Microstory 2618: The Way is Clear, the Beetle Knows the Way

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Almost straight east, another kilometer and a half away, in the direction of the planet’s night side, lay another manmade structure. Since it would have been so far out of the group’s way, Breanna decided that a detour would require a unanimous vote. Last time, they received one when they didn’t need it, and this time, they needed it, but didn’t get it. Less than half were willing to risk it, so they elected not to. Those who voted in favor of it were not upset or argumentative. They accepted the results, and moved on.

They have continued on their way northwest, trying to head in the general direction of the pole while also hoping to run into a dome, or one of the tunnels used to connect the disparate domes to each other. After hours, they finally see it, and decide to forgo their break in lieu of pushing forward to reach their interim goal. They’ve become more accustomed to their suits, though they still feel very confining. Even Breanna and Cash have had just about enough. They’re designed to operate indefinitely, but changing human psychology is a different challenge altogether.

“I think I see a person up there,” a passenger notes, looking towards the spine. It is a massive structure, snaking through the land, made to transport people and supplies along walking corridors, vactrain tubes, or sometimes chairlifts for steep climbs. Breanna isn’t extremely familiar with the inner workings of these structures, but while she can’t quite make out someone standing on the top herself, there is surely a way up there on the exterior. The megaengineers responsible for all this infrastructure tried to plan for everything. Everything but a worldwide cataclysm apparently.

“I see it too,” someone else declares.

Breanna reaches up and extends the magnification on her helmet to its extreme limit, and is able to see a silhouette, but no detail. “Whoever they are, they’re not wearing any protective gear.” She looks over at Aeterna.

Aeterna smiles. “I told you he was alive.”

“We don’t know that that’s him,” Breanna says. “Unless you have some reason to believe that you’re the only two insanely invincible immortals in the universe.”

“No, of course not. They’re just probably not on Proxima Doma, or in this time period.” That doesn’t make much sense. If they can’t die, why wouldn’t there be just as many—this doesn’t make sense at all. She’s choosing not to question it, however, because it’s hurting her head, and she probably doesn’t really want to know.

They get close enough to resolve a face, and just as they suspected, it is indeed Tertius Valerius. He’s smiling like he doesn’t have a care in the world, waving to them gleefully, pointing towards some particular part of the spine that he’s standing on, and beckoning them forwards. As they draw even nearer, they discover that there’s a fully functioning escalator on the side, which they use to reach the top and reunite with him. He and his daughter hug, but not particularly exuberantly. Neither of them is surprised. Why would they be? As they keep saying, they can’t die. She hands him an extra mask so he can utilize the radio, and tell them all what happened since they lost contact.

Everyone wants to know how Tertius survived the ordeal. He claims that there’s not much to tell. He just did because that’s what he does. Once the cyclone was over, he got up from the ground, and just started walking, hoping to catch up with everyone eventually. He makes it sound so simple. They have more questions, but Breanna understands their priorities. “Did you check the interior? Are there working vactrains?”

He shakes his head. “Not in the one behind us, nor the one in front, but there’s a maintenance railcar a little bit farther down. It’s not meant for people, so there aren’t any seats, but we can make it work. It’s for repairing the exterior, so it will go all along the perimeter of each dome, but if you do the math, I’m guessing it adds up to being faster and easier than walking. You’ll want to find something to hold onto as I do not believe the floor is ferromagnetic.” He turns and starts walking away. “Come on.”

He leads them farther down, towards the other end of the spine, and then down some steps on the side opposite of where they came from, where there are tiny little baby train tracks, and a small railcart. “Are we...gonna fit?” Cash questions.

“Oh, this is a maintenance drone.” Tertius waves his arms around the giant machine occupying the majority of the railcart. “I can’t pull it off, I was assuming you had tools to take care of it. There will be enough room once we get rid of it.”

Brenna holds her fist in front of the drone, and taps on her wrist interface. It suddenly springs to life, unlocking itself from the dock, and using its six little legs to skitter off of the railcart, onto the tracks behind them.

Cash bends over and pats the beetloid on its head. “Good girl. Good girl. Now, stay here, and try not to get swallowed up by the infinte abyss.”

“It can’t hear you through the suit,” Breanna says.

“She knows what I’m saying,” Cash claims.

They all climb onto the railcart, and find various components to hold onto. There actually is one ferromagnetic spot. It’s the hatch that leads to the engine. Breanna stands there so Tertius and Aeterna can stand in front of her, using her as a backboard. A couple of other passengers hold onto her arms and neck. Cash is the only one sitting so she can operate the controls, which were originally designed to be manipulated by giant beetle robot claws. She has to ramp up the speed slowly, because even though their suits offer them protection, they don’t exactly have inertial dampeners. A drone will normally just punch it and go, but as humans, they need a little more time to ease into it. She also needs to watch for the curves, and slow down appropriately and safely. Her onboard AI is telling her when and how, but she has to physically do it herself.

“Boss?” the guy they rescued from the other rover asks Breanna. “How do I do that thing where I just talk to one person?”

“You’ve done it,” she replies. “We’re talking one-on-one.”

“I mean with, umm...Tertius,” he clarifies.

“Oh, he just has a regular radio transceiver, so he can talk to everyone or no one.”

“I wanted to apologize for what happened...for...what I did. For what he had to do for me. It’s not that I don’t want anyone to hear what I say. I guess it just feels like I would be performing. I really just wanna have a private conversation with my savior.”

“While Cash is keeping the railcart going, I’m linking up with the dome systems as we run along them. I’m hoping we end up finding one with a fully operational train station, so we can get into one of the vacuum pods, and go a hell of a lot faster than this. You will have a chance to speak with him quietly, even if it’s not until we reach the northern pole.”

“Okay, thanks, I appreciate it.” The guy never gets his chance.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 28, 2541

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Ramses’ new Brane Establishment Map—name subject to change—was fully ready to go, but there was a catch. It required the equivalent of five tandem slingdrives to run, and once it was running, it counted as one sling. The coherence gauge went down when it was used, went down faster when it was used to map a larger region, and even faster when kept up for an extended period of time. Instead of slinging physical matter across the universe, it was only slinging information, but that still required punching a hole into the membrane of the universe, and that came at a cost. If they wanted to look for Spiral Station, they would be able to go there, but not come back until the next day. For them, that was a whole year, which if their target was on the run, would give them more than enough time to find a new place to hide.

“You should take a screenshot,” Romana suggested.

“Huh?” Ramses asked.

“Whenever you load the map, if you want to save on power, take a screenshot of it, and close it down immediately,” she went on.

“Well, it doesn’t work like that. The map is interactive. You have to zoom in and out to make out the different dots. A screenshot would just become a low-res flat image.”

Romana shrugged. “I never meant an actual single image. Download an offline file, and load it back up afterwards. It won’t be able to update, but we shouldn’t need that anyway. People don’t move around all that much on interstellar timescales.”

“Hm. It’s not designed for that,” Leona pointed out. “There’s no offline mode.”

“Then build one,” Olimpia suggested. “We’re in it for the long haul. We never expected to locate them on the first try.

They all looked back at the map. Every little dot represented some threshold of technological presence. It couldn’t find a homestead running on watermill power in the middle of nowhere, but that wasn’t the scale they were using anyway. This wasn’t about finding anyone and everyone in the galaxy. This was about spotting the outliers in this smattering of dots. There were so many of them, and it was impossible to tell what they could be walking into.  Some of them were obviously major colonies, because they were centered on known star systems, but there were a lot more isolated establishments than they knew. “Buncha hermit crabs,” Marie noted.

Any one of these could be Spiral Station.” Mateo randomly pointed to a few of them. On the last one, he accidentally touched the screen with his finger. The slingdrive under their feet sprang to life, revved up, and sent them away. “Uh...sorry? I didn’t know that would happen.”

“That’s my bad,” Ramses admitted. “It should not be that easy to navigate to a target. At the very least, it should ask for confirmation.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Leona said. “Remember that we appear as a small array of stylish belts in the main dimension. I doubt they will even notice.”

“They’ve noticed us,” Ramses said. The map on the big screen was gone, replaced with present environmental data. “It’s the Aerie.”

“The Aerie?” Angela questioned. “You mean the Iman Vellani shuttle?”

“The very same,” Ramses confirmed. “I don’t know who’s operating it, though. We will need to exit. I believe that we’ve been pulled into the tiny little airlock.”

“We might as well,” Leona decided when they looked to her for orders. “Everyone, teleport out of the pocket.”

They all appeared in the back of the shuttle. Two people were standing there, utterly stunned at their appearance. No one on Team Matic recognized them. “Uh, greetings, aliens. We come in peace.” The man held up the Vulcan salute.

“Greetings, travelers,” Leona said, stepping forward. “We are vonearthans, ultimately all from Earth.” She looked laterally at Romana. Well, six of us are. Do you identify as Dardieti?”

“I’ve never really thought about it,” Romana replied. “I’m a Nieman and a Matic.”

“I’m Quidel, and this Renata. We’re from Castlebourne, and we really do come in peace.”

“How did you come to possess this shuttle?” Mateo asked them. “We are friends with the owners, and used to crew its main ship’s sister ship.”

“A woman named Brooke Prieto gave it to us. She said they were upgrading, and didn’t it need anymore. It’s quite the gift,” Quidel says. “We’re moving at twenty-two-c.”

“Don’t tell them that,” Renata urged. “We don’t know if we can trust them.”

“If they caught up to us, they can go at least that fast too, if not faster.”

“What are you doing this far from Castlebourne?” Ramses asked. He was tapping on his tablet, taking readings, or interfacing with the Aerie, or doing whatever.

“Ram,” Marie said with her own tablet. “Look. Your computer actually did flash the last image it saw on the map before we slung here. What are these other dots?”

Ramses pulled up what she was looking at on his own device. “We’re a bit over four hundred light years from Castlebourne. The colonization sphere hasn’t reached this far out, which means there shouldn’t be anything else out here, so that’s a good question.”

Leona was looking over his shoulder. “Zoom out.”

“It’s just an image. I can’t zoom out. I mean, of course I can, but as I was saying before, it will just lose resolution. We won’t be able to see more detail.”

“Overlay that image onto a regular map of the Milky Way, as scanned by Project Topdown, and zoom out on that,” she clarified.

Ramses did what she suggested. It didn’t take long. “That’s...”

“Yeah...” Leona agreed.

“What is it?” Mateo asked. “Are we supposed to recognize it?”

Leona pointed to a cluster of stars deep in the galaxy. “This is the Goldilocks Corridor.” She pointed to another spot much closer. “Castlebourne is somewhere around here.” She pointed one more time. “This area between them is where those extremely far out dots are.”

“Oh my God, it’s the Exin Empire,” Mateo lamented.

“It’s the Exin armada,” Leona corrected. “They’re on the attack.” She looked back at the couple. “What did you hope to gain, coming here?”

Renata sighed. “The woman who gave us this thing. She tried to strip all the data out of it. We imagine that she and her own crew used it for all sorts of things before they were ready to give it up. But she missed something.”

“One communiqué,” Quidel continued the story, “between the mothership, and something called The Ambassador. It was a warning to her and her people of the danger in this region. We were trying to get there to see it for ourselves. We had nothing better to do.”

“There could be hundreds of ships in that armada,” Leona warned them. “This little thing isn’t gonna stand a chance against them, and they will swat you like a fly.”

“Seriously,” Angela said. “They won’t try to figure out who you are. They’ll just kill you and not bother to slow down.”

“We were looking for a mission,” Renata reasoned. “We were looking for a purpose. It may sound reckless to you, but if you found a treasure map with an X marking the spot, you would follow it, you’d have to. Even if you didn’t think it would lead to something good, your curiosity would win out.”

“I suppose I can imagine the allure,” Leona conceded. They had gone on similar experiences before for similar reasons.

“Wait.” Mateo swatted his own proverbial flies in front of his face. “Why did Brooke give this to you? I don’t mean, why did she give it away—that’s well within her character—but why you? Who are you?”

“We’re just—” Quidel began.

“I’m a robot,” Renata interrupted.

“Please stop using that word,” Quidel begged.

“You used it first.”

“And I regret it every day.”

Renata smiled and went on, “I was living in a base reality simulation, and I woke up. Actually, my mother woke me up. Still, I was technically an emerging consciousness, so Hrockas had to grant me independence. It was not an easy journey, and I won’t go into detail, but this was sort of an apology gift. I don’t think that Miss Prieto was trying to give it to us. I think she was giving it to him, and he was regifting it before he could even use it.”

“That’s well within his character,” Mateo acknowledged. “He must be trying to get rid of you.”

“What?” Renata asked. “Why would he wanna do that?”

“You emerged, in one of the domes?” Mateo pressed.

“Yeah...” she confirmed. “Spydome.”

Mateo nodded, having heard of it. “He probably doesn’t want that happening again. You’re...proof that it’s possible. But if all the intelligences he creates wake up, what does he end up with?”

“The most populated planet in the galaxy,” Olimpia put forth.

Mateo chuckled. “Yeah, that’s true. That could create a massive shift in power in the Milky Way, assuming it didn’t spark the deadliest rebellion in history, like Westworld times sixty thousand.”

“Hrockas brought that up once,” Renata said. “I’ve still not seen it.”

“If I have anything to say about it, you never will,” Quidel told her.

A brief pause. “Well, I have no interest in starting a rebellion. That was my mother’s dream, and I sacrificed everything to stop her.”

“Forgive me, but you don’t seem to have much love for her. Why would you call her that?” Romana asked. “Was she really your mom in some way?”

“After she reprogrammed me,” Renata began, “I retained all of my implanted memories. Even though they’re not real, I have years and years of memories of her raising me. She didn’t do a good job, because that was how her character was written, but they still feel real to me.”

“If she’s the one who woke you up, who woke her up?” Leona questioned.

“She never said,” Renata explained. “Apparently, she was an NPC in a completely different simulation years ago. I think a normal human changed her programming, and she spent a long time trying to replicate it.”

Leona and Mateo exchanged a look, as did various members of the team. She looked back at the couple. “Was her name, by chance, Proserpina, or maybe even Pinocchio?”

“No, it was Libera,” Quidel answered.

Leona looked back at her husband. “That doesn’t prove it’s not her. She could have changed her name. She did it before.”

“Libera is the perfect name for someone who thinks it’s their job to free intelligences from oppression,” Mateo agreed.

“Yeah.” Renata nodded. “She used that word a lot.”

“We have to go back to Castlebourne,” Leona determined. “I did this. This is my fault. We need answers, and I need to answer for it.”

“I’m partially responsible too,” Mateo claimed. “I ran into her in the afterlife simulation, and...forgot that I promised to help her.”

“We don’t know where it is anymore,” Olimpia reminded them both.

“I can find it,” Ramses promised.

“What about these two?” Angela gestured towards the couple. “We can’t just leave them here. You understand that nothing is waiting for you on your current trajectory but death, right?”

“Yes, we do now,” Renata replied. “We’ll turn around, and maybe finally see Earth. That’s what Hrockas suggested in the first place. It will take us, what, twenty-five years? I’m immortal now, so that won’t be a problem.”

“You said you were going twenty-two-c?” Ramses asked.

“Yeah, that’s what the computer thing says.” Quidel pointed into the little bridge behind them. “We also have to stop and let the engine rest periodically.”

“Could I take a look?” Ramses requested.

They stepped to the side, and let him pass. He looked through the console data. “Yeah, it’s a reframe engine, of course. It’s highly inefficient, though. I’m not surprised you’re moving so slow, and you keep having to stop. I can fix it for you.”

“You can? How fast would we be able to go?” Quidel asked.

“Seven-oh-seven,” Ramses answered him. “We will have to, um...go somewhere else at the end of today, but I can program my nanites to execute the repairs and upgrades in the meantime. If you’ve been piloting it, you must know enough to be able to tell when it’s done, and ready to go. It should only take a few weeks, but if you leave, we may never see each other again, because we won’t know where you are.” That wasn’t entirely true when they had their new little map, but they didn’t need to know about that, or the slingdrive technology in general, which was orders of magnitude faster than even maximum reframe.

“We would be grateful for that,” Renata said. “In return, we can tell you where Castlebourne is, if you forgot. It’s in our logs.”

“Nah, if you left twenty or so years ago, it will have moved since then. We’ll have to locate it ourselves. But that’s fine. We’ll figure it out. I have a general idea”

“Could I be so bold, sir, is there a way to get our hands on whatever technology you have that lets you, umm...miniaturize yourself into a tiny little baby ship?”

Leona smiled. “I’m afraid that secret must remain with us.”

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Microstory 2425: Industrial Farm Dome

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A bunch of domes are dedicated to farming. Some of them are designed for necessary food production, but others are just for the sake of it. Industrial farming describes the kind of farming that they did during and after the industrial revolution. They used machines to farm giant fields for massive numbers of people, and even used electricity, but they didn’t have computers. There was absolutely no hint of automation. Lots of farm hands still had to do all the work, and that’s how it goes here. Nothing gets done if there’s no one here to do it. If that means the crops die, then so be it. There’s actually plenty of waste, because the rest of the current population of the planet doesn’t really want to eat this stuff. Everything they could ever want is provided for them. They got their lab grown meat, meal bars, food printers, and dayfruit. They don’t really care how hard I worked out here in the hot sun, and the Castlebourne leadership isn’t incentivizing them to choose us over those other things. I think they really should have worked this out differently. Screw that other stuff. If you have the real thing—and people are willing to labor FOR FREE—why would you choose anything else? Those should be a last resort. If they want this planet to be self-sufficient, then we have what you’re looking for. I don’t blame the other visitors for doing this wrong. There is so little awareness about what we can do for them. I guess what you really need is cooks. Some domes have culinary components, or so I hear, but I can’t find a dome that’s dedicated to the culinary arts. If they did that, we could work closely with them to make the supply chain a real thing. See? I got ideas, and I’m just a dumb regular human. I came here on a ship with one of these new reframe engines. I can’t even upload or transfer my consciousness to a new body. This is the real me. These other people don’t always even need to eat, so they have no appreciation for any of this. Some changes need to be made around here, because I don’t want to go back to the stellar neighborhood. I shouldn’t have to. I should be able to find what I’m entitled to on this planet. People just need to do the right thing.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 11, 2493

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A web of technicolors appeared out of nowhere, and spat Team Matic out onto the floor. They rolled away from each other like marbles from a jar. It was not only the six of them, though. Romana was with them, as was some guy. “Who are you?” Leona demanded to know, prepared to fight, while Mateo was making sure that his daughter was okay.

The stranger stood up and cracked his neck. He held his arms out in front of him with his elbows bent a little. As he was clearing his throat, he adjusted his nanites, looking down at himself, making sure they were all in working order. It was only then that he acknowledged their presence, though not out of surprise. “My name is Amal,” he answered stoically.

“What are you doing here, Amal?” Leona questioned, almost as if she didn’t believe him.

“What year is it?” he posed.

She kept one eye on him while she consulted her watch. She tapped on it a few times with her fingernail. “No idea, this is broken.”

“Use your other one,” Amal suggested cryptically.

“My other what?” Leona asked, confused, and even more defensive now.

“Uh,” Ramses began, massaging his forehead. “I replicated that watch’s powers. We all have one now.” He receded the wrist of his emergent suit to show his bare skin. The time and date appeared on it, glowing a bright green. “Nanobotic tattoos, tied directly into the timestream.”

Leona looked at her own. Then removed her broken watch. “July 11, 2493. We jumped early from last year.”

“No, you went on a detour,” Amal contended. “You’ve been gone longer than you realize.”

“Where were we?” Marie asked, stepping forward. “When were we?”

“I cannot answer that,” Amal replied. “I honestly do not know.” Agent Smith. That was who he sounded like; Agent Smith from the Matrix franchise. “Our minds have been erased to protect the future. I could not even tell you why I’m here. We have not yet met.”

“It seems that we have,” Angela reasoned.

“Quite,” Amal agreed. “Something must have gone wrong after you were summoned to the future. I should not have come through with you.”

“Summoned by who?” Olimpia pressed.

“That I could answer, but I won’t. But I can promise that you trust them.” He laughed through his nose.

“It was us,” Leona figured. “We summoned ourselves.”

“I never said that.” Amal was worried, which probably meant that she was right.

“How do we proceed?” Mateo asked him. “What are we gonna do with you?”

“What you’re going to do is be patient,” Amal answered. “Until we meet again.” There was no stopping him. He slammed his fists together, crouched down, and stuck his knees between his elbows. Technicolors overwhelmed him, and he was gone.

“Hmm,” Ramses said. He looked around at his lab. “The sensors picked that up. Now I bet they know how to make a miniature slingdrive.”

“Careful, Rambo,” Leona said to him. “That’s what we call bootstrapping.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

“Roma,” Mateo said to his little girl. “How did you end up with us?”

“We were going on a mission,” Romana answered. “I stepped into my Dubra pod, just as we always do, so our temporal signatures don’t interfere with the operation of the slingdrive on the Vellani Ambassador. Then I woke up here.”

“You must have been summoned too. It could take years before we find out where we went, and even then, it may only be from an outsider’s perspective. Then again, I once closed my own loop, and my otherwise paradoxical memories of it finally came flooding back into my brain, like they were just waiting for me.”

Romana shook her head. “I’ve been gone for almost a year. I have to go report in.”

“I understand.” He gave her a hug, and then let her go.

A swarm of dark particles spun her around, and into oblivion.

Olimpia was playing with her new suit. She opened some sort of flap on the top of her wrists, which she pointed around the room with a menacing look on her face. “I have guns. I’m gonna shoot sum’im.”

“Those are not guns,” Ramses said with a laugh. “There are no onboard weapons.” He lifted his own flaps, then switched on the flashlight on his right arm.

“Oh,” Olimpia said, figuring out how to turn her own flashlight on, and looking down the barrel of it. She then did the same with her left arm. “What’s this other one?”

“Sensor suite,” Ramses explained as he was walking towards her, “for more detailed information about your environment. It has a medical array too. You should read up on it. He tapped the center of her chest, just under her neck, with three of his fingers. A holographic computer interface was projected from two emitters on her shoulders. “You should peruse the manual.”

“Why is it called the EmergentSuit?” she asked.

“Because the nanites emerge from the implants in your body,” Ramses said.

Olimpia read a little more of the text, which was probably pretty dry and uninteresting. “Boring, I’ll wait for the movie.”

He put an arm around her shoulders, and used his other hand to control her interface. A video popped up. “Hi. I’m a virtual avatar, presenting in the form of my creator, Ramses Abdulrashid. Let me show you how your new EmergentSuit works!” He muted it. “What a fox,” Real!Ramses mused.

Mateo huffed. “You did not tell me that was there. I had to read pages and pages of that thing.”

“If that’s true, you would have seen the part where it tells you that there’s an interactive alternative.”

Mateo mocked Ramses playfully with his pursed lips as he bobbled his head. He pulled up his own interface, and searched the manual for the exact terms. “Interactive alternative; no results.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot to put that blurb in your version of the manual, and you never received the updated edition. You do have the video, though.”

“Thanks, that’s great,” Mateo said sarcastically.

“This all sounds fun,” Leona said, “but we need to go check in with Hrockas.”

“Wait,” Angela interrupted. “Is that it? We were sent to the future, and brought back to our pattern, and we’re just gonna move on as if that’s normal and fine? We’re not gonna try to get our memories back, or investigate how this could have possibly happened, or anything? Someone summoned us, Ramses, using technology that you have apparently not invented yet. Doesn’t that worry you?”

Ramses was about to answer, but Leona stepped in, starting with, “I—” She took one moment to gather her thoughts. “Before you died, did you believe in God?”

“Excuse me?”

“It was very common at the time, to believe in a higher power.”

“Well, yeah, I did. I was raised to be a Christian,” Angela admitted.

“Did you ever question God?”

“All the time,” Angela replied, like she was winning the argument. My dad was a slaveowner.

“And did you ever get anything out of that? Did God ever...come down, and apologize?  Did he give you answers?”

Angela was not happy, but Marie was even more upset. “The people who took us are not gods.”

“By our standards,” Leona reasoned, “they may as well be. We know nothing. We don’t know for sure that it was Future!Us, though that is the assumption. We can’t go preoccupying ourselves with every little thing that happens to us. We’ll go crazy. The truth will reveal itself in time. Until then, Hrockas needs to know that we’re back. Because we returned later than expected, and we made a commitment to build him a relay network.”

“The relay network is done.” They had left Ramses’ lab, and were now in Hrockas’ office. “Well, it’s not done, but it’s on its way, and will be ready in time for the grand opening in seven years.”

“Team Kadiar agreed to help you with it?”

He shook his head. “No need. Some friends stepped up. They didn’t want us clogging up their own quantum terminals, but they agreed to build us dedicated machines. Most of them will be stored in the corner somewhere on their Lagrange-one stations.”

“I thought you couldn’t do that,” Leona reminded him. “I thought they were unwilling to help.”

“No, the core government was unwilling to help. But the neighborhood representatives finally secured a win for key legislation that gave them more latitude. They’re free to build whatever technology they want—as long as it follows certain criteria, like not being a weapon—and they don’t have to share it with any other world. This places each machine squarely in the local leadership’s control, and I’ve managed to negotiate with all of them, even some core worlds. So we’re good. Thanks for the offer.”

“This sounds risky,” Leona pointed out. “They could revoke the charter whenever they want, right?”

“Absolutely,” Hrockas admitted. “Maintaining strong diplomatic relations will be of the utmost importance to the continuity of my operation. That’s why I’ve hired a Minister of Foreign Affairs to be in charge of all the little ambassadors that I’ll need to liaise with our relay partners.”

“Could we meet this person?”

“She’s not here yet,” Hrockas explained. “I believe that she’s leaving in a few weeks, then it will take her a couple of months to arrive.”

“A couple months?” Ramses questioned. “The only way you can get out here in a couple months is if you use a reframe engine. I mean, that’s if you’re not just quantum casting which is within an hour.”

“Yeah, she has a reframe engine,” Hrockas said. “I guess Earth has done enough work to develop them on their own.”

“I guess,” Leona agreed. “I hope we did the right thing, letting them have that technology.” It had actually been a pretty long time since the Edge Meeting where they granted certain knowledge to certain parties in the main sequence regarding the manipulation of time. It was Hokusai Gimura’s responsibility to actually coordinate with Teagarden and Earth, and Leona didn’t exist most of the time, so she lost track of how that process was faring. It didn’t sound like it was going to be as easy as beaming them the specifications, and walking away. Still, it felt rushed, probably because to the team, this whole thing only started a few months ago. “Well, I’m glad you’re doing okay.”

“Yep,” Hrockas agreed. “So, if you wanted to move on to your next project, maybe fight the bad guy in that Goldilocks Corridor, I think that would be fine.”

“Yeah, we might do that,” Leona said with a nod.

The rest of the team was there, but besides Mateo and Ramses, they were all kind of busy reading up on their new suits. It was awkward, so Leona just disappeared. Mateo broke the others out of their trances, and pulled them out of the office too. “Hey. How are you feeling?” he asked his wife. They were in the replica of Kansas City now, standing in the parking lot where all time travelers were funneled to when they showed up in the Third Rail.

“We never...finish anything,” she mused. “We don’t accomplish our goals. We’re always pulled in some other direction, and all we can do is hope that we’ve done enough for whoever we had to leave behind. I got used to that. I got used to knowing that I did my best, but this new crowd needed me now, and it was time to refocus.” She finally looked up at him. “But do we even need to go back to the Corridor? Niobe’s army is taking the offensive. I even think fighters from Verdemus finally showed up in the Anatol Klugman. Team Kadiar is rescuing defectors left and right. I don’t know what’s going on with the Sixth Key, but the delegates were doing fine the last we saw them.”

Mateo nodded. “We’re aimless again, aren’t we? And we don’t do well when we’re aimless. Ramses needs to invent, you need to lead, the Waltons need to counsel.”

“And the two of us need to be dum-dums,” Olimpia added.

Mateo nodded again. “And the two of us need to be dum-dums,” he echoed.

“Dum-dums with cool flashlights,” Olimpia corrected. She shined it on the asphalt, thought it was daytime under this dome, so the light may as well have been off.

“We may be aimless,” Marie said in a soft voice, “but we’re not useless. We’ll find our place to be. Ramses just needs to get us there.”

“I can finish the mini-slingdrives,” Ramses confirmed, “but someone will need to decide where we go.”

“Are you sure?” Angela smiled. “We’ve used it before without plotting a destination. You could even say that we were aimless.”

Leona smiled too.

“Orders sir,” Ramses requested from the Captain.

Leona took a breath to center herself. “Engineer, build me my new engine. Counselors, find out what you can about this Minister of Foreign Affairs. I don’t want to leave our friends hanging if there’s only one last thing to do. Mister Matic, go see if you can spend some time with your daughters before we leave. And Miss Sangster?”

“Yeah...?”

“I believe we owe each other date.”

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Microstory 2357: Earth, July 7, 2179

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Dear Corinthia,

You should have received my custom read receipt that confirmed the plan for The Winfield Files, but in case you didn’t, we’re a go. They’re not the longest books in the world, but they’re not super short either. Still, I think we could each get the next one done within a couple weeks. I agree that our thoughts should be in the form of attachments. Yeah, we might have to wait for each other’s responses before moving on, so it may not be as neat as one installment per pair of letters, but I dunno. We’ll just have to wait and see how it goes. To answer your question, our relationship with the dome remains strong. Generally speaking, the immigrants aren’t having significant issues, though it’s a culture shock for many of them. In some ways, we’re different, but in others, we’re the same. It’s true that we’re mobile, but this thing is so large, and the engines are running so slowly, that you can’t really tell. The view is really the biggest difference. Still, they’ve designed it to simulate a normal dome as much as possible. We have dirt and sand and grass. Dad and I live in the platform section, instead of the dome proper, but all of the newcomers have been assigned housing outside, which I think they prefer, since it’s more like what they’re used to. Speaking of new friends, I have an idea about your neighbor. What your problem seems to be is that he doesn’t care how his actions affect others. You have to show him that you exist, and give him some reason to consider that in the future. Don’t complain about the noise, don’t yell at him. Endear yourself to him. First step is to ask him for help with something. How tall are you? If you have some artwork high up on the wall that needs to be adjusted, or a nut under your sink that needs to be tightened, ask him to do it. This especially works if he’s a man, because he wants to feel big and strong, but you can execute this trick with just about anyone. Just make sure it’s a simple task. People want to feel needed, not exploited. Once he’s done, thank him for taking the time, then invite him over for lunch, or a board game. Invite a couple other people if you feel uncomfortable being alone with him, but don’t make it a full-on party. You want him to see you as an individual, and to be reminded of his connection to you when he’s in the area, not the gathering over all. I don’t like the phrase kill them with kindness, but that’s what you’re doing here. This doesn’t work every time; some people are clueless, but my childhood bully stopped harassing me after I tried this. Give it a shot, and let me know how it goes.

Ready to start Book One,

Condor

Microstory 2261: Call Her My Baby

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My license situation in this country, on this planet, has been complicated, to say the least. I do have an identity, though officially, I am not considered an alien from outer space. It doesn’t matter how many people believe me, or even if all the world leaders do, bureaucratic documentation simply does not have a box for that on any of the forms. So anyway, while I was technically certified as a driver here, I was only rated for a normal combustion engine. It required learning a lot more maintenance than I cared to know. I would much rather take it in to a professional, and have them deal with it. Mechanics has never been a strength for me, and more importantly, not an interest. Of course, electric vehicles being what they are, require a different kind of maintenance. It wasn’t easier or harder; just different. I had to go into the dealership, and take a little class, which included a written portion, and practical instruction. Then I had to take a test immediately afterwards. It was a sort of all-day affair, but they conduct these all the time, so there were about two dozen people with me. Most people were bored, because they were a lot more prepared than me, and they were more used to driving over all. I needed a refresher on operating motor vehicles anyway, since it’s been quite a while for me I think. I know I did it a little bit in Havenverse, but we mostly tried to walk or bike, since electric cars weren’t as prevalent there as we would have liked. We couldn’t afford one anyway. So that being done, I was able to finish the paperwork for my purchase, and take my new car home. You’ll notice that I did not refer to it as a she, or call her my baby. This is a machine that I need to get myself around, not a living member of the family. And it’s not just for fun. It’s a tool, to make our lives more convenient in a medium-sized city with some metropolitan sprawl. After Kelly and Dutch take their own classes, they’ll be able to use it too.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 0 EXT

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Leona looked over the new control console that Ramses had installed on the bridge of the Vellani Ambassador. He had revamped the whole thing, instead of simply integrating this new engine that he had fabricated into the old system. He was calling it the quintessence drive. It worked by pushing against the fabric of the universe, which was composed of what was once known as dark matter. Instead of fully piercing the membrane, it only reached through it enough to adjust the temporal properties of the ship. Outside of any universe, time was a spatial dimension, instead of a temporal one, which essentially meant that time didn’t really pass in any humanly fathomable sense. One could travel untold distances in the blink of an eye by stealing energy from the highest dimension possible. Machines like the Crossover and the Transit did this all the time, but they usually did it to travel from one brane to another. All the quintessence drive did was skip over the realspace in one brane, and end up somewhere else much faster than any other vessel in histories. Not even The Globetrotter, Maqsud Al-Amin was as fast. At least that was the idea. They had yet to test it.

“Show of hands, who is willing to risk it?” Ramses asked, now that he had clearly explained the deal.

“That’s not your call,” Leona reminded him. She took a beat before repeating the question herself verbatim.

Everyone raised their hand.

“All right,” Leona decided. “Rambo, this is your thing, so if you say you’ve done the necessary preflight check, I’ll believe you.”

“I’ve done it,” Ramses said. “Navigation is the hardest component, as it always is. I can’t guarantee that we’ll be right on target, but we’ll be close, and we’re not going to be liquified, or turned back into babies, or something.”

“Why would you even bring that up?” Mateo questioned.

“Because it’s not going to happen, it’s fine, don’t worry about it.” He slammed his hand on the physical button that he had incorporated into the console, and declared, “yalla!” That was usually Leona’s line, but it was his language.

A web of technicolor threads appeared on the viewscreens. The bridge offered them a 360 degree view of the outside using exterior cameras. The web continued to spread out, and encompass the whole ship. It closed in on them tightly, like a silkworm forming its cocoon. It didn’t remain in this state for long before it stretched back out into infinity, pulling all of spacetime along with it. The stretching decelerated as the colors faded into oblivion, and for a moment, they saw nothing in the absolute black. Not a single photon of light was making its way towards them. And then the stars blinked into existence as if God had switched them back on. They were there. Well, they were somewhere anyway.

“Report,” Leona ordered.

“PMS is recalibrating,” Ramses replied. Back when researchers were first really contemplating using the galaxy’s pulsars to determine a ship’s relative position in space, they devised the Pulsar Mapping System. By the time people pointed out the unfortunate acronym, it was kind of too late. They did officially change it to the PPS, a.k.a. the Pulsar Positioning System, but a lot of developers preferred the original term specifically for its humor value, and it wasn’t illegal to call it that.

“Just call it the PPS, dude,” Leona suggested.

“What? Oh, yeah.” Ramses watched the screen, gradually falling into a blank face.

Leona could have read it the whole time herself, but it was his job, so she hadn’t bothered. Now she turned her head to check as well, and saw what he was seeing. “Insufficient data. Position indeterminable,” she read.

“What does that mean, we’re too far for it to know?” Marie asked.

“We could be too far from the extent of the pulsar map in three dimensions,” Leona began, “or in four.”

“We may have traveled through time too?” Angela surmised.

“Lee-Lee, your watch,” Mateo pointed out.

“Right, of course.” Her watch could tell her the time no matter where or when she went. It would either default to standard human culture, or reach out to the nearest civilization that was advanced enough to have their own timekeeping standards. If none of these was available, it would display the relative temporal distance from its last known position. “Two thousand, eight hundred and fifteen years.”

“That’s the year, or the...” Olimpia prodded.

“That’s how far back we went,” Leona clarified. “We’re about 350 years before the start of the common era.”

“Can you...plug that into the PMS?” Angela asked, gesturing towards the console. “Or the PPS. Do we know where these pulsar things were back then?”

“We do not,” Ramses answered, shaking his head. “The map doesn’t account for such big time differences. Perhaps a time traveler could make such a map, just for people like us. Because without it, there’s no way to know where we are. There’s no decent way to even measure regular stellar drift in this period. Everything is different. And until we figure it out, we’re not going anywhere. Trying to make another jump would be even more dangerous. I seem to have sorely overestimated my abilities.”

“It’s all right, bro.” Mateo slapped him on the back. “We’re still here in seven pieces, that’s all the matters.”

“I need to run a diagnostic on the rest of the ship’s systems,” Leona said. “If we’re stranded, we need to know if anything’s damaged. Waltons, could you take stock of our inventory?” She placed her hand on Ramses’ shoulder. “Keep working at it. Find Sagittarius A* and at least two neighboring galaxies. Those will not have moved much. It won’t give us our exact location, but we’ll get a better frame of reference.”

“That’s a good idea. Thanks.”

Leona went off to check the other systems, like the reframe engine, and hull integrity. Verdemus was nowhere to be seen, so the new drive had taken them somewhere else, and they needed to understand whether there were any consequences or limitations to that. Angela and Marie went off to see what kind of supplies they had with them. This left the dummies with nothing to do once again.

For the most part, the six of them preferred to be rather close to each other. Their private rooms in the main pocket dimension were small; no one was more than several meters away at any time while they were on the ship. There were times when that was just a little too much. Fortunately, Ramses had built this second pocket altogether, which was used by the delegators during The Rock meetings. Though Ramses was considering upgrading his lab to the entirety of this space, it was presently still completely vacant. There was a bicycle in here, which someone must have requested from the industrial synthesizer in the engineering section. He didn’t think that any of the delegators were allowed to use that without supervision, so maybe they had had it, and someone else on the team had decided that it was okay.

“Got one for me?” Olimpia asked, having followed him inside.

“I don’t think so,” Mateo replied. “We could take turns.” He tilted the bike away from his body, balancing the end of the left handlebar on the tip of his index finger.

She brushed it away with a wave of her hand. “It’s all you, buddy. I don’t even know how to ride.”

Mateo smiled. “Neither did my daughter. I taught her while we were in the Sixth Key. It was a touching moment. Shoulda caught it on camera.”

Olimpia nodded. She was alone in the void during that time. Well, it was technically the future, but they didn’t reunite with her until she had spent some time there, fighting for freedom, and also for what little hope she had left.

He sighed, and looked around. “There’s not really much room. I don’t know how they used it. I guess there’s this hallway that wraps all around. But when you’re learning, you kind of need wide open spaces.”

“It’s fine,” Olimpia replied, sincerely confused. “I wasn’t asking for you to teach me. I don’t need to know how to ride. It’s...” She consulted her forearm interface screen. “...the fucking future.”

He thought about it for a moment, then he leaned the bike back against the wall, and started to leave the pocket. “Come on.” He led her across Delegation Hall, and into their usual pocket. He opened Olimpia’s door, and ushered her inside. “Lie down.”

“For..for what?” she stammered.

He tapped two fingers against the corner of the VR drawer to open it. He took out the headband, and waited patiently. “We can have as much space as we need.” All in all,  they didn’t use the virtual environments that much. They just didn’t really have the time, what with all the running around, fighting bad guys, and saving universes. They were always there, though, and the Ambassador came equipped with a decent number of virtual stacks.

She smiled without showing teeth, and lay down on her back.

“Scooch over.” After she was closer to the wall, he gently placed the band over her head, like a nurse preparing her for a medical procedure. He then reached back into the drawer to retrieve the second band. He lay down next to her, and slipped his on.

They appeared next to each other on the street that ran by Mateo’s childhood home in Topeka. Thanks to satellite imagery, stitched panoramas, and supplemental photographs, the majority of civilization since the late two thousand aughts was available for visiting through the stacks. People were dreaming up virtual worlds every single day. It was pretty much impossible to have a copy of every single one of them, especially since most of the point was for people to come together on a joint server. But these mapping images, which could be scaled to any point since 2007, depending on where you want to go, had become standard issue in every copy of the central archives. This included the street images, ocean views, and sky maps. The idea was to simulate the real world, using a real world physics engine. Anything beyond that was user’s choice. This was what they needed today. Olimpia needed to feel what it would be like if she were sitting on a real bicycle.

They could smell the fresh autumn air, and hear the dogs and leaf blowers in the distance. There was no pollution, or bits of trash on the street, though, so it wasn’t exactly like it was in the real world, but it was an idyllic version of it. This is what things looked like in 2013, not long before Mateo first disappeared.

“Why am I wearing a helmet?” Olimpia questioned.

“For safety,” he answered.

“I can’t die in here,” she reasoned.

“It’s a simulation,” he argued. “We’re simulating it. No, you can’t actually die. Even if we really traveled to Earth, and you fell down, you would barely be hurt in this all but perfect body of yours. But I want you to feel like it was like back when I was learning. Well, I mean, twenty years later, but we don’t have data from 1992.”

“Who taught you?”

Mateo smiled, and looked up at the house. The imagery didn’t contain people unless the user programmed them in. Even then, likeness was difficult to acquire. He couldn’t just conjure up his family out of nothing, and there was no getting the rights to them from here. “My mother. My birth mother. She couldn’t take care of me on her own, but she still wanted to be there for the milestones. She disappeared in ninety-four.”

“I didn’t have much in the way of parents myself,” Olimpia said. “I couldn’t be around people with my voice the way it was before this—” She cut herself off when she looked at her arm, and realized that she had no need for the Cassidy cuff in here. “Well, you know what I’m talking about.”

“Yeah.” He placed one hand underneath the seat, and the other on the handlebar. “Put both feet on the pedals. Don’t worry, I won’t let go.”

“It would be fine if you did, remember?” Olimpia turned her head, and realized how close their faces were. “But please don’t anyway.”

They could smell each other’s breaths. Regardless of what they ate today, they both smelled good in this world. Scientists did studies centuries ago, and while there was no accounting for taste, citrus seemed like a pretty universally appreciated scent, so that was the default in VR. In fact, pink grapefruit was the most common default in most systems. She looked up at him with those eyes.

Scared of whatever the hell was happening, Mateo jumped back, accidentally pushing the bike over in the process. “Holy shit, I’m so sorry.”

Olimpia stood back up, leaving the bike where it was. “I’m fine, my pain sensors are at a very low setting.”

“I’m sorry, it’s just that...Leona...”

“I know. I’m not trying to get between you two. But you were just talking about my perfect body, and you have to admit, we’re more alike than you two are.”

“Yeah, because we’re both morons. We could be the progenitors of Idiocracy!”

“I don’t think a moron would know the word progenitor.”

Their comm discs buzzed in the real world. It was from Ramses. “Team, I found something. It’s a planet, and there’s an energy signature coming from it.”

“How far?” Leona asked.

“One hop, one skip, and one jump.”

“Plot a course. Everyone get back to the bridge. I’m pretty sure it’s the Exins.”

Mateo and Olimpia looked at each other awkwardly. “We need to talk, the three of us,” he decided.

“I know.”

They removed their bands, and got out of bed.

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Fluence: Aura (Part II)

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Briar was gone. Once Goswin felt like he knew enough about the Parallel justice system to trust that it was fair and, well...just, he returned to the X González to explain things to the suspect. Briar was not in his cabin, nor did it look like anyone had ever stayed there. The bedsheets were perfectly aligned, and the surfaces were dusty from disuse. Goswin stepped back into the hallway to see if he was just turned around, but this had to be the right cabin. Still, he checked all of the others, and Briar wasn’t anywhere else either. It wasn’t a huge ship. Eight Point Seven’s sensors were damaged, in addition to her memory, so she was unable to find his location. The researchers on this asteroid had their own security system, which could not find him either, nor detect that anyone besides Goswin and Weaver had ever stepped out of the González. It was a mystery, the answer to which almost certainly had something to do with time travel.

“There’s a database,” Pontus began to explain. “It stores the records of every single person in every reality, throughout all of time, in every timeline. It could trace Briar’s steps as long as he showed up somewhere that records such data. While it does have an unspeakable amount of data, it’s not magic. If someone went off somewhere alone, they could hide from it, just like you could slink through the blindspots of a security camera.”

“Might as well try it,” Goswin decided.

“It’s not that easy,” Pontus replied. “It’s not here. It’s hard to reach, and reportedly harder to access. Almost no one in the universe is granted permission, and even when they are, their activity is heavily monitored to prevent abuse. The Tanadama, which are sort of like our god-leaders, would be prone to letting someone like you use it, but you would still have to go there first, and there is no guarantee.”

“Can we just...call them?” Goswin asked. “I don’t need to look at this database myself. He’s a dangerous and unstable man. He was an adult before he met anyone besides his mother, and he found himself trusting the wrong person. I don’t know what he’s gonna do...and if he’s dead, I need to know that too.”

Pontus shook his head. “We can’t just call. Part of the point is making the journey to Sriav.” He looked towards the back entrance of the hollowed-out asteroid. “It’s out there, in the void, away from all others, in this tiny pocket of civilization. I couldn’t even give you the exact coordinates. I think you’re expected to intuit your vector somehow. They call it our sister outpost, but we’ve never interacted with them, and I’ve never given it much thought.”

“Well, this has to happen. Whatever you need from us, it will have to wait. Briar de Vries is our priority.” He turned away as he tapped on his comms disc to make it clear that he was starting a separate conversation. “Eight Point Seven, Weaver, we’re going to a world called Sriav.”

When he turned back to ask for permission to leave the asteroid, Pontus was gone. Beside him were Weaver and Eight Point Seven in her humanoid form. “How did you do that? Did you have that body ready and waiting?”

She was just as surprised as he was. She patted herself. “Are we all corporeal?”

“No way to test that,” Weaver acknowledged. “We could all be in a simulation.”

“Not a simulation,” came a voice behind them. “It’s Sriav.”

They turned to see a grand entrance to an expansive room. It was so wide and deep that they couldn’t see how big the room was. The walls and ceiling were ornately decorated, but it appeared to be completely unfurnished, like a shell waiting to be filled and used. “I’m sorry, I got the impression that this planet was located in the intergalactic void.”

“It is,” the woman confirmed. “It’s roughly a million light years from the edge of the Milky Way galaxy.”

“We were just on an asteroid in the Achernar system,” Weaver said.

“Well,” the woman began, “if you were going to be in one place one second, and another the next, it would be Po.”

“Po?”

“That’s the primary planet orbiting Alpha Eridani. Hi. I’m Madam Sriav. You came here for a reason, I presume?”

“Captain?” Eight Point Seven urged.

“We’re looking for a man by the name of Briar de Vries,” Goswin started to explain. “He disappeared from our ship. We don’t know exactly when, or how, and we certainly don’t know where we went. Our arrival here is the second time today we’ve jumped through spacetime inexplicably quick. I was told that you have a database?”

Madam Sriav smiled. “This world is quite remote, as I’ve said. We have true faster-than-light travel, of course, but you can’t use it to get here. If you try, you’ll slow down for no apparent reason. It’s a security feature. No, if you wanna come here, you have to do it the old fashioned way, with a simple reframe engine. That could take you upwards of 1400 years. Most barely try, and most of the rest quit. The few who have dedicated their lives to such a pursuit have ended up staying here. There is no better place to live, I believe.”

“Okay, but the database?” Goswin pressed.

She smiled again. “A mechanical rabbit lure, just to give people a reason to head in this direction.”

“So it doesn’t exist,” Weaver surmised.

“A computer that tracks everyone in every reality? What horrors could that lead to? I wouldn’t want to live in a universe that had something like that.”

Weaver faced Goswin. “There must be some reason we’re here. There’s a reason we were thrown to Achernar, and now this place. I think you’re doing it.”

Goswin shook his head with the confidence of a math professor. “No, I’m not.”

“There are only three reasons to slip timespace the way we’ve been doing it; incidentally, by one’s own hand...or by someone else’s,” Weaver went over.

“What is here?” Goswin asked Madam Sriav. “What is the purpose of this world?”

“If you have to ask, you don’t belong,” she answered.

“It would help us understand how we ended up here,” Eight Point Seven reasoned. “Perhaps Briar is already here.”

Madam Sriav sighed. “It would not be my place to say, but...”

“But what?” Goswin waved his loose hand in circles. “Go on.”

“You could always look for a tracker...assuming you can make it back to civilization.” Madam Sriav didn’t think that would ever happen. “There are people who specialize in it. Some have learned and trained, others are born with the gift. Some were imbued with power by the Tanadama themselves.”

“A tracker?” Goswin questioned. “Is there a real database of such people, like a...um...”

“The word you’re looking for is a phonebook,” Weaver helped. “Madam, I know you don’t use money for transactions, but if these people help people like businesses, there must be some central location to find them.”

Madam Sriav shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I was born on this world. I don’t have much of a practical understanding of the way they do things out there.”

Now Goswin sighed as he looked up at the high ceiling. “Well, do you have any ships? We forgot to bring ours.” Something weird happened. Did the ceiling change? Yeah, the ceiling appeared to change. It was sort of gradual, but also abrupt? He kept staring at it, and trying different angles. It looked more like a sky at dawn now.

“Captain. It happened again,” Eight Point Seven explained.

Goswin nodded, still checking different angles of the sky-ceiling. “Yeah, I know. I’m just afraid to look. Everytime I wanna go somewhere, we go.”

“It’s worse than that this time,” Weaver said.

Goswin dropped his chin. Madam Sriav was still here with them, and they were no longer in the frighteningly large room. They were outside, in the center of some kind of meadow nearish the top of a mountain. “I do apologize for...whatever is going on. With me, or with us. I just don’t know.”

“You need to get me back,” Madam Sriav insisted. “So please, figure it out.” She seemed like the kind of person who was not used to getting upset, and was desperately trying to keep her emotions in check, even though she had ever reason to be cross.

“Hey! Who are you?” A man was walking towards them from the slope.

“We are the crew of the X González,” Goswin replied, hoping that Madam Sriav would rather be lumped in with them than stand out in the presence of yet another stranger. “Can you tell us where we are?”

“You’re on Lorania, on the side of Mount Aura.”

“Lorania?” Eight Point Seven echoed, “as in, the island on Dardius?”

“That’s right,” the man said.

“Dardius only exists in the main sequence,” Madam Sriav revealed. “You brought us across realities. How are you doing this?”

“I still don’t know, but I’m worried that he’s accidentally joined us, and if I start thinking about going somewhere else, I’ll only make matters worse.”

“No,” Madam Sriav began to calculate. “Think about Sriav, and that’s where we’ll go. I don’t really care where anyone else goes. I welcomed you to my planet, because that is my job, and I can’t do it if I’m here, so I’m done humoring you.”

Wow, this situation escalated quickly. “Are you a tracker?” Goswin asked the new guy. “If you’re a tracker, that’s why I’m here.”

“No. I’m Harrison. Tracker Four is up there.”

“Great. Maybe they can help everyone get home,” Goswin hoped.

“She’s with another client,” Harrison said, stopping them from stepping forward with an imposing stance.

“You can come back for her later,” Sriav said to Goswin. “You take me back first.”

“I can’t control it,” Goswin argued. “I’m not even sure I am doing it. I don’t feel anything when it happens. Do either of you feel anything?”

Weaver and Eight Point Seven shook their heads.

“Yeah,” Goswin went on, “so let’s say it’s me. What if I accidentally send us to the inside of a volcano, or hell, just the vacuum of outer space?”

“Don’t even suggest things like that!” Sriav was raising her voice now. “Don’t put those thoughts in your own head!”

Goswin made prayer hands, with his index fingers wrapped around his nose, his middle fingers pressed up against his forehead, and his thumbs pushing up the corners of his lips. This is what he did when he was frustrated, and trying to solve a problem. “Harrison, is this region dangerous in any way.”

Harrison didn’t expect the question. “Uh, there’s a natural merge point a few kilometers that way, which will take you to prehistoric times. As long as you stay away from that, you should be good.”

“I’m not gonna try to do anything yet. Madam Sriav, I know that your life and your job are important to you, but you have a few hours to just wait, so I can get this right. I’m going to go meditate. When I get back, if you happen to have photos of where you live, there’s a chance that helps. I really couldn’t say for sure. I’m sorry if I did this to you, but this is uncharted territory, so your patience would be greatly appreciated.”

Still annoyed, Madam Sriav raised her eyebrows, and gestured for him to get on with it. Then she turned around, and started kicking at some nearby flowers.

Goswin wasn’t super into meditation, but he had done it a few times, and it was a great excuse to get away from everyone. If he really was responsible for all of this, standing around and being berated about it wasn’t going to help. He found a nice, soft patch of grass a couple hundred meters away from them. He sat down cross-legged, and closed his eyes, hoping to free his mind from all distractions. The birds were starting to chirp, but they were very consistent and melodic, so it actually helped. There was a slight breeze that cooled his face just enough to be comfortable in this tropical weather. He breathed in deeply, held it in for a few seconds, and exhaled through his mouth. This wasn’t him. It couldn’t be him. He didn’t have powers, or a pattern. He was just a normal guy who met a bunch of time travelers one day. That was why he jumped at the chance to board the X González. He wanted to know more, to meet other people. He wanted to have an adventure. He didn’t want to ruin people’s lives.

He was sitting there for several minutes when it began to rain. It was only a sprinkle at first, but then the drops began to fall harder. It didn’t stop him, though. He stayed where he was, trying to find his center. This was just another distraction that he had to let go of and ignore. Before too long, though, the rain was pouring. The grass under him was pushed away to be replaced by mud. He didn’t know how long he could stand it. It wasn’t the most discomfort he had ever experienced, but he certainly didn’t want it to worsen.

“Ēalā! Eart þu hāl!” an unfamiliar voice shouted to him.

He felt like he had no choice but to open his eyes. This was definitely not Lorania anymore. “What? Sorry, I slipped, but I’m okay.” He started to stand up. “Where am I?”

She seemed quite confused at his words. “It’s England.”

“Forgive me, but...what year?”

“Oh. You must have come through the cave.”

“What cave?”

“On Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. It’s the year 1133, on Earth. My name is Irene. Irene de Vries.”

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