The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 18, 2399

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Mateo shoots up from the pillow and gasps. He would have guessed that it would wake up his wife, but she’s sleeping peacefully next to him. He nudges her, but nothing. He shakes her, and she groans, but still doesn’t open her eyes. “Leona. Leona—Lee-Lee!”

“What?” she finally says, keeping her eyes closed, and crunching her pillow up under her arms and head. “I’m sleeping.”

“What about Angela and Marie?”

“Alyssa promised that she would let them come back without disrupting the reframe engine that’s bringing them here, or the exterior inertial dampeners that will stop them from crashing into the planet.”

“No, I mean the immortality waters that Angela is meant to drink. We still haven’t gotten the remaining sources.”

She opens her eyes, and holds herself up with locked elbows. “We keep forgetting about that. Why do we keep forgetting about that?” That’s a really good question. Either they’re terrible people, or someone is doing this to them. They would like to think it’s the latter, because that problem can be solved, but at the same time, it may be rather difficult to find the culprit. They need to erase all distractions. Is it the building-slash-evacuation spaceship, and if so, is there something odd about the structure itself, or is it just so mysterious that they can’t think about anything else.

“We need to make a plan to procure what we need. First, I need you to remind me which ones she’s already taken. If I recall correctly, she had access to another.”

“Right.” She curls into a more comfortable position. “Lamp on,” she commands their smarthome receiver. “She’s had Catalyst, Longevity, and Time. Which is good, because those are the hardest to get, especially in a world where time and accelerated space travel are all but impossible. She also drank some of the hard-to-make Atacama desert water for Body. Now, the alternate version of Tamerlane Pryce reportedly gave her a bottle of Dead Sea water, so that takes care of Energy, but she’ll need to take Existence and Invulnerability first, so we will need to take trips to the Bermuda Triangle, and the North Pole. At this point, the latter will be easier than the former, because people apparently know that the Triangle is special, and are watching it.”

“The Fountain of Youth is the next one, right?”

“Yeah, the government is monitoring that. I don’t see it being a problem. Both Health and Death come from the Pools of Pamukkale in Türkiye, which is also politically complicated, but if I ask Winona, I think she can swing it. That just leaves Activator.”

“Where do you get that?”

She frowns at him. “The end of the world. It’s the opposite of Catalyst.”

“I don’t know when the world ends, but it’s not in a few weeks.”

“And if we can’t travel through time, it won’t matter when exactly it is anyway.”

“It’s right now,” came a voice from a dark corner.

“Who the hell is there?” Leona questions. “Lights to a hundred percent.”

The lights come on to reveal it to be their friend, and Mateo’s sort-of daughter. “Kivi,” Leona exclaims. “I forgot about you. You can’t exist, can you?”

“I don’t have long. Just know that the world is ending this year. Any water, from anywhere—as long as it’s injected with temporal energy at the right ratio—will work.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 17, 2399

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Leona has finally come back to the Superscraper after spending days at Homes for Humankind, working on something big. She even made a short trip to Haiti without even telling Mateo about it. She hasn’t given any details regarding their plans, but Mateo has briefed her on what he and the volunteers discovered as they were exploring the sublevels. She wanted to see it for herself, of course. She is particularly interested in the fusion reactor on the very lowest level. She stares for a few minutes, not vocalizing her thoughts. Then she walks over to it, and starts opening panels and hatches. She presses a few buttons, and flips some switches too. When she’s satisfied, she brushes the dust off her hands, and walks back over. “It is more interesting than you thought.”

“Why’s that?”

She points. “See that over there, that collection of tubes?”

“Yeah. Kind of looks like an organ.”

“It’s part of a cooling system.”

“Sounds reasonable to me. Fire hot. Fire burn,” he says like a caveman.

She smirks knowingly. “Let’s go back upstairs. I need to test something.”

They take the elevator up. Leona stops on the main floor, and opens the door to a maintenance closet. She looks around a little bit before finding what she’s looking for, which is apparently a large metal pipe. She smacks it against her other hand to test its strength, then they get back into the elevator to go up a few more floors. She doesn’t say a word this entire time. Mateo doesn’t think she’s going to hurt anyone with it, but he’s very confused, and a little nervous. She usually likes to explain herself along the way.

They get out on the fourth floor, and walk into a random unit. It’s not being used by any of the people they took in. Still silent, Leona pulls the pipe into a backswing, and sends it straight into the window as hard as she can. It’s not too hard, because she never played baseball, or works out, but it should have done at least a little damage. There is not a mark on it. Also silent, Mateo reaches out. She hands him the pipe, and he takes his own shot. Nothing. Impenetrable. “What does this tell us?” he asks.

She takes back the pipe, and hits the glass again, like a pickaxe this time, and not with all of her might. She feels the seams with her fingers, and looks closely at them. “Does this kind of window remind you of anything? Like, when you think back to the times you’ve encountered one that appears to be indestructible, were you in an office building, or were you...in something else?”

Puzzled, Mateo winces, and tries to think. “I mean, they’ve always been like that when I’ve been on ships?” He shakes his head tightly, and widens his eyes. He looks around at the room that they’re in, and slides his palm on the walls. “This is a ship?”

“I think so. In fact, I think that it’s just a giant evacuation vessel. They built them to replace the original arcologies in the main sequence during Project Airtight, but we never saw them. The whole planet could be evacuated in a matter of hours, if need be.”

“Leona, one of our new friends did the math. If some lived up top, and some below, a million people could fit. How many would you need to save literally everyone?”

“At a million per ship, that’s about eight thousand, just like this one.”

Mateo gazes out the window. “Is that possible? Do you think more exist?”

She sighs and watches the sun set upon the city. “That...would be crazy.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: February 21, 2399

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Across the street from the parking lot where the transreality anomaly is, there is another parking lot, and across the next street is an office building that is no longer in heavy use. A few companies still hold their offices there, but the majority of them had moved to newer facilities by the time any of this got started. Some of the rest of them left when the government first put up the containment tent. Those still lingering were placed in their own special quarantine on the top floor following Humbert Messer’s attack. Other nearby office workers faced similar situations. A long-ass plastic tunnel was placed at the entrance to the tent, going all the way to the new isolation building. Everyone who happened to be in the tent at the time was sent through, and relocated to their own room. There were enough executive offices that had their own bathroom to accommodate the bulk of the patients. Some were placed in actual bathrooms, but a few had to suffer with a bucket. But they didn’t stay that way for very long. The point of these rooms was to separate the infected from the non-infected. It wasn’t long before they were all symptomatic. They were recently moved to the popup clinic that the government set up in the cafeteria on the bottom floor.

No one who wasn’t in the tent at the time of Humbert’s arrival has shown any signs of infection. They were fortunate enough to have not undergone a shift-change by the time Vearden showed up and figured out that he was contagious. According to experts who have begun to research the disease, killing Patient Zero immediately was the only option there. He would have only made things worse by staying alive. They will study his corpse, and the living patients. The quarantined office workers will be released and evacuated soon. This whole area will be a ghost town in a matter of days. The government takes this seriously, and will not accept any pushback from the public. Fortunately for the process, they’re not getting any, because this is not the first outbreak this world has experienced. There’s a reason the team keeps being locked up in quarantine when they travel, despite there being no current threat...until now.

Leona flew back to Kansas City from São Paulo. She was trying to find the Harlows there, but it’s been difficult. The satellite can give them a good idea of where they are, but not only is it a dense and heavily populated city, and not only have they been hiding out in a particularly dense area, but the nation was also celebrating a religious holiday last week, so the streets were chaos. It’s already begun to clear up, though, and it should be easier now for Kivi and her team, who are taking up the mantle. Leona isn’t annoyed that she had to cut her search short. All they need is for someone to confirm whether or not Alyssa is the other target. Once that’s made, the hunt will be over, because if it’s not her, they will be out of leads.

Vearden is in a private room, and will remain there as the others are moved downstairs. He’s shaky and weak. His skin has turned red from capillary leak syndrome. Inflammation is causing severe damage to the blood vessels, resulting in blood leaking into the interstitial tissue. Doctors can usually make it go away, but the root cause has been hard to identify. They have never encountered a pathogen like this before. The fact that it appears to not be from this world is not what’s tripping them up, but the fact that it’s new, and there is no antibiotic or antiviral for it. They’re not sure yet if it even is bacteria, or a virus. It could be something else. “It doesn’t hurt. Shouldn’t it hurt? I mean, look at me. This looks like it hurts.”

“I would say that not feeling any pain is a good thing, unless you don’t feel anything at all, like you’re numb,” Leona replies. “Are you numb, because then we would have to call the doctor back.”

“I’m not numb.” He slaps himself in the face. “No, not numb.”

“Don’t do that.”

“I’m sorry. Thanks for coming back here. I know you have your own crap to deal with.”

“You are my crap. I mean...you know what I mean.”

He nods. “How are all the other patients doing?”

“They’re the same. This pathogen does not discriminate.”

“I bet they’re pretty butthurt that they had to convert the nearest emergency pandemic research facility into a time lab that you’re not even using anymore.”

“Their new lab is also close, and anyway, they’re not even using it. They’re based out of this building so far. It’s not even an epidemic, let alone a pandemic.”

He nods, but his mind is elsewhere. “Listen, I’ve been meaning to ask you for something. I can’t believe I never thought of it before, and like I said, I know you’re really busy, so I don’t want to put you out—”

“Vearden,” she interrupts. “Ask me.”

“Will you try to talk to Arcadia using all that fancy technology that you and Ramses built? Like, with the Insulator of Life and the Livewire? Can they help?”

She smiles. “That’s a good idea. When I leave here, I’ll give that a shot.”

“Could you...leave right now? If you have to fly all the way back to Indonesia—”

“All that stuff is still here. We never thought to transport it to Mangrove One. It’s unrelated to our work out there.”

“Good. I appreciate it.”

“Do you need anything? I can get you some real food. There’s a way to pass it through without risking cross-contamination.”

“I’m okay with what they give me. I’m more worried about Arcadia.” His face tells her that the request is still urgent, even though she won’t have to fly overseas first.

“All right. I’ll go grab the supplies, then head for the hospital.”

“Thanks.”

Leona goes to get what she needs. It takes more than the Insulator and the Livewire. Interfacing with people’s minds is not something that any known special temporal object can perform. It requires technology that Ramses reverse engineered from research that experts spent centuries developing. Vearden was right, though, that they should have thought of trying this before. Arcadia is still in there, she just can’t wake up. Leona doesn’t even think that comas are a thing in the main sequence. It’s the kind of technology that should be inherently produced in tandem with consciousness transference advancements.

She has to call Ramses for a little help, because he understands this stuff better, but she gets it working. Nurse Chenda stays awake as a failsafe to pull her out if need be. Leona connects herself to Arcadia’s mind, and tries to reach out to her. It’s not long before she hears the sound of screaming. She runs towards it and finds Dream!Arcadia, who is standing in place, unmoving, and unrelenting in her piercing cry. Leona tries to shake her a little, but a skintight forcefield prevents them from touching. She just holds there like a statue. This isn’t a coma. This is something else.

Microstory 1679: The Data

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Long after Legend Oberti was dead, the world itself was dying. The remnants of humanity tried to eke out a living amongst the ruins, but life was harsh, and people were sad. They were only likely going to survive in the long-term thanks to the sustainable inventions of a historical figure named Axel Quincy. Axel died while Legend was still alive, but the specifications for his designs lived on beyond his death. Unfortunately, this was not good enough. The people of the future could not live like this forever. It was just too late. Perhaps if they had all this before, things would be different. There was no way to stop the world from having ended, but if they went back in time to save this one person, he could ultimately make their lives easier. A gamma-ray burst destroyed nearly all life on Earth, leaving only the survivors who were lucky enough to be on the other side of the planet alive. This consisted predominantly of people in New Zealand, Australia, southern Argentina, and many islands in Oceania, as well as people on sea vessels. A few researchers in Antarctica were fine too, which is where the time travel technology originated. They were already working on manipulating time there, free from the oversight of their countries of origin. When the world ended, they decided something had to be done to protect the people who managed to be out of the danger zone, for surviving the initial event was not good enough on its own. Their hope was to just send everyone back to prehistoric times, but things changed when they caught wind of something called The Data. Before this data was discovered, life was pretty hellish. The supply chain was broken, the network of artificial satellites in orbit were completely destroyed. Governments were gone, and chaos reigned.

While searching for entertainment files to keep their people from going insane, a small group of people stumbled upon Axel Quincy’s designs on a server in Papua New Guinea. He had kept his data in the cloud, and even after all this time, it was still there, just waiting for someone to find it. They didn’t know exactly what they had, but the data started getting bounced around the hemisphere until the right people learned about it. They knew how to build his designs, and reunite what was left of the world. When the time travel researchers found out about The Data, they decided there was a better way. Instead of just trying to make life easier, what if they went back and made sure these creations were made before the gamma-ray burst? The whole population of the planet could be relocated to the safe zone, and sustained by the Quincy structures. Many would probably not believe them, but at least they could try, and for those few from the past who were willing to take a leap of faith, there would be a place for them in Australia. Now all they needed was to find someone to actually go back in time, save Axel, and set everything in motion. It was not an easy search. Only one person would fit in the machine, and once they were gone, no one else would be able to follow. Even if the traveler succeeded in the mission, it would have to be a one-way trip, which people were all right with. The main draw was that they didn’t know what would happen to the original timeline. That was what really made so many people volunteer. They didn’t want to die in the collapse. Antarctica set up a lottery to choose a handful of candidates, and then formulate a training program to make sure they could handle the job. Siri Cobb ended up fitting the bill, but as we already know, things did not go as planned.

Microstory 1499: The End of Durus

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Two hundred years after Savitri became the first human on Durus, the eleventh major form of government, the Solar Democratic Republic officially ended. Technically, it should have ended a long time ago, if not once the rogue world left 70 Ophiuchi space, then certainly when nearly the entire population was evacuated through the Nexus. Survivors, called remainders, ultimately agreed that this most recent event was the greater shift than those others, however. The thirteenth remainder in charge of waking up from stasis, and being available to solve any problems, was a woman by the name of Kyra Torosian. Nothing of note happened for the first few months of her shift. A couple of the pods experienced some power irregularities, but these were simple repairs. None of the Dardieti team were awake at the time, for she was not considered a threat to them. She spent her days zipping throughout the bunkers on a scooter that one of the children left there when he evacuated, and carrying on full conversations with her completely unresponsive friends. They had access to entertainment from Durus, Dardius, and even Earth, but she wasn’t much for that kind of art, so she really just wasted the days away. She was the type of person who could sit in a chair for hours, doing nothing else, and not grow bored. Her mind was just too busy with her imagination for it to matter much what her environment was, as long as it wasn’t uncomfortable, or sometimes even if. One day, Kyra was wandering the halls just outside the Nexus room when she thought she heard it start to power up. Of course, she assumed that someone from Dardius was coming to check on them, so she ran inside, and mentally prepared herself to greet them professionally, and in her words, well-spokenly. She never knew exactly what happened, or whether anyone was actually trying to come through, because it all went wrong. The machine exploded, and sent a wave of energy throughout the entire section.

What no one knew at the time was that the explosion was an accident, and happened to all Nexa in this universe. Because they involve time travel, they didn’t explode all at once, and the damages were not irreparable, but this did cause a number of problems for everyone who needed to use them at certain times. The explosion was powerful, but it was pretty contained, so no one else on Durus was affected, or even immediately made aware that it happened. Kyra would later have to start waking them up, so she could let them know. Obviously, the explosion didn’t kill her, which was a universal result. Others experienced superficial injuries, but nothing serious. What set Kyra apart was that she came from a bloodline of paramounts. While there was never enough temporal energy on Durus for her to have exhibited any powers before, she was genetically predisposed to developing them, and the Nexus explosion was enough to do just that. What was unclear was whether she would have developed the same power under different circumstances, or if the explosion also decided what she could do. Evidence suggested the latter. After waking key remainder leadership, along with the team from Dardius, Kyra went about figuring out who she now was. It was like she became a walking Nexus. When someone touched her, they would be transported to one of the other Nexa, and if someone made the appropriate hyperdimensional metamathematical calculations, they could also transport to her. Unlike regular Nexa, Kyra could also transport herself anywhere in the universe that she wanted; it didn’t even have to be tied to the network. Every time she jumped somewhere, it would recharge her temporal energy, like a perpetual motion engine, and the more she did it, the stronger she became. Over time, she would end up with enough power to move entire planets through the network, which she used to move Durus to its new home. Not even the Nexa could do that. It wouldn’t be there forever, though, because her power continued to grow. The remainders would come to use their unique position to fight a great war against a multiversal threat. Until then, the remainders had to decide how they were going to use this advantage, and whether they would be able to convince any former Durune to return to their homeworld. While they worked on that, they figured they ought to shift to yet another form of government. This one would be called the Kyran Nexus Tempocracy. That was not all, though. The remainders would also decide to change the name of the planet to Torosia, in honor of her.

Microstory 1498: Those Who Stayed Behind

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The Solar Democratic Republic was over, as was the Durune civilization in general, and everyone knew it. Now, accepting this reality was a different matter altogether. Most people agreed to evacuate to Dardius. It was warm, safe, and reliable, and there was no good reason to stay pass up this opportunity to lead happy lives. The only reason humanity survived on Durus this long was because of time powers. Had they never existed, Savitri would have died within minutes of falling into her portal, and everyone after that would have probably lived out their lives in Springfield, Kansas, completely unaware that the rogue planet even existed. Even their regular technology was based on decades of the development of a society that took powers for granted. Living in the underground bunkers—or worse, being stuck in the stasis pods indefinitely—was an irrational way to live, and most people understood that. The rest, well, they held firm. They believed, almost in a spiritual sense, that Durus was destined to go on forever, whether that meant finding a new host star, and spontaneously forming a new atmosphere, or the replenishment of temporal energy, and reëmergence of time powers. They just couldn’t surrender to the fact that there was little to nothing they could do to make life easier on Durus, and that the chances of it happening on its own were negligibly low. The problem was that the chances were not at zero, and that was enough to keep the stubborn people going. For days, they argued their case against the other side. They never tried to stop anyone from leaving, but they felt entitled to stay if that was what they wanted. To prevent this from growing out of control, the government, in one of its last acts while still in charge, created a set of criteria. Only certain people would be allowed to stay, and all others would have to evacuate with everyone who had already left. The most notable requirement was that all remainders—as they were called—would have to be romantically unattached, and be responsible for no children. In the end, 216 people fit the bill.

Some who had already evacuated changed their minds, and wanted to be considered for the same treatment, but they were summarily denied. Transportation through the Nexus was going to be heavily regulated, and that was out of Durus’ hands either way. There would be periodic travel, however, and this required a little help. Dardius had no problem leaving their power source on Durus. They had no shortage of resources, and maintained a strong enough connection to Earth to keep up with technological advancements. They had one major condition, though, and it was non-negotiable. A small Dardieti contingency would be left in the Durus bunkers, and have any veto power when it came to what happened with their technology, or the connection back to their home. The remainders had no problem with this, especially since they would be sleeping in their stasis pods most of the time anyway. They created a system to keep things running. One remainder would wake up from stasis every year, and spend the following year looking after all the others, and tracking the planet’s progress through interstellar space. This system would last for over two centuries before anyone would have to wake back up more than once, though they had no idea how much time would pass before anything interesting happened, so that wasn’t saying much. The Dardieti contingency would each wake up less often, but do so at strategic times. They worked with the government to identify remainders who were at more risk of threatening the system, and would benefit from a little oversight. Most of those types of people were disqualified from the beginning, but everyone was a risk, and anything could happen during a year alone on a dead world. Even though no elected official stayed behind, the remainders insisted on continuing to call themselves the Solar Democratic Republic. It would be like this for twelve years, until a catastrophe leads one remainder down a different path.

Microstory 1497: Evacuation Protocol

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In 2210, the people of Durus voted to begin exploring the Nexus replica network. This was after the decline in temporal energy, but before anyone knew about it. Following careful consideration, more discussions, and training, the first mission was dispatched in 2213. They chose to go to a planet millions of light years from the stellar neighborhood called Dardius, mostly because that was the only location available. They could see evidence that there were other Nexa to visit, but they were locked out of all but the one. They established diplomatic relations with the Dardieti, but both sides were very cautious about their interactions. Dardius was a sanctuary planet, designed to house people who had either survived close encounters with dangerous temporal manipulators, or were at risk of encounters, due to events occurring in alternate realities. These people’s descendants lived here as well, and though they used some time technology of their own, they were very wary of Durus. They also had a very delicate social structure, which relied on rescuing people in the past at very precise moments. They didn’t just extract them from the timeline at random. They developed highly sensitive models to make sure new citizens integrated safely into the system without disrupting it, or being disrupted by it. Durus was a new variable, which Dardius had not accounted for in their models. That didn’t mean they were xenophobic, or hateful, but this was going to be a slow process, which didn’t bother Durus, because they were in no hurry to make any drastic changes to their own system. Before anything of significance could happen, the relationship ended anyway. In 2217, Dardius began having major issues with one of their rescue groups. Their timeline extraction machine malfunctioned, and started quantum duplicating everyone who came through, over and over and over again. This threw off the social balance greatly, and sparked a war. Dardius had no time to deal with Durus, but this would stop being a problem two years later when the Durune realized their time power issues. They could no longer afford to waste energy on intergalactic travel either.

Flashforward several decades, and the time power problem had not been solved. Nor had the regular power problem. It was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the wind turbines on the surface, and they still had no way of powering the Nexus. Fortunately, the Dardieti did. Their war was long over by 2267, and Dardius was essentially under brand new management. The Einarssons wanted to reestablish relations with Durus, so they sent a recon team to find out how the Durune had been doing. They were soon able to provide them with a power source, so they could initiate outgoing transports, but that alone would do them no good. There were still hundreds of thousands of people in the stasis pods who could not exactly be evacuated using traditional means, even with the Nexus in play. It was only designed to accommodate thirty people at a time. There seemed to be a way, however. As Dardius’ best technicians were working with Durus’ best, they found something called an Evacuation Protocol. It was exactly what they were looking for. The machine could still only take thirty people at once, but it would just keep going and going, about once every minute. If they coordinated perfectly, they calculated they could evacuate every single person in a month and a half. Realistically, it would be closer to two months, but that was fine. They were lucky to have found the feature, because it wasn’t immediately apparent to them, and it wasn’t something people would need on a regular basis. Perhaps the machine was somewhat sentient, and knew that this was exactly what they needed to survive. Under the Einarssons, the Dardieti were now less concerned about predictive social harmony models, and more concerned with saving lives. They agreed to evacuate everyone who wanted to move to their planet, which had a stable sun, and abundant resources, without question. Nearly everyone happily agreed to abandon their dead world, because there was little hope of saving it from the void, and they felt that it was just time to let it go. Some did choose to stay behind, however, and they had their reasons.