The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 12, 2464

« < » > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2, and by Pixlr AI image editor

Using a communications array that the Maramon built, Leona was able to make contact with Hogarth Pudeyonavic. She was aware of the membrane thickener that the Angry Fifth Divisioner had deployed, and was working on a way to get rid of it. In the meantime, there was another way out of this universe. Like many other places, time travel was illegal here. And like all other places, there were exceptions. The way A.F.’s machine worked—which Leona now believed should be called a quintessence multiplier, or maybe a concentrator—what used to be known as dark matter would consolidate over the boundaries of the target universe. It would seal up any dark energy leaks, and tighten the borders. What was unclear as of yet was whether this happened like blood platelets clotting a wound from the inside, or more like a bandage wrapping it up from the outside.

The fact was, this process happened in realtime, starting from the moment that it was initiated. It did not extend backwards in time, which meant that the kasma was still accessible from any point in history. Hogarth agreed to send them back just long enough to let them cross over through the aperture, where they could go on their merry way. The only condition was that they not attempt to change the past in any way, even to stop A.F. from completing his mission. If Hogarth ended up solving the problem using such a technique, then that would be her decision, and it would happen on her timetable.

Hogarth could not, or would not, send them back in time in the little ship that Leona had engineered for them. The suspicion was that Hogarth wanted to use the skeleton key that it was equipped with for herself, which was surely okay, and a fair tradeoff for them. In another deal, they also agreed to take the hybrid, Aclima with them. She didn’t want to give them her reasons, but she promised that she harbored no ill will towards them, nor any nefarious plans for the multiverse. As payment for her ticket to the past, she gave Past!Mateo his own suit; helmet and all, so he too could survive wherever they ended up going.

Once they returned to May 30, 2451, the group was free to leave Fort Underhill. They were planning on crossing the kasma, and entering Salmonverse through its own aperture, but decided that they wanted to reunite with the rest of the team first. Now that they were already in the kasma, it was better to return to Stoutverse now, or they may never get another opportunity. They would still find a chance to help Past!Mateo complete his mission on Verdemus, even if that meant having Carlin relapse them to the Goldilocks Corridor in the 2420s and 30s. That was assuming the Maramon wasn’t lying about its significance anyway.

They were floating in the kasma now, listening to their past selves in the Transit deal with A.F.’s wrath. “We have to get on that train,” the present day version of Angela determined. She was speaking through the laserlink. They needed to be able to communicate with each other without interfering with the timeline, so outgoing signals from their comm discs had to be disabled. Laser communication was a great way to send a signal to a specific target—or in this case, targets—without worrying about anyone else intercepting it.

“All right, we teleport to the caboose,” Leona decided. “Stay on the outside for now, and find something to hold onto for a few seconds. I’ll teleport in while invisible, and scope out the car, then signal the rest of you.”

“We don’t have much time,” Marie pointed out, realizing that their past selves were nearing the end of their argument with A.F., and would be bugging out soon.

“We don’t need it.”

Past!Mateo took Aclima’s hand, and they all teleported to what they believe to be the outer hull of the rear car of the Transit. Instead, they found themselves inside of it. They had gotten pretty good at precision, so it didn’t make much sense that they would be off target. Sure, it was only meters too far, but it was weird just the same.

Future!Mateo pulled his helmet off, as did everyone else. “What the hell happened?”

“Let’s just be happy that no one is in here to catch us,” Marie said.

Leona started to look up and down the car. “No, this is weird. Hold on.” She looked through the window. “There’s the next car.” She jogged over to the other end. “There’s the equilibrium. I gathered information about this thing while we were on our way to Stoutverse. Every car is the same size; roughly thirteen by fifty-five by twenty-one meters. This is much shorter. I would have seen it on the floor plans if this were a thing. I think...” She trailed off.

“We’re invisible,” Aclima guessed.

“I think so. There are meant to be fifty-five cars, but this could be the fifty-sixth.”

“It’s like it was made for us,” Angela mused.

“Check out this caboose!” Past!Mateo joked.

They felt a lurch as the Transit flew into overdrive in a desperate play to escape the kasma. Olimpia would soon use the Sangster Canopy to cleave a canal between the two universes to avoid being captured by A.F. All the future versions of the team would have to do now was sit tight, and wait to catch up with their own time period, effectively closing their loops. If they lay low, and waited patiently in secret, they could reveal themselves in four days, and get back to work with the knowledge of the quintessence consolidation machine. They could also engineer a new skeleton key, which should allow them to somehow return to Salmonverse, and make their way to Verdemus. Navigation was going to be the biggest issue, but that was a problem for tomorrow. For now, they just had to be concerned with life support for Aclima for four years.

The secret fifty-sixth car was shorter than all the others, yes, but it was slightly taller. At twenty-four meters, instead of twenty-one, they were able to look through a window to see the rest of the Transit. Wow, it really was inspired by trains. This would be called the cupola. It also had a window in the back, which was showing them what was happening behind. While most of them were watching the ship race through the kasma canal, Past!Mateo was looking in the opposite direction. “Uh, guys? Something looks wrong here, so maybe you oughta look?”

“What is it?” Leona slid over to check out what he was seeing. Brilliant technicolor lights were illuminating the walls of Salmoverse and Fort Underhill. Olimpia’s magical powers were separating them only for long enough to let the Transit pass through. It wasn’t ever meant to be a permanent canal, and in fact, that was probably not physically possible. The walls were closing back in on themselves, and this appeared to be happening faster and faster. She lifted her watch to her face, and kept an eye on the timer. “It’s accelerating. We’re not gonna make it.”

“That’s impossible,” Angela said. “We already know that we’ll make it. We’ve done this before.”

Leona shook her head. “The Transit will make it, but not every car...not this one, and maybe not the next one over. I don’t know. There is a margin of error in my head math that I am not comfortable with.”

“We need to teleport to the next car,” Marie assumed.

“I’ve been trying,” Future!Mateo said. “We can’t do it, not now. I think it Olimpia’s power is blocking us.”

“Or the kasma, or the canal, or the bulk, or the quintessence. There’s no way to know what the problem is.”

“Fine, then let’s just walk over there,” Marie offered.

“Can’t do it!” Aclima declared from one level down. “The door’s locked!”

Leona looked back at the advancing walls of doom. “Brace for impact!”

 Suddenly, the door that Aclima was trying to get through opened from the other side. A man stepped through. “What’s going on in here?”

Before anyone could answer, a burst of technicolors flooded the room from the outside, and threw him across the car, and down a couple of levels. Everyone else fell down too, though not quite as hard. Leona got herself to her feet, and raced down to shut the door, but it didn’t seem necessary. They were exposed to the harsh environment of the equilibrium, but doing just fine. The atmosphere wasn’t trying to escape. Well, there had to be a reason it was called an equilibrium in the first place, right? Still, she closed the door, and reached down to check on Aclima, who had hit her head, but was conscious, and recovering quickly.

Everyone checked on each other, and seemed all right as well, having suffered only superficial wounds. They found a cot in a nearby compartment to lay the man down. Leona looked down at him with a sense of familiarity. “I know him.” She pulled her handheld device out, and started swiping through their list of known persons.

“That’s not important right now,” Marie told her. “We’re drifting.”

“So go check the systems,” Leona ordered. You’re tech-savvy enough. I shouldn’t have to do everything.”

“I know who that is,” Past!Mateo said as both Angela and Marie were walking down to the control terminal. “I remember him from your memories, back when I didn’t exist. That’s the guy in the secret seventh pocket dimension on the Elizabeth Warren. His brother was the one who killed Annora Ubiña.”

Leona nodded. “Right. But it wasn’t his brother. It was his cousin.” She found what she was looking for in the list. “Jarrett. That makes him Hadron.”

Hadron’s eyes were still closed while he swallowed, and adjusted his position on the cot slightly. “That’s me, Hadron Grier.”

“What are you doing here?” Leona asked.

Aclima slipped her hand under Hadron’s head, and pulled it back out. There was a little bit of blood on it. “No more questions.”

“That was one question,” Leona clarified.

“I’m fine,” Hadon said, sitting up, and allowing Aclima to move the pillow up to the wall for him to lean back on. “My medical nanites will heal the wound. To answer your question, I never thought I would see you again. My cousin was sent to prison for murder, but since he did it for me, it was decided that I wasn’t completely innocent. I was sentenced to house arrest for three years. That was fine, I was finally free of the tyranny of Durus. Still, when a magical door suddenly opened up on a wall that wasn’t supposed to have a door, I took the opportunity to cross over.”

“You worked in The Crossover,” Leona noted.

“For a while, until I found myself taking up a righteous cause in Universum Originalis. I should have known that I would end up in a place like this. What goes around, comes around, eh?”

Aclima pulled her suit’s drinking tube past her neck, and hovered over him to let him have some water.

“Thanks, love,” he said. “Are you gonna take me back to jail?”

Leona scoffed. “Ha, what? That was, like, 280 years ago.”

“Oh.” Only now did he get a look around. “I don’t understand what this is. I was in the caboose. I thought maybe you were a boarding party, but this appears to be of Transit architecture.”

“This is the real caboose,” Future!Mateo explained to him. “It was invisible for some reason.”

“I see.” Hadron took another sip from Aclima’s water tube, which from the right angle, looked a little like he was breastfeeding from her.

Angela came back. “Interestingly, this thing can operate on its own power. We think that we can follow the Transit to Stoutverse, but we’ll never catch up. It doesn’t go fast enough.”

“That’s okay,” Leona said. “Time ain’t nothin’ but a thang. Plot a course, and yalla.”

“We’ve already done that,” Angela replied.

“Great. Mateo?” Leona asked

“Which one of us?”

“Both,” she answered. “Go explore this place. Find out how many cots we have, and see if you can find a food synthesizer, or anything else we can use.”

They did end up finding a food synthesizer, as well as a number of cots, though they didn’t really need them all that badly. The most important discovery was an advanced industrial synthesizer, which was compatible enough with the datadrive that Leona already had with her regarding the skeleton key. She was able to build a new one in a matter of hours, which allowed them to cross over into Stoutverse without having to piggyback on the Transit proper as it entered. They didn’t even have to worry about laying low until they closed their loop in this world either. That navigation issue randomly spit them out of the bulk on June 12, 2464, which wasn’t that much later than when they left.

They were able to reconnect with Ramses and Olimpia, who updated them on everything they had been dealing with. The government wanted to use a Westfall visitor as a human bioweapon, and since they couldn’t accomplish that, they just took his blood to develop a serum, which they distributed to the whole population. Despite it seemingly being over, Westfall still wouldn’t let the man go home. They offered to try to take him back instead using their new bulk traveling machine. That seemed to be enough to break reality, though. When Dutch Haines attempted to follow them through one of the doors of the bunker, he disappeared, hopefully back home where he belonged anyway. But there was no way to know. Oh well. They were still going to leave, but they weren’t going alone. Kineret asked to tag along, but this was a complicated situation, because technically, due to her position as the Primus’ lieutenant, it was considered going AWOL. They needed to approach this with care and caution.

« < » > Table of Contents

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 3, 2455

« < » > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2

When Mateo and Leona finally had the time to meet back up in their bunker room together, they both said, “I need to leave,” at the same time. They were surprised by the other’s declaration, and certain that it couldn’t have been for the same reason. They were right. They spent all evening talking about their respective missions until the end of their day when they jumped forward to the future. They then went to sleep to get their full five hours before waking up to have breakfast with their friends, Carlin included. He was vital to both operations, so he needed to know what was going on too.

The tension in the air was undeniable. Even though they didn’t know that they were coming together for a meeting, everyone seemed to feel that that was part of the reason they were here, not just to eat. Leona sat up straight to speak. “Olimpia saved our lives a few days ago when she used the Sangster Canopy to break through the dimensional membrane that separated Salmonverse from Fort Underhill. This was especially impressive since that membrane was particularly thick. Hogarth Pudeyonavic designed her artificial universe this way on purpose, in order to protect it from intruders. The way I understand it, that’s what makes it a fort. Someone evidently figured out how to replicate that technology, and-or extend it to our home universe as well, which was why we couldn’t just turn our ship around to escape.

“We must do the same, for this universe. What Angela and I learned from the Ochivar we interrogated was that they are not going to stop coming. This is a playground for them. They’re testing their infiltration methods, but it could worsen. They might later test weapons of mass destruction, or ultimately their sterilization pathogen. Time in this brane does not match up with time in theirs, which means that they could come here from any moment in their history. We believe that these invaders are coming from relatively early on in that history. The ones that the locals have detained as prisoners of war would therefore not be armed with the same knowledge that the future Ochivari we and our friends have encountered had. They’re young, and dumb, and people like that are reckless, and unpredictable. Shutting them out completely may be this world’s only hope. So I have to go back to where we came from, approach the Angry Fifth Divisioner who keeps trying to kill us, and get him to lead me to whatever actually intelligent person or group that he’s working with. Carlin, I would ask you to...relapse me there.”

“Me as well,” Marie offered.

“I was about to volunteer,” Angela argued with her sister.

“Like she said,” Marie began, “she’ll be confronting a dangerous man, who is probably working with a more dangerous group of people. She needs a fighter.”

“I am a fighter,” Leona reminded them. “I can go alone.”

“Oh, yeah?” Marie asked. “What happens when you need to defuse a bomb while keeping an angry horde of crazed zombies at bay? Can you do both at the same time?”

Leona gave her a look, and held there for a moment. “I’ll give you a million dollars if I find myself in a situation where there’s a bomb, and a bunch of zombies.”

“How will you pay?” Marie questioned. “You’ll be dead. I’m going with you. We don’t separate; not completely, not anymore. After what happened to me in the Third Rail, and Olimpia in her kasma, I won’t allow it. Carlin, you remember that. I’m telling you to never relapse only one of us somewhere. If she tries, you come to me immediately afterwards, and send me exactly where she went. Leona, you can’t prevent that.”

“She’s right,” Carlin agreed. “I don’t like people being alone either. You could order me to stand down, and I’ll just ignore that.”

Leona sighed. “Okay. I’m sorry, Angela, but she’s right. She’s better suited for this mission. You’re both smart and capable, but she was a spy, and we may need to spy.”

Angela folded her arms. “She wasn’t a spy, she was an asset. Totally different.”

“You can come with me,” Mateo suggested.

“Where are you going?” Ramses asked.

“I have my own mission,” Mateo began. “Speaking of the Third Rail, I once disappeared from that mine in Russia. Carlin can show me what happened; how I ended up with a solid block of timonite in my stomach. I don’t think that I just skipped over time. I think I went somewhere, and spent time there. It’s been long enough. I have to recover those memories. I am getting the feeling that it is of vital importance. I don’t know why, but now is the time.”

Angela took Mateo by the hand. “I would be honored to accompany you.”

“You’ll likely run into your past self,” Ramses pointed out.

“That’s probably why you lost your memories in the first place,” Olimpia conjectured. “You did it on purpose to prevent a paradox.”

“That’s the reigning theory,” Mateo concurred.

Ramses looked over at Olimpia. “I suppose the C-team will stay here to man the fort, huh?”

Leona scoffed. “Ramses, we’re on the front lines. Don’t downplay that. These people need you. Now that the breach detector is done, you need to start working on the breach predictor.”

“Good point.” He bobbled his head. “Some might even say that we’re on the most important mission out of the three groups.”

“Carlin?” Mateo started. “You’ve not actually agreed to relapse us yet.”

“You’re right, I’ve not,” he replied. “That’s probably because I wouldn’t know how to get you back. I’m not a boomerang thrower.”

“We discussed that last year,” Leona said. “I can always go to the nearest Nexus, and plead my case to Venus Opsocor. Mateo has a psychic bond with a woman named Amber Fossward, who can link him up to a bulk traveler. We’ll find a way back.”

“Those sound like very unreliable and vague strategies,” Carlin determined.

“I will admit to that,” Leona replied. “We always find a way, though. I’ve decided to stop worrying about it. Remember, someone wants us here. They set in place a series of events that led us to this planet on a day that, according to the local calendar, matches our pattern back home. It couldn’t be a coincidence; the odds are too low. If we had never left, it would be June 3, 2455.”

“That’s even more vague,” Carlin pressed. “You’re putting your faith in a higher power, like some dumb Santien trying to cleanse the population.”

“I hardly think it’s that,” Leona insisted, “but it’s not your concern. You only need to help us get out of here. Please?”

For some reason, Carlin looked to Olimpia for guidance. She nodded her head slightly. “Okay. I’ll send the four of you to your two missions. But I take no responsibility for what happens after that.”

“We would never blame you for it,” Mateo assured him. “You should know us better than that.”

“You knew me when I was a child, and children don’t have very good memories.” That was a decent point. They had missed so many years of his life. He was practically a stranger to them now. But he was a McIver, and that was good enough for them to trust him with this. “Are you going to tell the Primus where you’re going?”

“We won’t get into specifics,” Leona answered. “She doesn’t need to know, in case it doesn’t work out. We’ll just tell her that we’re going off to find help.”

“Okay.” Carlin stood up. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

“Thank you,” Leona said. “Oli, could we talk?”

“Sure,” Olimpia replied.

“Leona?” Ramses asked. “Could we talk?”

She laughed. “Sure. Just give us a minute.”

Leona transported Olimpia to the same place in the Gobi desert where she and Angela discussed the ramifications of the Ochivar’s claim that some of the exo-universe infiltrators were human, and would be more difficult to detect. If neither Leona nor Angela ever managed to come back, someone else needed to carry the burden of that information. She was free to dispense it as she felt was prudent, but Leona gave her some advice in this matter. It was a very delicate and sociopolitically charged situation. Once they were done with that, she met with Ramses in his lab on the Vellani Ambassador.

He presented her with a PRU, which stood for Portable Resource Unit. It was a special backpack that could be affixed to, or detached from, their integrated multipurpose suit. There were four components: oxygen, water, food, and other supplies. One side was flexible, capable of conforming to the body of the user as they moved around, while the other sides were more rigid and durable. They were not wearing them when they were spirited away to the Garden Dimension, but stored on the Ambassador. He had been lobbying for them to keep them on at all times, as well as the helmet, which could magnetically attach to the outside for a real turtle look.

“Okay,” she relented. “I will take them with us. But you’re the one who designed our bodies to be able to survive in the vacuum of outer space.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t design them to help you survive the equilibrium of interuniversal space apparently, though. And anyway, that’s not the reason I brought you here, or why I’m so excited.” He was smiling widely. “These are special. I modified them myself with miniature dimensional generators. They now come with three months’ worth of water and the liquefied dayfruit that comes through your feeding tube.” He flicked the food tube that was presently collapsed into Leona’s IMS collar.

“Dayfruit smoothie, my favorite,” Leona said sarcastically. This variety of the versatile food took a lot of the taste out of the daily nutritionally-complete food, and drinking it from the tube made it impossible to switch to other flavors, since it logistically had to come from one storage container.

“It beats dyin’,” he reasoned. “The oxygen tank is a lot larger too, which places less strain on the carbon scrubber, though that has also been upgraded, as have the surface ramscoop nodes.” Theoretically, a regular person could survive for weeks in outer space with nothing more than their suits, and a resource unit. There were minute amounts of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon atoms in the interstellar medium, which the PRU’s ramscoop could suck up, and process for power, air, and even food. To Leona’s knowledge, no one had ever tested this, though, because that would be insane.

“Yeah, you’re right,” she acknowledged. “Did you modify the other three that we need for the two away missions?”

“Of course. I modified them all.” He reached over his shoulder, and tapped twice on his own PRU. “I need you to convince the other three to wear them now. I’ll take care of Olimpia. I’m sure we’ll all need them at some point, and I would feel better if you had them at any rate.”

Leona nodded. “Marie and I will operate at PREPCON three, I promise.” This preparedness condition required the user to be wearing the suit in its near entirety, as well as the PRU, with the helmet attached to its dock. The higher levels didn’t demand quite this much readiness, and for the lower levels, the helmet was on the user’s head. A member of the crew of a ship who was on duty was expected to be ready to be shot out of an airlock, or a hull breach, at all times, but that wasn’t necessary while they were simply walking around a planet with an atmosphere. This was the space travel equivalent to the DEFCON system.

“Thank you.”

Leona ordered the rest of the members of the away teams to report to Ramses for a short training session regarding the new PRUs. Meanwhile, she met with Naraschone and Kineret about what they were doing. She told them that they needed to investigate ways to stop the Ochivari from being able to come here at all, but that she couldn’t explain more than that. They planned on relapsing after everyone was finished packing up, but Ramses’ bulk portal detector went off. Mateo teleported Carlin right to the location in a rare opportunity for him to get to the scene within moments of an alert. The teleportation should have made it a quick detour, but Carlin was required to report to an after-action debrief. Fortunately, Mateo was able to jump them to the Defense Bunker too. He was asked to participate anyway, but it only took them about an hour, after which they were able to return to the Executive Bunker.

“Will it hurt?” Olimpia asked.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Carlin said to her. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. There was something going on between them, but it seemed rather nascent.

“Yeah, but I don’t want it to hurt my friends.”

He smiled. “People report that it’s jarring, but not painful.”

“We’ll be all right,” Marie promised.

“Have you thought about exactly where you wanna go?” Carlin asked the group.

Mateo handed him a piece of paper. “These are the coordinates to the Russian mine. I don’t know for sure that I traveled through time on that day, but it’s likely.”

“I don’t need this. You’re the navigator, as my teachers would call it. I’m just the engine. Concentrate on your destination. Mrs. Matic?”

“I have a few options in my head. I too am unsure, but I’m hoping that crossing into a bulk aperture sufficiently qualifies as a time travel event. We have to locate that angry Fifth Divisioner who trapped us in the kasma. He must be somewhere close. If not, there are other, less than ideal options where we’ll have to go the long way around.”

“Okay. Say your final goodbyes,” Carlin advised.

They hugged and kissed each other, then separated into their pairs to either make their way back to their own pasts, or stay exactly where they were. Ramses and Olimpia watched, fearing the worst for their loved ones, but hopeful that everything was going to work out. “Okay,” Olimpia said after they were gone. “It may all be up to us now.”

« < » > Table of Contents

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 1, 2453

« < » > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2, and by Pixlr AI image editor

The team transported the Sixth Key delegates, the Primus, and her assistant to the Executive Bunker on the other side of the world. From there, they watched the battle that the Transit and the Cormanu were fighting against the onslaught of Ochivari ships. The local squadrons watched from orbit, but did not participate. The public watched as well through minimal satellite feeds, though most of the cameras that were pointed  away from Earth were limited to military and governmental use. After only about fifteen minutes of the shooting, they all disappeared through a technicolor portal. No friend or foe was left on the battlefield. The theory was that the Transit was trying to spare the locals by moving the fighting to another universe, but it could have just as easily been more like the other way around. No one sent them a message, and when the team returned a year later, they still hadn’t heard from anyone, but a lot had changed. Carlin was now a folk hero.

In all this time, they never got a chance to find out what his time powers were, which appeared to run in the family. Apparently, he was kind of like a walking homestone, but with fewer limitations. He could send anyone back to any point in their life just after they departed from that moment using teleportation or time travel; not only the first instance. He was able to return all of the delegates to where they were when the Tree of Life first pulled them to the nucleus. Leona respectfully asked why he didn’t do that before, and he said that he wasn’t certain of the extent of his abilities. He didn’t know that he could relapse across universes, but Thack was able to check to make sure that everyone was back to where they belonged as if they had never left.

“Are you sure you want to use that word?” Mateo asked.

“I like it,” Carlin insisted.

“Well, it’s just that it has negative—”

“I understand. I like it,” he repeated.

“Okay.”

“I could relapse you too,” Carlin offered, “now that I know that I can even do it from all the way out here.”

“Can you do it to yourself?” Mateo asked him.

“No.”

“Then it’s a no for me too. We’re not gonna leave you behind. Though, perhaps Thack would like to go home?”

“She says that she must remain here for a certain amount of time,” Carlin explained. “I offer a way out to her every day.”

“Does it drain you of energy, doing what you do?” Mateo went on.

“It’s invigorating,” Carlin revealed. Even though the orbital battle last year was fought against an armada of ships, it wasn’t like they were the only Ochivari in the universe. More kept coming through smaller breaches on the surface of this planet. Whenever a new arrival was detected, the government would fly Carlin to that location to have him dispatch of the threat. They actually gave him a special hypersonic jet to accomplish this. He might need to travel anywhere in the world to complete his missions, and he was beloved by all for his efforts. Many were coming out of the bunkers, and trying to return to their normal lives as a result. Though, the government wasn’t sure whether that was the right call. One thing that helped them know when an Ochivar had snuck in was because there were fewer humans around for them to blend in with. They had yet to figure out how to detect the portals themselves, and were hoping that the team could help them. “I love all the sudden travel, though I know that the natives are hoping that you can make that simpler.”

“Are you up for that?” Leona asked Ramses.

“What, me? Of course, why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, you almost died from equilibrium exposure,” she reminded him.

“Well, I had to test what it was like to be exposed in the equilibrium,” Ramses explained. “And now I know...it’s worse than a vacuum.”

“Next time, wear a helmet,” Leona suggested.

“Aye aye, Captain.” He was trying to keep it light, but Leona wanted to be a little more serious, so he nodded, and added, “I really will. I need to get the Ambassador back up to the surface, and re-embigify it, so I can start working on the detector in my lab.”

“Go ahead,” she allowed.

“I’ll go with you,” Angela offered. They both jumped away.

Soon after they were gone, Thack Natalie Collins entered the room. They were in the executive bunker situation room, where the military usually planned and led the war efforts. It was originally designed to support the continuity of government in the event of a total collapse of civilization, which hadn’t happened yet. However, they were always on the cusp of complete failure, which was why most of Primus Mihajlović’s supporters kept begging recently for her to begin operating out of here fulltime. The second major tactical  assault was all the reason they needed to basically force her to finally accept that, so she and Kineret had been down here for the last year, as was Thack, who was presently serving as a cultural advisor. “Welcome back to reality.”

“We weren’t sure that we would jump at all,” Leona told her. “Being in other universes makes it complicated.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Thack claimed.

“Would you know about the Transit, and the Cormanu?” Mateo pressed. “Where did they go when they left here?”

Thack smiled in a way that made it seem like she was about to school them on the subject. “Psychic abilities are interesting. For the most part, we’re not talking about knowing things without learning them, though that’s definitely part of it. The majority of psychics are limited by their connection to others. That’s what it is; the links that bind us together. Now, you would think that this means I should be able to find our friends wherever they are, especially since I have formed close personal relationships with the Hawthornes, however, I believe that they have traveled beyond my scope. They have gone to a universe where no one else lives. Yes, I’m connected to the people that I already know, but not to anyone else there, because they don’t exist. You’ve been to a handful of branes yourselves, and you’ve always found people to already be living there, such as the one we’re in right now. But most aren’t like that. Most are dead, or lifeless anyway. In the infinity, I think most can’t even harbor life at all, meaning that you can’t go to them, or you’ll just straight up die. I can tell you for a fact that our friends did not end up in one of those extreme scenarios, because I see their futures. But there are plenty of others out there where life is safe, but never evolved. And again, I can’t see them. If you were in the middle of a fight with the Ochivari, you would probably try to go to one of these places, so the conflict did not endanger the lives of innocents.”

“I would if I could, yes,” Mateo agreed. “But just to clarify, you can’t watch them remotely, even when you concentrate, and you can’t guess when they’ll return, if ever?”

Thack shook her head. “I’m saying that I don’t know where they went when they left,” she explained, quite careful with her language. It probably wasn’t safe for them to know too much about the future. She faced Carlin. “Mister McIver, I will be leaving today. Please prepare to relapse me back to Voldisilaverse.”

“I’m ready, we can go right now,” Carlin replied.

“No, no. Mister Abdulrashid needs time to build his little device. When we’ll go, he’ll take measurements of the bulk energy that you’ll be tapping into. That data will be vital for the goal of detecting arrivals as they happen.”

The Primus walked into the room with Kineret, having heard enough from the hallway. “Will we ever be able to predict them, so we can dispatch a team ahead of time? We’re always worried that some remain...somewhere.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Thack repeated herself from earlier.

Naraschone seemed to be used to having to allow Thack her secrets. “Anyway, the military requires this room for a battle exercise for one of their new fighter jets.”

This was where the team happened to be last year when their proverbial hourglass ran out, and they were sent forward in time a year. They weren’t entirely sure when it would happen, since their original pattern was tied to midnight central in Salmonverse. This was a version of Earth, and the bunker was located in Colorado, so their best guess was that it would be the same, using the local time zone borders, but it happened at 22:00 instead, when it was only 23:00 in Kansas. They did not know why.

“We were just leaving,” Thack said respectfully.

As they were exiting, Mateo pulled Thack aside since this was evidently his last time to talk to her. “When I was being possessed by Amber and Sanaa, two others managed to sneak into my mind. One was Meredarchos, I’m sure you’ve heard of him.”

“I have,” Thack said, nodding.

“The other; they were crying for help. Would you have any idea who that could be, or would you not know anything about that?” Hopefully that didn’t come off as harsh.

“It could be a number of people,” Thack answered. “It could be me. It could be one of the people on any of the bulk traveling machines that were here last year, or of the people who travel using other means. It could be you, from your future.” She looked away from him as if her own words had given her an idea. “Or from your past.”

“No, I would remember that,” Mateo insisted.

“Aren’t you missing some personal time? Think back.”

Mateo winced, not knowing what she was talking about, but then he realized that she might be onto something. He did disappear once, from the Third Rail, in the Russian mine where they were looking for timonite to rescue Trina. When he came back, they thought that he had only jumped forward in time a couple of days, but he had always secretly had the feeling that he had actually been detoured somewhere in the meantime, and had since lost his memories of it. He never really talked about that with the others, but it was super weird that he just happened to swallow the one rock that they had been searching for. “Maybe you’re right. You really think that it was just me?”

“Oh, it’s only an idea. You have an opportunity to investigate that you didn’t have before, though. If you don’t have anything else going on, you could talk to Carlin.”

That was an interesting recommendation, one which he should probably take.

« < » > Table of Contents

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 31, 2452

« < » > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2, and by Pixlr AI image editor

One of the crew members started counting down the distance. The physics of extradimensional space weren’t very intuitive. The equilibrium was proof that the membrane was all around. It wasn’t like one would have to travel a certain distance to reach it. They should be able to break free from anywhere. The fact that the Transit moved so quickly was just its way of accomplishing this, as opposed to other methods, like temperature and pressure, or surgical strikes. Still, there was a physical boundary, which would kill them if they collided with it, and it was approaching fast. Or rather, they were approaching it. In order to combat this, they needed Olimpia’s umbrella.

“Eleven units!” the engineer called out about a second or two after saying that it was thirteen. “Nine! Seven! Sir, we need to abort!”

“There’s no time, Dawn,” Freya reminded her. “We have to trust in magic.”

“This will work!” Olimpia insisted. “We just have to get closer before it actually starts...w—w—working.” She wasn’t super confident in this.

“Three! One!”

They held their breaths again.

“Two! Four! Six. Eight. Ten.” Dawn was beginning to relax.

“It is working, Olimpia, keep holding!”

“For how long!” Olimpia questioned. Increasing the length of the kasma itself was proving to be far harder than simply holding back the Lucius bomb back on Ex-467. And this time, she probably couldn’t ask someone else to give her a break, or they would be destroyed during the hand-off.

Dawn’s numbers kept going up and up and up as the walls of the universe cleaved for them. For Olimpia. “Fifty-five, fifty-six...infinite.”

“Infinite?” Freya asked.

“Infinite,” she repeated. “We’re not in the kasma anymore. We’re in the outer bulk. She just built a canal for us.”

Marie started to massage Olimpia’s back. “Ya done good, kid.”

Olimpia was breathing heavily, and hanging her head low. “I think I need to go to the med car too.”

Marie caught her when she keeled over, and teleported her away.

Leona held one finger up when Azura tried to say something to her. She and Angela were listening to the state of their teammates. Both Olimpia and Ramses were probably going to be all right eventually. “Okay. What was that?”

“Are you talking to me now?” Azura asked.

“Yes, Azura, go ahead.”

“I don’t have the coordinates for very many universes. I’ve sort of...burned bridges in most of them, and I don’t know how the Maramon in Providenciaverse would react to you, since your history with their species is...complicated.”

“Can we get back into Salmonverse from here?” Angela asked.

“The membrane is too thick,” Dawn explained as she was looking at her computer. I can get you back in, but...”

“But what?” Freya encouraged.

“Not in your present day,” Dawn clarified. “The part of the barrier that runs throughout the entire time period is thicker. It’s like if you sealed a box with tape, and then wrapped a whole bunch of tape around the middle until the whole roll was gone.”

Azura looked at her like she was crazy. “You’ve heard of adhesive tape?”

“I grew up on a fairly primitive planet. Yes, I’ve heard of tape.”

“Where can we go?” Leona pressed.

“Where’s Treasure?” Freya asked, knowing that no one here knew the answer, or they never would have been in the kasma in the first place.

Leona sighed in the middle of the silence. “Matt, get back here, please,” she said into her comms. “I know, but you’re not a doctor. Trust whoever’s there to take care of them, and come back. You’re the only one who can do this.”

Mateo reluctantly jumped back to the executive car. “What is it?”

“I need you to reach out to Amber. We’re looking for someone in the bulk, and she’s the only one we can communicate with from presumably anywhere.”

Mateo looked at everyone in the group. All of the delegates from the Sixth Key were still here, watching him like eagles over a river. “I could use some space.”

“Olkan, take our guests to...” Azura grumbled, and massaged her face with both of her hands. “I dunno, nothing is ready here yet. I guess use car six. It would not be a bad idea to remodel some VIP living compartments at some point.”

A guy apparently named Olkan led the delegates away. Besides Leona, Mateo, Angela, Freya, and Azura, only Carlin stayed behind, which was fine. Mateo found a seat to relax in. Amber appeared to be able to reach out to him psychically whenever she wanted, and with very little effort, but it was a lot harder for him since he wasn’t a psychic himself; he was just bonded to her. He closed his eyes, and let himself drift away from this plane of existence. A few minutes later, he reopened them. But it wasn’t actually him. His consciousness was being suppressed. Amber smiled his lips, and looked amongst the small group, settling on Azura. “You must be Azura. I’ve met your brothers and sisters.”

“How are they doing?” Azura asked.

Amber shrugged Mateo’s shoulders. “They were all right, last I saw them. They left in their little grenade thing. Said something about a different war.”

“We need to talk to Thack Natalie Collins,” Azura went on. “You can do that?”

“No, we are not bonded,” Amber answered. “I can talk to Sanaa Karimi, though, and there is a point in the metaphysical history of the bulkverse when those two cross paths. Would you like me to call her?”

“That would be great,” Freya said in Azura’s stead.

Amber shifted her gaze over to Freya. “One moment, please.” Mateo’s eyes glazed over, quite literally. The irises and pupils were all but gone. Another few minutes later, the trance was broken again. Mateo looked over at Leona. “Hey, bitch.”

“Sanaa?” Leona questioned.

“Now with one hundred percent more penis. How the heck are ya?”

“Where are you?” Leona asked. “Is Thack there? Can you ask her where Treasure is for us?”

“Treasure’s here too, dum-dum.”

“Where?” Freya asked frantically. “Where are you?”

“Thack called it Stoutverse. We’re havin’ a picnic. Whole gang’s here.”

“Stoutverse,” Freya echoed. “Have you heard of that, Azura?”

“No,” Azura answered, shaking her head.

“Is this the Transit?” Sanaa questioned.

“Yeah.”

“She’s expecting you,” Sanaa said like it was no big deal. “ So you must figure out how to get here at some point.”

“What did you mean by the whole gang?” Azura asked Sanaa. “Who is that? Is anyone else there who might have the coordinates?”

“Well, sure,” Sanaa began. “The Crossover, the Prototype, some chick in a sexy spacesuit, a dude in a very colorful coat.”

“Dawn,” Azura said quickly. “Remember I told you about the Crossover. We’ve never formed a link before, because there’s no way to know who’s in control of it, but now we have a baseline. Piggyback off of Mateo’s psychic connection, and send a ping. We’ll have our coordinates.”

“Later, sluts!” Mateo blinked. “It was nice to meet you all.” That was probably Amber. He blinked again. “You’re all gonna die.” he said in a darker tone, and with furrowed brows. He blinked again, and widened his eyes in horror. “Help!” he cried, in a higher pitched voice, but quietly, like someone might do if mimicking a cheering crowd without raising their voice too much. One more blink, and suddenly the Time Shriek started to echo throughout the car, and reportedly in other cars down the line. It wasn’t coming from Mateo’s mouth, but it was probably triggered by the multiversal link. They covered their ears in pain, as it was far louder than it usually was.

Azura reached over to the controls, and somehow figured out how to shut it off. “Jesus. What the hell was that?”

“You’ve never heard that before?” Angela asked, shocked.

“No, I’ve heard it before, of course, everyone has. I just mean why here, why now, why that frickin’ bad?”

“Mateo, what do you remember?” Leona asked.

“I remember how it felt,” he told her. It was fine when Amber and Sanaa were in my head, but not after that. It was...disturbing in a way that was all too familiar.”

“You know who that was,” Angela said, not as a question.

“It was Meredarchos. He’s not happy with us.”

Everyone exchanged looks.

“If he’s not where Treasure is, then I don’t care,” Freya determined. “If he is, then we have to go. We have to go either way.”

“Dawn?” Azura posed.

“I have the coordinates. Well, I have a trail of breadcrumbs anyway.”

“Then let’s go.”

The trip took them most of the rest of the day, though their aging and metabolisms were halted. Ramses and Olimpia recovered fully in this time, thanks to their superior substrates, and the work of the medic, Spectra. She checked Mateo out too, though they weren’t exactly equipped to detect issues that resulted from psychic connections, or psychic intrusions. One thing that Mateo was able to tell was that the person who cried for help at the end was not Meredarchos, but a fourth consciousness, and he didn’t know who it was, or where they were. He offered to reach out to Amber again, or even try to contact Sanaa, but Leona forbade it. It was not safe; what happened before could be repeated, and Meredarchos might be able to find a full foothold next time. They just all sat there and waited until the journey was over.

Finally, they pierced the membrane of what was evidently called Stoutverse. They could hear the train horn blare, which Dawn said they were unable to figure out how to disable. The viewscreens showed confirmation of Sanaa’s claims. The Prototype and Crossover were sitting next to each other in a wide open field. Several picnic tables were a few dozen meters away, but only a handful of people were there, watching them until the spacetrain came to a complete stop. Azura and Team Matic followed after Freya ran out. “Where’s my daughter?” she demanded to know

Thack pointed towards the sky, and looked up. “On the frontlines. The Darning Wars have begun.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Freya said angrily.

“It means the Transit needs to get up there, and start defending this planet,” Thack replied. “Anyone who doesn’t want to participate should disembark now. They’ll be safe here on the ground.”

Azura lifted her watch up to her mouth. “Evacuate the passengers. We’re going into battle. This is not a drill.”

“Get her back right now,” Freya ordered. She was also talking to a man standing next to Thack. “This is not what we talked about. We agreed to let her be more independent, not a soldier.”

“Zek made the decision to pull her up there,” another woman explained.

Freya gave her a dirty look, and then turned her face away again. “I don’t care that she asked to watch. Send her back down to me this instant.”

A teenage girl, a twentysomething guy, and a thirtysomething woman appeared on the ground. “Mom, why did you do that? We could talk later.”

“Are you fighting the Ochivari up there?”

“The Cormanu is the safest place I could be right now. And I need to learn.”

“That’s not true, young lady,” the man said, the implication being that he was her father. “The Primus has a bunker. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that she went up too,” he loud whispered to Freya. “It was only for a couple of minutes, though.”

They hadn’t realized that Azura had run back to the Transit. “Fray, are you coming?” She wasn’t urging her, just asking.

“Do what you gotta do!” Freya yelled back.

“Hi, I’m Primus Naraschone Mihajlović. This is my lieutenant, Kineret McArthur.” The other stranger reached out, and started shaking hands, but she kept messing it up, as if she were still learning how.

Leona showed her Mario Matic’s special watch, which recalibrated itself to every new destination’s timekeeping standards. “Is this the date and year right now?”

“May 31, 2452,” Primus Mihajlović recited with a nod. “It is.”

All of Team Matic were surprised. It was quite the coincidence, that the time period was close to what it was when they left home. Perhaps it was done intentionally, and the plan was for them to come here all along, but whoever was pulling the strings was waiting for the right moment. They may have let it go, but if they had broken the accelerated time bubble early enough, and returned to their regular pattern, this was bound to be one of the days that they were in the timestream. Did their pattern follow them here? Before they could dwell on it, though, most people there suddenly disappeared. Other than the team, only Carlin, Thack, the Primus, and her lieutenant remained. “Uhh...can any of you teleport? Please say yes.”

« < » > Table of Contents

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: The Rock – Part 3

« < » > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2

The Rock diplomatic discussions were over. Of course, the various representatives for the five former realities currently living side-by-side in the Sixth Key were going to stay in contact with each other, and diplomacy was never over. Even if they managed to integrate into a single unified peoples, internal conflicts would require constant care and consideration. Everyone was happy and unhappy at the same time, and that was all anyone could ask for when it came to something like this, especially at this incredibly unprecedented scale. The two major issues that they needed to cover were how to distribute resources, and how to organize some sort of joint form of governance. Things could always take any number of steps backwards, but they were ready to deal with that on their own, without any help from Pryce Tree, Team Matic, or the Vellani Ambassador. They found suitable locations in their own universe to handle anything new that came up.

There was only one thing left to do before the team could finally get back to their mission in the Goldilocks Corridor. As soon as the meeting was officially adjourned, Pryce Tree and Princess Honeypea disappeared, as did the delegates from the true main sequence. Everyone else still needed to get back to present day, and to the Sixth Key, or to its membrane twin, Fort Underhill. This other universe was attached to Salmonverse, but it could only be accessed at one location, for security reasons. Even a bulk traveler could not realistically enter the brane from a different spot, as the walls of the membrane were hyperdimensionally thicker than natural ones. For now, there wasn’t much traffic between the two conjoined universes, but that could change in the future, so Hogarth Pudeyonavic was currently erecting a checkpoint station to facilitate border crossings. Until that was finished, they just had to drop their own names to the little guard vessel, and go on through the breach.

Theirs was not the only biverse in the bulk. A few others were linked, like two stars orbiting each other. There were even rumors of a triverse somewhere out there. And when this happened, for whatever reason, the region of equilibrium between them was given a special name. They were now in the kasma. No one on the Ambassador was aware of the difference between the kasma, and any other part of the outer bulk. Perhaps it was an otherwise meaningless distinction, there only to designate its proximity to the connected branes. There was a bit of a lurch as their ship’s inertial dampener array began to recalibrate itself for the difference in environment. In a vacuum, you would be in a constant state of freefall, drawn towards the strongest source of gravity. In an equilibrium, gravity operated at an even distribution, which made it feel like every atom in your body was being pulled in every direction all at once. The strength of this pull wasn’t enough to spaghettify you, but it took some getting used to. That was why the internal dampeners were so necessary. They were taking longer to recalibrate. Hopefully, this would not be a problem on the way back.

“I would think that we would not feel such a thing from our little pocket dimension,” Carlin noted as he was stepping onto the bridge. Everyone else was either in the visitor’s pocket, or sitting around Delegation Hall.

“I wasn’t sure either,” Ramses replied. “I don’t know that much about it. I wish we were spending more time here, so I could take some more thorough readings.”

Olimpia shivered. “We’re spending long enough.” She hadn’t technically been in the kasma before, but was trapped between the two halves of the daughter universe. It too existed outside of the membranes, so it probably operated under the same physics. Her feeling of unease was not out of nowhere, and something that they should have been concerned about going into this final leg of the Rock mission. Fortunately, she lived there for untold time. This trip, however, would only take about an hour and a half.

Leona hugged her from the side with one arm. “We’re almost through.” The kasma was about three AU wide, at least here, which could have been incidental, or deliberate on the creator’s part. The reframe engine did not work inside, and in fact, they were unable to travel at high subfractional speeds. They were maxed out at about the quarter the speed of light. Their attempts to push it faster than that threatened to tear the ship apart at the seams.

They were watching on the viewscreen, but there wasn’t much to see. As they were too close to the nearest brane to view it in its full form, there was almost nothing but utter darkness. A pinprick of light marking their destination into Fort Underhill had appeared, now that they were only several hundred thousand kilometers away, but that was it. They were decelerating for safe entry, but they still would have covered the distance in a matter of minutes. Suddenly, a spacetrain appeared out of nowhere, roughly perpendicular to their vector. It was the Transit, of course.

Leona slammed her hand down onto the shipwide intercom. “Brace for gravity turbulence!” She pulled her hand away so she could slam it down again to the emergency stop button. There weren’t many physical controls on this thing, but that was an important one to include in the design, along with the touchscreens. “Full stop!”

The ship came to a complete stop, though Leona’s cry was her instinct to be safe rather than sorry. If anyone had an open glass of liquid, some of it would have splashed out, but they were otherwise okay. In normal space, a stop was a misnomer, as everything in the universe was in perpetual motion. But they were no longer in the universe, so it was extremely possible to be totally still. They just sat there in the equilibrium, and waited for the Transit to make its own stop in front of them. Everyone looked around. Someone was being recruited for the Transit Army. It could be any one of them, or hell, all of them. Usually, when the Transit appeared, time would stop for all but their target, but no one reported this happening. Everyone stayed in realtime, but perhaps that was a consequence of being in the kasma.

“Unidentified beautiful purple ship, this is Azura of the Transit, please respond.”

Leona opened a direct channel. “Transit, this is Leona Matic of the Vellani Ambassador. Who are you here for?”

A different voice came back after a mic bump, and some feedback. “Leona, this is Saga, but I go by Freya now. I’m looking for my daughter.”

“Does the Transit have anti-teleportation tech?” Leona asked.

“No, it does not,” Azura replied.

“Prepare to be boarded.” Leona switched off comms to address the team. “Olimpia and Angela, please stay with the delegates. Ramses, man the bridge. Mateo and Marie, you’re with me.”

At the last second, Carlin took Mateo in a bear hug to tag along. They were now all four in the Transit, which none of them had ever seen from the inside before. “Not cool, dude,” Mateo complained.

“Sorry, I had to see this,” Carlin responded. “No regrets.”

Leona approached the woman who looked just like Saga, but something shifted in her brain, forcing her to be absolutely certain that she was actually called Freya. In fact, she wasn’t even an Einarsson anymore, but a Hawthorne. Still, they reunited with a hug. Leona then shook the hand of the woman standing next to her. “Azura, I presume?”

Mateo was searching through his handheld device as Azura was nodding. He found what he was searching for. “I thought I recognized the name. I’ve heard it before, and saw you briefly. You’re an agent of the Maramon.” Centuries ago, when Mateo and Leona were separated for a long time, he was trying to rescue billions of human refugees from the universe and planet of Ansutah. During this desperate act, a Maramon broke into the facility, and co-opted the portal machine towards his own ends. Azura was one of the people that he sent off to god knows where. There were other names in this section of his list, including Cain, Abel, Seth, Luluwa, Awan, and Lilith. They were named after characters in the bible, no doubt. Then again, this involved time travel, so which came first, those chickens, or their eggs?

Azura nodded again. “I’m a hybrid, human and Maramon. You’re right, I was sent to spy on Missy Atterberry in Universe Prime, but I abandoned my post immediately. Actually, I abandoned it long before that. I secretly swapped my destination to Universum Originalis, billions of years before Missy would ever show up. I was bred to despise humans, as were my brothers and sisters, but that did not work on most of us. We make our own choices.”

“My daughter trusts her,” Freya explained, “and if Treasure says she’s okay, then I choose to believe as much.”

“Your daughter is Treasure Hawthorne?” Mateo flipped through his list again. “She’s on here too.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Azura said, “but best not give us any information about it. There is little chance that she has yet experienced meeting you in her personal timeline.”

Leona nodded acceptingly, and moved on. “What made you think that Treasure was here?”

“Thack,” Freya answered. “She can witness events in other branes, but not outside of other branes. The last she saw her, Treasure was taking my former ship, the Cormanu out of Salmonverse, but they never exited. Well, they do show up eventually, but Treasure isn’t there, and the ship has been repaired, so that’s some other point in the ship’s timeline. Time, right?”

“So if Treasure left one universe, and never entered another, she has to be in the outer bulk somewhere, including possibly the kasma?”

“That’s right,” Azura confirmed. “We had no idea that you would be here, but we were hoping that you knew something. Have you encountered anything unusual here? Anything at all?”

“No,” Leona answered apologetically. “It’s been smooth sailing. No anomalies detected. Though, we’re not experts on the kasma,” she added per Ramses’ interjection through comms. Yet. He was loving the chance to spend more time here to gather data. They all suffered through an awkward silence for a moment. “Well, we would help you find her if we could, but we have no idea. We actually need to get over to the other side to drop off all of these deleg—” She stopped herself when saw the viewscreen. “Are those readings accurate and in realtime?” she asked.

“Of course they are,” Azura replied.

“Ramses, where’s the aperture? I don’t see it anymore. Are we drifting?”

“Hold, please,” Ramses said, leaving them holding their breaths for a minute. “No, the aperture is gone. They’re both gone actually. I’m only getting faint readings.”

“Don’t bother trying to make it the rest of the way,” came a familiar voice through the Transit’s communication array. It was that angry Fifth Divisioner who kept coming back to irritate them, like a latent disease. He was the herpes of the antagonists world. “My alt closed it on the other side. You’re trapped.”

Freya opened a channel. “This is Freya Hawthorne, Engineer of the Transit. You do realize that we can travel to other universe, right? We don’t need a permanent aperture to fly through.”

“We reinforced the membranes too,” A.F. clarified. “Your little toy train isn’t going anywhere. Some of you will die there. Others will be retrieved shortly.”

“Sir, there may be a chance if we try to breach the cleavage between the two universes, but we have to go now,” one of the Transit crew members claimed. “That’s the main difference between the kasma, and any other region of the outer bulk. It carries the same properties, but is cut off from everything else, as a pond could be just like any other body of water, but still isolated by vast swathes of land.”

“Before you escape,” Leona began, “can you take on some extra passengers?”

Freya turned to her engineer. “Get it ready.” She turned back to Leona. “Get your people over here. You’ll have to leave your ship, though.”

Leona laughed, “no, we won’t. Rambo, get ready to pack up the Ambassador. We’re taking it with us, but I want everyone on board the Transit first, so Waltons and Olimpia, start teleporting them over two by two.”

Mateo jumped back to help with those efforts without being asked.

“There’s plenty of room,” Azura said. “We’ve only recruited a couple of cars worth so far. The problem is, I don’t know where to go.”

“Just take us wherever. We’ll figure out how to at least get back into Salmonverse later, even if that means seeking help from whoever runs the Crossover. I assume they use better tech?”

“Does a smartphone use better tech than a flip phone?” Azura asked rhetorically. “The membrane for Fort Underhill is already too thick for us. That’s how Hogarth designed it. We actually would need that aperture, just as you do.”

Freya’s engineer reported that they were ready to go just as Ramses was reporting that the Ambassador was empty, and ready to be folded into its pocket dimension.

“Come on over!” Leona ordered Ramses.

A minute later, he appeared, grasping the model size of the Ambassador. He was on the floor and unconscious. It would seem that surviving in the equilibrium was not the same as surviving in a vacuum. Mateo scooped him up, and demanded to know where the medical car was. Azura told him, and he teleported away.

Freya pushed the button, and the Transit flew off at the speed of light. According to her engineer, the kasma was like a tube, about three astronomical units apart, but theoretically several dozen AU long. At one of these ends, they theorized that it tapered off so that the branes weren’t technically touching each other, but there might have been a passageway just large enough for them to squeeze through. “We were wrong!” she cried as they drew nearer. “There’s no cleavage! We’re just gonna crash into it!”

“If there’s no space for us to get through,” Olimpia said, pulling the Sangster Canopy out of her bag of holding, and opening it up. “Then I’ll make space.”

« < » > Table of Contents