The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 19, 2398

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Leona pulls the gear off of her head. “What do you mean, Mateo is never coming back? Where is he?”

Alyssa is discernibly frustrated that she had to say anything, but if she wants this to move along, she can’t ignore Leona’s questions completely. “He stayed in the past. Danica made him. She said it was too dangerous to erase his mind a second time.”

“How far in the past were you?” Leona presses.

“There’s no time for these questions,” Alyssa argues. “Every minute we spend down here is another day up top.”

Leona shakes her head, and starts to pace. “No point in time makes any sense for you two to randomly jump back to, however you did it. If you were with Danica, the only non-random point in time would be when The Constant was first built, which was four and a half billion years ago. But that can’t be right. If a minute here is a day of realtime, that means you have observed over three million years. Are you three million years old?”

“Time wasn’t always moving at this speed. It used to be a lot faster.” Alyssa is growing very impatient. “You weakened the bubble just by coming here, but we still aren’t matched with realtime.”

“You’re just trying to avoid telling me what happened with Danica in the past.”

“No. Danica wanted to avoid that, so she put my memory on a timebomb, and she’s forcing you to either learn her secrets, and lose a lot of time with the rest of the team, or cut your losses, and pop the bubble for good.”

“Argh!” Leona looks around for clues to overcome the dilemma, like she’s just in a simple escape room. If there’s a solution, she can’t see it, and if she really is losing time, that could cause a whole lot of problems for their friends. “How do I break the bubble?”

“That box on the console that doesn’t belong. It tears tiny holes in the bubble, and sends out the distress signal that is probably what brought you here. If you can program it to open a hole permanently, the bubble will burst. At least that’s what she said.”

Leona goes down to the bridge, and inspects the box that she’s talking about. The first thing she has to do is figure out how to open it. She slides her fingers around the edges and the corners, but she doesn’t feel a release. It’s not made of adamantium, though. She takes out her knife, and jams it into the seam, then she pries the top open to reveal the guts of the machine inside. She scans the inner workings a little before understanding what she needs to do. Flip this switch to temporarily cut power to the oscillator. Pull the wire, and reattach it to the contact permanently. Reset the power. Boom. Done.

They watch through the viewport as the translucent bubble slides away like rainfall on a windshield. “I have time to tell you one thing,” Alyssa begins. “What you’re looking for is on Vulcan Point, but you’ll want to go there last. And it’s gonna take you longer than you think. You’ll be really tired by the end of the maze. But before you get any ideas, that’s not where Ma...” She trails off, and goes to la-la land.

This is what happened to Mateo just before he lost his memories in Lebanon. The trigger for him is hypothesized to have been the filling of Danica Lake. In this case, it was the bursting of the time bubble. This seems to be different, however, because he passed out—and there she goes, right to the floor. Damn, Leona could have caught her.

Leona drags the sleeping Alyssa up to the main loft, and lays her on the bed. Then she returns to the bridge, and tries to make contact with the team on the AOC. They don’t respond, but she gets a time announcement back, informing her that it’s November 19, 2398 at 15:05. A minute later, the announcement says that it’s 15:06, which means that the bubble is indeed down, and the urgency is over, as long as her friends aren’t in any danger. She uses their ship as a relay point, and manages to get a hold of Ramses. He’s in the lab with Cheyenne and—funny enough—Curtis Duvall. She hasn’t seen that guy in forever. She tells Ramses that she’s still at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, and just needs to figure out how to surface.

She postulates that there were two bubbles around the vessel. One altered the rate of time, and the other just protects The Bridgette from the pressure of the ocean above them. In submarine mode, it can dive deeper than its predecessor, The Olimpia, but not this deep. This is Constant magic at work, and she can’t be sure that it will persist through an attempt to rise back up to their safe depth. This little box was only designed to handle the time bubble, so the force field must be somewhere else. The most likely location is down in engineering. In the Olimpia, that could be found in the back. It was a tight space, but one could stand. Here, the ceiling is 75 centimeters up, making it a crawl space, and she has to get there by opening the steps that lead to the fuselage like a cellar door. Ramses sacrificed comfort for more beds to sleep passengers.

“Hello?” Leona can hear as she’s still working on the engine. She figured out right away that the pressure field will last as long as they don’t try to go anywhere. If they attempt to surface, it will collapse before they have enough time to go all the way up. It’s almost like it was designed that way. The issue is that she is this close to running out of power. A time bubble that can last billions of years would have taken enormous amounts of temporal energy. Not even the tanks on the Bridgette could store enough after being concentrated from immortality water. Yet it all runs out today; not a day too soon? Either Danica is trying to kill them in the most roundabout way, or there’s a way out of this that Leona hasn’t thought of.

Leona slides on her ass back towards the bridge. “I’m down here!”

Alyssa gets on her stomach, and sticks her head over the edge like a reverse prairie dog. “Is everything okay?”

“I don’t suppose you have any idea how we’re supposed to get out of here without the pressure of the ocean crushing us to death?”

“Where are we?”

“What is the last thing you remember?” Leona asks.

“Mateo and I were diving to the bottom of Danica Lake, just in case there were any clues left down there.”

“Were there?”

“I don’t remember.” She takes a beat. “I found this in my pocket when I woke up, though.”

Leona slides farther up to get a better look at what Alyssa is dangling in front of her. It’s an auto-injector. “This is probably temporal energy, and probably enough for me to teleport us to the surface, but not enough to get the whole craft up there.”

“So we have to leave it here?”

“No,” Leona says. “We’ll get more in the Bermuda Triangle, and then come right back. I’m not losing another home.”

Extremus: Year 36

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At first, it was obvious what Captain Leithe needed to do. Dr. Holmes lied to her, claiming that she was trying to help her fix her memory problem when really she was the cause of it, at least part of the time. She had to go. People had to know that she was bad news so the dismissal process could be completed. It was going to be neither easy, nor simple, but it simply had to be done. As Kaiora pondered the proceedings that would follow should she choose to put this on the agenda, however, she had to acknowledge a big issue. Nearly everything would come out about her practice. Every procedure she performed, every medication she prescribed; it would all be out in the open. This information would not be attached to any names, of course, but it had to become evidence, because while it wasn’t all relevant, any of it could be relevant, and it was going to take a specially formed committee time to sort through it. At the very least, this was needlessly humiliating to a well-respected medical professional whose motives Kaiora was not fully cognizant of, and at worst, it placed Olindse in more danger, which defeated the whole purpose.

As it turned out, Kaiora didn’t know that much about what happened to Admiral Olindse Belo. She circumvented a direct order from her Captain to jump into a portal to the future. That’s really all she knew. She didn’t know why she had to go, or when she would arrive. Best practices suggested the best way to handle the situation, since the memory wipe didn’t really take, was to ignore the topic as much as possible. Throwing Dr. Holmes under the bus was not ignoring it, and it was not discreet. Temporal theory states that doubt about the path to reach a known future is tantamount to an unknown future. That is, Kaiora doesn’t know what the timeline is like when Olindse shows up in it, which means she has to assume that every choice she and the people around her make will lead to that future, rather than some random alternative. She’s not free to make any decision she would like, but she’s pretty safe making the reasonable ones since she has no reason to believe they would go against her hypothetical fate.

Still, trying to get rid of Dr. Holmes was a risky move by any standard, so she decided to let it go. The two of them didn’t talk about it for almost three years after that. When they passed in the corridors, or sat across from each other in the executive crew meetings, they exchanged knowing glances, but they did not address the elephant in the room, which they could both see. It was in both of their best interests to pretend it never happened, so that’s what they did. Unfortunately, as the time since has illustrated, it has not been that easy. The tension between them has proved to be a lot more obvious to everyone else. Apparently, there have been two elephants in the same room all along, with neither being mutually visible. It’s affected their work. Surely without coordinating, they’ve both begun to delegate a lot more work that they would traditionally do themselves, worrying their fellow crew members and friends. They never staged an intervention, but independently of each other, the head of surgery spoke with Dr. Holmes, and the Second Lieutenant spoke with Kaiora. That’s when the latter knew she was at her lowest, because if Lars Callaghan thinks there’s something wrong with you, there’s something wrong with you.

Something has to change about this dynamic, and if Kaiora isn’t going to step away from the captain’s seat, there is only one other option. They’re in a meeting now to discuss the future of this crew, and their respective responsibilities on it.

“I’m not going to do it,” Dr. Holmes says before Kaiora has a chance to speak.

“You’re not going to do what?”

“I’m not going to retire.”

While Hock Watcher can effectively be a lifetime appointment, Chief Medical Officer actually is. Dr. Holmes would have to do something pretty bad to lose her job. Premature retirement is even harder. If Kaiora wants to do this, she has to be careful. She has to convince her to make this decision for herself. “I never said that.”

“You were going to suggest it.”

“And how would you know that?” Kaiora questions. “Are you aware of future events in the timeline to which the likes of me are not privy?”

“Oh, here we go again.”

“What do you mean, here we go again? We’ve never talked about this!”

“I see the way you look at me.”

“I see the way you look at me!”

“Are you just going to echo everything that I say?”

“Are you not going to explain yourself? I want to know why you did it. Why did you fuck with my memories?”

“Why did you not question me before?”

Kaiora takes a moment before responding. She sips her tea in the meantime. “Do you know what this room is?”

Dr. Holmes looks over at the walls. “I’ve never been here before. I stay mostly in the medical section.”

Kaiora nods. She places a headband over her forehead. Then she reaches over to a gadget on a table next to her, and flips a switch. Everything changes. They’re still in the same room, but they’re joined by infinite copies of it now, along with infinite copies of Dr. Holmes herself. Kaiora is safe as she’s wearing the headband, but the doctor can see her own duplicates, sitting around her, above her on the ceiling, and below her under the now transparent floor. They’re all looking around at each other too, equally as confused, but each reacting differently to an infinitesimal degree. As time goes on, they begin to pop out of existence, only to be replaced by new copies.

“What is this?” Dr. Holmes asks, and as she does so, an infinite number of others do the same, each in their own special way, at slightly different times, tones, and speeds. The sound echoes unbearably throughout the infinite cosmic expanse. They continue to disappear.

Kaiora clears her throat, and switches off the machine. “This. is the Infinitorium. It’s sometimes known as the quantum duplication room, but to some, that implies the ability to cross dimensional barriers where that function does not exist. You can see and hear your alternates, but only one of you will survive any given moment. The rest are constantly being destroyed. You are dying an infinite number of times every moment of your life. This is the fact of reality, and what this chamber does is show you that, whereas most of the time, you’re free to move on with your life, blissfully ignorant of all the versions of you that didn’t make it. This was an experiment of Old Man’s. He thought the criminals on this ship might find it unenjoyable to be tortured in. See, now you’ve seen. You’ve watched yourself be wiped from existence over and over again, but here’s the catch.” Kaiora leans in. “That’s not what you learned today. What you really saw...is that the next possible version of you to die...could be you.”

Dr. Holmes shifts uncomfortably. “What do you want?”

“I want the goddamn truth. What did you do to my memories? This has been a long time coming.”

Dr. Holmes takes a breath, and does everything to recover from her recent traumatic experience, recognizing that she’ll probably need therapy after this regardless. “I did it to protect the Admiral. You came to me, and told me what happened, and together, we pieced together what you were missing. The memory drops were perfectly fine when they were manufactured. They’re a prescription drug, and I don’t know where Olindse got them, but like any consumable, they go bad. It was expired, Captain Leithe, and you should not have taken it. I keep telling my patients, read the label. Analgesic doesn’t mean what you think it means! Anyway, what your videos don’t mention is that the drug was having a negative impact on other parts of your memory, not just episodic. They were interfering with your ability to walk, and to remember words. You were making yourself look like an idiot, and people were strongly considering recalling you as the captain.

“I found myself incapable of fixing you permanently. The best I could do was give you that nose spray. What it does is sort of consolidate the apparently reproductive memory solution in your system, so it does what it was supposed to do, and only erase your episodic memories. It was a temporary solution, obviously. I never meant to keep you like that. I was working on something that could flush all of it from your body, but that was proving to be more difficult than I thought it would. I delegated my duties, and focused solely on the permanent solution.”

“I didn’t need you to synthesize a system flush,” Kaiora argues. “All I needed to do was stop taking the nose spray.”

“Yeah, I see that now, but since we kept having the same conversation every other day, and the same other conversation every other day, that didn’t occur to me!”

Kaiora took another beat before responding. “Once you realized I was back to normal three years ago, why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because you didn’t say anything. Your past self was trying to protect the Admiral, and I wanted to do the same. Yeah, it sucked that you kept erasing the day you just lived, but I believed you would agree that to be the lesser of two evils. I still don’t know what you know; what you remember about it. You never came to me to run tests, and I didn’t want to...do any more damage to your psyche.”

Kaiora reaches up to massage her forehead, only now realizing that the control headband is still there. She pulls it off, and carelessly throws it across the room. “Shit,” she says loudly, but voicelessly.

“What was that a reaction to, the headband?”

“No,” Kaiora contends. “I messed up. I assumed the worst, and I didn’t talk to you about it.”

“I nearly retired because of what happened, Captain. I’ve never made a mistake like that. I’ve never been so reckless with someone’s neurology; someone’s life. I didn’t wanna say anything because...I was afraid to lose my job, and my reputation. As soon as they posted this position for the Extremus mission, I dreamed of dying at my desk. I wanted to outlast everybody, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned as a doctor it’s that patients benefit from continuity. What I did to you...and what I didn’t do, it threatened all of that. It threatened my legacy, and I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry,” Kaiora echoes. “I jumped to conclusions, and that’s not the sign of a good leader. Halan Yenant would never have done that.”

“Yenant is not without his faults. I mean, he’s the one in hock.”

“He shouldn’t be.”

“Yes, he should, and not because he broke the law—his actions saved the lives of thousands on board, and tens of thousands of our ship’s descendants, and countless generations beyond the realization of our mission. But the next guy won’t have such good intentions, and we can’t let that guy think that we’ll just forgive and forget. That was Halan’s true sacrifice, and we can’t rob him of it. I know you and Olindse have always wanted to get him out, but it can’t be done. He’ll die in there, just like I’ll die at my desk...assuming you aren’t still trying to get me out.”

“No, doctor. I was wrong.”

“Welcome to the club.”

While they’re sitting in silence, the doorbell rings. It’s excruciatingly annoying, and needlessly echoey. Kaiora stands up, and looks at the screen. It’s Lieutenant Seelen. “What is it, Corinna?”

“If you’re done with, uh..whatever it is you’re doing in there, the resupply team found something.”

“I’ll be right there.”

“Thanks, Captain, for understanding.”

“Thanks for protecting the timeline. That’s what I was trying to do too.”

They both teleport out of the room, but go to different places. Kaiora lands in the cargo bay. Nearly three decades ago, this team’s predecessors sent the first drones out to nearby planets in the past to mine precious resources, and return them to the Extremus. They’ve continued to do this on an as-needed basis, but the process has become more difficult since Halan sent them into the intergalactic void. There are worlds out here, but they’re incredibly dispersed, and hard to find, which makes every mission that much more important than before. If they run out, the mission will be a bust, and they will probably all die.

“I was told you found something.”

“Yes, Captain,” the cargomaster tells her. He escorts her over to a stack of raw materials that were in the middle of being sorted. He points down at a block of metallic hydrogen. On top of it is a clear box, not larger than a tall man’s fist. There is a life inside of it, which Kaiora has to lean in and squint to make out.

“Oh my God.”

“That’s what we were thinking.”

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Extremus: Year 28

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Ovan Teleres is the first candidate for Olindse’s little rehabilitation experiment. They decided to stop calling it reintegration, because it suggested an outcome that may never materialize. One day, she hopes to get her mentor, Halan Yenant out of hock, but she can’t go straight for him. She has to play the political game, and begin with someone who has already shown remorse for his actions. In a moment of weakness, he tried to take control of the ship. It was pretty bad, and violent, resulting in the deaths of two people. He has since expressed a desire to repent for his actions, and improve himself. Today was the initial interview for the process. Once the program gets up and running, Olindse will step back, and let Counselor Persephone Falk establish her own therapeutic methods. This is just to make sure Ovan understands what’s going to happen, and why. If his sessions go well, they’ll restart the process with the other two permanent prisoners, along with anyone who ends up being sent here.

“Any further questions?” Olindse asks.

“No, I’m—I feel grateful for this opportunity,” Ovan replies. “I’m ready to begin.”

“That’s good to hear,” Olindse says. “The two of us will coordinate...”

Persephone nods.

Olindse goes on, “and you will probably have your first private session in two days.”

“Not private,” Armelle Lyons says. Head of Security is a weird position here. A shift lasts for eight years, but the end of it does not spell the end of the crewmember’s service to the ship. Armelle worked security before she was selected to run the team, and after she was finished, she went back to being a regular security officer. She will continue on this way until she chooses to retire, which could be any day now. The people who created the shift schedule determined that security could be the most stressful work over the long term, and they didn’t want to force anyone to stick around if they weren’t into it anymore. They wouldn’t be very good at maintaining security if they were burned out or sick of it. You have to prove your stamina to be appointed the leader, but there is still a limit to this.

“Well, we’re still working out the kinks,” Olindse admits, “which is why we’re not starting right away. All patients have the right to privacy, Madam Lyons. We’ll figure out some way to keep you close by without letting you hear what is said in this room.”

Armelle growls.

“Anyway, if that’s it, then I guess we’re done here.” She stands up, and accepts Ovan’s handshake amidst Armelle’s protests. This won’t work without a level of trust, and a handshake is the least that they can offer the prisoners.

Once they leave the cell, Hock Watcher Giordana asks to keep her down here while Armelle escorts Persephone out.

“What is it?” Olindse asks.

“It’s Vatal. He’s asked to speak with you,” Caldr reveals.

“He can wait his turn,” she decides.

“He says it’s time sensitive.”

“It sounds like a trick already.”

“I’ll be right there with you,” he promises. “I’ll magnetize him to the far side.” Every prisoner wears advanced cuffs around their wrists. They serve a number of purposes. They can release a chemical sedative into the bloodstream, or deliver a debilitating electrical shock, or sequester them to a certain area. The latter is used all the time. Cell doors are kept closed and locked when not in use, but they’re not technically necessary. None of them can cross the threshold. A dimensional barrier would just force them back like an extremely powerful wall of wind. Of course, there is also an electromagnet inside the cuffs, which can bind them to one another, or against the back wall. Olindse insisted that this not be done with Ovan, but Dvronen is another story. He’s an incredibly dangerous and intelligent man who hates the ship, and everyone on it. At least Ovan isn’t an evil spy.

“Very well. I’ll give him five minutes, at most.”

They stand before the door. Caldr is wearing his own cuff, which controls all the others. He taps the commands into it, and they hear the familiar clink of metal against metal. Caldr opens the door.

“Is this necessary?” Dvronen asks. He looks so pathetic, trapped there with his hands behind his back. He’s always been so prim and proper; it must be excruciatingly embarrassing, being reduced to this.

“Quite,” Caldr answers.

“What do you want?” Olindse questions.

“Why, Vice Admiral, this is not a good start to your reintegration program.”

“Rehabilitation,” she corrects.

“What did I say?”

“You have four minutes.”

“Is it safe to say that I am the most hated man on the ship?” Dvronen poses.

It’s his time, so if he wants to take the long way ‘round to go nowhere, then fine. “Sure, that sounds about right.”

“What if I told you that what Oaksent did when he took those genesis samples was actually all part of the plan?”

“I would say I know it was all part of the plan. It was his dirty plan. He clearly didn’t do it on a whim.”

Dvronen smirks. “No, I mean it was part of the ship’s mission.”

“The mission, according to who?” she questions.

“It’s whom.”

“Sorry,” she laughs. “I mean, the mission, according to who?”

He looks perturbed. “The Conceptualizers.” The Conceptualizers were a small group of people who originally wanted to leave Gatewood. They started formulating plans before Omega Parker even came to them with the idea for the Extremus ship. As their voices grew louder, their ranks grew too, and they eventually abandoned their collective term. Going by a specific name felt silly and juvenile. Most people didn’t refer to the people who framed the mission as Conceptualizers, but it was occasionally bandied around.

“They came up with the idea of attacking the ship, and trying to kill everyone on it?” That’s hard to believe.

“No, of course not. Their idea predates the Extremus concept. They wanted to seed life all throughout the Milky Way, and in order to compete with Earth, they wanted to do all this deep in the past. When Omega showed up with the new idea, everyone sort of fell in line. Well...not everyone.”

“Bronach Oaksent was not a Conceptualizer,” Olindse argues. “He was too young to have been involved in those discussions.”

Dvronen shakes his head. “He was, but his grandmother wasn’t. She used to let him sit in on their meetings. They talked about a number of different plans, and he was inspired.”

“It doesn’t matter that they talked about interfering with Earth’s Project Stargate, because they didn’t go through with it. They chose Extremus over it.”

“And like I was saying, not everyone agreed with that decision.”

“If that’s true, why did they involve Extremus at all? They could have built their own ship, and left us out of it. As I said, they attacked us, and they didn’t have to.”

“Do you know what’s in the Bridger section?” Dvronen goes on.

“Yeah, the Bridgers, and the samples that Oaksent left behind when he broke in.”

“There’s more. There’s a lot more down there. Maybe you wanna...find out for yourself?”

“I don’t have authorization. Neither do you. Neither did Oaksent.”

“Then you need to talk to someone who does.”

“The Captain is not going to go along with this. Nor should she.”

“You don’t need the Captain from the present day. You don’t even need a captain at all. Most admirals have—and will have—access to the Bridgers, because they will be former full captains. You’re a little different, since you were only interim.”

“Are you expecting me to go talk to a future admiral, or something?”

“There is another, and I don’t mean Yenant. Let’s not get him involved. There’s someone from the past who would be willing to help you. He never went down there, he doesn’t know the truth. But he could have, and he’ll still have authorization, because no one thinks to strip dead people of their access codes.”

“If I go down there and investigate, what are you getting out of it?” Olindse questions.

“I think...when you learn what’s really going on on this vessel, you’ll want to release me from hock. You’ll be on my side at that point.”

She laughs. “Wow, you really believe that, don’t you? Your five minutes were up a long time ago, by the way.”

“See? You’re already starting to like me. Otherwise, you would have been strict about that time limit.”

“Goodbye Dvronen. I’ll see you in a few weeks for the start of your rehabilitation.”

“Go down there, Admiral. Go see for yourself,” Dvronen says as Olindse and Caldr are stepping out of the cell.

Once the door is closed, Caldr tries to release the magnets. She places a hand over his cuff. “No. Leave him like that for a few hours.”

“That’s considered torture, ma’am. It’s against the law.”

Olindse gives him a terrifying look.

“I’ll...fudge the report.”

“That can wait. Meet me in the executive infirmary in thirty minutes.”

“You want me to do what?” Dr. Holmes asks.

“Erase our memories. Mine, his, and Dvronen Vatal’s.”

Dr. Holmes looks over to Caldr, who just lets out a grimace. He kind of understands why it is Olindse is asking for this. “Any particular memories, or do you just want me to take ‘em all?”  This isn’t something that she’s allowed to just do when requested. It’s technically feasible, but there’s this whole protocol.

“Vatal is trying to gain an advantage over me, and I need him to not remember that. I need to not remember it either, or maybe he gets the advantage anyway. The Hock Watcher here was just an innocent bystander.”

“Plus me,” Dr. Holmes adds.

“No, you don’t need to know anything about it,” Olindse reasons.

Dr. Holmes shakes her head. “Actually, I do. In order to delete the right memories, I need to know what they are. I mean, I could take the entire day, but then you’d be, like, what the hell happened to my entire day!” She’s not usually this volatile.

“So, no matter what, someone would have to recall the memories?” Caldr figures.

Dr. Holmes sighs. “No, I could delete the entire procedure from my own mind without risking reversion, since I know how to convince myself to ignore the inconsistencies. I’ve been trained for this. I just don’t know if I should in this case.”

“It’s about the Bridger section,” Olindse explains.

Dr. Holmes takes some time to respond. “What do you know?”

“Too much already. What do you know?”

“About as much.”

“It shouldn’t be very hard,” Olindse assumes, “not for me, nor for Caldr. Vatal is a different story. He deliberately withheld information from us to maintain leverage. We don’t know what else he knows about the Bridgers, but we would certainly love to take that from him too. You see why that’s important, ethical ramifications notwithstanding.”

The doctor folds her arms, and leans back to consider those ethics. There is no obvious answer to this. Getting rid of anything and everything Dvronen knows about the ship that he shouldn’t would surely be a boon for them, but erasing memories without consent lies in shaky territory. It’s not illegal to do on a post-conviction hock prisoner, but it’s not something she takes lightly either. She would feel a lot better about it if someone could order her. A Vice Admiral doesn’t have that power. “The brain doesn’t store memories like a computer does. You would have to walk me through each idea, and tell me what to extract. It’s not a pleasant experience. It’s not painful, but it can be awkward and uncomfortable.”

“I understand.”

“How would you do the same with Vatal?” Caldr asks.

“Him, I would brute force,” Dr. Holmes begins. “I can rip out ancillary memories, and not worry about him experiencing time discrepancies. He’ll know something’s wrong, but he has no legal recourse to gripe about it. We have to be more delicate with you two, because you might make a big stink about me performing a medical procedure on you that you don’t remember. It won’t work if you realize that you’re missing something, and then we could all be in trouble.”

“Do it,” Olindse agrees. She looks over to Caldr, who agrees too, knowing that it has to be this way. “Please.”

They start with Dvronen. That’s the great thing about no one else working in the hock section, it’s easy to be sneaky. Caldr goes next, and then Olindse. Dr. Holmes navigates from the general, and makes her way down to the specific. She removes the conversation with Dvronen, but not the one with Ovan. As far as Olindse’s concerned, she left after the interview, and didn’t do anything else of significance today. She didn’t burn a secret note to herself, or talk to the doctor, or go back down to the hock.

A year later, the secret note reverses entropy, and rematerializes on her desk.

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The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 22, 2199

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The first thing that Leona Matic could remember was being killed by one of the mercenaries that she had commissioned to break Ulinthra out of her prison cube. She could recall the sting of the bullet, and the flow of blood spilling out of her wound. She could feel the light of her life dim little by little until there was nothing but a single pixel left. She never actually experienced that pixel being destroyed in her very, very final moment, but it still made her feel small. Though, through the magic of alternate timelines, she knew she had died before, no one had ever shown her what it truly felt like before. But she had apparently asked for it, and she had to trust her own past. The memories began to return to her backwards from there. Interrogating Ulinthra to find the ardusite dagger, retrieving an alternate Horace Reaver from the extraction mirror, watching Brooke Prieto die in a darkburster explosion. They just kept coming at an accelerated rate, until everything she had done before had finally returned, added to the ever-growing pile of parallel memories. The Warrior removed his hands from hovering at the side of her temples.

“I’m not screaming,” she noted. “Why am I not screaming? The others screamed. It always makes you scream.”

“Not always,” the Warrior explained. “You’ve had your brain blended before. It gets easier each time, and your brain is particularly...magnificent. Plus, the way you changed realities has never been done before, as far as I know. That dagger seems to have come from a completely different universe, so there’s no telling what other side effects it brought with it.”

“Where’s Horace?” Leona asked.

“He was never here,” Vitalie told her. “He and I followed Ulinthra to where she hid the ardusite dagger. Despite the fact that cops have been playing that trick on criminals throughout all procedural drama history, Ulinthra fell for it. She couldn’t help but check to see if we were bluffing about already knowing where it was.”

“Who did it?”

“He did, of course,” Vitalie continued. “He tried to tell you; that he knew it would mean his own demise. Ulinthra never existed. We are the only few people who have ever heard of her. Unfortunately, if she never existed, then we had no reason to go get Horace from the alternate reality either. As soon as he stabbed her with it, reality changed around everyone, leaving us with this, and without him.”

Leona shook her head. “We needed Horace to erase Ulinthra from history, which meant we didn’t need Horace, but if we didn’t have Horace, then Ulinthra couldn’t have been erased from history. It’s a vicious circle. A paradox.”

“I can’t tell you why it’s not a paradox,” Vitalie said. “Let’s just let it go, and be grateful that everything worked.”

“Yes,” Brooke finally spoke. Let’s.”

“It appears to be unanimous,” Ecrin pointed out.

Paige sighed. “The motion has passed.” She mimed banging a gavel.

“If that is all,” The Warrior said, “I will be going.”

“Yes,” Leona said, almost thinking they ought to give him a tip, as if he were a helpful bellhop. “Thank you so much, Anatol..for everything.”

The Warrior nodded respectfully, and disappeared.

“Well, he’s right that this feels different. Before, I got blended memories of different times. But this just went back through the last two weeks of my life, with only a little extra from having encountered Ulinthra at Stonehenge before we left for Durus.”

“Yeah, that’s what’s interesting to me,” Brooke said. “There are minor differences in what happened to us between the first time we saw Ulinthra in this time period, and when we saw her again in Panama, but nothing big. I have conflicting memories of recharging my systems on the ship one day, instead of going over navigational calculations; or of Dar’cy and Missy arguing over something trivial, when that actually never happened. But no one died who should have survived. No one was born that shouldn’t have, or anything like that.”

“I guess, in the end,” Ecrin began, “despite all the havoc she wreaked on the world, she wasn’t really all that important. It makes you wonder, do any of us matter? How different would the universe be if any one of us just disappeared?”

“Yes, about that,” a man said as he stepped through an invisible door in the middle of the room. In the timeline that had since been erased, they spent most of their time in Panama, but in the real timeline, Leona only got one day there before everyone went back to Kansas City. A couple years ago, they decided to move to one of the outer Northwest Forest circles, which was where they were now.

Ecrin tilted her head in friendly, mild surprise. “Ennis, how nice to see you again.”

Ennis looked like a mailman, complete with shorts, a cap, and a large satchel. He also had terrible burn scars on his face. “Miss Cabral, hello.” He tipped the cap.

“What do you have for us?” Ecrin asked him. “Anything good.”

“I guess,” he said.

“What did you mean, about that?” Leona asked. “About what?”

“Oh, you were talking about people disappearing, and I have something for you that is relevant to that.” He pulled a thick folder out of his bag, but did not hand it to anyone. “I was meant to come to you earlier, but I’m not allowed on Durus, and I don’t do moving vehicles. I could have given it to you after that, but I was told to leave you alone during the Ulinthra corruption. So I’m here now, at my earliest convenience, to give you this.” He handed the heavy folder to Leona.

Leona didn’t open it, but looked to Ecrin for guidance. She trusted her judgment.

Ecrin nodded. “If The Courier hands you something, it belongs to you. He’s legit.”

“Mrs. Matic,” Ennis began.

“Miss,” Leona corrected.

This confused him a bit. “I’m sorry, but aren’t you pregnant?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Leona asked, appalled and offended.

“Well, it’s just, I was told...who’s the father?”

Now Leona was getting really offended. “That is none of your business.”

Ennis scratched at his chin, then took a notepad out of his bag, and started looking them over. “Oh, you’re only starting to remember. Hmm.”

“What? Are you? Talking about?”

“Okay.” Ennis clapped his hands together to begin his explanation. “There was a man. This man..was named Mateo. A...bunch of stuff happened, and then a really powerful asshole took him out time. Kind of like what you did with Ulinthra. And also kind of like Ulinthra, he owned a planet, but in this case, it was legitimate, and the people who lived on it actually liked him. Since he’s no longer here, however, the rights to that planet fall to his next of kin, which is you.”

“You’re telling me I have some relative that I don’t know about, because someone erased his history?” Leona had seen a lot as a salmon, and knew there were entire timelines she had no recollection of, but this was sounding fishy.

“I’m telling you that you had a husband you don’t remember. He’s the father of your child, which means that child is proof that Mateo Matic did indeed exist. His history wasn’t erased. He was erased. You don’t remember everything he did, nor do most people, but he still had an impact on the way things are today. And the days before, since we’re time travelers.”

Leona once again looked to Ecrin, who clearly had no memory of this either. “Again,” she said, “this man doesn’t lie. If he says this dude existed, then he existed.”

“The more the baby grows inside of you,” Ennis went on, “the more it will have an effect on you. You will start remembering. The Superintendent can do a lot, but he can’t stop that. I didn’t mean to suggest you had to be married to have a child, I just thought you were far enough along to start getting your memories back.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Leona said, trying to wrap her head around having a husband she couldn’t remember. “I’m not saying I believe it, but I’m not saying I don’t. Assuming it’s true, is there any way to prove it? Can you..show me something? Can we get the Warrior back here?”

Ennis shook his head. “The Warrior and The Blender can give you quantum memories from an alternate timeline. But this isn’t an alternate timeline. It’s a corrupted timeline, but still the same timeline. Same same, but different.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, I got blended memories from the Ulinthra corruption, which is what you called it.”

“That shouldn’t have worked either,” Ennis began, “but you made arrangements so that it would. You spoke with The Warrior before Horace used that dagger thing, and prepared him to help you today. That’s not gonna work here. I want to make it clear—and Ecrin can attest to this—I am quite literally the messenger, so don’t shoot me. I didn’t erase Mateo, I can’t put him back, I can’t prove that I’m not lying, and lastly—this is an important one—I can’t put you in touch with the Superintendent. He’s the one who did this, and like a witch’s spell, only he can undo it.” He pointed at the folder, which Leona had yet to open. “That is, if you even wanted him to undo it. Dardius is pretty nice this time of millennium.”

She didn’t know the answer to that. Surely if her memories had been removed against her will, she would want to get them back. Yet this was her life now, and though no sane person would call it a good one, it was one she understood. While she would likely never see Serif again, Leona would never want to lose the memory of her. If they only got together because Mateo wasn’t there instead, then what would happen to her? Could she give up one love for another? “What would that mean for Serif? Was what we had even real?”

“Oof,” Ennis said lightly, “that’s a loaded question. Was Serif real? Technically, no. She was fabricated, but she was fabricated...before Mateo was removed from time.”

“But she was, what? Just some friend?”

“No, you were with her; you and Mateo both. Don’t ask me to give you details on how your relationships worked, I just met you today. Some things I know, some things I don’t.” His watch beeped, as did Leona’s, though she didn’t know why. “Oh, look at that, it’s time. Are you guys going to the show? Do you have tickets?”

“Tickets to what?” Brooke asked.

“The Last Savior’s Last Save? It’s today, in just a few minutes.”

“You mean, she retires after this?”

“Yep, it’s over. The Age of Saviors is kaput. I can hook you up, if you want. I’m pretty good friends with Sanela. Hey Leona, she’s your, uhh...great-something-grandmother...in-law. Umm. Twice removed? I don’t know how it works, your family tree is crazy.”

This was getting to be too much.

Ennis kept going, “so do you guys want to go, err...?” He trailed off an awful lot.

“That would be lovely,” Paige said.

“Yeah, sure,” Leona agreed. She was the last to step through Ennis’ invisible portal. It would be nice to see Étude again, but honestly, all she could think about was what she was going to do about this Mateo guy.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 12, 2158

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There was nothing special about the twelfth day in August of the year 2158. That it was Mateo’s last in existence did not matter much to the universe. When most people die, the worlds keep spinning, despite what others may feel about it. In this case, not even people would recognize that something was wrong, or different. Everything would just continue as if he had never existed, and any impact Mateo had on history would be reattributed to someone, or something, else. There was something liberating about that. It reminded him of his great grandfather’s death. Mateo was very young at the time, but he remembered vividly a conversation he witnessed between the man that everyone called Grandaddy Kai. He was a proud man who had sacrificed so much for his family that he never wanted to leave them. Mateo’s mother, Carol was not blood-related to Kai, but she took just as much care of him in his final days as anyone else, if not more. She told Kai that the family would be okay once he was gone. He was in so much pain, and the only reason he held on, whether he understood this or not, was because he thought everyone needed him too much. And they loved him, and they wanted him to stay, but his time was nearing, and he would need to let go. He raised fine children, who raised fine children of their own, who were still raising their own, using skills they ultimately learned from him. He could leave, because his job was done.

Mateo’s departure was not like this. Like everyone else, at least when he was first growing up, his time was not infinite. He too would one day die, whether this all happened to him or not. But no one needed to have a conversation with him about how they would survive without him. It wasn’t clear what lessons or feelings he would leave behind, or rather what exactly time would do with those experiences. He could take comfort in the fact, though, that his exit would not leave a hole in anyone’s heart. Not even Leona would feel a loss, and this made it easier for him to leave. “We need to spend every single second of today together,” Leona said, but was this true? You spend time with the people you love so you can remember those moments, and reflect on them later out of joy. Since this couldn’t happen with her, what did that matter?

“Without memories, what we do today is irrelevant,” Mateo said. “Neither of us will know a difference.”

“I’m still holding out hope,” Leona said in response. “I may one day get you back, you never know.”

The Superintendent would have to arbitrarily decide that this was going to happen,” Mateo calmly contended. “You certainly won’t be able to fight for it yourself.”

“I don’t believe that. Doesn’t your religion claim the soul to be real. If it is, maybe other people’s effect on it is not as easily erased as the mind is.”

“That may be, but you still won’t know what you’re missing, which means you won’t know where to look.”

“I dunno, I’m pretty smart. Maybe I’ll figure it out.”

“Maybe. But let us not worry about that. And let us not admit that this is an end. I’d like us to just go about our day as if it were like any other. I don’t want to eat a salmon dinner for the last time, or drive a muscle car for the last time, or even kiss you for the last time. Those...those symmetries are nothing more than illusions, especially when considering our unique situation.”

“So what do you wanna do today?”

“I just wanna relax.”

She sighed, and said nothing else.

“Mateo!” Gilbert’s voice came from down the beach. “Hey, Mateo!” He was waving excitedly, nearly dragging Zeferino Preston with him. As they got closer, they could see that the two of them were handcuffed together. Island dwellers thought it was weird, but not enough to ask questions. Everyone watched for a few seconds, and then just shrugged it off.

Mateo and Leona ran down to meet him halfway. “What are you doing?”

“I caught a big fish for ya,” Gilbert said proudly.

Zeferino just snarled.

“How old are you?” Mateo asked.

“It’s not polite to ask a lady her age,” Zeferino spit.

“Where have you been?”

“The Superintendent sent me back almost 2,000 years. I occasionally find someone who lets me hitch a ride to another planet, but I’ve mostly just been walking around this whole time, completely powerless, like an animal.”

“That’s a decent life,” Gilbert said, pulling his captive up so he couldn’t sit down to rest. “Even longer than mine when you add it all together.”

“What’s this about, Gilbert?” Mateo asked.

“I hear you’re going away,” Gilbert said.

“I am.” Mateo nodded his head. “I don’t suppose you two will be able to remember me.”

“Not this time buddy.” Gilbert shook his head. “That’s sort of why I’m here.”

“Oh?”

Gilbert continued, “I don’t like you leaving with loose ends. When you’re gone, the two of us should be too.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s time,” Gilbert said. “No one should live forever who’s done the kinds of things we have. I appreciate you getting me out of the extraction mirror. I’m sure Zeffy here does too.”

Zeferino said nothing.

“Zeffy!”

“Yes!” he shouted. Then he quieted down, “thank you. You didn’t have to do that. You would have found some other way to get Darko back, I’m sure.”

Gilbert redirected his attention to Mateo. “We’re all going back to Glubbdubdrib where the two of us will be reinserted into the last moments of our respective deaths.”

“Is that necessary?” Mateo asked. “Can’t you just...live forever?”

“We’ve gotten lucky,” Gilbert explained. “If I die before going back to the mirror, I create a paradox. Same goes for this asshole.” He had to pull Zeferino up again to prevent him from resting. “What’s done is done. It’s created the reality we live in now. Don’t get me wrong, I have a long history of changing reality, but I don’t wanna do that anymore, especially not when it comes to you. He’s even more dangerous outside of the mirror. His death is marked by the hound, which is a metaphor I made up just now to describe people who have died under conditions of the hundemarke. Like I said, we’ve lived long lives, and they are already over. We just have to make it official.”

“Are you sure this is what you want?” Mateo pressed.

“No,” Zeferino answered instead.

“Shut the f—” Gilbert breathed in, and then out. “Yes.”

“Well, I can’t say I’ll miss you,” Mateo said, trying to laugh through the pain.

“I will,” Leona said.

“As will I,” Horace said as he was coming up to them.

“Did you hear all of that?” Gilbert questioned.

Horace took out a set of ear plugs. “Ellie gave these to me as a wedding present many years ago. She calls them bergbuds, but I don’t know why.”

“You little spy,” Mateo said with a smirk.

“Some things never change,” Horace said. “And good thing I was listening. I was able to call in a favor, so you won’t have to paddle to the palace...like an animal.”

Lifeless barrens magically appeared over the water, and floated towards them. Once they were all standing on the other side of the merge point, the beach disappeared, leaving them only a kilometer or so away from their destination.

“Thank you, Kayetan!” Mateo called out to the aether.

“Fuck off!” an echo of Kayetan replied without showing his face. They were never going to be friends. Well, after today, they couldn’t anyway.

The five of them started walking towards Palace Glubbdubdrib, but didn’t say a word on the way. There really was nothing to say. Mateo might have expected Zeferino to burn off some gallows humor, as he was known to do, but perhaps it wasn’t so funny when they were marching towards his death. He was literally born to live for eternity, and probably never considered his own mortality. Back when his death first happened, things were moving too quickly for him to process it, but now that it was about to happen again, his mind was probably racing with thoughts of fear, and regret.

They entered the palace, and walked down the corridors to the mirror room. A man was waiting for them, in front of the extraction mirror, which was already paused on the final moment of Zeferino’s death.

“Darrow?” Gilbert asked upon seeing the man. “What are you doing here?”

“Hello, Boyce,” Darrow said. “I am the bringer of death. I am present at the end of all salmon and choosers.”

“I...did not know that. You’re supposed to be The Maverick.”

“No, that’s not what I’m supposed to be, that’s just what I am. What my job originally entailed was to pull people from the brink of death if the powers that be weren’t done with them. They came up with more sophisticated means of doing this, so they abandoned me, and I struck out on my own. I came here today, because extractions are easy, but insertions take a little more finesse. They require a talent that none of you possesses.”

“Then thank you,” Gilbert said.

“First subject,” Darrow said, stepping aside to let Zeferino through.

“Am I entitled to some final words?” Zeferino asked.

“Yes,” Mateo said, but before Zeferino could speak more, Mateo pushed him through the mirror. “And those were pretty good ones.”

“Would you like to watch?” an apathetic Darrow asked.

“No, thank you,” Leona said.

Darrow reached up to the edge of the opening, and switched the view of the extraction mirror to Gilbert’s death.

“What about me?” Gilbert asked.

“You may have as much time as you need to say whatever you need to say,” Mateo assured him. “Or you can back out. No judgment, really.”

“I die here today, but it will not be the first time,” Gilbert began. “It will simply be the last. I have been given many opportunities to improve as a person, and have squandered the majority of them, if not all.”

Mateo was going to argue against that, but this was Gilbert’s moment. He had to say his peace.

“But there is hope. If I had been born a girl, my parents would have named me Quivira. As the timeline gods would have it, this is the truth of the timeline we’re in now. Quivira Boyce is a flawed, strong, beautiful woman. She dedicated her life to jumping through time, using her powers to help everyone she can. She is what I should have been, and I’m glad that this universe...will remember me as her.” He was tearing up. “Mateo..Leona, I thank you for your understanding. For your patience. For your love. When all I ever gave you was reason to doubt me. I have lived many lives, but the best two were the ones when we were friends, the ones when I was just me. I cherish the relationship you allowed to grow between us. I only wish I had some way to repay everything you’ve given me. Instead, Leona, I’ll give you some advice. Remember.” With that, Gilbert Boyce stepped into the insertion mirror...and vanished.

Darrow slid his hand on the edge of the opening again, revealing an image of Tribulation Island. “Fear not,” he said. “I can insert anyone anywhere, to any time; this doesn’t mean you’ll die. It’s just a portal back to your home.”

Leona looked up at Horace. “Is this our home?” she asked.

“Do we have another?” Horace asked back.

“I would much like to return to Earth, I believe,” she acknowledged.

“I can switch you to that,” Darrow said.

“We’ll find a way back on our own,” Horace said. “There is still much to do on the island. We have to get Serif anyway.”

“Of course,” Leona agreed. “Thanks for coming with me to see them off. I know you have mixed feelings about Gilbert.”

“I loved him as strongly as I love anyone else in our family,” Horace replied.

The two of them locked arms and stepped through the portal together.

That evening, Leona revisited the idea of finally getting off this planet at dinner. It was a huge feast that included everyone there at the time, though they couldn’t all fit at the big table. Dar’cy and Lincoln had long since returned from their trip to see friends in Sutvindr. Mario, on break for a few days, was excited to tell everyone what kind of person Winston Churchill was. His wife, Lita revealed an admiration for the historical figure. Aura, Samsonite, and Téa were wondering why they didn’t expand the island as a resort to attract tourists from the mainland. Baudin was open to starting talks about such a thing.

Paige Turner was happy with her job in the Hall of Records, but was quite interested in Leona’s plan to go back to Earth, as was Dar’cy. The latter had spent some time in two now-collapsed timelines, but very little in this reality.

“What do you think, Serif?” Leona asked.

“I go wherever you go, Leona Matic,” Serif said with a loving smile. “Were I you.”

“Were I you,” Leona echoed.

They kissed.

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