The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 18, 2399

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Ramses purged the version of Constance that he had uploaded to The Bridgette. They don’t know if it’s been compromised, but they can’t take any chances. The AI served them well for a long time without giving them any issues, or giving them any reason to doubt it. It’s only when the one from the Fifth Division showed up that they started having issues. The question is, is it even from the Fifth Division? Was that all a lie? Did Impostor!Mateo give them a partial truth? Could it have been an anti-Alyssa who was just using their illusion powers to pretend to be Mateo, while having a backup plan of prompting the wrong investigation if they were even discovered to be an impostor?

Leona, Ramses, and the McIvers are in an SD6 safehouse right now. It’s not completely devoid of electronics, but there aren’t any microphones that could listen in on their conversation, which they are having in the kitchen while the boys play a card game in the one and only bedroom. “Any ideas?” Leona asks. She waits for a response that never comes. “We were all meant to sleep on it.”

“I doubt anyone slept well under these conditions,” Alyssa notes.

“You’re the one who had the bed,” Ramses points out.

“With two smelly boys in puberty,” she counters.

“We heard that!” Carlin shouts from the room.

“I wasn’t trying to be quiet!” she shouts right back.

“All right,” Leona says. “Are we all in agreement?”

“Agreement of what?” Ramses questions, confused.

“We all agree that we don’t know what the fuck we’re doing, and we don’t have any idea how to proceed?

“Heard that too!” young Moray exclaims.

“First we have to decide whether we think that was Mateo, infected by a psychic, or someone else entirely?” Alyssa says. “If it’s the latter, we need to find the real Mateo.”

“It’s not really something we can decide, but yes. I’m not sure how we go about doing that. It’s not like we can look for a scar underneath his right eye, or something. It’s entirely reasonable that he would get himself into a pristine body. The impostor’s story about Mateo going to the Fifth Division was not unbelievable.”

“You think that really happened, but Constance!Five somehow transformed herself into him, and left him somewhere?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time. Fax!Mateo did it so he could sacrifice himself in Alt!Mateo’s body.”

“This is getting confusing,” Alyssa admits. “Has your life always been like this?”

“It hasn’t,” Leona begins. “Back in the day, when Mateo and I were just jumping forward in time, we met a lot of time travelers, but we never had to wonder whether they were the wrong version of someone we already knew. I mean, there was The Rogue, and then Makarion after that, but it didn’t happen nearly as much as it does now. For a reality that doesn’t allow temporal manipulation, there do seem to be a lot of wibbly wobbly, timey-wimey shit. Sorry,” she adds in reference to the children.

“It’s fine,” Alyssa promises.

Young Moray comes down the hallway, pulling away from every attempt of Carlin’s to keep him back. “What about the error detector?”

“What do you mean?” Leona asks.

“That thing you had in the sky. It told you where all the weird time people were, right? If the real Mr. Matic is somewhere else, that should be able to find him, right?”

Leona looks over at Ramses. “We need to replace that anyway to find the remaining errors, don’t we, since the AOC is gone?”

“Oh my God, the AOC!” Ramses laments. The error detector was on that, and now it’s gone. He feels so stupid. It would have been so easy to deploy a nanosatellite from the AOC, and it’s a lot more difficult now that they have to rely on this antiquated Third Rail technology. Months of living here, and he has still not gotten used to that. He keeps making these mistakes, and it’s really starting to piss him off. “The detector isn’t up there anymore. I’m such an idiot.”

“Now hold on,” Alyssa says. “Maybe we don’t need it. If Mateo isn’t dead—which, I’m guessing the detector wouldn’t detect anyway—and our theory is correct, then Constance!Five is keeping him somewhere relatively safe. He would need food, water, shelter. She hasn’t been here long, so she doesn’t know of a whole lot of places.”

“It would appear that she knows everything that Mateo does,” Leona replies. “He has a lot of places in his head.”

“How many of those places are isolated or hidden, so no one will stumble upon him?” Alyssa asks.

“Where was he last time,” Carlin offers, “the first time this happened?”

“The bunker,” Leona answers. She gets out of her chair, then just stands there.

“What’s happening?” Ramses asks her.

“I can’t jump,” she replies. “This body metabolizes temporal energy too quickly.”

“I don’t have any left either,” Ramses says apologetically. “I’ve had to use a lot recently, and I’m in no position to synthesize more.”

“I can still feel the power in this body. If that’s okay with you?”

“No, go, please.” Leona urges. “No one else will go with you to conserve the power you have left. I’ll show you where it is on the map, then we’ll catch up with you by car.”

Alyssa teleports to the middle of the forest, and can instantly feel that it was her last trip. She either gets her hands on more temporal energy, or she never jumps again. Her mother taught her how to read a map without satnav, so she can also tell that she’s a little off the mark, but not too far away. She carefully climbs down the hill, and finds the secret entrance to the underground bunker. She slides down the ladder to find Mateo on the opposite wall. He’s nearly naked, strapped to what seems to be a wire bed frame. He looks dehydrated and exhausted. “Oh my God! What happened to you!”

“Fuh...” he’s really struggling to speak. “Cons...conste...”

“Constance!Five, yeah, we know. She was impersonating you.”

“No.” He shakes his head while she tries to get the restraints off. He musters what little energy he has left. “Constellation.” He passes out.

“What?”

One more push. “Constellation. Phoenix. We have to go there.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 17, 2399

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Ramses is watching the footage from the lab yesterday. The current feed is running on the other screen, showing Mateo sitting on his bed, and doing nothing of note. Leona walks into the room. “How’s Arcadia?” he asks her.

“They say that she’s in a coma, but...”

“But it’s more than that.”

“Yeah. If it were anyone else, she’s the one I would call to go inside her mind, and figure out what’s wrong.”

“Yeah.”

“What have you found here?”

Ramses rewinds the video, and plays it again. “See for yourself.”

“Did they bring you in to see if I’m really Mateo?” Mateo asks.

“Are you?” Arcadia asks.

“I’m an open book. Read my mind if you’d like.”

Arcadia closes her eyes, apparently using her psychic powers on Mateo. After a few minutes, she reopens them. “Your story checks out. I don’t see anything in there that suggests you’re anyone other than who you say you are.”

“I told you. I don’t like to lie.”

“I’ll go tell the others.”

Mateo nods, unsurprised by the verdict. He turns away to pull the sheets off the bed, presumably in anticipation of having to wash them before the next guest arrives. That’s when Arcadia collapses. He turns back around, and starts banging on the glass. Remembering that there’s an emergency button by the door, he runs over and pushes it, prompting Ramses and Marie to run in. The rest of the video plays out as they remember it. As for how it all began, it doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense.

Ramses and Leona exchange quizzical looks. She holds her hand out to him, which he takes. They teleport to the middle of a forest in Nowheresville, Russia. “What the hell did we just watch?”

“A deepfake is my guess,” Ramses replies. “But, like, a really good one.”

“How did Mateo do it? He doesn’t know how to do that.”

“It’s not Mateo.”

“He knows things.”

“Maybe he knows things the same way that Arcadia can know things.”

“If...whoever that is is powerful enough to generate a deepfake remotely without any obvious means of interfacing with the recording system...”

“Then the containment chamber is useless, at least in the lab.”

“Which means the entire facility has been compromised, and nothing in there can be trusted.”

“What are we gonna do with that thing?”

Ramses shakes his head. “We have to move it.”

“Where?”

“The where is not the problem, it’s the how. I would have to build a mobile containment chamber, get him inside, and hope that he doesn’t interfere with any of the systems of the vehicle we put him on. This is after we build a second full-sized chamber elsewhere. And that’s assuming any of this matters. My guess is that he can’t use his time powers while inside, but can use whatever else he can do.”

“But that’s just a guess.”

“He may be playing the long game, and only pretending to be trapped.”

Leona tilts her head. “Wait, the lock is electronic. He could just open it.”

“There’s a mechanical component,” he explains. “It’s just a sliding bar, but you need hands to open it.”

“Ah, I didn’t realize that. I haven’t been involved in all that all that much.”

Ramses chuckles, and watches a bike of ants carry something indiscernible away.

Leona believes that she can read his mind. “You’re thinking of moving him yourself; no mobile containment chamber.”

“It would be the fastest way to do it,” he acknowledges. “We would still need to contain him at the destination, and there couldn’t be any electronics for miles.”

“But it could be done,” she finishes.

“I don’t know if we have time to do anything. He’s expecting us to let him out soon. He might just brute force it if we take too much time. We keep calling him a him as if we know who this person is, but we almost don’t know anything at all. All we know is that the consciousness in Mateo’s body isn’t Mateo...at least not one we love.”

Leona kicks at a nearby tree to stimulate her thinking brain. After a few minutes, she’s got it. “How attached are you to the AOC? How badly do you want to keep it?”

He narrows his eyes, suspicious of her. “Why? What are you thinking?”

“I have an idea, but we need to work it out together. I want to come up with every variable, and have a contingency to correct it. We’ll only have one shot.”

The two of them go over the plan, keeping it all in their head, or writing it down with good old pen and paper, because they can’t trust computers right now. They don’t know the extent of Impostor!Mateo’s power, and can’t risk him catching wind of what they’re going to do to him. He may be able to sense other people, which means he’ll know if Angela is in or out of her stasis pod. There are too many questions, so they have to be extra cautious. All they know is that he has to be isolated and contained. They’ll have to just figure the rest out later. They bring Marie and Alyssa into this, but no one else. Alyssa’s main job is to stay with Arcadia, Vearden, and her brothers in the hospital.

They’re about to execute the plan now. “Are you ready?” Leona asks.

Marie cracks her neck, and gets into position. “Ready.”

“Radio check one,” Leona says.

“Check two,” Ramses replies.

“Check three,” Marie says, adjusting her ear piece a little.

“On my mark,” Leona declares. She looks at her friends and nods. “Four, three, two, one, mark.”

“Stepping one.” Marie teleports first. She jumps to the infirmary in the lab. She starts to open Angela’s stasis pod.

“What are you doing?” the doctor questions.

“Help me lift her up,” Marie orders.

He helps her, even though he doesn’t know why.

“Step one complete. Stepping two now.” She teleports again, this time with Angela and the doctor in tow.

“Stepping three now.” Ramses jumps to the infirmary. He activates the stasis pod’s hover feature. He then gets on top of it, and holds on tight. It’s heavy, so even though it’s possible to transport, it’s a little harder to do than a person is. “Stepping four now.” He jumps to an Antarctic island that the main sequence would call Heard Island.

“Stepping five now.” Leona teleports last. She unlocks the containment chamber, and power walks towards the man who looks like her husband.

“Hey, honey. Is it over?” he asks, feigning delight at the sight of her.

“Step seven primed,” she can hear Ramses say through the radio.

Without a word, Leona wraps her arms around him, but not in a loving way. “Stepping six.” She teleports to Ramses’ location on the other side of the planet. He already has the stasis pod open, and is waiting to close it. “Stepping seven.” She shoves Mateo into the pod.

“Hey what the fuh—?”

Ramses shuts it.

She locks it. “Step seven complete.”

“Stepping eight,” Marie tells them through the radio. “Purging Constance.”

The two of them look up at the sky, knowing that they can’t see her from here.

“Step eight complete. Stepping nine now.”

“Godspeed, Marie,” Leona says.

“Love you all.”

“Love you too,” Ramses responds.

“Step nine complete,” Alyssa reveals through the radio. She was keeping an eye on the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from the hospital, since they can’t have electronics around Impostor!Mateo. She sees that it has successfully entered relativistic speeds, but not using the reframe engine. It’s the only way to keep both Angela and Marie alive long enough for Angela to finish drinking all of the immortality waters. Impostor!Mateo needed the stasis pod more than her.

He surely wouldn’t agree, though. Speaking of which, he can speak. “What, no step ten? There are usually eleven steps. What’s the deal?”

Leona rips her earpiece out, and hastily sets it on a rock. She takes a second rock, and slams it down. Ramses hands her his, and lets her do it again. “How is he talking to us? One second should mean ten thousand years in there.”

Ramses checks the pod to make sure it’s set to the right differential, and functioning properly. He then looks into the window to see Mateo lying there, frozen in time. “Framejacking.”

“What’s framejacking?” Alyssa has teleported to their location. “The others are fine,” she assures them before they can ask.

“Framejacking is a superintelligence concept. It refers to altering one’s perception of time, as opposed to actually changing the time that passes around you,” Ramses begins to explain.

“Basically it’s when you’re thinking so fast, it’s like you’re living a lot longer than you would if you just operated in normal time,” Leona continues. “Different species at different sizes do this naturally. Ever notice how a fly can move away from your swatting hand so quickly? That’s because it sees your hand move in slowmo. Computers can process upwards of millions of calculations per second. A really advanced one could do billions, or even trillions. I think I know who’s really in the box.”

Ramses and Leona look at each other and simultaneously say, “Constance!Five.”

“Constance!Five. Right,” Alyssa says hurriedly. “That’s what I was gonna say too; we’re all equally smart.”

Microstory 1354: Division (Part 1)

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Magnate Representative: Thank you all for coming in. We have some exciting things lined up for the next few years, and we wanted to get an idea of how some of our customers feel about what we’ve done so far. A little disclaimer, we chose you lot randomly. You have not necessarily spent more money on us than others. My department, in fact, does not have access to your purchase history. All we know is that you have bought at least one Magnate product or service. We also do not have access to customer complaints, or other routes for feedback. This is an entirely separate department. If you have voiced a concern about us in the past, however, and do not feel that the issue was resolved, please feel free to repeat it here. Does everyone understand?

Magnate Customers: [in unison] Yes.

Magnate Representative: Okay, to start us off, is everyone here aware that we sell products and services in the ten categories listed on this chart?

Magnate Customer 1: What exactly does Smart Solutions mean?

Magnate Representative: That is something we are going to talk about today. We’ve been picking up on some confusion regarding what that means, and would appreciate your input. Smart Solutions is our newest and broadest division. It encompasses everything from the materianet to renewable energy, to 3-D printing, to internet based cities.

Magnate Customer 2: Materianet?

Magnate Representative: It’s also known as the tangiblenet. We’re talkin’ non-screen internet-connected devices, like a refrigerator that tells you what you’ve run out of when you’re at the store, or even just a streaming security camera. Up until 2017, all divisions in this company have involved us getting into preexisting markets. We didn’t invent furniture, or toys, or cars. Smart Solutions is all about the future. Much of what that division does is determining what that future looks like, because right now, no one really knows.

Magnate Customer 3: Hm. Since it is so broad, maybe that is the best term for it, even if it causes a little confusion.

Magnate Customer 4: Maybe you could focus on marketing each department, since people already know what 3-D printing is, and all those other things. You can still use a term for the whole division, but that doesn’t have to be very client-facing.

Magnate Representative: Okay, okay. These are actually really good ideas. We’ve always advertised from the division down, but it doesn’t have to be like that. Let me take this note here.

Magnate Customer 5: Does the toy division include adult toys?

Magnate Representative: I’m sorry?

Magnate Customer 5: The toy division? Is it just for kids?

Magnate Representative: Uh...it is, sir. We do not have an adult toy department. All our products are very family-friendly.

Magnate Customer 5: Well, I bought an axe from you guys last month. Would you call that family-friendly?

Magnate Representative: I suppose not. There’s a safety issue when it comes to some of our products, like tools and vehicles. The problem with adult toys is we wouldn’t be able to keep kids from even seeing that they exist, and they’re just not part of our business strategy.

Magnate Customer 3: Speaking of which, what’s this I hear about the toy division being shut down?

Magnate Representative: I have heard those rumors too. That comes from an unfortunately leaked email from a year ago that discusses our long-term plans. With the increasing demand for virtual entertainment, physical toys may not have a place in the future. Nothing has been decided, and won’t be for at least another five years; probably longer.

Magnate Customer 3: Well, my kid is still gonna be a kid in five years.

Magnate Representative: Again, we don’t know what we’re going to do. We’re just going to listen to the market, and give our customers what they want. If enough people are like you, we will continue to provide them with fun, wholesome entertainment, like our line of dress-up kits.

Magnate Customer 5: I thought your whole thing was knowing what the future holds. You called it Smart Solutions.

Magnate Representative: That’s true, I said that, but no amount of predicting can be a hundred percent accurate. We still have to be able to adapt to unforeseen changes. But what I’m hearing is that you want us to be a little more confident in our decisions. Is that a fair assessment?

Magnate Customer 5: I don’t really know what that means, but I guess.

Magnate Representative: Okay, we can work on that. Let’s circle back to Smart Solutions later. I would like to ask you a few questions about your feelings on musical instruments. It is our least profitable division, but as you may know, it carries sentimental value to Mr. Burke, because of his grandfather. What are your thoughts on that?

[To be continued...]