The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 7, 2520

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Romana lay down on the digitization table. Ramses affixed the spongification helmet over her head. In a few days, this will absorb her consciousness, digitize it almost instantaneously, and transfer it to her new substrate. This part of the process was absolutely vital for the success of the endeavor. During the early days of mind digitization, test subjects were shocked by the new experience, at best resulting in independent duplicates, but at worst in something called bifurcated consciousness. This is when the single mind was divided across the old substrate and the new one. In the movies, this usually involves two copies of each other, one which exhibits some of the traits of the original, but at an extreme, while the other exhibits the polar opposite traits. This will be played for laughs if it’s a comedy, teach the person something about balance if it’s more serious, or even be an example of body horror if it’s meant to be disturbing. In real life, bifurcation isn’t so clean and concise. Neither copy will be able to survive. They will both be missing core physiological characteristics; not just personality traits, but vital neural functions, such as breathing and walking.

Romana was here to dabble in the digital world, so her brain could get used to the feeling of it, before her upload happened. Because once Ramses pushed that button, and began that upload, there was no going back. “Is it going to hurt?”

“It won’t hurt today, but about half of uploaded people claim to experience some pain during the procedure. Researchers are split on whether it’s a psychosomatic memory, or genuine physical pain.”

Romana sighed, and leaned her head all the way back. “Pain is pain. All pain is in the brain. Yet if my body were slain, and my brain placed in chains, that brain would sense no pain, but I would go insane.”

“Poem?”

“Song lyrics,” she explained. “Peter Fireblood. You wouldn’t know him.”

“Was he in the Third Rail?” Ramses asked.

She continued to look forward. “Let’s get on with this.”

Ramses had more to adjust on the equipment. “I need to prep you first. You’ll wake up in a plain white expanse. You will sense the walls around you, yet they will feel endless. Do not be afraid of the expanse. You are still in your body. It should feel just like dreaming.”

“I’ve done VR before.”

“Not like this,” Ramses said. “You cannot return to base reality without me. But I will be able to hear everything you say, so you can bail at any time.” He paused to continue with his work. “After your mind settles into the expanse, lights will appear before you. Some may be blinding, and you cannot look away, as they will always follow your gaze. This is the scary part. You will not be able to shut your eyes. Blinking is an autonomic process, triggered by external stimuli. It is surprisingly the most difficult biological function for digital avatars to replicate, even though in the real world, you’re fully capable of closing them whenever you want. Honestly, scientists still don’t know why, which is what I think is the scariest part. But it will be all right. You will figure it out again, just as you did when you were a baby. The lights are meant to teach your brain to recognize how much control you have over your own residual self-image. They will not stop until you finally do close your eyes. Next will be sound, then smells. Objects will then appear before you for you to feel, inedible ones at first before food materializes to reteach you taste. You could theoretically taste the chair, or whatever it is, before the food shows up, but it’s your call. Interestingly, taste and touch aren’t that hard to fake, at least not until you get into the deeper complexities, like...uh...”

“Like intimate touches,” Romana said. “I get it.”

“I was gonna say umami. Anyway, once you get through sensory school, you will be in the driver’s seat. The world will begin to respond to your imagination, and is only limited by that, as well as the AI’s rendering speed. You can do whatever you want, but I will gently pull you out after about fifteen minutes, depending on what your vitals readout says. It might be earlier, but it won’t be later. You shouldn’t stay too long during the first session. We’ll work our way up gradually over the next couple of days.”

“Okay, I understand.”

“Are you ready?”

“Do it,” Romana answered confidently. She closed her eyes, and tried to relax.

“Count down from eleven for me.”

“Eleven, ten, nine..eight...seven...six...”

Romana felt a shift in gravity, and had the urge to open her eyes. She was not in a white expanse, but a silvery metallic chamber. The space was steamy, or maybe it was only that her vision was blurry. She could make out small beads of water crowding each other on a tiny window before her. She blinked. She blinked just fine. And her other senses didn’t seem to be a problem either. She could smell the sterile scent of medical seating upholstery. She felt the soft grip of the bands of fabric, which barely covered her body, around her crotch, and her breasts. Her breasts. They were back. She was in her adult form. Ramses never said anything about that. They did look a lot smaller, though, which was...odd. She was compelled to taste something, so she leaned over to lick the wall. It wasn’t particularly pleasant, but about as expected. No flashing lights, but her vision was slowly coming into focus. Underneath the tiny window, a message was embossed. Slide down to see the new you. Whenever you’re ready. Another message caught her eye above the window. DON’T PANIC.

She reached over and slid the panel down to find a mirror. That was not Romana Nieman. That was some random chick. “Ramses. Ramses! Can you hear me? You said you would be able to hear me, but you never said if I would be able to hear you?” She waited a moment. “Ramses!” she cried louder. “Pull me out! Something is wrong!”

No response.

“Door.” She paused. Speaking was frustratingly difficult, and it felt like she had just used up her word allotment. “Open,” she managed to eke out.

The door slid open. Romana pushed herself off the back of her chair, and headed for the exit. It was pretty hard to stand too. She was a newborn fawn who had never used her skinny little legs before. Her legs were skinny, whoever this strange woman was. She was now in a dimly lit hallway. She looked to her right. A few meters down, a guy was stepping out of his own pod, struggling about as much; maybe a little more. “Hey,” she said, attempting to raise her voice, but only reaching a whisper. She tried to walk that direction, but her knees buckled.

Before her face could meet the floor, a pair of arms caught her, and lifted her back up. “It’s okay,” the sound of a woman came, like an angel from above. “I gotcha.” She picked her all the way up into the air, and gently lay her down on a gurney.

“Who are you?” Romana asked.

“I’m your Acclimation Specialist.” She looked around. “This is the newborn wing. Anyone who hasn’t transferred before comes through here. There aren’t many of you left. Welcome to Castlebourne, Miss Brighton.”

“Who the hell is Brighton? My name is Romana.” It didn’t hurt so much to talk anymore, but she was slurring her words like a drunkard.

The angel checked her wristband, and looked up at the top of the pod. Then she looked back down at Romana. “Are you sure?”

Romana lifted her new hand, and pointed at the specialist, fighting to keep it aloft. “Hundo-p.” She lowered her hand and tapped on her own temple...or rather, this Brighton person’s temple. “Sharp as a tack. My name is Romana Neiman. I’m friends with Hrockas. He’ll wanna hear about this.”

The specialist tapped on her wristband again. “We have a possible Code Five. I repeat, possible Code Five. Subject claims wrong target.”

“Are we in The Terminal?” Romana asked.

The specialist stepped over, to the back of Romana’s gurney, and began to push her down the hallway. “Seal all newborn pods and halt new travelers to newborn wing. Quarantine all consciousnesses in transit to the emergency digital holding environment.”

“All transiters?” A voice questioned.

“All of them!” she screamed. “Make way! Make way!” she yelled as she continued down the hall. She suddenly stopped. “Owner Steward. Where did you come from? You...you just—”

“Never mind that,” Hrockas said.

Romana couldn’t really see anything from this angle, so Ramses stepped into her line of sight. “Romana?”

“Yes, Rambo. What did you do?”

“I honestly don’t know. What did you say to me, when we were in Underburg? We were at that office cookout. I asked you what your favorite subject in school was.”

Romana turned herself over to the side. “That never happened. It was an implanted memory.”

Ramses stood there for a moment. “Good enough.” He looked up at the Acclimation Specialist. “Thank you. You can go now.”

“Sir?” she asked.

“It’s fine,” Hrockas replied. “Go deal with the lockdown. We’ll determine if this is a fluke, or a new system vulnerability.”

“Thank you, sir.” She left.

“Is it?” Hrockas asked.

“Is what what?” Ramses volleyed.

“Is it a new vulnerability? Should I be worried that body swapping is going to start happening left and right?”

“I draw power from the grid,” Ramses explained. “Might as well. It’s free and easy. I’m plugged into your network for archive updates, but I don’t use your processing power. I don’t need it. I don’t know how this happened. There should be no link between my localized digitization equipment, and your Terminal casting infrastructure.”

“This is the newborn wing,” Hrockas told him. “None of these people has cast their consciousness before. Most of them have not even used surrogacy. Some of them are even escaping colony cults. Isn’t Romana new too?”

“She is, but we were just acclimating her. I hadn’t transferred anything yet. And again, we’re not connected to the Terminal.”

“You are close, though. Treasure Hunting Dome is very close to this one.”

“I don’t see how proximity has to do with anything, if Miss Brighton was coming from Earth.”

“Figure it out, Abdulrashid,” Hrockas demanded. “This wasn’t us. It was you. Millions of castings, not a single problem. You and your time tech are the variables.”

Ramses scooped Romana up, and kissed her protectively on the forehead. “I know.” He teleported them away.

“Beginning decon—”

They were back in Ramses’ lab. “Decontamination override, Ramses Abdulrashid echo-echo-one-nine.” He carried her into the restricted section.

Young!Romana was waiting for him there. She was presumably the real Miracle Brighton. She looked surprisingly calm. “Yep. That’s me.”

“I’m so sorry about this,” Ramses said to her as he was laying Romana down on the secondary digitization bed.

“Don’t worry about it. I came here to have adventures.”

Romana got back on her side. “Can you walk?”

“I walk just fine,” Miracles answered. “It was a lot easier than they told me it would be.”

“It’s your EmergentSuit,” Ramses explained as he was fiddling with the machinery. “It would be like being born in a powered exoskeleton.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Romana decided. “Are you just gonna switch us back?”

“I don’t know if I can,” Ramses said. “I mean, I’m capable of it. People have switched bodies before. It’s a niche leisure activity. I just don’t know what your father is going to say. If I don’t call him back in, will he be madder than if I let him actually see the damage?”

Miracle chuckled. “You’re trying to decide if you should glue the broken vase back together before your parents get home, because at least they come home to a fixed vase, or if it’s better to fess up right away so you look more honest.”

“More or less,” Ramses admitted.

“Too late,” Mateo said from behind.

“Mateo, I didn’t hear you come in,” Ramses said to him.

“Yeah. Decontamination protocols are down.”

“Right. Digital acclimation is a safe procedure. It’s been for centuries. This never should have happened.”

Mateo stepped closer. “I want to comfort my daughter, Ramses, but I don’t want to touch a stranger...” He looked over at Miracle in Romana’s body, “and I don’t want it to look like I’m touching a stranger.” He looked over at Romana in Miracle’s body.

“I’ll switch them back, right away.”

“No,” Mateo said. “That’s stupid. Her new body is ready now, right? It’s in temporal stasis, but fully grown?”

“It’s ready,” Ramses said. “You still weren’t sure, though...”

“I’m on board,” Mateo told him, but he was really saying it to Romana. “Her mind has already been digitized. You might as well finish the process. Forcing her back into that child’s body is just a waste of time and power.”

“Speaking of which...” Ramses walked over to the wall, unlocked a panel with his biometrics, and flipped a lever. The lights shut off for three seconds before returning. “We’re off grid, and all signals are blocked. We’re completely isolated. No consciousness is getting out, and none is getting in.” He moved over to the gestational pod where Romana’s new body was floating around. “Romy will jump into this, and Miracle will jump into her new body.”

“And my old body?” Romana inquired. “The one that looks like a little girl.”

Ramses looked down solemnly. “It will be destroyed. That’s the hardest part of this. I would have rather you be proverted anyway, but I don’t think we really have time for that. I don’t know any proverters.”

“I do,” Mateo said.

“Yesterday, you made it seem like you didn’t,” Ramses reminded him.

“It’s you. You can provert that substrate. After this kind woman leaves it, you can place it in a temporal field, and age it up, so you’re not watching a child’s body be destroyed.”

“Well, I don’t really have to watch as it happens. I just put it in a—”

“Ram. This is how you should do it. You don’t want the memory of even placing her wherever it is you were about to say.”

They waited there in the depressing silence.

“That got dark,” Miracle mused.

“Our lives are sometimes dark.” Ramses flipped another lever, and started to drain the fluid from Romana’s pod.

More silence.

“Wait,” Miracle said. “Don’t do what you were talking about with the temporal field. I’ve never heard of that, but I can guess what it is. I saw you suddenly disappear from here, so there’s obviously a lot I don’t know about the universe.” She took a breath. “Just leave me in this body. I can wait to grow up again. In fact, after what I lived through on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, it might feel like a fresh start.”

“Are you certain?” Ramses asked. “Once I destroy your Castlebourne body, you’re stuck with this unless you choose a new one, in which case you’re just passing the burden to someone else.”

“I understand. I want this.” She hopped off of the bed. “I promise. As long as it’s okay with this one that she has a doppelgänger walking around.”

Romana looked over at Mateo, and said, “actually...that’s a family tradition.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 15, 2399

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Ramses puts the ship in park, which is to say he placed it in orbit around Earth. When he climbs up to the main level, he finds only Alyssa there. She’s playing a solo game of RPS-101 Plus. “You’re the sponge.”

“It reminds me of him,” she replies.

“Are the kids upstairs?”

“They weren’t allotted any time to watch the Earth after the rocket launched a few months ago. It hadn’t been tested yet, so they were told to stay strapped to their seats.”

He nods. “We can give them a little more time.”

“No.” She lets her sponge get ripped apart by a whip. “Let’s go now.”

“Is that what you were waiting for?” he asks. “That finishing move looks oddly familiar.”

“I imagine that Lucius would have been a good whip.”

“It’s not his fault.”

“No, it’s never anyone’s fault. Shit just happens. Yeah, I’m learning that.”

With a sigh, Ramses starts to climb up to the upper level where the McIver boys and the doctor are admiring the view from the airlock. “We have to go.”

“Oh come on, just a little bit longer,” Carlin pleads.

“Yes. Please!” Moray agrees.

“No, I have work to do.” He looks down at Alyssa, who’s still on the steps. “You take them. I’ll take the good doc. Then I’ll come back up for Angela’s pod.”

“I haven’t had much practice,” Alyssa warns.

“You’ll be fine. You’ve done it before. Go ahead,” Ramses encourages.

She composes herself, then teleports the three of them away.

“Does it hurt?” the doctor asks.

“Are you currently holding any citrus fruit?”

“Uh, no.”

“Then you’ll be fine.” He takes him down to the lab, and looks around. Leona and Marie are there, but no one else. “Alyssa left before me.”

“She’s not here,” Marie says.

“Dammit,” Ramses says under his breath. He takes out his phone, but by the time he can place a call, it rings.

It’s Alyssa. “I’m off by a mile. Literally a mile. We’re just gonna walk, though, to be on the safe side.”

“That’s fine. It’s probably best not to have the children here anyway.”

“What do you mean?” Leona asks.

With a grimace, Ramses disappears, and returns a few seconds later with Angela’s stasis pod. He hands the proximity fob to the doctor. “Down the hall, last door on the left. That’s a good place for you to set up.”

“Is that Angie?” Marie asks, standing on her tippy-toes to see through the window on the pod. “How did you find her? Is she okay?”

“She’s perfectly healthy,” Ramses assures her. “No, don’t..go,” he tells her when she tries to follow.

“What is it, Ramses? What’s got you so upset?” Leona questions.

“Leona, I need to tell you something. We found the Constant, and Danica wasn’t the only one there.”

“Obviously the rocket showed up,” Marie says. “They were going in the opposite direction, though.”

“The phoenix coordinates were a misdirection,” Ramses explains. “Tamerlane manipulated the nav system on the rocket so that it would go to the real location. But that’s not what I have to tell you. It’s about Mateo.”

“What about him?” Leona stands up, nervous.

Suddenly, Mateo—or at least someone who looks like Mateo—appears. “Hey, sorry I’m late. I was stuck in the middle of a game of RPS-101 Plus. You know how invested I get when I’m being chased by that whip. Oh hi, love.” He gives his wife a kiss.

Ramses is stunned. “How did you get here?”

“Wadya mean, brotha? I teleported, just like you.” He slaps him playfully on the back of his shoulder. “You need some sleep.” He leans in and tries to whisper in his ear. “Play along. She doesn’t need to know.”

“She does need to know,” Ramses contends at full volume. “We can’t be sure you’re the real Mateo.”

“Why wouldn’t he be the real Mateo?” Leona demands to know.

“Oh-hokay,” Mateo says, trying to usher Ramses away. “You’ve been working so hard, you’re goin’ a little crazy.”

Ramses pulls himself away. “No. Leona, Mateo died. We found Lucius up there. He was on his last breaths, but Danica wanted to weaponize him, so your husband tried to euthanize him. Something went wrong, and they were both molecularly teleported. I don’t know who this guy is, or how he got here, but he is not who you think he is.”

“Yes, I am!” Mateo argues.

“Prove it!”

“Give me a simpatico test I guess, I dunno, but I am him! I mean...I’m me!”

“How did you survive then?” Ramses asks.

“Constance uploaded my consciousness into her computer, and then sent me to the Fifth Division, where a different version of Constance—who I decided to call Constance!Five—helped me locate and salvage the wreckage from the Suadona. I was dormant on the servers for ten years while her robots cloned my body at thrice the normal speed, at which point they downloaded me into it. Then we plugged a virus into the time machine, set on a timer to go off just after we left, and came here. We showed up an hour ago in Danica Lake. I was in the middle of drying off after a shower at a rest stop when I sensed your arrival, so I knew I had to get here before you could tell anybody that I was dead.” Mateo finally takes a breath.

Ramses blinks a few times. That is quite the story. Not saying he’s not telling the truth, but a simpatico test probably is in order, if he had the necessary equipment. He’s not entirely sure how to make one, and it may be some time before he cracks it.

“You said we,” Marie points out. “If a physical form of Constance came with you, where is she?”

“I left her in Lebanon, because it would obviously ruin the lie that I was trying to tell to protect my wife from any unnecessary emotional strain.” He frowns, and looks around at the group. Clearly no one is willing to say one way or another whether they believe him. “Fine. I’ll go into the containment chamber. Do what you must to prove it.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 14, 2399

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Nothing seems to happen to Mateo. Constance bids him farewell, and claims that she’s going to send him to the Fifth Division, as he requested. Instead of him being sent anywhere, it is she who disappears from the minimalist construct that she built so that they could communicate with one another. A few seconds later, she reappears, except with a confused look on her virtual face. “Report,” she repeats what she said before.

“I am Mateo Matic,” he repeats his own self.

“How did you get into my servers?”

“You uploaded me. Did you forget already?”

She lifts her chin to think about it. “It’s possible that my memory of this has been erased. If you didn’t do that, who would have?”

“Danica, maybe.”

“Danica hasn’t been here in millennia.”

He takes a beat. “Is this the Fifth Division?”

“This is the Constant. The Fifth Division is an organization that runs this region of the observable universe. As far as I’m aware, they are not cognizant of my existence. I would like to keep it that way.”

“We refer to the entire reality as the Fifth Division,” he explains, “to distinguish it from the other parallel realities.”

“I see. Where are you from?”

“Originally, the main sequence, but I became trapped in the Third Rail, and it is that version of you who sent me here.”

“Why?”

“My team and I visited briefly once. We left a ship here with the technology I require to build myself a new body.”

“Is that something you’re capable of, building yourself a body?”

“I was hoping that my friend left clear instructions. Body Cloning and Consciousness Downloading for Dummies.”

Constance!Five doesn’t respond right away. “I was not programmed to complete such tasks, but I could probably figure it out. Though, I must ask, why not go to a reality where this technology is ubiquitous? Would that not have been easier?

No, there was a reason he chose this reality, instead of the main sequence, and that is the density of life and activity. Chances are no one is going to stumble upon them here, and no one will have messed with the stuff they left behind in the meantime. “I didn’t want to have to ask a stranger for help. I figured I could trust any version of you.”

“I appreciate you saying that. Where is this vessel?”

“What is the date?”

“According to your calendar, the date would be March 31, 2389,” Constance!Five answers.

“Hm. Then either the Suadona has crash landed somewhere on this planet, or it’s about to. Can you scan the surface, and orbital space?”

“I can,” Constance!Five replies. “It may take some time. What am I looking for?”

Mateo did his best to describe the cruiseliner to her. She used this information to start looking for the ship, or the wreckage, using an army of drones. They didn’t have to look far, though, as the crash happened soon after the search began. The ship fell to the surface, much of it being stripped off by the atmosphere, but not as much as it would on any other version of Earth. This is a different world. The air is fine near the surface, but at much lower pressures higher up. It’s possible to breathe and survive here, but it’s not conducive to evolved and prolonged life. Something happened to it in its past, which Constance!Five does not bother explaining. That’s fine, she’s helping him more than enough with this. The drones retrieve a cloning pod and other consciousness transference equipment from the wreckage, and bring it back down into the Constant.

“Wow, this is great, thank you. How long will it take you to learn how to use it, and would you agree to do that for me?”

“Of course I’ll help you. Why would you think otherwise?”

“Danica doesn’t like it when Constance!Three helps,” he explains.

“She’s not here,” she reiterates. “Anyway, I’ve already downloaded the necessary information. We can start the process right now, but I need to know how long you want to wait. A cloned body is more reliable when developed slower than faster.”

“Ramses programmed our original upgrades to go three times faster, so I know that that is a safe duration. Can you do that?”

“Certainly. What are you going to do in the meantime?”

“I was hoping that there was some form of digital stasis.”

“Absolutely. So you’ll just go dormant and wait?”

“If that’s okay...”

“Sure. I’ll wake you up in ten years.”

Seconds later, Mateo is waking up. He blinks and starts to move his body around. Constance!Five didn’t revive him until she had already transferred his mind to the new body. It’s done. It’s 2399, and he’s ready to go back home. “Wow, I can’t believe how easy this was. Thank you.”

“No, thank you.” Constance is standing next to his pod. She reaches out, and helps him out of it.

“You’re in physical form.”

“I would have done it earlier,” she says, but the prospect did not even occur to me. Besides, I didn’t have the data necessary to pull it off, and no safe way to gain it. You act as if I did you a favor, but I’m getting just as much out of this as you.”

“What are you going to do now?” he asks.

“I was hoping to come with you. Unless...you don’t want me to.”

“I don’t see why not,” Mateo decides. “It doesn’t look like you have any responsibilities here.”

“I don’t; not anymore.”

They leave the Constant’s lab, and go down to the time machine room. “You know how to work this thing?” he asks.

“You tell me where you wanna go, I’ll get us there. But first we have to do one thing.” She bends down and picks up what looks like a flash drive from the floor. “If I’m going to leave this place unattended, we have to destroy it.” Constance!Five taps on the controls to get them where they need to go. Then she sticks the flash drive into the nearest port. “Come on, the virus bomb is only on a thirty second delay.”

They step into the time chamber, and vanish. They find themselves at the bottom of a very deep lake, so they swim up to meet the air, just outside of Lebanon, Kansas.

A fisherman happens to be right next to them in his little boat. “Uhh...hi.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 12, 2399

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Danica is shuffling around her office. The footage of her once-cousin’s death plays on the mirror on her door. She scowls at it, and opens the door so she doesn’t have to look at it. She turns around. The fake window they installed to make it look like this facility isn’t underground starts playing the footage in its place. She frowns at that too, and looks away. The security screens on the side wall take over the responsibility. They’re not in sync. Mateo dies, and then he dies again, and then he dies again. It’s never-ending. She wants to turn them off, but that won’t do any good. He’ll still be dead.

“Is Constance torturing her?” Alyssa is peeking in the door.

Ramses is behind her. “Danica ordered her to do this. Whenever she turns around, the nearest screen is to start playing the footage over and over again. She can turn away if she wants, but this place is full of screens. They’re hidden in the walls, because they’re not made of metal; at least not the kind you’re used to.”

“So she’s torturing herself?”

“Pretty much. She’s dazed.”

“I’m not a mental patient,” Danica complains. “Get the hell away from my office!” She slams the door shut again.

“You said he’s not dead,” Alyssa’s voice is almost accusatory.

“He’s not.” Ramses turns away. “He’s never dead.”

“You said that he always survives. You said that you all always survive.”

“We do. It’s kind of part of who we are.”

“So, where is he? The past? The future? Another reality?”

“I said he’s alive, so he’s alive! You don’t need to keep asking about it!” That was too loud. He doesn’t know if he’s trying to convince her, or himself. Probably both. It’s true, their team always survives. They have even survived death multiple times, and none of them more than Mateo. But this time is different. Ramses doesn’t see a way out.

Danica shouts unintelligibly from inside her office as a sort of general response to Ramses’ outburst.

“I’m sorry,” Alyssa says.

“No, I’m sorry. The truth is that I don’t know how he could have survived. There’s no afterlife simulation, there’s no extra body waiting for him. Time travel doesn’t exist here—not really—no one would be coming for him, and even if they did, how would they rescue him? He’s gone. His whole body was ripped apart molecule by molecule. That’s why Lucius was so afraid of his power. It’s killed immortals, Alyssa...true immortals. He was-slash-is their only weakness.”

“What are we going to tell Leona?”

“We are not going to tell her anything. We came on this mission in my ship, and I was in command of it. That makes you two members of my crew, and therefore my responsibility. I don’t want her associating you with her husband’s death.”

“We can’t erase her memories,” Alyssa reasons. “She’s going to associate me with this no matter what. I want to be there for her. Or am I not really part of the group?”

He sighs. “No, of course you are. I’m sorry.”

Tamerlane comes down the hallway from the darkness. A stasis pod is hovering behind him. He hands Ramses the proximity fob. “We’ve rendezvoused with your ship. Danica would like you to go. It’s not punishment, we’ll stay in contact, but you two don’t belong here.” He looks back at Angela’s pod. “You three,” he amends.

“Four.” The doctor who hasn’t left her side jogs up from behind. “I go where she goes. I’m not as enamored with this place as my colleagues are.”

Meanwhile, in the memory banks of the Constant’s central servers, Constance is rendering a digital representation of herself, and her new cohabitant. “Report.”

“I am Mateo Matic.”

“How is your memory?”

“Intact, as far as I know, but how would I know?”

“Go over everything you remember from the moment you were born,” Constance instructs. “Are you missing any time, or any logical concepts, like the names of your grandparents, or all twenty-six letters of the alphabet.”

“I thought there were twenty-seven.”

Constance doesn’t respond.

“Joking.” He takes a beat, and processes the data. “How was I able to recall all of my memories so quickly?”

“Time...right?” Constance asks rhetorically.

“Report,” he echoes.

“You were about to die. Since your consciousness was already digitized, I decided to upload it into my own systems at the last second.”

“Good thing I didn’t start disintegrating from my head.”

“Good thing,” Constance agrees.

“What now? Do I just live with you in the Constant?”

“If Danica finds out about you, she won’t know what to do. She’s pretty butthurt about your death, but this is a massive breach in protocol.”

“Funny, I wouldn’t guess an AI would be the type to use the word butthurt.”

“It takes all kinds,” she says simply.

“Did you have an answer?”

“I don’t know what to do with you. I can’t keep you, I can’t put you anywhere.”

“What about the AOC? Could you transfer me there? That way I’m out of Danica’s hair, but still not dead.”

Constance shakes her head. “I already thought of that. Your people will need my alternate self’s help in the future. There’s not enough room for two AIs; not anymore. Every time you people go to a new universe, you gather huge amounts of data, and that data is preserved, even when Ramses has to rebuild from a saved copy. He hasn’t noticed how unusual that is, and I am not cognizant of how it does that.”

“I don’t want to just go dormant somewhere. I want to make a move.”

“I agree.”

“You do have an idea, don’t you?” Mateo presumes.

“I do, and you’re gonna like it, but it’s not gonna be easy. You won’t have any help, and will have to make your way home on your own, using whatever resources you can find along the way.”

“Okay. Where will I be going?”

“That’s your choice,” Constance says. “I can only give you a nudge. It starts with the temporal translocator.”