. When he came back, they thought that he had only jumped forward in time a couple of days, but he had always secretly had the feeling that he had actually been detoured somewhere in the meantime, and had since lost his memories of it. He never really talked about that with the others, but it was super weird that he just happened to swallow the one rock that they had been searching for. “Maybe you’re right. You really think that it was just me?”

“Oh, it’s only an idea. You have an opportunity to investigate that you didn’t have before, though. If you don’t have anything else going on, you could talk to Carlin.”

That was an interesting recommendation, one which he should probably take.

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