The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 1, 2514

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Ramses posited that the temporal energy that Boyd had absorbed when he blew up the crystal with lemon juice was basically all that was holding him together. Even after Mateo resurrected him from the afterlife simulation, he could not be saved forever. He knew this. Leona knew this. She also knew that it was only a matter of time before it killed him anyway, whether he was drained of the power or not. Temporal energy is really just time itself. You can have an excess of it, but if not properly stored, it will leak out as time passes, and that would have been the end of Boyd Maestri. She chose to not let his sacrifice go to waste, and to restore their own powers so that they could go on with the mission that he was intending to help them with. The role he was going to serve on the team now fell to Mateo. That was a problem for the future, though. Right now, they were going to honor their frenemy with a proper burial.

Everyone was here already. They were just waiting on Ramses, who was working on something in his lab. Mateo looked over at his daughter awkwardly. She glanced back at him, but quickly turned away again. He tried to look away too, but returned. She did another double-take. “What is it, dad?”

Mateo reached down and took a fold of her outfit between his fingers. “This isn’t your suit.”

“No, it’s real clothing,” she confirmed. “I went to Fashiondome, and sewed something myself. That’s what I’ve been doing all morning.”

“You know how to sew?”

“Yeah, I grew up thousands of years ago in the Third Rail. Of course I know how to sew.”

“Oh. That makes sense. I forget that about you.”

“Yeah.” Romana tried to go back to waiting patiently for Ramses.

“I know you’re an adult, it’s just that it’s a little—”

“Shh!” Leona warned before Mateo could finish his sentence.

Romana sighed, but continued to look straight forward. “Boyd liked my cleavage, and I choose to honor him in this way. This is a perfectly normal black funeral dress.” She said that she wasn’t angry at him for not being able to resurrect Boyd a second time, but there would always be that question between them of whether he genuinely tried, or if the part of him that didn’t want to save Boyd was big enough to stop it.

He looked on down the line at Olimpia. “And you?”

“You’re the one who likes my cleavage.” He didn’t say anything more, but she took the hint, and commanded her nanite clothing to cover her chest up a little more.

Ramses appeared. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. I had to come up with a way to safely dispose of temporal energy crystal.” While Mateo was trying to get Boyd back, and Romana was crying, Ramses had to delicately remove the shards from Boyd’s face. It wasn’t exactly trained as a medical examiner, but they couldn’t risk anyone else for the job, or really, trust them with it.

“It’s okay,” Mateo said. “You get on that end.”

“No,” Romana said. “I can carry it myself.”

Mateo looked at her sadly. “Romy, it’s unwieldy. You could hoist it over your shoulder, but you can’t carry it with the respect that he deserves.”

“Watch me.” Romana reached over the casket and tried to grab the handle on the other side. It wasn’t that she wasn’t strong enough. Her arms weren’t long enough.

“Let me get the other end,” Mateo offered. “He and I had our issues, which is exactly why I should do this. You wanted us to be friends, didn’t you? Or did you enjoy being in the middle of the animosity?”

She sighed again, relenting. “Okay, get the other end.”

Mateo and Romana carried Boyd down the trail as the others followed, or walked on ahead. “You spoke with Hrockas?” Leona asked.

Angela nodded. “This dome won’t be used for another fifty years, if ever. We’ll bury him deep, where there’s more activity while the regolith is being transformed into soil from chemicals they added to the water table.”

“Did he end up making an announcement?” Leona went on. “The first permanent death on the planet. That’s a big deal.”

Angela shook her head. “He’s burying the truth along with Boyd himself. No one needs to know that anyone died. Even though people are still allowing themselves to die on the Core Worlds, it could hurt visitorship. His death was completely unrelated to anything offered in the domes, so there’s no point in advertising or disclosing it.”

The two of them were talking rather quietly, and their comms were off, but everyone wearing an upgraded substrate had excellent hearing, so they all heard it. Romana was not upgraded, but even she heard it somehow. She glanced over her shoulder at Leona and Angela and frowned, but didn’t speak to them. She instead looked at Ramses, who was next to her. “People should know that he died, and what he died for. He sacrificed himself...for us.”

“You’re right,” Ramses said. “One of the hardest things we do is keeping our lives secret from the vonearthans. I know you know everything about that, living in the Third Rail for the majority of your life.”

Marie and Olimpia were in front, and had just rounded a corner when they suddenly stopped short. Olimpia nearly tripped on a rock, but caught herself in time.

“What is it?” Mateo questioned.

“There’s a man,” Marie answered. “He may have a weapon.”

“Set it on the ground,” Mateo ordered. He slowly bent his knees as his daughter did, and carefully set the casket down. “Wait here.” Mateo walked on alone, gently pulling the ladies’ shoulders back so this mysterious stranger wouldn’t be able to see them anymore. He did see a man, standing in the distance, resting both of his wrists on what appeared to be a shovel. Mateo used his telescopic vision to zoom in. “It’s Halifax.”

“Really?” Leona asked. She walked forward to get a look for herself.

“I recognize that name from the list,” Olimpia said.

“He’s The Gravedigger,” Mateo replied. “We’ve not seen him in a long time.” He looked back at Romana. “Not since the Third Rail.” He grabbed the casket again. “Let’s go. He’s no threat.”

They continued on their way. Halifax waited patiently where they first saw him. He was chewing on sunflower seeds, and spitting the shells off to the side. “I expected you sooner! Why didn’t you teleport here?”

“It’s a funeral procession,” Mateo explained. “You can’t teleport through a funeral procession.”

“No, s’pose not.”

“What are you doing here?” Mateo asked him.

“I’m here for him.” Halifax nodded at the body.

“Not many work orders from this time period, I would guess,” Mateo mused.

“Nope,” Halifax replied matter-of-factly.

“So he’s never coming back?” Leona asked.

Halifax took a beat. “No,” he answered solemnly. “He’ll be in good company,” he added after Mateo exchanged a look with Romana. The Cemetery magically appeared behind him, including a new open grave right behind him, and a second one a few meters away, which was alarming.

“Can we still do a green burial?” Romana asked, stepping forward. “It’s what he wanted.

“Is there any other kind?” Halifax responded.

Romana knelt down and started to unlock the casket. Mateo reached down, and covered her hand with his. “You don’t have to do this yourself. You don’t have to...see him like this.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, father.” She unlocked the other latch. “I do.” She lifted the lid, and stared at Boyd’s dead body for a few moments. Then she slipped her arms underneath his, and began to drag him out, across the ground, and over to the edge of the grave. She let go only to hop in, then took hold of Boyd again to pull him down on top of her. She lay there for another few moments, staring blankly into empty space. They gathered ‘round and watched her in reverence. Finally, she freed herself from him, stood up, and just teleported to the surface.

“Your dress,” Mateo pointed out.

“That’s why I wore something real,” Romana explained, “so it wouldn’t have a self-cleaning function.”

“Would you like to say a few words?” Halifax offered.

She stepped over, and looked into the grave with everyone else. “Boyd Maestri was not a perfect man. Like many of our kind, he took his power for granted. He made life harder for some people, like Dave Seidel and June St. Martin. But he never really hurt anyone. He wasn’t anywhere close to being evil. He was actually really sweet. And I wish that you had all been able to see more than just glimpses of that. But I’m at least glad that you got to see a little. I know you weren’t happy with our age gap. The truth is, it was wider than you even know. But he never pushed me, or pressured me. What he felt for me was love. I can’t say that I felt the same. Growing up the way that I did—skipping all that time—I couldn’t have real relationships. If I met someone, they would be dead in the blink of an eye. So yeah, when the first man who I could be honest with took an interest, I fell for him. As I said, he took his powers for granted, but he didn’t treat me the same. He was respectful, and kind, and he recognized my boundaries. I—” she stammered. “That’s it.” She stepped backwards, away from the grave.

“Anyone else?” Halifax asked.

Mateo was already pretty close to the grave, but he stepped closer, letting the toes of his shoes hover over the edge. “I forgive you.”

Romana hadn’t cried this whole time, but now she snapped her eyes shut, and scrunched her cheeks up, trying to hold the tears back, even though she knew that no one expected that of her. She buried her face in the safety of Olimpia’s bosom. Suddenly. Ellie Underhill climbed out of the second open grave. She tried to clap the dirt off of her hands, and wiped them on her skirt. Without saying anything first, she began to sing, “I just found a lemon tree. It’s a bad day for my enemies. Yes, there’s sugar water in the breeze, and I’m ready, I’m ready. So someone play guitar for me. I’m ready to leave my body.”

It was at this point that Olimpia pulled off her necklace, and joined in. “And oh, this could be rage. We’re flying to the space between the lies we told, and find the good in every soul is all connected energy, or how would I know you were thinking of me in the tree?” Only two of them were singing, but with Olimpia’s echo powers, it sounded more like a small chorus. They went on with the song, but skipped the instrumental break, since they were singing a capella. When they ended with the final two lines, “when all of the lights remain, this is all that our time contains,” Olimpia belted it out. Her voice roared up into the sky, and apparently tore a hole in spacetime. The Time Shriek answered back, echoing in its own way, just as Olimpia could.

Romana smiled as she wiped more tears from her eyes. “Boyd loved that scream. He thought it was so cool that so many people from so far away could hear the same thing.”

“You got to know him better than I realized,” Mateo said, wrapping his arms around her. “I’m sorry I didn’t make it easy on you.”

“It’s okay,” she assured him. “I understand. Or rather I don’t understand what it’s like to be a parent. But I will soon.” She smiled, and placed her palm on her belly.”

“No,” Mateo said, struck with dread, trying his best not to faint, or shout in rage.

“No, I’m kidding!” Romana said apologetically.

“Oh, god...dammit! Don’t do that to me!”

“Or me,” Ramses agreed surprisingly. “We would have to uninstall your EmergentSuit.” He looked around at the rest of the ladies. “That goes for all of you. I wouldn’t otherwise have the right to know if you’re pregnant, but...”

“We get it,” Marie said to him. “We’ll let ya know.”

“Thanks for coming, Ellie,” Leona said. “That was a very thoughtful and beautiful gift.”

“That wasn’t your gift,” Ellie said. “I just like to make an entrance.” She reached into her pocket. “This is your gift.” She pulled out a smooth red stone. Or was it made of glass? It looked familiar, but no one could place it right away. “The angry Russian I took it from wasn’t happy, but he and his daughter will be fine. I moved them somewhere safe.”

“The cap of the Insulator of Life,” Ramses exclaimed. “We’ve been wondering how those two got separated, and where this has been.”

“St. Petersburg, I guess.” Ellie looked from one to another, to another, but only with her eyes. “Is anyone gonna take this from my hand, errr...?”

Angela happened to be the closest, so she accepted it.

“Forgive me, but...this was a funeral gift?” Leona questioned. “Do they have those in Fort Underhill? I didn’t even think you had death.”

“No, it’s a wedding gift,” Ellie contended. She looked around at them again, but with her head this time. “Wait, what year is this?” She reached out and grabbed Leona’s wrist so she could look at her watch. “Whoops! Better go! Forget I said anything!” She ran off and hopped back into the portal grave.

“Well,” Olimpia said with a sigh. “I guess the cat’s out of the bag.” She reached into her own pockets, and pulled out two diamond rings. She held them in front of her. “Mateo and Leona Matic...will you marry me?”

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Microstory 2458: Diamond Dome

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Would you believe it, centuries ago, diamonds were considered a precious commodity? They’re still precious, but they’re not nearly as rare and luxurious as they once were. Our ancestors would cut them up into pretty shapes, and fashion them into pretty jewelry. We don’t care about that. We care about function over form. Carbon is one of the most versatile elements in the universe, and as it turns out, its diamond form is actually extremely commonplace. It was hard to find on Earth when people were digging it out of the ground with shovels and pickaxes, but when you have the automation and power to manipulate entire planets, you start to see how abundant things are. We use diamonds because the stuff is durable and reliable. It’s also clear, making it a perfect, semi-natural alternative to glass. There are lab-grown polycarbonates out there that we can use instead, and to be sure, those are here on Castlebourne too, but nothing beats the OG super-material. We could also grow diamonds in a lab, but there’s plenty of it in this world, so why not take what the Lord giveth. Now, what exactly is it used for? Well, it’s the primary material for the domes. Most of the domes here aren’t perfectly smooth. They’re geodesic, which means they’re made up of a skeleton called a space frame. Traditionally, these were metallic, but these days, we use metamaterials; particularly graphene. Between the struts for the space frame, they affix transparent triangular panels, which allow you to see the other side. Why do they do this? Most of the domes use holographic skies anyway, so you’re seeing whatever the image is programmed to be. Well, I don’t really know. The tour didn’t explain that. It wouldn’t really be better if the entire dome were opaque with no hope of seeing the outside for real. Using a framework with clear panels is the most common way to design these things, and I just think they look nicer. You can turn the hologram off, and see the true Castlebournian sky, but if they weren’t made this way, that would not be possible. I guess it just gives us more options. A lot of people are afraid, believing that clear equals unsafe, but obviously that’s ridiculous. They think some meteorite could crash through, and suck out all the air, but that’s not really possible. Like I said, it’s made of diamonds, and even if it weren’t, your concern is unwarranted. Even if one panel does falter, these things are so gigantic that it would take days for all the air to escape, at worst. If it’s only one panel, it would take years. At any rate, there would be plenty of time for a drone team to fly up there and replace the panel, or panels. If there is so much damage that the dome rapidly becomes unbreathable, well, whatever caused that damage probably killed everyone on the surface anyway, so the air would be the least of their worries. Okay, I’ll end this on that happy note. Safe travels!

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 10, 2401

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A part of Mateo expected the sight to be more spectacular; that they would see countless worlds suddenly appear in the sky, but obviously it wouldn’t look like that. Even he knew that all those planets would all be ripped apart if they suddenly came close enough to each other to be seen by each other. There was nowhere you could be where you could witness more than one planet appear out of nowhere. Even if you could, Mateo wouldn’t be in such a place. The whole point was that the main sequence would be spared the Reconvergence. Nothing should change here.

“That’s not entirely true.” Mateo, Angela, and Marie spent the night in the nearest arcology to Stonehenge. Bhulan has just shown up.

“What do you mean?” Mateo questioned.

“You’re not in the main sequence right now. You’re in the Sixth Key.”

“So it didn’t work,” Angela assumed.

Bhulan stared at her for a weird length of time. “There are two main sequences now. The original is fine, right where it was before in Salmonverse. This one is a copy.”

“That’s not what I asked for. The Omega Gyroscope was meant to read my mind, and do what I wanted. And don’t tell me that it was an accident, like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, because I didn’t even consider this outcome. I wouldn’t have thought that would be a thing. I’m not—how you say—creative.”

Bhulan nodded, and stood up, pointing to his jacket hanging over the chair. “Were you wearing this when it happened?”

“Yeah,” Mateo answered. “Let me guess, I’ve been unknowingly wearing the Jacket of Duplication this whole time, or some bullshit like that.”

“It’s not the jacket,” she said with a shake of her head. She reached into one of the pockets, and then another, where she found the knife that Mateo used to replicate parts for the Olimpia, and also fail at fixing Heath when he was on the brink of death. He kind of forgot that it was in there. “Oh, crap. Are you serious? I forgot about that.. Like I said, I wasn’t thinking about making a copy of anything. I was trying to save the main sequence the headache of the Reconvergence stuff.”

“This is a temporal object,” Bhulan said, shaking it demonstratively, but not angrily, “just like the Cassano Cane, and the Omega Gyroscope. Sometimes they interact with each other, whether you mean for them to, or not. Who gave this to you?”

“The natives on an island we ended up on once,” Mateo answered. “They were...mysterious, and noncommunicative.”

Bhulan nodded again. “This is the same place where Angela got her immortality waters, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Angela confirmed. “That didn’t work. Or it did? Marie is alive, but I never found Activator water, so that whole ordeal is confusing.”

“I can’t explain how Marie survived what happened to her,” Bhulan began, “but you becoming immortal would not have done it. Yes, she’s an alternate of you, but you had become two independent beings. There was no reason why she would not have been able to die. The only thing that Time and Existence waters do is prevent someone from preventing you from existing and becoming immortal, and Marie has nothing to do with that anymore. I don’t know who told you it would—”

“We were just...desperate,” Angela explained. “And it seemed to work, so we figured that it was inevitable.”

“Bottom line,” Marie jumped in, “what does this mean? What can we do, what should we do? Why are you here?”

“I’m not here to talk about the main sequence, or the new main sequence,” Bhulan said. “That’s just something I noticed you were confused about. I’m here for that.” She pointed to the corner where Mateo had leaned the Cassano Cane and Omega Gyroscope against the walls. The latter was still hovering over the former. “They need to be destroyed, and I finally figured out how. The Reconvergence has not technically happened yet. The Keys were turned ahead of time, in case there was a delay or complication, but all the other parallel realities will collapse, and everything in them will be destroyed. This whole thing with the Third Rail started because I was there too early. I showed up at the beginning, but I should have appeared at the end. This is my chance.”

“Any objections?” Mateo asked the girls. “Go ahead,” he told Bhulan when they shook their heads. “It’s only here because Alyssa disappeared on us when I used it...incorrectly, and don’t know who’s supposed to have it.”

“I appreciate you not pushing back.” She walked over and reached for the cane, and as soon as her fingers wrapped around it, Ramses Abdulrashid appeared out of nowhere, and wrapped his own fingers around it. “Um...excuse me.”

“I need this,” Ramses said.

“Report,” Mateo asked.

Ram looked at him, but did not let go of the cane. “I don’t have long here, so I’ll just give you the highlights. I survived Phoenix Station. I found Olimpia stuck in the Sixth Key before its big bang. I was forced to join the Shortlist’s meeting for The Edge. I escaped, and now I have a new mission...which requires my use of the Cassano Cane.”

“Nuh-uh-uh, buddy,” Bhulan argued. “I have to destroy these things.”

Ramses pursed his lips, and then let a puff of air escape to make a popping sound. At the same time, he flicked the Omega Gyroscope off of the cane, letting it fall to the floor, and begin to roll away. The glow emanating from it shut off while it was doing this, so it didn’t get far before becoming entangled in the hundemarke chain that had been hidden inside while it was active. “You can destroy anything you want, but you can’t destroy this cane.”

“This is my only shot. Once I do this, I’ll be dead, and I won’t be able to take anything else with me.”

“Then I guess you won’t be the one to destroy it, if anyone even is ever. Let. Go.”

Ramses was not letting up, and neither was Bhulan. They did not want to cause physical harm to each other, though; that much was clear. Mateo cleared his throat. “Bhu. It was your mission to destroy the hundemarke, correct? Then someone gave you the Insulator of Life, and someone else gave you the Omega Gyroscope, right? You have the hundemarke. No one here wants to see that used again, and we don’t really care about the gyroscope. So just go with what you have. Rambo obviously needs that for something that none of us understand.”

Bhulan frowned and considered her options. In the end, she chose the path of least resistance when she let go. “Fine.”

“Will we ever see you again?” Marie asked Ramses.

“I don’t know, but I was there. In the Third Rail, when you didn’t know I was. I was watching over you, and now I just have one thing left to do. When I come back, I’ll give you this.” He opened his other hand to show them an antique rosary. It was once Mateo’s, before he was ripped out of the timestream during Arcadia’s expiations. When the Superintendent returned him decades later, he made him an atheist instead of Catholic, and they never saw the rosary again. He only would have cared about it because it was his once-mother’s centuries prior.

“I don’t need that,” Mateo told Ramses. “It’s not mine anymore.”

Ramses smiled. “Trust me, you’re gonna want it, if only to keep it out of the hands of someone who would abuse its power.” He tucked the cane under his arm to free that hand so he could hang the metallic beads from it. “They call it the Mateo Rosary. He closed his fist over the cross, and disappeared, making it seem as though it was the rosary what done it.

“I’m not familiar,” Marie noted.

“I’ve never heard of it either,” Bhulan said, “but I don’t think it was just a teleporter. It probably also belongs on the list of objects that I would want to destroy.”

“You’ll have to settle for what you have,” Mateo told her. “I promise, I’ll do everything I can to make sure the cane, the rosary, and anything else like them, don’t fall into the wrong hands.”

Bhulan picked up the two objects, and disentangled the hundemarke, placing it around her neck. “I don’t doubt it.” She focused on the gyroscope, presumably trying to reactivate it. “I think Ramses did something to this. It’s...dead.” She looked pleased.

“That’s good, right?” Angela guessed.

“Yeah, that means it won’t be able to stop me from doing what I have to do.” Bhulan breathed a sigh of relief. “I die to save quintillions.” She disappeared as well.

“Whoa, does anybody else feel a little tired all of the sudden?” Marie posed.

The room around them changed. The furniture was moved around enough to cause the three of them to fall to the floor, and they were no longer alone. A couple was sitting on the couch with their young child.

“Sorry to disturb you,” Mateo said, standing up, massaging his coccyx.

“I recognize you,” the man said. “Why do I recognize you?”

“I recognize him too,” the woman corroborated.

“I just have one of those faces,” Mateo answered, not knowing the truth himself.

“We’ll leave you be,” Marie told them. “Apologies for the intrusion.” They left the unit, and stepped over to the nearest convenience terminal against the wall next to the elevator. “April 10, 2401. We jumped in time, just like we used to.”

“It wasn’t just like it,” Angela pointed out. “It wasn’t midnight central.”

“Yeah, it was,” Marie contended. “Well, it’s about fifteen ‘til one in Kansas, but close enough. It obviously happened because the Omega Gyroscope is finally gone.”

“What do we do now?” Angela questioned. “Where do we go?

“We have to find a way back to the real main sequence. That is where my wife is.”

“Are we sure about that?” Marie asked.

“No, you’re right, we’re not. In fact, there could be two of them now. Damn, I wish Ramses had stayed long enough to give us some details about that damn meeting.”

“If this is the Sixth Key,” Marie began, “then you know what we have to do, and it’s not looking for Leona.”

Mateo sighed, and nodded. “We have to assume she’s safe, but Olimpia may not be. I don’t know where to start with that trail either, though. Any ideas?”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 10, 2398

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Mateo knocks on the door, but can’t hear the muffled response from the other side, so he knocks again. The response is still muffled, but it sounds angrier this time, so either Alyssa wants him to just come on in, or she very much wants him to leave. He decides to open it carefully, and prepare an exit strategy. “Hey, sorry, I couldn’t hear you out there.”

She’s rushing from one side of the apartment to the other. She’s wearing a towel around her body, and one on top of her head. She’s trying to put away some dishes in the kitchenette, and haphazardly fold the clothes on the couch at the same time. “I said to come in. I can’t talk, though. I just came back to shower, because my brothers complained about the smell, but I’m going right back to the blacksite.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Look, Matty, I know you all say that Trina isn’t in there, but what if she is? What if this Erlendr asshole is just suppressing her consciousness, and she’s been trying to escape this whole time? She may be watching through his eyes, I have to control for that. When we get her back, what should I say to her, that I just stayed home, and left her there in the prison?”

“No, I suggest you tell her that you did everything you could to get her back, and sitting in that room doesn’t accomplish that,” Mateo replies. They’ve been to a number of places on Mateo’s list already, usually for other reasons, and now it’s time to start considering making a point of finishing off that list with a real world tour. He does not yet know, however, who will be accompanying him. A good start could be to ask for help for something very specific.

She unwraps the towel from her head, and furiously dries her hair as much as possible. “What else can I do? I’m not a physicist, like Ramses.”

“He’s not a physicist, he’s an engineer.”

“Whatever.”

“Speaking of Ramses, he needs something from somewhere, I need help getting it for him. Marie is considering going with, but whether she does or not, I could do with a translator.”

“You’re going back to Russia?” They learned that Alyssa’s mother’s family originates from Russia, and that her grandmother taught Alyssa the language before her death. The younger children don’t know it, and of course, wouldn’t be suitable for this mission anyway.

“Technically, I wouldn’t say that we were ever in Russia before since we never got off the boat. I’ve never been at all, even in my home reality.”

“What do you need in Russia, and how will it help Trina?” When he takes a little too long to answer, she winces. “Is it dangerous? Spit it out.”

“It’s politically very dangerous, they could brand us traitors by asking to excavate in the area, because we would have to give the Russians the mineral rights, but I don’t see that we have any choice given what else is down there.”

“What else is down there?” Alyssa questions, annoyed. “What is down where? You’re explaining this all out of order, you realize that, right?”

Mateo takes a breath. “You’re right. There’s a mine in Russia that contains a ton of diamonds, worth hundreds of billions of dollars—maybe even over a trillion—but the thing is that this mine was never discovered in the Third Rail. We know exactly where it is, and we don’t care about the diamonds. According to lore, there’s a gemstone down there that’s worth more than everything else combined.”

“Lore?” Alyssa asks skeptically.

“Marie’s friend from Australia who collected stuff like this, and things that Leona Delaney read in her book about time travel; they corroborated each other’s stories regarding the thing.”

“What is it?”

“It’s called timonite, and it’s rumored to grant the user control over all of time and space.”

“That sounds like a fantasy,” Alyssa reasons. She steps behind her bedroom door so she can finish changing. She starts to raise her voice a little to compensate, but it makes her seem irritable. “I don’t much care for fantasy. Talk to Moray about that stuff, he’ll go on, and on, and on.”

“It might not be real, but isn’t it worth the risk?”

“If it starts a war with Russia, which Russia will win because of their sudden influx in capital, then no. Trina is a child, so she doesn’t understand the politics, but if she did, I know she wouldn’t want that. She hates violence. She doesn’t even like to watch cartoon characters fighting each other, even though they’re all immortal.”

“You’re right. Again.”

“There has to be a way to dig where we need to dig without starting an international incident,” Alyssa figures. “You’re time traveling teleporters, for God’s sake; get creative.”

A lightbulb comes on over Mateo’s head. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. We need you more than ever.”

“I could interpret for you, but you’ll have to figure out who you want to talk to. It can’t lead to violence, that’s my one rule.”

“We require the most powerful person in Russia. He’s the only man who can get us what we need.”

“Well, yeah, but you’ll still be branded as a traitor.”

“Not if we have help from the U.S. government, because we don’t need to talk to the actual Russian President. We just need someone who looks like him, and we need him to talk to other Russians on our behalf.”

She stares at him. “Am I supposed to know where you’re going with this?”

Has anyone ever told you why we were immediately comfortable being around you? Didn’t it seem like we recognized your name, or something?”

“It seemed a little weird, but I had other things on my mind, and later I thought we knew too much anyway, so you either had to bring us in, or kill us.”

“It is we who knew too much,” Mateo corrects. “We already knew you. Or we knew of you. Vearden knows you personally, he met you centuries from now, or something.”

“You mean that I’m going to go with you to your alternate reality, and meet people I’ve already met before?”

“Yes.”

“Hm. What does that have to do with the Russian President?”

He smirks. “What are your thoughts on hats?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 6, 2395

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Dalton Hawk looked different. Sure, his face was the same, and he was at about the same age as he was when they last saw him, but he held himself differently. He stood up straighter, which made it all the more interesting that he was also carrying a cane. Upon closer inspection, they saw that this was unlike any cane any of them had seen before. A humongous diamond was affixed to the top of it. Leona realized as he was walking towards them, though, that she had indeed seen it before, just not in its completed form. A long time ago, Dilara Cassano, a.ka. The Arborist asked her and her then team to procure the diamond for them as payment. She used her ability to muster a version of Horace Reaver from an old timeline, along with Lincoln Rutherford as a bonus. They were both apparently paradoxed out of reality after the former deliberately erased Tristesse Ulinthra from all histories.

“You can?” Mateo asked. “Aren’t you just a body hopper? I mean, I don’t mean to say that’s all you are, but...”

“It’s fine,” Dalton promises, “no offense taken. And no, I don’t have that ability anymore; not since I was reborn from the afterlife simulation.”

“What can you do now?” Leona asked.

Dalton spun his fancy cane like a professional baton twirler. He ended by moderately gently dropping it on the floor, where it stood up to gravity. “I can’t do anything, but I can use this.”

“What can it do?” Angela pressed.

“It invokes and harnesses a special flavor of temporal energy. I should be able to send you anywhere, anywhen. Or I could give you powers, take them away, saddle you with a time affliction. I could theoretically rewrite reality to my will.”

“What do you do with it?” Olimpia questioned, worried.

“Nothing much so far,” Dalton answered. “I’m still figuring out how it works. It comes with a learning curve, and a downside.”

“Doesn’t everything?” Ramses asked rhetorically.

“I can’t use it on myself,” Dalton explained. “Well, I could, but then I would lose the cane, because someone else would have to do it for me. My arm doesn’t reach that far.” He demonstrated the idea by holding the cane from the bottom, and trying to point the diamond at himself. Humans weren’t anatomically set up for that. The thing was too long.

The Presidents and Vice Presidents looked amongst each other. “We don’t know who he is,” Skylar told the team. “We’re assuming he’s good people because of your reception of him, but could you confirm that?”

Leona shrugged. “We don’t really know him that well, but he seems cool.”

“We can help you then,” Lucy said. “Have you tried reflecting the energy off of a mirror?”

“Yes, I have,” Dalton replied. “It just consumes the mirror. It doesn’t care that it’s reflective.”

“Our mirrors are different,” Oliver told him. “If we were to be transported to the barrier at the edge of the metro, we could show you right now.”

They took each other’s hands, and teleported to Stilwell, Kansas. It sat on the southernmost edge of the dimensional bubble they were in. Beyond this was nothing, or maybe they just couldn’t get to it. The team had never actually questioned anybody what happened if they tried to cross over. Surely someone had tried in the last 370 years. It was weird to see. The barrier was a mirror, just as Oliver had described it. They could watch themselves as if they were in a giant dance studio. The image faded as they looked upwards, and eventually gave way to the sky and clouds.

“It goes all around,” Kostya explained. “It used to be the entire dome. You could stand here and watch things happening miles and miles away, on the other side of hills and buildings. We don’t know who did it, but we don’t think it was the man who made the snowglobe itself. We think one day the reflection will disappear completely, and we’ll be able to expand beyond the borders.”

“Some people think that,” Oliver contested. “It’s kind of a religious thing.”

“How do you know that this will reflect temporal energy,” Dalton asked.

“We’ve seen it before,” Skylar answered. “That’s all we’re gonna say about it.”

Dalton smiled with little confidence. “I’ve sat through trigonometry class multiple times.” He turned his cane, and aimed it at the barrier. A blast of energy came out of it, bounced off of the barrier, and landed in Olimpia’s chest. She disappeared.

“You better have sent her somewhere safe,” Angela warned.

“I did. The only question was whether the reflection would work.” With that, he shot her with energy too. He then proceeded to do the same for Marie, Ramses, Leona, and finally Mateo.

Mateo woke up on the ground. He didn’t think it was possible to be knocked unconscious in this new body, but then again, temporal energy was probably some pretty powerful stuff. He got himself to his feet, and looked around. No one else was there; not Leona, nor anyone else. He was completely alone in the middle of a field. He gazed up at the sky, and saw the stars, but there was something odd about them. He kept staring, looking for what was wrong. As he adjusted his angle, he realized that there was a slight distortion in the light coming down from them. The sky wasn’t perfectly transparent. A dimensional barrier was between the land and the heavens. He was still in the Fourth Quadrant. What evil trickery was this?

Before he could teleport to civilization, to figure out what was going on, he felt something wrap itself around his waist. He looked down to find a lasso, or perhaps a whip. It tugged him backwards, through a tunnel of flashing lights. He landed on his feet when it stopped, but couldn’t get rid of the momentum without falling on his ass. It didn’t really hurt, though. Ramses reached down, and helped him off the floor.

“Where are we?” Mateo asked.

“The Parallel. I’ve been here since yesterday.”

“What’s yesterday?” Mateo went on.

“It’s just been a day for me. Whatever Dalton did, he sent us to different points in spacetime; I believe to different realities. I came here last year. You were simply thrown forwards in time one year. The others are elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere,” Mateo echoed. “Elsewhere is where?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m still looking into it.” Ramses turned and addressed a woman who had been watching them. “There’s your proof of concept. Please allow me to seek the others.”

She seemed very unappreciative of their inconvenient situation. “We will not allow you to travel through time...in any reality. We will let you seek the others, but you must wait until you catch up to them on your own before you may bring them here.”

“What if they’re not on our pattern anymore?” Ramses tried to reason. “What if they’re a day behind, or a day ahead, or centuries in the past? What if we never catch up to them?”

“We will not allow you to travel through time,” she repeated like a robot. “You must wait until you catch up to them on your own.”

“Real mature, asshole,” Ramses said. “He pulled one device off the counter between them, and handed it to Mateo. He then grabbed the second device.

“What are these?” Mateo asked him as he was following his friend out of the room.

“What you’re holding is basically a kin detector. Obviously we all have unique DNA, but the way I engineered our clones was consistent across the six of us. That thing will alert us when it senses another one of us in the same moment of time. It even works across realities.”

Mateo flipped a switch on the side of the detector. An alarm started to blare, and until Ramses could take it away from him, and turn it off, Mateo thought he was going to lose his hearing.

“Sorry, I should have said don’t push any buttons.”

“Does that mean someone else is here?”

“No, it’s still not calibrated to ignore you,” Ramses replied. “That’s why it was so loud, because you’re so close to it.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“But we don’t know when we’re gonna find the others. Maybe never.”

“This universe is not exactly a unified empire. We’ll find someone who can help us eventually, I promise you that. I would modify it myself, but it is so far beyond me, Matty, like you don’t even know.”

“Why did Dalton do this to us?”

“I don’t know that it was on purpose. He may have looked confident, but I could see anxiety in his eyes. He had little experience with that cane. There’s every chance the first time he tried to use it had somehow backfired, and trapped him in the Fourth Quadrant in the first place. We should have talked to him more.”

The two of them were given a full suite to stay in, but they ended up just sleeping in the same bed, so they could both hear the alarm. Neither knew how faint the volume would be once it did go off. Ramses said it could even potentially be infrasonic. Of course, that was a relative term for them now. They were capable of seeing a wider range of frequencies on the light spectrum, and of hearing a wider range of sound frequencies. Also due to their new bodies, they didn’t need to sleep much, but they did need a little. Their skin could absorb and convert solar radiation into chemical energy, but as it was organic, it was only so efficient at this conversion.

They woke up a couple of hours later, fully rested. The friend detector log did not indicate that they had missed their window. It was still April 6, 2395, at least inasmuch as that meant anything in this reality. “Can we go anywhere in the universe, or do we have to remain close to Earth?”

“Comparatively speaking, it shouldn’t matter too much,” Ramses answered. “Other realities are further away than you or even I could fathom. Plus, we don’t know where Dalton might have sent them. It could be Earth, or somewhere else. Why? Was there somewhere you wanted to go?”

“I was just thinking about checking in on Flindekeldan. I know it’s stupid, but I’m feeling a little nostalgic.”

“Better leave them out of it. Besides, that’s particularly far away. In no other reality is that populated. I doubt anyone’s that far out, and we don’t need to test the limits of this thing.”

“I understand.”

“As do I,” came the voice of another Ramses. He hadn’t bothered to knock on the door. He waltzed right into the bedroom, and outstretched his arm. “Pleased to meet you, Ramses, I’m Parallel!Ramses.”

“Likewise,” Ramses said rather unconvincingly, but surely rather innocuously. “Here but for the lid of Schrödinger’s box stand I.”

Parallel!Ramses chuckles. “If that’s the way you wanna look at it, then I won’t try to stop you.”

“Oh, I’m sure you understand it better,” Ramses said, worshiping him with a wave of his arms. “We’re not worthy.” It was starting to look a lot less playful.

“I just wanted to make sure these accommodations are too your liking,” Parallel!Ramses began. “I see that you two have finally hooked up. I always thought it might happen.”

Mateo looked back at the bed, and then over at his Ramses. “Really?”

“He’s messing with you.” Ramses retrieved the friend detector from the nightstand. “This thing is amazing, but I have feedback.”

“And I would love to hear it,” Parallel!Ramses lied. “Unfortunately, I have a lot of work to do. It’s a big universe out there, you understand.”

Ramses squinted at his alternate self. “I always knew I would become you...if I ever got power. That’s why I try to stay away from it.”

Parallel!Ramses glided back towards the door. “It would seem as though you chose wisely.” He left.

“Well,” Mateo said awkwardly. “That was a pointless conversation.”

“He was trying to gloat,” Ramses said, still staring at the space his alt once occupied. “He thinks he’s finally won.”

“Has he not? He has all that power. I don’t want to compare the two of you, but if this really is all you ever wanted...”

Ramses finally looked over at his friend. “He doesn’t have everything he wanted. He barely has anything. He doesn’t have you and Leona. He believes that these arbitrarily restricted devices will keep us from ever getting out of this reality. He believes you’re stuck here with him.”

“Are we?”

Ramses rifled through his bag until he found his toolkit. He removed one small tool, and flipped it in the air before catching it again. He used it to pry the casing off of the lasso dimensional extraction device. “We’re not just gonna bring our friends here. We’re gonna go to them, and even if we end up in a reality not of our choosing, we’ll be together.”

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