Microstory 2459: Savanna Land

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Right now, this is one of the least impressive domes on the planet. I guess I can’t say that. It’s not like I’ve seen every single other one. Then again, people have been making these kinds of statements forever, like when a food blog would rate the best restaurants in the country, as if they have any semblance of a comprehensive authority regarding anything close to what they’re claiming. All I mean is that there aren’t any animals here yet. For this one, I don’t think that they want to get by with lifelike robots. I think they want it to be really authentic, and that’s going to take some time. Still, it’s not called Savanna Animal Kingdom. They opened it, because it currently already exemplifies exactly what it says on the tin. There’s a ton of grass, patches of barren dirt, and very few trees. I didn’t see many other people while I was there, and the ones who did show up didn’t stay very long either, because we all saw the same thing. Potential. But not completion. The vehicles are ready, which is an interesting thing, but the real interesting part about that is how big they are. Back on Earth (before we stopped having to drive) roads had to be sort of standardized. It would have been ridiculous if French roads were 10 meters wide and Spanish roads were 50 meters wide. They developed organically, initially based on the size of people, then of horses, then horse-drawn carriages, and so on, and so forth. They got bigger, but you could still still see the natural origins. Even when they broke new ground, like I was saying, the cars were the size they were, and they weren’t going to make special cars for some hip, new region. I’m talking a lot about vehicles, because I can’t talk about the lions or the elephants yet. The point is, we’re starting from scratch here, and not limiting ourselves to tradition. Some of the vehicles are big, with giant observation bubbles which allow for 360 degree viewing all around. Man, it’ll be great in 15 or 20 years when this place is populated, and there are actually some cool things to see, but until then, we can literally only imagine.

Microstory 2451: Mud World: World of Mud

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Here we have another overly descriptive name, like Mountain Mountain or Substrate Development Dome. If you’re lookin’ for mud, they have it here. We got obstacle courses, wrestling, bogging. We got all sorts of sports. If it’s typically paid on the ground, you’ll be playing it on—see if you can guess—a muddy ground. Did you guess right? There are some places in Mud World that isn’t mud, and that’s because it’s SWAMPS! There are no boats, so you have to wade, or even swim, across in order to get from one sector of mud to another sector of mud. MUD! There is already a dome that’s dedicated exclusively to swamp and wetlands, but this one has both. That’s okay, there’s room for all of us. If you come here, you’re gonna get muddy. I know, big surprise. Like, there are only a bunch scattered points of respite from all the mud called King Hills where you can play King of the Hill. A few people can probably stand on the top of it, but there’s only supposed to be one. If you manage to secure it, you better not rest on your laurels, because I guarantee that someone else is gonna come challenge you within the next three seconds. It’s not that everyone is trying to get out of the mud, it’s just fun to push people around, and get pushed around...back down into the mud. If you don’t like mud, you’re not gonna have a good time. You walk through the doors, check in, and then walk down some stairs to the area. Once you get down to the bottom (and in the mud that I was talking about earlier), the stairs collapse, and the nearest other stairs could be miles away for the next group of visitors. You could try to get to one of those quickly, but why would you do that? You’re walking through mud! And mud is great! I don’t know how else to explain that this is a Mud World: World of Mud. I’m not just calling it that for fun, by the way; it’s the official name, which I’m guessing you know because you’re here, and if you’re here, then you must be interested in mud. Which is a good thing, because we got plenty of mud here. MUD! Okay, that’s enough—it’s enough mud! ENOUGH MUD! I’m done with the mud! It’s over! If you’re done with mud, walk over to the nearest exit, and step into a shower. Ah, that feels good. Nice to get all this mud off my body. The water is warm, the jets go every which way. You can stay in the shower as long as you want, they got loads of them; as far as the eye can see. I mean, you can’t see the other showers, they have partitions. Well, they do have group showers. If you wanna wash off in full view of others, that’s your business, and theirs. It’s not 2025, where everyone is sexually unhealthy, and self-conscious. When you’re done with the shower, they have hot tubs too. After you’re done tubbin’, please get back in the shower, because hot tubs are gross. I’ll take a pool of mud over a hot tub any day. HOT TUBS! And-or you can dry off, and leave the dome. You can leave the dome for good, or come back another time. Or hell, you can turn around right that instant, and get back into some muddy shenanigans in the mud. One last thought before I go: MUD!

Microstory 2057: Precision of Language

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The interview went about as well as it could. He didn’t seem to have a problem with the fact that I didn’t have a résumé. I spent so much time traveling the bulk, and dealing with all sorts of wildly different people, I almost forgot how unusual I am. I’m neurodivergent, which doesn’t mean much in the extreme diversity of the multiverse, but it matters here. The reason I’ve been saying this planet is boring is not just because the headlines are pussycat tame compared to the kind I’m used to, but people seem to be mostly humorless too. At least when people back home would make absolutely dreadful approximations of jokes, I knew that they were trying. They wanted to be funny, they just weren’t very good at it. Metaphor, simile, analogy, hyperbole; these all go over these people’s heads. By that I mean, you failed to comprehend it, not that an object moved over your physical head. I told the interviewer that I’ve been to a thousand parks in my day, and he wanted to see my log of them, which he assumed I would need in order to come to such a precise figure. He didn’t understand that I didn’t mean it literally. I’ve just been to a lot, but probably still under a hundred, I don’t know. When I explained as much, he understood, so these people are not like Drax in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise. They don’t have to take things literally, but it’s not intuitive for them to pick up on things like sarcasm and emotional nuance, and they have to think about it for a moment once you clarify. Fortunately, they also don’t seem perturbed about it, like the society in The Giver, which emphasizes something called precision of language. Listen to me, making pop culture references that you don’t get, because these stories don’t exist here. I guess that’s what I’ll do with my time. You do have fiction here, but it’s got to be different than the kind in other worlds if they’re more about just telling the story, and less about the poetry. Hopefully I hear back from the garden soon. I’m ready to get my hands dirty. Just so you understand, getting one’s hands dirty is an idiomatic expression that usually means being able to put in the work to accomplish something, rather than just sitting by and letting others do it. It can sometimes mean doing something bad, but it doesn’t have to. In my case, it’s to be taken seriously, though, so don’t worry. Gardening is dirty work.

Microstory 2052: Day Two

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I have to write this one really quickly, because I’m running out of money, and I know that I really shouldn’t be spending it on the internet, when what I really need is food and shelter, but I figure that I can get those things for free if I’m smart, or just later. First, while my immortality is gone, I’m still running on the energy that I got back when a window to the bulk briefly opened up. I probably won’t have to eat for at least for another week, maybe two. The weather is surprisingly mild here. They say it’s January in Kansas City, but it doesn’t feel like that. I don’t think the temperature—or the weather in general, for that matter—has changed once since I arrived here yesterday. Either your calendar is a lot different than the ones in other universes, or geography is. Maybe the continents drifted differently? Could this version of North America be closer to where the equator would be—wait, no, that doesn’t make any sense. I would have noticed that just by looking at a globe. The equator is the equator, regardless, and we’re about as distant from it as I recall. This is just super weird. Anyway, where was I? Oh, I had a little money in my pocket from Havenverse, and luckily, they use the same kind of bills here. I think that’s kind of how it works, though. Westfall is a special section of a universe-traveling machine called The Crossover. Westfall is seemingly random, and doesn’t send you clear across to a distant brane that’s unlike your own. The whole point is that you usually don’t even realize it’s happened. A lot of things are gonna be the same, like currency, and history, but apparently not weather. Still need to find a job, and a place to live, though. If anyone has any leads, hit me up in the comments. At this point, I’ll do pretty much anything. But I don’t deal with food or cleaning. Or waste or sewage. Or animals, because I’m allergic. And I really don’t like to work with my hands, or lift really heavy objects. I don’t want the environment to be too dirty or cold. I’m also not very skilled, so it needs to be entry level, but still pay extremely well. Other than that, I’m up for anything. Let me know, I’m gonna go take another nap in the park.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 14, 2398

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Ramses is back in his own body. That’s the first thing Mateo wanted done when they returned to Kansas City from their nearly three week-long ordeal into the bulkverse, and between the realities. They didn’t switch bodies, though. Ramses took his place where he belongs, but Erlendr was left in the Insulator of Life. He’ll be trapped there until he can be delivered to his fate in the afterlife simulation, where Past!Leona murders him with a zeroblade. Now no one is in Leona Reaver’s body. It’s destined to return to its native reality as well, so it can die for real—fortunately without the consciousness that once inhabited it, however. They have to figure out how they’re going to make that happen, just to be safe. They don’t want a doomed substrate floating around that someone might end up in without a chance to escape before fate intervenes, and destroys it forever.

Trina’s body is currently not being used either. Its original consciousness found itself in a new home in the main sequence, and lived a complete life from then on, choosing not to undergo any significant life extension treatments or enhancements. So that’s done, and will likely not be undone. Unlike Reaver’s body, Trina’s isn’t destined for anything. If they wanted to, they would be able to keep it indefinitely, but they’re not going to do that, because it’s unnecessary and macabre. Maybe if they were discussing an adult substrate, it would be one thing, but they don’t want to leave themselves open to the option of transferring someone into the body of a child. That’s just creepy. They might regret not having the alternative later, but they will burn that bridge when they come to it. Trina deserves to be put to rest in all her forms. They’re on their way to a memorial service, one that her brothers, Carlin and Moray can attend, since they could not be present for the first one.

In this region in the main sequence, normal people are not allowed to dig the graves for their family and friends. It’s a liability issue that requires paid employees to take part in the work. For religious reasons, the law can’t really stop it from being a thing, so that’s what they’ve chosen to do. They’ve selected a non-denominational cemetery, since Trina wasn’t old enough to come to her own decision about what faith she would follow. This is a sacred space where any interreligious squabbles people might have with one another are put aside. Everyone has the right to bid farewell to their loved ones. Carlin and Moray are young, but they’re both old enough to wield a shovel. They’re mainly responsible for the digging, but Mateo and Ramses are helping as well.

Now the youngest, little Moray has grown tired of the work, and they’re not even halfway through. He climbs out of the grave, embarrassed and ashamed. “It’s okay.” Heath has shown up without anyone realizing. “I got you.” He gently takes the shovel from the boy, and hops in to continue the digging.

“Thank you for coming,” Marie says to him.

“I’m not here for you.”

That’s when they notice that he did not come alone. Vearden and Arcadia are here too, arms locked together. Are they together, together? “We’re here for you, even though we don’t know you very well,” Vearden says.

“Have you two been living in the condo the whole time?” Kivi questions.

“Yeah, it’s an unfilmed updated reboot of Three’s Company,” Arcadia jokes softly.

Marie doesn’t know what to think of all this.

“We assumed that you ran off to a far corner of the Earth,” Leona tells them. “We never thought to look this close.”

“That’s what we were planning to do,” Arcadia says. “Starting at the Bran safehouse seemed like the most logical first step.”

“We didn’t know that someone would be coming back to it, especially not so soon,” Vearden adds. “We talked, and agreed to share the space as outcasts.”

“No one cast anyone out,” Marie argues.

“Let’s not fight today,” Heath requests.

Marie looks at her bare wrist. “Well, I’m free tomorrow, and everyday after that.”

“I’ll come back when I’m ready. Today is just about Trina and the McIvers.”

“How did you even find out about the service?” Mateo asks.

Heath can’t help but glance over at Angela, not sure if she wants to keep their link secret or not. They all look over at her. “Someone had to maintain contact. It’s a safety thing. Rule Number Thirteen, never get separated from the people you love. Please don’t ask me to pick sides.”

“Thank you,” Marie says to her alternate self, taking her by the hand affectionately. They smile mildly at each other.

Heath takes note of the tender moment, and then gets back to work.

Twenty minutes later, the job is done. The gravediggers move off to shower at the facilities, returning with the formal clothes they had brought. Heath didn’t have any extra clothes, because he didn’t come knowing that he would help, so the sexton provided him with a spare set of ceremonial robes to keep the dirt and grime covered. Leona was never officialized as a ship captain. She was chosen by the crew at a time when a leader was needed, and accepted by all who have joined the group since. The state would not usually acknowledge such a distinction, but it made an exception after a conversation with a certain U.S. senator. She performs the ceremony in this capacity, so the whole memorial can be kept in the family.

All three siblings speak to their relationship with Trina, but no one else speaks, because they did not know her well enough for that to be appropriate. At the end of the ritual, each attendee tosses a handful of dirt over Trina’s casket. To make up for having to quit earlier, Moray insists on finishing the burial all by himself, determined to stick to it no matter how long it takes. While the others return to the Lofts for the reception, Mateo hangs back so he can drive Moray home later. He gets it done quickly, then Mateo waits for him to take another shower. The reception is nice, and bigger than they thought it was going to be. Heath, Vearden, and Arcadia came with a bunch of food of their own. It’s considered a celebration, but a rather subdued one. They don’t drink and laugh and tell stories, or dance. They mostly listen to the siblings who knew her best, particularly Alyssa, who is able to relate stories she heard during Trina’s final moments. At the end of the day, the outcasts go back to the condo, and everyone else retires to their apartments.

That night, Ramses gets out of bed, and sneaks out of the building. He takes one of the cars, and drives back to the cemetery. He digs up Trina’s grave, steals the body, and then fills it back up exactly as it was, so that no one will notice. He takes Trina’s corpse to their building, and leaves her in a secret refrigerated room in the basement that he never told anyone about, in case he needed to store hazardous materials. When he wakes up the next morning, he has forgotten all about it.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 18, 2398

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Ramses looks at the time again, even though his hypothetical chronoceptor organs are operating at maximum efficiency, and he knows that it’s been around three minutes since he last looked, and also that Mateo isn’t due for another three minutes.

“How are we lookin’?” Winona asks. She’s about ten meters away, so everyone can hear her.

“No way to know until it happens,” he answers. Since Leona has been busy with her fusion work, Ramses has been consumed with harnessing the limited temporal power on this world. It’s the hardest job he’s had in his whole life, and it’s killing him. He barely sleeps, and eats too quickly, because every second spent holding food could delay progress. The problem is that his obsession has come with consequences. He rushed a teleporter out of the gate because he wanted to rescue Trina so badly, and now his best friend is stuck outside of the timestream. It was supposed to transport the site of the mine instantaneously, since that’s the whole point of teleportation, but he made a gross error in his calculations, and they ended up jumping forward two days. It’s not the first time that’s happened, and unless he gets his head out of his ass, it won’t be the last.

When The Constant imploded, it was replaced with a massive body of water, which Mateo called Danica Lake. He promptly passed out, and lost the memories that may have answered all the questions they had about the development, such as where the water came from, and why this happened at all, but that didn’t mean they were completely lost. With a little investigating, Ramses was able to learn that the water was there the whole time, just locked in an underground lake, and released from pipes by a series of valves. Those valves have been degrading over time, along with the pipes themselves, but they’re still there for now, and they can still be reversed, allowing some of the water to return to the ground. When the mine appears in the next two minutes, it’s going to displace billions of gallons of water, and if they hadn’t done something to prepare for that, it would have flooded the area. So really, the temporal delay was a good idea, and Ramses wishes that he could take credit for it. He never thought that Mateo would actually use the teleporter. It was only a last resort.

His thirty second warning alarm goes off. “Here it comes! Earplugs on!” When the lake first appeared, it made the news. Winona came up with a decent explanation for the public, which involved shifting tectonic plates releasing water from an underground lake, so it was almost half true. People have come from all over the world to see it, but while the filling of the lake was spectacular, it just looks like a regular body of water now, albeit shockingly deep for something in Kansas. The spectacle has since died down, and the last thing they need is to make another one. Fortunately, the agency team doesn’t have to cordon off the area to prevent people from witnessing the arrival. No one else is around. But they’ll probably hear it. He’s expecting a sonic boom.

Five, four, three, two, one, and...nothing. There’s no sonic boom. There’s no cloud of dirt. Maybe there was a little splash down there, but they can’t see it, because the water has been drained far below the edge to insulate them from that displacement issue, and they’re standing pretty far away. In cartoons, whenever the bad guy tries to shoot the good guy, the bullet either misses, or the gun just doesn’t go off, which makes sense, because these cartoons are meant for children, and not meant to be horrific. It’s perfectly okay for the bad guy to get himself shot, though—as long as it doesn’t kill him—and that’s usually what happens when he points the barrel towards his own face to figure out what’s goin’ on with the darn thing. Ramses knows that it’s a risk to stick his head over the edge, but someone’s gotta do it. What he finds there is a friendly face.

Mateo is treading water, and starts to swim over when he sees which direction to go. One of the military guys that Winona brought with her throws down a rope, and pulls him up. “Thanks,” Mateo says to him. He doesn’t look distressed, or scared, or anything. He’s perfectly okay, just a little wet. Well, he periodically grimaces as he’s standing there, but he must just be cold. He faces Ramses. “It worked. Nice. I guess you’ll have to get some divers down there to drag the bottom of the lake, though. Isn’t that what it’s called?”

“It’s not down there,” Ramses says.

Mateo looks down over the edge again. “Oh, no?”

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“The water would still be moving, and be a lot higher. You are the only thing that came through the teleporter.”

“Oh.” Mateo squints. “Are you sure?”

“Damn sure.”

“Maybe it’s coming later. We’ve had trouble with delays before.”

“You’re already two days late.”

Mateo looks over at the frowny Alyssa. “I’m sorry. It was supposed to take the whole mine, not just me.”

“It did,” Alyssa tells him.

Winona steps forward. “National Intelligence Authority assets on the ground confirmed it. The would-be mine is gone. All that soil and rock went somewhere.”

“Or somewhen,” Marie advises.

Mateo nods, and grimaces again, but this time also leans forward, and reaches for his stomach.

“Are you okay?” Alyssa places a hand on his back.

“I’m fine. It must just be that Mongolian breakfast. They must have made it with a little citrus.”

“What does that matter?” Alyssa asks.

“It doesn’t travel well,” Marie explains.

“Really?” Winona asks. “You never told me that.”

“I was a non-traveler for four years. It didn’t occur to me to mention things like that, I suppose.”

“That’s not it,” Ramses contends. “There’s something seriously wrong with him.”

“Really, I’m fine,” Mateo insists. But he’s not fine. He lurches, and gets down on all fours, groaning in pain. He retches once, and twice. He looks like a cat trying to cough up a furball. People are standing around him, debating what they could do to help, when he does manage to cough something up. It’s a rock, but not just any rock. It’s a beautiful stone of many colors. It is red, and yellow, and green, and brown, and scarlet, and black, and ochre, and peach, and ruby, and olive, and violet, and fawn, and lilac, and gold, and chocolate, and mauve, and cream, and crimson, and silver, and rose, and azure, and lemon, and russet, and gray, and purple, and white, and pink, and orange, and blue. It could be tourmaline, but it’s probably timonite.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 10, 2398

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The map was finished when Mateo woke up the next morning. It took him a few minutes to confirm what he was seeing, since he didn’t exactly take any training to use this software. According to this data, there is indeed some kind of access shaft right about where he always suspected there should be. That’s all he can tell about it. He’ll only have to dig a few meters down in order to reach the empty space. It’s too square and perfect to have been made by natural causes. Someone built something down there, and then covered it up. It can’t be anything but The Constant, because that would be too great a coincidence. He’s so excited. This is the first time since coming to this reality that a plan someone on the team came up with to find answers has actually gone well. Furthermore, he’s the one who conceived it, which is just wild considering...

The joy of success wears off quickly when Mateo realizes that there’s a huge problem here. Just because there’s something down there doesn’t mean he can go down and get to it. The Lebanese people won’t—is that what he should call them? Probably not. The people who live in Lebanon, that is, surely won’t care for it, or maybe just not whoever owns this particular acre. Scanning is one thing. It wasn’t hard for him to run the machine over this land without causing a stir. It might even be public land, but that doesn’t mean he can excavate it. Now he’s both literally and figuratively at a crossroads, and he needs help.

Just then, as if she could sense his desire, Leona calls. The quality is loud and clear, but she pretends that it’s shoddy. “Captain. Can you hear me?”

“What?”

“On your left.”

“You’re the Captain.”

She sighs. “I know, which is just one more reason why I should be there, and you should be in this car. Look to your left,” she reiterates.

He looks over to find Heath’s flying carboat coming right for him down Highway 191. “Did you get up to drive in the middle of the night?”

“We flew most of the way,” Heath answers proudly. “That’s why I bought this.”

“I was trying to remain conspicuous,” Mateo complains.

“Inconspicuous, you mean,” Leona teaches.

“I’ve heard it both ways.”

The giant vehicle pulls over into the grass, and parks right next to the location of the ground anomaly. Leona gets out first. “You bought that thing with our shared credit card,” she begins to explain. “That means I had access to the serial number, and therefore the data in the app. Angela happened to be awake early, and noticed what you found. So we took off work, piled in here, and came out to investigate with you.”

“I’m sorry I left without you. I was just worried how Danica would react.”

“It’s fine,” Leona says sincerely. “We’re not mad. We’re all kind of doing our own thing. It’s time for a joint adventure, though.”

“I found what I was looking for, but not necessarily who. My cousin may not even be alive. If this reality suppresses powers, then she died billions of years ago.”

“Somehow, I doubt that,” Ramses says with a smirk. He’s walking over the access shaft, arms down at his sides, feeling the air churning under his palms. “Do you feel that?”

“I felt it when I arrived,” Mateo agrees. “It’s become stronger since you showed up.”

“There’s temporal energy here,” Ramses believes. “There may be enough.”

“Enough for what?” Marie questions.

His smirk widens. He closes his eyes to concentrate, locks onto the apparent energy around him, and disappears.

Heath is shocked. “I always believed. I always believed it was all real, but a part of me still experienced doubt.”

Marie takes him by the shoulders, and leads him closer to the shaft. “That’s fair. I’m glad you stuck by me, and you will be too. The first time is always a rush. “She holds on tight, and jumps him down to meet Ramses.

The other three come together, and follow. The lights are on in the elevator, and a little beyond the open doors, but no farther. Ramses is already venturing out, and Marie is smiling at Heath’s look of exhilaration.

“Hey, computer...I’m home,” Mateo says out loud.

“Welcome,” comes the AI’s voice. Lights begin to illuminate for them, but never get too bright, possibly to conserve power.

The team continues down the passageways, splitting off every once in a while to check out rooms to see if there’s anything of note in them. All but Angela meet back up in the main lounge once it becomes rather clear that they’re the only ones down here, and it’s probably been this way for quite a long time. “Computer, report.”

“I’m afraid I do not understand.”

“What happened down here?”

“You arrived seven minutes, thirty-two seconds ago.”

“What happened before we arrived?” Leona clarifies.

“No data available,” the computer answers.

“I’ll look into it more,” Leona tells the group. “There might be answers in the system that the processor doesn’t have direct access too, or even a handwritten note on the refrigerator.”

“This alone is a pretty big answer,” Mateo points out. “Just the fact that it’s here proves that we may have everything we need to get everything we ever wanted. We could leave, not leave, travel back and forth. This gives us possibilities that we didn’t have yesterday, or at least lights us the way.”

“You were right,” Leona admits. “This is real.”

Angela walks in. “So is the med bay. I think we can work with this. Marie, you’re gonna be okay.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 9, 2398

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Mateo is just driving a regular car, rather than the flying carboat—a form factor which definitely needs a new name, or at least that particular vehicle needs its own designation. This car he’s using today is not even Heath’s at all. Ramses and Leona pooled the money they made from their first paychecks at their three jobs, and put a down payment on a second one for the team. It’s an SUV that can fit all six of them, and then some. It just makes practical sense to have two standard forms of transport, even if two members will soon embark on a long-term mission with that third vehicle. Mateo didn’t tell anyone that he was leaving. Well, he leaves every day, usually to go to therapy, or the library, so the real problem is that he didn’t tell them where he was going this time. About halfway into the trip, Ramses evidently experiences a psychic vision, and decides to call him up on the video screen, which is overlaid on the windshield.

“You don’t need to know that,” Mateo replies when asked for his whereabouts.

“Something is wrong, I can feel it.”

“I thought we weren’t empaths anymore,” Mateo says.

“We shouldn’t be, but maybe our powers are slowly coming back. Or you’re drawing nearer to a location of great power, and that’s helping? Where are you?”

“You tell me.”

“If I had to guess? Lebanon.”

“Close. Manhattan.”

“What’s in Manhattan?”

“It’s...on the way to Lebanon.”

“So I’m right. You’re hoping to get into the Constant.”

“I am, yes. It will be harder since it’s not the center of the country in this reality, so they won’t advertise the location, but the Constant was built billions of years ago. There is no reason to believe there’s not a version of it here, and if there is, it’s an hour from my current location.”

“We don’t know where the point of divergence was,” Ramses reasons. “Angela is still researching history. The Constant is a secret place, which could have been moved without anyone knowing.”

“Why would they do that?”

“That, sir, is an unknown unknown.”

“I’m gonna check anyway.”

“What are you looking for, the church above?”

“Why don’t these cars have autopilot?”

“I don’t know,” Ramses says.

They do have some advanced cruise control features, which allows Mateo to participate in a video call, and also reach behind his seat to struggle to lift a box up with one hand. “Can you..can you see that?”

“I see a box. What is it?”

“Ground-penetrating radar.”

“You’re just going to go to where you think the church would be in the main sequence, and search for signs of an access shaft?”

“Bingo was his name-o,” Mateo confirms.

“Why are you doing this? Why aren’t you just waiting until Heath, Marie, and Angela can get their affairs in order? Are you really this anxious for answers?”

He’s not doing it for himself, or even to get his people back home. It’s for Marie. The Constant was designed with all sorts of advanced technology, including medical equipment. They don’t need to trust an outsider if he can make contact with Danica. “If I can find my cousin, she can help us complete Marie’s procedure, and she can do it in such a way that it doesn’t leave evidence, and we know that she won’t rat us out. It’s a far better alternative than Croatia.”

“Why didn’t you tell us, or ask one of us to come with you? Do you even know how to use GPR?”

“I don’t know how to use GPR. It comes with instructions. I didn’t tell anyone, because I don’t want to spook her. She trusts me more than anyone, and I’m more likely to be invited if I’m alone.”

“That’s a stretch,” Ramses contends. “We’ve all been down there too.”

“And you will again one day,” Mateo promises. “Just not today. I’m not going anywhere. I’m just looking for help.”

“Fine. Just be careful, and stay in touch.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Having spent a relatively small amount of time in the Lebanon area in the past, Mateo doesn’t know exactly where he’s going. He sort of has to take for granted the likelihood that the roads at least are the same. He starts in the town proper, then makes his way North, backtracking a little until he figures he has reached the correct crossroads. In the main sequence, the actual center of the U.S. is located in a rough triangle, rather than a four-way intersection, which makes it even harder to guess, but this must be it. It’s just about two miles from town, yeah, it has to be.

He removes the various parts of the radar thing from the box, and begins to assemble it. It takes him a few hours to get through it, at which point he finds himself too hungry to go on with the mission, so he stops to eat some lunch. Then he spends the rest of the sunlit hours scanning the ground, hoping to find any evidence that there’s something below his feet besides more dirt and rocks. He looks for landmarks on the surface too; perhaps an interesting tree, or a boulder. They don’t really have that second thing in Kansas, so it would be very out of place. He’s assuming that this version of Danica opted out of an entrance for normal people, and just teleports herself whenever she needs to, but there might be an emergency exit somewhere too.

The machine isn’t designed to just beep when it finds some kind of anomaly. It sends waves into the ground, which detect impediments along the way. This is how the machine measures density, and estimates composition. A picture of the soil below does begin to form on the data screen, but it’s incomplete until the entire data can be synthesized into a full image. He pretty much has to scan the whole area strip by strip before he can find out whether it’s found anything of note. He’s done with a good chunk of land when the sun sets, so he stuffs the thing back in the back, crawls into the passenger seat, and goes to sleep so the computer can continue its work. He’ll check it in the morning.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 11, 2398

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Anxious, and needing to feel useful, Mateo took time in the morning alone, coming up with plans. He reorganized his list of all the places he had visited at some point, in some timeline, into a list by proximity to the team’s current location. Some of the more distant places would be more difficult, but surely doable. Then again, he didn’t know that much about this reality, so maybe they would turn out to be impossible. Now that it’s complete, he’s presenting it to Leona.

“Well, Antarctica is going to have to wait.”

“Why?” Mateo asks.

She stares at him in that face she displays when she wants him to figure it out on his own.

“Because it’s cold.”

“Because it’s cold,” she confirms. “You really can’t go until the summer, which for the southern hemisphere...”

“Is winter for us.”

“That’s right. That being said, maybe there are different rules here. It doesn’t turn into the moon, it’s just more treacherous. As for Easter Island, I dunno. For these people, it may just be another random island in the middle of the ocean, or a nature preserve. These are all special temporal locations for us, but who knows what things are like here? Think about what your life was like before you became a time traveler. These were mounds of dirt, and grass, and flora. There were animals, and roads, and precipitation, and bodies of water. It really feels like this is the manifestation of that original assumption about the world. Nobody here knows that time travel exists, partially because...it doesn’t.”

“Somebody knows something,” Mateo reasons. “Obviously what we need to do first is go to Lebanon.”

“I think you should go back to the parking lot.” Heath has entered the room, holding a tray of assorted breakfast beverages. “At first, it seemed random that Marie should show up there, but your arrival at the same place changes the math. Maybe it’s special. Maybe it is for your reality too, but you never knew it.”

“Maybe,” Leona concedes. “It’s certainly closer than the Center of the U.S.”

“The center of the U.S. isn’t in Lebanon,” Heath declares as if it should be obvious.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s Gothenburg.”

“Is that a band, errr...?” Mateo jokes.

“It’s a small town in Nebraska,” Heath tells them.

“Lee-Lee, how is this possible?” Mateo questions.

She thinks about it for a moment, then faces Heath. “Could you show me a map of the United States?”

“Yeah, here.” He takes a phablet out of the pocket of his cargo shorts, and pulls up a map service neither of them are familiar with.

“Whoa,” Mateo notes, staring at it. “What the hell am I looking at here?”

“It’s just a south-up map,” Leona explains.

“But why? It’s freaking me out.”

“Why would north have to be up?”

“Because most of the world is in the northern hemisphere,” Mateo reasons, thinking he’s so clever.

“Eh, whatever. Besides, that’s not even the point here. Look at that. Most of Texas belongs to Mexico. Some of Canada is in the United States. Geography is a human construct, not an inherent one. These incongruent borders are more than enough to change the location of the center of an arbitrary geographic mass.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Mateo says. “My cousin lives in The Constant, which is underneath Lebanon. They didn’t move it two centuries ago, or whenever the borders were created. It’s been there for billions of years. That’s still where we need to go.”

“I would check both places,” Heath suggests. “Might as well. You’re gonna be here for a while. Money’s not an issue, if that’s what you’re worried about. We can support everyone here, in whatever venture you need.”

“Thanks,” Leona says. “I do have one question, but I’ll probably have more.”

“Shoot,” Heath allows.

“Ya know what, I have two questions actually,” she amends.

Heath nods

“What is this drink?”

“Hagadesfām juice. It’s a fruit from the Arabian Garden.”

“I’ve never heard of it. Have you ever heard of The Beatles?”

“Is that a band, errr...?”

Microstory 1490: Birth of a Big Problem

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One of the first things that the people of Durus voted on for the Solar Democratic Republic was what to do about the Time Crevice that Escher Bradley was trapped in for a hundred and eighty years. It was too dangerous to leave lying around, even with guards protecting people from it. There was no reason for something like that to exist, so it was vital that they find some way of getting rid of it. Of course, any attempt at destroying it could have devastating consequences, and completely backfire on whoever was unlucky enough to be assigned the task. If they were going to do this, it would have to be by fighting fire with fire, using paramount powers against it, once and for all. The first thing they needed to do was study it, not only to understand its properties, but also to know its range. Obviously, anyone who walked through it would start experiencing time at a much slower rate, but where exactly did that start, and where did it end? If they dug a tunnel from five meters away, when would it start happening for them too? Was it the rock? Some kind of temporal gas inside the crevice. An invisible man in there who was just controlling the whole thing for kicks and giggles? After all this research, they came up with a few options. There were some paramounts who had the ability to control the flow of time, and could potentially alter it for the Time Crevice. Unfortunately, none of them was successful. They could hold a time lock for a period of realtime, but unless they actively remained there, it would always snap back to the way it was, so that wasn’t a long-term solution. Perhaps they could simply bury it, so that no one could accidentally end up in there anyway. Well, that would take quite a long time, because remember that one second for the crevice was one day everywhere else. It took weeks to make any noticeable progress, and years until completion. Then someone had a bright idea to rid themselves of the problem forever.

A former president of the Democratic Republic suggested that they remove the crevice altogether. There were definitely paramounts powerful enough to rip it out of the ground, and banish it from the surface of the planet, at least when working in tandem. To be safe, they could even remove a kilometer diameter of land along with it, and hey, free crater. The risk was great, but if they could jettison the entire thing into space, they wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. Fixing the time discrepancy or burying the crevice would have been fine to do once they covered the logistics. Something like this, however, couldn’t be decided by just the people involved. All Durune had to have a say in the matter, so they put it on the ballot for the 2205 elections, to make sure everyone had a voice. The great thing about this, which was one of many this democracy enjoyed, was that no one was fighting too hard one way or the other. Everyone could agree that they wanted to do what was best for Durus, and if that meant going back to the drawing board, then that was what they would do. Earthan governments experienced a lot of infighting, but not Durus; not anymore. There was only one side now. The ballot measure passed, not with unanimous votes, but not by a small margin either. The necessary paramounts started working together immediately, to make sure they could perform this amazing feat in one go. They had never apported anything quite this large before, so it was important that they took their time, and got it right. Once they were ready and confident, they got into position, took out the huge chunk of land, and sent it into outerspace, in a fairly random direction. They didn’t come out of it unscathed. A lot of them ended up with psychic nosebleeds, and one developed a chronic migraine condition. She was okay with it, though, because she felt they had saved a lot of lives, or at least a major hassle that might have been. Sadly, they didn’t consider all of the angles, and that chunk of rock would one day come back to bite them in the ass. It wouldn’t be for decades, but it would ultimately change everything about how Durus operated, and potentially destroy all they had worked for since the beginning.

Microstory 1433: Peak Valley

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Before there was even a spark of an idea to build the eighth town of Astau, construction began on a new town called Peak Valley. It may seem like an oxymoron, but there really was a smallish mountain to the south of Springfield and Splitsville, on top of which was a sort of bowl that looked like any other valley. Experts believed it once housed a glacier, but they couldn’t explain what would have happened to all the water on the surface. In fact, it was a question they never answered about the whole world. There were signs of water erosion all over the place, but no liquid or solid water anywhere. The planet must have ventured close enough to its star to evaporate it all away before that star expelled it from its system, but there really wasn’t any proof of that either. Regardless, the real magic of the Peak Valley was that there was an extra seed portal from Earth there. For the most part, seeds only showed up on Durus in a certain region, and any plants that grew beyond it did so due to the normal spread of vegetation. They appeared from small flashes of light, like fireflies. It wasn’t particularly safe, because of the monsters, but teenagers liked to go there on quick romantic getaways, and watch the seeds appear. The Peak Valley was the only other place where this happened. It would have been a nice place to live all along. While monsters definitely had the ability to climb up the side of the mountain, or simply fly, it was still a well-fortified area. It was easy to see them coming from pretty much anywhere in the valley, which would give mages enough time to prepare for an attack. As always, the main reason they never settled there before was because of resources. It was difficult to pump water up from Watershed, but as time went on, both technology and time powers promoted progress. By the 2070s, it was a sufficiently viable option. The filter portaler would remain in Distante Remoto, where she belonged—even though they could have used her—because there were other ways of getting what they needed, which they didn’t always have. Laying pipe in the ground was a fairly easy endeavor when dirt could be teleported out of a hole, the pipe could be teleported into the hole, and then the dirt could be teleported back on top of it. The new town was initially planned for a 2075 completion date, but in 2072, a new member of Mad Dog’s Army was sourced who could make quantum replications of objects. A single pipe could be manufactured once, and then copied thousands of times. This process was not instantaneous, but it started moving a lot quicker once the quantum replicator joined the project. Peak Valley was finished in 2073, and prospered for seventeen years.

Microstory 1403: Two Against the World

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When Escher Bradley first arrived on Durus, he met a few people. They were all time travelers, though, so they didn’t stick around for long. After his first harrowing adventure, his rival went away for a little while, and seemingly left him alone. His battle with that alien enemy resulted in him now possessing an exorbitant amount of temporal energy. He would come to discover that he did not exactly possess any time powers of his own. He could absorb energy that others expelled, and then relocate it somewhere else, but he generally couldn’t control it. If he held it in too long, it could start deteriorating his mind and body, though, so he would always have to get rid of it. In the beginning, the energy itself sustained him, though. He didn’t need to eat or sleep for the next several days. Not knowing how long this would last, he knew he had to find a source of water. He wandered the planet for about a week before he finally found a small pond. He knew the right thing to do would be to boil the water to make it drinkable, but he didn’t have the proper resources, so he just drank it up, and hoped for the best. It was hard to explain, but as he drank, the water seemed to be communicating with the temporal energy. No, they weren’t communicating. They were harmonizing with each other. His body and the pond vibrated in sync, and he could just feel that they were now being drawn towards each other. To see what would happen, he released a small fraction of the power. It suddenly started raining for a few seconds. He released some more, and it rained some more. If this was the only source of water—and there was no way back to Earth—then expanding the source was the best use of his power. He released the rest all at once, and started a downpour...which never stopped. He had just created what the Durune would come to know as Watershed. It would be the only place to get water for the next two hundred plus years. The rain was heavy enough to alert the planet’s only other permanent inhabitant, Savitri. She raced over there as fast as she could, and found Escher walking out of the rain boundary. They were both shocked to see each other, but then Escher’s surprise wore off when he assumed it was merely his enemy, Effigy, who was known to alter her appearance to deceive people. It took Savitri at least two years of proving herself before he seemed satisfied that her presence was not a trick. Nonetheless, all the while, Escher was teaching Savitri everything he knew about everything. He taught her how to speak, and then by drawing in the dirt, how to read and write. He recalled the few lessons he received in elementary school, though most of it wasn’t all that useful here. She taught him survival skills, but he was able to bolster them from his more traditional education. They had about nine years before Effigy showed back up and started giving them trouble.

Microstory 921: Hand Sanitizer

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I discussed hand sanitizer in the Stepwisdom entry about Cleanliness in general; wherein I recount my first experience with the stuff as being God-adjacent. For someone like me, cleanliness is extremely important. I’m not a germaphobe, mind you. I get sick all the time, and it has been this way my whole life. I’m not afraid of being infected by something, and I’m about 83% that, if the zombie virus ever plagued this world, I would be immune to it. What I have a problem with is cross-contamination. My OCD is what gives me the need to control the nature of my environment, but it’s my autism that dictates what how that environment should ideally be. There’s this trope you can find on the web called Blessed With Suck. Basically, a character will be burdened with some supernatural ability that is mundane, pointless, or downright inconvenient. There are a lot of superpowers that I occasionally believe myself to possess, like being able to see the future, or sensing other people’s emotions. The one power that I actually do have, all the time, is the ability to feel the ick around me. If you were to clean a table thoroughly, I would be able to touch that table, and tell that it’s happened. No big deal, right? Anyone can intuit the cleanliness of an object. Now imagine you ran your palm along the tabletop. Your hand isn’t particularly dirty; you weren’t picking your nose, or chalking up to climb a mountain. It was just your hand. Well, I can tell that too. I won’t know exactly what happened, but I’ll be able to tell that something contaminated that surface, and it’ll bother me. I once worked with this girl in a room where all the tables were pushed together, and we sat around it. She would put her feet up on her section, and—I dunno, doodle “Mrs. Donald Trump” in a notebook, I guess. When it was lunch time, she would go grab her food, and place her fork on that table...right where her shoes were. Then she would use that fork to pick up food, and put it all in her mouth. She was putting dirt in her mouth, along with animal feces, and God knows what else she’d walked through. Because she was a crazy person. People think I’m weird for walking around with hand sanitizer, but it makes me feel safe, and it makes it a lot more difficult for me to put poop in my mouth. Can you honestly say the same?

Microstory 860: Pyramid Scheme

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I have never seen anything so evil and twisted done in the name of science. Decades ago, and in some cases more recently, there was little regulation regarding what kind of experiments could be done, and which could not. True scientists have always known that you cannot kill someone in order to understand death, or something related to it. You could also never harm anyone, though exactly what qualifies as harm is always changing. For years, there was a huge patch of land in the desert that was a no fly zone. Outsiders were not allowed within its borders, and by some special handshake with the government, risked being shot if they trespassed. A bunch of politics happened that I had nothing to do with. We elected a new president, and there were some changes to our federal investigative system organization, which meant what was assumed to be a desert cult was no longer protected. Fearing something terrible, the military was sent in to raid the desert, not at all certain what they would find in the center of it. It turned out to be a pyramid. It wasn’t particularly large, but it was built with modern materials, and perfectly maintained. They forced their way into the facility, and discovered a relatively small group of researchers who acquiesced peacefully. All they asked was that their experiment not be disturbed, for it was extremely sensitive, and the introduction of new stimuli could result in severe psychological trauma. The soldiers went into the center rooms anyway, and found several teenagers living there. As per the warning, the kids were profoundly afraid of these new strangers. Upon being carried to the outside, they began screaming, crying, and thrashing about. At first, as implausible as it seemed, the soldiers thought they were dealing with vampires, they were do violent. But the researchers explained that they had been conducting a social experiment for the better part of two decades. The subjects were taken from supposedly unfit parents, who were rewarded substantially. I never heard how much money they were given for their children, or even whether it was true at all. All I know is that it is my job to help these kids acclimate to the world.

They spent their entire lives inside the walls of the facility. They were told literally nothing of the universe beyond. They weren’t even told that there was a universe beyond. As far as they knew, the total breadth of reality topped out at around three thousand cubic meters. You can’t even imagine how bewildered they were when they were suddenly exposed to the dirt, to succulents, to the sun and the sky. They had no concept of these things, or frame of reference. They were taught the English language, but the researchers were exceptionally careful with what words they uttered. They said nothing that would even suggest the possibility there was more to the world than just this pyramid, and just this handful of people. It’s unclear what the researchers were attempting to accomplish with this. Perhaps they were intending to release them at some point, and observe their reactions. Or maybe they just wanted to see how humans behaved in a controlled microcosm. I have been told that there was little schooling in the pyramid. There was no use in teaching them agriculture, or animal names, or even that much math. As far as they could tell, everything would always be spontaneously provided for them, so they never thought to ask for anything else. Not a single one of them was so much as moderately suspicious that everything their elders had told them was just a lie. I don’t know how I’m going to explain everything to them, but I have been given the freedom to choose my own method of treatments, and move at whatever pace is needed. There is no time limit. Still, I see that the longer I take to prepare for them to survive without their elders, the harder it’s going to be to make any progress at all. I hope I don’t damage their vulnerable minds even more.

Microstory 808: Diamond in the Rough

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When I was younger, I used to hang out with the neighborhood kids. As I grew up, I realized that we weren’t so much friends as our proximity simply made it really convenient. We grew apart when our age differences became more noticeable, and a couple of us moved away. But before then, we liked to sneak into construction sites, and our neighborhood had a lot of them, because it was still quite nascent. One day, we strayed a little too far from where we all lived, and discovered a site we didn’t know about. It was completely cordoned off with barbwire fencing, and warning signs. Now, you have to remember that this was the late 90s, when parents let their children go out for hours at a time. We didn’t have cell phones, and we didn’t tell each other everything. It was perfectly normal for us to be so far from home, and in such a dangerous place. Being the ever mischievous ones, we found a point of weakness in the fence, and broke in. At first, it all looked like any other site. It was particularly large, so it probably wasn’t designated for a single house, but otherwise, nothing was out of place. There were tools leaning up against an office module, a pair of work gloves accidentally dropped on the ground, and various heavy machinery scattered about. Then one of us—I can’t remember which—noticed something shiny on the ground. I picked up the gloves, and used them to brush away more of the dirt, fancying myself a junior archaeology excavator. It almost looked like diamond. But that couldn’t be true, it was larger than a manhole cover. Reena, who had the ability to move particles with her mind, came over, and spread the dirt some more, revealing the diamond-like surface underneath to be even larger than we believed. Glenn grabbed a pick axe, and tried to break into it, but couldn’t even make a scratch. It must have been a diamond. Ralph, our resident mechanic, hacked into all the vehicles, and moved them off to the edges. Reena swept away the rest of the dirt, revealing the full diamond, which was in the shape of a baseball diamond. Knowing we wouldn’t be able to lift the thing out of the dirt and sell it, or something, we ignored our fantastical ideas of greed, and just decided to play baseball on it. I never liked sports, but that was definitely the best day of my life. When we went back the next day, the diamond was gone, having left only a giant crater behind, and a group of clearly confused government agents, who thankfully didn’t catch us. And so here we are at the brink of my upteenth archaeological dig. I think I’ve finally figured out what the diamond baseball diamond was, and what happened to it. Madam, if you would just provide me with the funding we need, I can prove my theory that these diamond structures are ancient spaceships. I eagerly await your response.

Best Regards,

Dr. Herbert Ruff