The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 27, 2540

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Angela inspired Ramses to alter his plans for their new pocket dimension habitat. He was still using a belt as a form factor, but instead of only having one central location where they would all live, they would have seven total. This helped a little with power management, which was important, even though they already had an advantage that not everyone trying something like this would. A temporal battery this small would not be good enough for most people’s use, but they only ever needed the pocket dimension to be active while they were in the timestream. During their interim year, it could be recharging simply by the passage of time. And if one of them lost power, the others might still be okay, and available. Each one of them would wear their own belt, which housed its own independent pocket. These would be connected to one another, though, allowing them to cross back and forth between each other’s territories seamlessly. And of course, each individual would be able to control access to their own pocket. They were in the middle of a tour to learn more about it.

“So, whose pocket is this?” Olimpia asked. “If it’s a common area, does one of us wear two belts?”

“No, this is just mine,” Marie revealed. “I figured, since I don’t have a love interest, or a laboratory, I might as well serve as the main hub.”

“Your personal quarters does lock, though,” Ramses explained, pointing to one of the doors. This was a room of mostly doors. “So you do have some privacy.”

“Well, thank you for doing that,” Leona said to Marie. “And thank you, Ramses, for building this. It’s quite lovely. Do the other pockets look like this, architecturally speaking?”

Ramses nodded. “Yes, same aesthetic, but it can be redecorated, or even remodeled, if you have your own vision. I designed them with forty-two square meters of space, though if you’re feeling claustrophobic, we can talk about expanding. It would just take a little more power...”

“That’s more than enough in the modern era,” Mateo noted. “The three of us are gonna be sharing our spaces.” He wrapped an arm around each of his wives.

“Uh, slow down there, cowpoke,” Leona said, brushing him off of her shoulder. “You’re gonna need to buy me dinner first, and it better be fancy. I’m talking laminated menus with multiple pages, and lighting so dim, you can’t read it.”

“Well, all right then. And you?” he posed to Olimpia.

“I’m easy. Just slap my ass and call me sweetheart.” They kissed.

“Gross,” Romana said.

Ramses laughed a little. “Like Marie said, this is the common area, but everyone has an antechamber like this one, but with only six doors, and smaller. You can enter each other’s domains directly, instead of going through the common area. So, Matics, you could just leave your doors open all the time, and it will feel like the same big house. Now,” he began as he was walking towards a door that was separate from the others. When he opened it, they saw a staircase. “This goes down to the basement where your respective tandem slingdrives are, along with other necessary equipment, like life support and power control. Don’t...” he hesitated. “Don’t come down here unless I ask you to, or if you really think there’s a reason. I don’t know what that reason might be, but you’re all adults, so I don’t want to make a blanket statement that it’s off-limits, or straight up lock you out. I just want you to be careful. In the past, you have not had physical access to the machinery, and I never heard any complaints, so even though you technically have access now, you really shouldn’t need it. I have direct doors to all of them, and you cannot lock those from your side, so fair warning.”

“Yeah, you’re our little basement troll.” Mateo put Ramses in a headlock and mussed up his hair. “Who’s our little basement troll?”

“I am,” Ramses admitted. He pulled himself out of the headlock, and straightened back up. “So, that’s about all I’m gonna show you. You can explore on your own. I mostly only put the basic amenities in there, like Alaskan king beds, VR connectors, stasis pods, emergency supplies. You can synthesize more, if you want. Everyone does have a giant hot tub, though. No amount of transhumanistic enhancement can replicate the relaxing feeling of hot water jets on your bare skin, lemme tell ya.”

“Gross,” Romana repeated.

“Oh, I almost forgot. One more thing,” Ramses said, leading them towards the back. He drew the curtains apart to reveal a glass sliding door. On the other side was what looked like the outside. It wasn’t just an illusion. He opened the door, and walked right out. The ground before them was only soil, but it was a sizable backyard. The landscape stretched for miles and miles, though that probably was all just holographic. At present, the sun was setting, so they stood there to watch it. “I didn’t plant anything, because I thought we might turn this into a little community garden. Wherever we go, we’ll be able to bring nature with us, even in the emptiness of intergalactic space.”

“This is really nice, Ramses,” Leona said again. “You did a great job.”

“You didn’t help?” Angela asked her.

“Not much,” Leona replied. “I ran some calculations, but the design was all him.”

“I needed a win,” Ramses told her. “I needed it to be my win, if that doesn’t sound too selfish and rude.”

“I understand,” she assured him. “It really is great. We finally have a home.”

“Is there a name for it?” Marie asked. “Like Willow Heights or Paradiso?”

Ramses started to look a little bashful now. “Well, we can come up with a different name, if you’d like, but in the base coding, I’ve just been calling it Silhefa. It’s kind of hard to pronounce in Egyptian Arabic, so that’s an anglicized approximation.

“What does it mean?” Mateo asked him.

“Turtle,” Ramses answered.

They all smiled. “It’s perfect.”

Mateo looked over, though, and noticed that there was a hint of sadness in Romana’s eyes. She was still going through a rough time, and she probably wasn’t talking to anybody about it. He slid over to her, and took her hand. She was a little surprised, but didn’t think of it as an opening to a conversation. She just smiled at him wider, and looked back at the scenery. He gently pulled her away.

“What is it?”

“Let’s talk,” he requested. He unlocked the door to his private pocket, and pulled her into it.

“About what?”

“Lie down with me.” He plopped down on the bed.

“That’s a little weird, dad.”

“You’re still my little girl. Lie down, come on.”

She sighed and lay down beside him.

“When you were just a tiny baby—I don’t know if your mother told you this—the Dardieti had built us this special bed.” He scooted over so there was more space between them that he could point to. “There was this hole in the bed which was just big enough for you. Your mom and I weren’t together, obviously, but for that brief period of time, we both slept in that bed with you. We felt like a family. It was in that bed that I made a commitment to protect you, which I was only able to do by letting you go.”

“We just talked about this on that scout ship. I’m not leaving the team.”

“I’m not asking you to. There are things I know you need that a father can’t give to his daughter. That would actually be weird. All I can do is be there for you while you figure it out. There’s something I might be able to give you, though. It won’t be easy, nor safe, but I can promise to try. I think it might help, though you would have to decide how you feel about it. The truth is, even though I didn’t know her well, I miss her a little, and would not hate seeing her again.” He drew from his memory of over a hundred realtime years ago, and used it to generate a hologram of Karla Nieman above them.

Romana teared up, and quickly started crying at the sight of her mom.

“We are time travelers. Let’s take advantage of that. Let’s go see your mother.”

“Getting into the Third Rail is not easy. Mom didn’t say anything about the baby bed, but she told me how hard it was to find refuge.”

“Then you know what to do.”

“Not exactly. She didn’t give me a map.”

“She gave you a way out, didn’t she? You made your way to Castlebourne somehow.”

“That was after the Reconvergence. I got out of the Sixth Key.”

“Well. We’ll find a way. Would you like that? Would you like to see her again?”

“Yes.”

“Come here. Come on,” he urged when she didn’t accept the hug right away.

She did lay her head upon his chest and cried into his shirt. “I have to admit something. I’ve been trying to Weird Science myself a boyfriend, using the Varkas Reflex computers. They know how to create characters, ya know. It’s not working, though. I keep trying to set very vague parameters, so he feels more like a real person that I didn’t come up with myself, but then he’s always a weirdo who I don’t really like. I thought maybe it was fate, because I thought of the idea, and then Ramses navigated us here, and it just made sense, but it’s not working out, and I feel like such a loser. I shouldn’t need an AI boyfriend. I’m just...desperate.”

Mateo sighed, not entirely sure what to say. “You had a boyfriend...once.”

“You mean Boyd?”

“Yeah.”

“You hated Boyd.”

“Well, he was an antagonist.”

She sighed.

“Until he wasn’t,” Mateo acknowledged.

“Why are you bringing that up?”

“Well. If we’re going to go back to the past to visit your mother, I don’t see why we can’t visit your ex too.”

“Really? You would do that?”

“You are my little girl. I don’t know how long it’s going to take for us to reach either destination.”

“I’m gonna need to print out a new bra.”

“Don’t push it.”

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Microstory 2606: There But For the Grace of God Go I, Yet I May Be Next

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August 19, 2526. Comms Officer Jeffries is operating the auxiliary station when the call comes in. He presses the tentative emergency button before the message completes, then listens intently to the rest. We’re experiencing a major hyperflare! You need to prepare for what comes next! You need to prepare for— is all he catches before the signal is cut. It doesn’t matter what the guy was trying to say, because there are only a few possibilities, and none of them is good. He doesn’t get the chance to hit the genuine emergency button before someone else hits it for him. He’s only on secondary duty right now. Everyone else is working the problem as the whole of Terminator Sentinel Alpha goes into mauve alert. His daughter is his number one priority now.

Jeffries races out of the room, and down the corridors, sliding against the wall as other people are racing to their own responsibilities. He finds Breanna in their unit, already putting on her integrated multipurpose suit. He smiles at her. “Good girl.”

“What are we doing?” she asks.

“Crew of Sentinel Alpha,” comes the voice of the captain through the intercom, “we are preparing for a hard turn into the nightside of the planet. Brace for inertial dampener disruption. Everyone is at PREPCON ONE. I repeat, all hands to PREPCON ONE! This is not a drill.”

“That,” Officer Jeffries replies to his daughter. “Get your helmet on.”

“What about you?”

“I ran out of the room without it,” he explains.

“You should have an extra one in here,” she argues.

“It’s in maintenance.”

“Goddammit,” she complains.

“I just need to get you to safety,” is all he’s able to say before the inertial dampeners glitch. He’s suddenly thrown against the wall. IMS units have their own onboard dampeners. It doesn’t save Breanna from the lurch entirely, but she survives it. Her father does not. Well, he does survive for a moment. His head is covered in blood. He’s enhanced, but not enough. He should have been wearing his full suit. Why wasn’t he wearing his suit? “Get to the pod,” he instructs. “Get out of here. You need to get underneath the magnet.” And then he dies.

She knows she doesn’t have time to mourn him. He wouldn’t want her dying up here too. Her body is more advanced than his, but she can’t survive everything. She runs out of the room, and down the corridor until she reaches the escape pod bay. She has always thought that each unit should have their own, instead of all in central locations, but this is an old ship, and they didn’t think of that yet. All of the pods are gone save one. She bolts towards it, but another girl shows up at the same time from the other entrance. “Cashmere.”

Cashmere switches her gaze between the pod and Breanna. “They’re technically large enough to fit two people.”

“Not with helmets on,” Breanna argues. There’s another lurch, but their magboots keep them upright.

“You ever heard of sixty-nining?”

“Jesus! Not the time!”

“To save our lives, there absolutely is.” Cashmere doesn’t wait for consensus. She pushes Breanna into the pod. Then she gets on top of her facing the opposite direction, filling in the space between her Breanna’s legs with her helmet. “You gotta operate the controls.”

“I know,” Brenna argues. “This better work, or we’ll both die. Goddamn pods designed like goddamn coffins!” she mutters as she’s engaging the pod. She flips on the boosters, and jettisons the pod out of the bay. It flies from the ship at Mach 20. They can see the planet below them through their HUDs. “Beginning decay.”

“I can see that,” Cashmere says.

“I know, but you’re supposed to announce it. Didn’t you read the manual?”

“I’m waiting for the adaptation!”

“Just let me know if you pass out, okay?”

“Will do, captain.”

“Targeting the northern pole,” Breanna announces. “Twenty minutes until atmospheric drag.”

They lie there together for another few minutes, not saying anything, but just stewing in the awkwardness. Suddenly, alarms start going off. They no longer feel the soft curve of their arc, but the shudder of turbulence. “What happened?” Cashmere questions.

“The atmosphere is too close. This doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s expanded,” Cashmere guesses.

“How?” Breanna cries

“I don’t know!”

They begin to plummet like a stone, at a far steeper angle than they planned on. Their ablative shielding peels off piece by piece. It’s too early to pull the parachute, though. They have to wait until they’re closer to the surface. “Wait for it,” Breanna says. “Wait for it,” she repeats. “Brace for chute.”

“Oh, I don’t think we can brace any more than this.”

Breanna can’t rely on the computer to make the calculations as its estimation of the distance to the planet was about 500 kilometers off. She hovers her hand over the button, forcing her mind to stay alert so she doesn’t succumb to the g-forces. Finally, it’s time. “Now!”

The chute opens. The pod flips up so she’s fully upright, and Cashmere is upside down as they wait to complete the descent. “Do you know where you’re going?”

“There’s a dome not far from here. The thrusters will be able to push us close enough to it so we don’t have to walk far,” Breanna answers.

They fall and fall and fall, slowly, but certainly not gently. Her mental calculations are slightly off when it turns out they were actually a lot closer to the dome than she thought. They end up crashing into the side of it. The only reason they don’t slide down from there is because the chute gets caught on something. Now they’re hanging, and they don’t know what to do.

“Rescuers are gonna find us six months from now, and will think that we died having sex,” Cashmere mused.

“No, they won’t,” Breanna contends. “I’m gonna figure this out. Just...shut up.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 16, 2529

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The team stayed on Jaunemus the rest of the day, eating the local cuisine, and recharging their photovoltaics by the star that they were orbiting right now. This moon was a gargantuan spaceship, which could move through space at will. The Jaunemusians couldn’t travel all the way back home to Verdemus to eat lunch with their friends every day, but they didn’t have to stay in one place either. They bounced around the nearest stars in this area, and spent a lot of time in interstellar space to avoid detection.

There was nothing for Team Matic here, so they decided to bug out. “We have to get back to Proxima Doma,” Angela suggested. “We have to find out what happened there, if anything.”

“I thought we were going after Miracle,” Ramses countered.

“That trail has gone cold,” Marie figured. “She has had a whole year to get those cuffs off.”

Leona chuckled. “She has not been able to get them off. They’re held together by a distributive bond. Breaking them would cause her to explode, and I’m the only one with a key.”

They all looked to Ramses for confirmation. He nodded. That was how their EmergentSuits worked. It was how they could be so thin, yet so durable, and protective against harsh environments, like the vacuum of outer space.

“There’s still the question of where she is,” Olimpia tried to remind them. “She could have gone anywhere. I’m guessing the quantum connection doesn’t extend this far.”

“Even I have my limits,” Ramses admitted. “But your husband doesn’t.”

“Me?” Mateo questioned. “If I can find her, why didn’t we do that yesterday?”

“We all needed a break,” Leona explained, “especially you. As I was saying, those cuffs aren’t going anywhere. There was no need to rush off, and besides, I don’t like traveling with low slingdrives. Mateo, your dark particles are the backup, not the other way around.”

“All right,” Mateo agreed. “I’ll use my black magic for a locator spell.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Romana said. No, it wasn’t Romana, but Miracle. She was holding her arms in front of her chest, like a beggar. “Get them off of me, and I’ll agree to transfer to a new substrate. It doesn’t matter anymore. I stole this body because that’s what Pacey asked of me. But I never wanted this.” She sighed, and looked off into a random direction. “I just wan—I just wanted to end him...and his reign of terror.”

The real Romana stepped forward, and placed a comforting hand on Miracle’s shoulder. “You’re not doing this for Pacey, you’re doing it for yourself. You’re from the Goldilocks Corridor.”

Miracle sighed again. “My name isn’t really Miracle. It’s just Mirinda. Mirinda...Oaksent.” They didn’t know exactly what that meant. In modern times, you couldn’t guess someone’s relationship to someone else based on their appearance. They could look 50 years older, but be 200 years younger. She giggled. “You’re all waiting for the clarification before judgment. That’s quite magnanimous of you. I’m his daughter. I’ve been that way for millennia. You see, all those people out here in the Corridor, they are his subjects...his toys. He built them to serve, and to adore him. But the problem with that is they were indoctrinated into belief from birth. Ignorance is the killer. I mean, you showed one person the truth about Earth, and an entire opposing faction spread out from it, which is what he’s always been afraid of. Sycophants who don’t know any better aren’t very satisfying either way. He wanted a group of people who loved him because that’s what they were supposed to do. He wanted a family. He made us just like he made the others, but he made us immortal, just like him. He didn’t really raise us, but we got more face time with him than most, so I suppose he figured that was enough.

“I grew to resent him, of course, which is how we ended up here. In defiance of his plan to curate a family of superhumans, I started fighting back violently. I killed all of my clones, as well as my brothers and sisters’ clones. I didn’t kill them too, but they eventually died, and there was nowhere for their consciousnesses to go. Oaksent doesn’t like virtual simulations, I don’t know why, so there’s no uploading to a central server. There’s just backup bodies. I was just about to kill my own final clone when Pacey found me. He made me realize that Bronach never cared about any of us, which was why he made almost no attempt to stop me. His plans didn’t work. He’s not a likeable guy, and if he didn’t force adoration through ignorance, it wasn’t going to happen. All of his children loathed him. I’m just the only one who wanted to do anything about it. Pacey promised that he could kill my father. He promised to find a way. You were supposed to be that way, but what he didn’t tell me was that you always look for the peaceful resolution. Your ship was literally called the Vellani Ambassador. I’ve been trying to get you to change, but if I thought that anyone could do that, I would never have let my siblings die. I would have tried to call them to action. I believe that I’ve just been trying to replace them...with you.”

Leona stepped forward, and gently held Miracle’s wrists in her hands. It looked like she was about to remove the cuffs from her. “Obligation.”

“Yeah,” Miracle said with a nod. “Wait, what?”

“It’s a movie, about a sibling rivalry that goes too far. The motif throughout is Nazca boobies, which are known for killing their siblings.”

“Oh, I guess that’s kind of similar,” Miracle agreed.

“No, it’s almost the exact same premise. What you just described here, killing off your siblings to drain the parents’ of their power, and their legacy...that is the plot of Obligation. That never happened to you.”

“Well, I hardly think that’s a unique situation. I mean, I’m sure—wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!” she screamed when Leona started to lift her arms up. “You don’t have to do this! Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay! I’ll help you! I’ll switch sides! Just don’t make me transfer out of this body.”

This was such a weird freak out. What was she so afraid of? Why did she not want to transfer to a new substrate? It wasn’t like the processes hurt, or anything. It just felt like going to sleep, and waking up in a different room after surgery. It could be disorienting, but that went away, and relatively quickly. Why did she even ever want Romana’s body if not to parade around as Romana, and give her a bad reputation? They should have asked this as soon as Miracle agreed to keep it. They shouldn’t have been so trusting of her. They won’t make that mistake again.

“Please don’t, please don’t! Miracle continued to beg.

Leona suddenly broke the cuffs apart, and let the nanites recede into her implants. “There you go.”

“You’re setting me free?” Miracle asked, shocked.

“I don’t want us to be enemies anymore. It doesn’t come for free, though. I want you to take us to Pacey. We need to have a talk with him. I’m sick of going through his little minions. It’s inefficient at best.”

Yeah, sure,” Miracle said, stepping away and rubbing her wrists. Déjà vu, this was basically what she looked like yesterday, just before escaping through a black hole portal. “I just need to, uh...speak with him first. I’ll be right back!” Still reminiscent of just yesterday, she fell through a portal, which closed up behind her immediately. And it wasn’t going to reopen.

“Why did you do that?” Olimpia asked her wife.

“She ruined our plans,” Ramses answered for Leona. “Miracle was supposed to lead us to Pacey, not come back here. Matty?”

“Okay,” Mateo said. Gather ‘round.” They huddled in a group, and let Mateo generate a swarm of dark particles to overwhelm them. It was a pretty weak showing, though. There weren’t very many of them. “I think we’re trying too soon! I can’t pull enough out,” he warned. “It took too much to get us to the Fifth Division!”

“That’s okay,” Ramses shouted back. “Just build a bridge! The slingdrives will take us the rest of the way!”

Mateo didn’t exactly know what he meant by that, but his intuition told him to spread the dark particles thin, so they reached far enough out to their destination without being wide enough for a group of seven people to cross over with them. They then activated their slingdrives, and used the signal to navigate them to the right destination. The technicolors came and went, and they found themselves in a familiar place. This was the room they went to before they were knocked unconscious, and inserted into the Underburg simulation with false memories. The place was empty back then, but not this time. Miracle was there, as were Octavia, Pacey, and some other woman. He seemed to like the ladies. He wasn’t happy right now, though.

Miracle’s eyes widened in fear as she stared at the team. She looked over at her boss. “I’m sorry. They took the cuffs off! You said I could come back if they took the cuffs off!”

“We never needed the cuffs, you idiot,” Ramses argued. “He can find anyone in the universe.” He jerked his head towards Mateo.”

“Not with my shielding,” Pacey contended. “There must be something else.”

“Nanites are very smol,” Leona said to him. “They could be on you, without you even knowing it. We never needed the cuffs,” she echoed Ramses.

“You tracked me, like an animal,” Miracle spat.

“You’re a murderer. Which one is worse?”

“Who said I murdered anybody?”

“So you were lying.”

“Enough,” Pacey interrupted. “You obviously came here to talk, so let’s talk. Leave my girls out of it.”

“Mr. Henricksen, again, I’m so—” Miracle tried to apologize.

He held up a commanding hand. “We’ll talk about it later. You both can go now.”

Miracle left, as did Octavia, having never said a word. Miracle was annoying, but an opposing force. Octavia still felt like a betrayal. They wanted to talk to her again too, but on a personal level. Today was about business. The mysterious other woman stayed. She didn’t lurch or hesitate. She knew from the start that he wasn’t ordering her to do anything. If this were an action movie, she would be the one in charge here, and all of their previous dealings were with her henchman or lieutenant, who was only pretending to be in charge. But this wasn’t a movie, was it? Was it? It was a movie before, under the dome. It could certainly be that again, or worse...still.

“I understand that you have reservations about fulfilling the mission,” Pacey began, getting himself comfortable in an arm chair while the woman sat next to him in a hardback.

“That’s an understatement,” Leona said. “We’re not doing it. We don’t need higher compensation, or incentive. We don’t need you to explain why you think we should do it. It’s just not happening. We don’t care if you agree or not. We don’t care what you want or know at all. It’s. Not. Happening. If you have some kind of Plan B, which doesn’t involve us, then I suggest you move forward with it. We’re not interested, and we never were. Why don’t you make like a snowflake, and let it go?”

“I don’t know what that means, but I want you to know that I’m listening, and I hear you. I won’t make you do anything that you don’t wanna do.” He seemed proud of himself for the response, which meant that it was a trick. It probably had something to do with the woman next to him.

They all realized that this wasn’t actually going their way, and it felt exhausting. Mateo stopped forward and placed his hand upon Leona’s chest. He gently nudged her backwards in the direction of the team. “It’s all right. I got this.” He took another step forward, but more towards the stranger. “Who are you? What is your stake in this?”

The woman looked over to Pacey, not for guidance, but more like they were having an unspoken conversation with each other. She lifted her eyebrows to ask a question. He shrugged like the answer was maybe. She pointed at him, and lifted her brows again. He shrugged again, but this time, more as if to say, yeah, fine. They made a couple of other gestures towards each other, all basically implying that they were relenting to the team’s demands, but really, it was impossible to know for sure what they were saying. In fact, they could have been in the middle of an actual psychic conversation. Finally, after Pacey said, “okay” out loud, the woman took a breath, and leaned back in her chair. “I was admittedly hurt when I first heard the term Team Kadiar.”

“No,” Mateo said.

“I felt left out,” the woman went on.

“No,” Mateo said louder. It couldn’t be.

“Yes, it’s true, father. I’m your fourth daughter. Or should I say...your first. His name isn’t Pacey. It’s Séarlas. And I am Franka.”

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Microstory 2536: Executive Assistant

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They call Landis’ nurse his left-hand woman, and that’s because I’m his right-hand woman. That’s really only because I literally always stand on his right side. His left arm has better veins for drawing blood, so that’s his “medical side”. Though, they sometimes come over to my side of his body, because they need to test things like, is his blood different in his other arm? No, it’s not, by the way. As I was trying to explain, I was an assistant for three years before I landed this job. It was difficult and trying. My boss was great, but she was very demanding. She had high expectations of me, but she earned that right by building herself up from just about nothing. I figured that working for the Foundation would be a new challenge, but it’s really pretty cushy. He doesn’t exactly need me to do anything for him. His schedule is the same every day. He goes to bed by 21:30 so he can get up at 05:30 for breakfast before work at 06:00. He usually takes his half-hour lunch at 11:00. It’s his main meal, and it’s always pretty big. It’s prepared by a world-class chef whose only job is this. After his afternoon/evening healing shift is over at 18:30, he has a therapy session, which usually goes alongside his dinner. It’s much lighter than his lunch, which is important, because he then has an hour-long massage therapy session starting at 19:30. This wasn’t his idea by the way, it was prescribed to him by his doctor, who was afraid Landis would not be able to relax. He doesn’t enjoy any other relaxing hobbies, so it was kind of something they had to come up with to help. This next part is a little tricky, so let me try to keep it classy.

After the massage, Landis takes a quick shower, and then meets with a woman for about a half hour, including some light conversation. It’s a different woman every night, as coordinated by the Legacy department. This woman is virile, and of course healthy—but it’s important to note that she is typically naturally healthy. They arrange it differently sometimes for comparative experimentation, but for the most part, we’re talking about a young woman in her prime mothering years who has not undergone the healing breath treatment herself. That is what she is looking for. While the pharmaceutical company is researching paths to the panacea, an alternative program seeks to potentially expand production of the cures by simply spreading it throughout the population. Not every pregnancy takes, but all told, Landis has fathered, uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh......about 800 children. Woof, that’s kind of something that we don’t really talk about. Part of the funding that we receive goes into supporting these families for the rest of their lives. As of yet, no child has exhibited any special abilities, but the oldest one isn’t even five years old yet, so they’re not taking that as proof that it doesn’t work. The program continues. When I first met Landis, he was chill and funny. He liked to talk, and be around people. This experience has changed him, and while most seem to attribute his turtle-shelling to the burden of the healings, I believe the daily expectation of procreation has affected him more than anything. He likes women. He likes sex. And it’s all consensual. But it still heightens his anxiety. He still considers it part of his job. On the one hand, that makes it easier to detach himself, and simply perform. On the other hand, is that psycho-emotionally healthy? I don’t know. I really don’t. But I’m here for him every day, and if he were to ever express doubt in continuing either of his jobs, I would be the first to know. I won’t let him do anything he’s not comfortable with, even if it’s something that he’s done a thousand times before.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 12, 2525

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No one chased the team as they fled the city, probably because they hadn’t done anything wrong, so the locals had no reason to try to apprehend them. Most of the team didn’t even know why they were running. They just trusted that Leona had good reason to order them to. She had to remind them to slow down, though, because their bodies moved too fast. They were supposed to be normal humans who were born a few decades ago, and would die several more decades from now. Finally, when they were out of the city limits, and safe within the coverage of the trees, they were able to stop. “Rambo, you understand what’s going on?” Leona asked him.

“I have an idea. Fascinating development. I need to get my hands on the slingdrives, so I can figure out why we’re off the mark. Proxima Centauri is close to Sol, but it’s not Sol. We also jumped to our next year too early”

“No, I mean, with the people in this dome. Do you understand why we ran?”

“Oh, of course I do. The Oblivios.”

“Then please go check the perimeter. Do it quietly. There could be campers or homesteaders, or just hikers. I’ll explain what happened to everyone else. I’m not sure if they’ve ever heard of Oblivios.”

“On it, boss.” Ramses left.

Leona caught her breath so she could think more clearly. “Okay. Oblivios. They came to this planet with the intention of living a more simple life, with very primitive technology. It’s like Castlebourne’s Dome for Pioneers, but for real.”

“They don’t look like pioneers,” Angela pointed out.

“That was 300 years ago. The reason they’re called Oblivios is because they had their minds wiped. The first generations didn’t remember advanced technology. They didn’t even know that they were in a dome, so they didn’t pass stories onto their children. Most of the criticisms of the project were about how they would eventually end up like this. You can’t stop progress. Since whatever dogma they had against tech was lost to them, they couldn’t instill such values into their descendants, so those descendants kept trying to make their lives better.” She pointed back in the direction of the city. “This is where that leads.”

“You’re gonna wanna see this, sir,” Ramses said through comms.

“If you see people, don’t talk to yourself.”

“I’m sure they’ve developed short-range wireless by now. There’s something I don’t think they’ve made yet, though, and I’m looking right at it.”

“Be right there,” Leona responded.

The group walked over to Ramses’ location, and before they caught up, saw what he was referring to. A gargantuan tower rose up into the sky, and disappeared above the clouds. The city they came from was advanced, but not like this. It took the kind of megaengineering that the hosts needed to build the domes themselves. It was hard to tell, but it might have risen all the way up to the ceiling. It might have been structurally necessary, since this dome was so much older than the ones on Castlebourne, but probably not.

Leona tilted her head. “That looks familiar to me. Why does it look familiar?”

“We’ve seen towers before,” Mateo pointed out.

“Yeah...” Leona wasn’t so sure. It was of plain design, but not generic.

“There’s no one around,” Ramses informs them. “Let’s just jump over to the base, and see what’s up with it.”

Leona was hesitant, but she looked around too, and checked her lifesigns detector. They were calibrated for human life, and sufficiently related cousin species, so they should be pretty accurate in a world that didn’t have transhumanism yet, but there was no way to be sure. They weren’t even worried about naked eyes anyway, but surveillance. “Okay, fine. Let’s just slip back into the trees first.”

They hid away, and then teleported to the tower. As soon as they appeared, a door opened up, likely via motion sensor. They all stepped into the elevator, and let it take them all the way up to the top, which yes, was right there at the dome’s zenith. A woman greeted them when the doors opened. “Greetings, travelers. I saw you teleport in. My name is Aeterna Valeria. I run this joint.”

“The tower, or the dome?” Mateo asks.

“Both, I guess.”

“You’re related to Tertius Valerius,” Marie guessed.

“Yeah, he, uhh...he was my father.”

“We just saw him not too long ago,” Romana explained. “He’s still alive.”

“I don’t really see it that way. It’s been something like two hundred years for me.”

There was an awkward pause in the conversation, which Leona needed to break. “So...report?”

“Yeah, we’ll get to that. Are you hungry? I have a synthy. It takes a few hours, but I’ve already synthesized some mashed potatoes and green beans for myself, if you’re interested in joining me. I like leftovers, so I always make extra.”

None of them was hungry, but they agreed to eat to be polite. It was good, and interesting to go back to regular food, instead of just programmable dayfruit or dayfruit smoothie. Leona needed to break the silence again while they were eating. “The people down there. What do they think of this tower?”

“They can’t see it,” Aeterna began to explain. “I have my father’s powers. I make them forget. I make them forget the tower at the same time they’re looking at it. It’s not technically invisible, but effectively so. I exempted you from it when you showed up.”

“Did you notice that they have moved past their original mandate?” Marie pressed.

Aeterna rolled her eyes. “Of course they did. We knew it was gonna happen. Our key contact died, but before she did, she and my father would fight all the time about keeping the dream alive. He said he promised he would erase people’s memories, but that he wouldn’t govern their thoughts. If someone came up with the lightbulb, they could have a freakin’ lightbulb. So that’s what they did, and they kept doing it, and now they’re here.”

“They said something about tunnels,” Mateo brought up.

“Yeah, they interact with the other domes,” Aeterna confirmed.

“How does that work?” Romana questioned.

“The others are pretty good about it. They don’t understand the technology, and they certainly don’t know that there’s a pretty girl up in this tower with magical memory powers, but they play their parts. Most of the nearby domes were also once intentionally primitive, though with no one like me. The Oblivios don’t really get how the dome works, but they know that they can’t go outside. They used drones to find the wall a long time ago, in defiance of the sonic deterrents, and for some reason, they didn’t freak out about it. It looked like a barren wasteland, and it made them sick, but they saw through the ruse anyway, and now they’re about to figure out the whole thing. The weird part about it is that they simply accepted that this was how their little pocket of the universe functioned. I was expecting riots, but everyone’s okay. It’s crazy really; a fascinating social experiment, I’m sure.”

“If they know they’re in a dome, why are you still here?”

“They know they’re in a dome because the data told them so. The drones kept crashing into the holographic walls, and I can wipe their memories of it all I want, but they’re gonna look back at that data, and it’s going to challenge their beliefs. So yeah, I gave up. But they still can’t see the tower. I’m still making them forget that they’re looking at a superscraper in the middle of it all. It’s limited in area, so it’s easier. They’re not looking for it, whereas they were looking for a way through the wasteland.”

“You ever thought about just stopping?” Romana offered.

Aeterna consulted her watch. “Yeah, won’t be long now.”

“What do you mean?” Mateo asked.

“The planet is going through a period of instability,” Aeterna went on. “Back on Earth, technologies like LiDAR were inevitable. Earth is too big, and you gotta navigate it. It’s easier to let computers do it for you. Here, in this cramped space, they didn’t need it. Human-driven cars are fine. You never have to go very far.”

“The tremors finally gave them a reason,” Leona realized.

“Bingo. Necessity being the mother of invention, it was suddenly absolutely necessary that they build sensor arrays to measure the world around them. Weather, for the most part, can be controlled in here, but we can’t stop the ground from shaking. They feel it just like everyone in all the other domes does.”

Ramses nodded. “And as soon as they turn on one of these sensor arrays, it’s going to pick up on the tower that humans keep forgetting, even when a camera records video of it, and plays it back later.”

Aeterna nodded back. “I won’t be able to combat that. And honestly, I shouldn’t try. The tower was a dumb idea that my father had, and I stuck around because once it was built, it couldn’t be dismantled, or it would ruin everything. They thought that someone with our power would have to stay here forever to keep it working, but the scope of this place is not limitless. They were always going to find the wall, and the data from their geological surveys would always contradict their perceptions. The ancestors thought, if they just went back to the way things were, they would stay that way. But that’s not what happened before, or they wouldn’t have needed to leave Earth to reclaim that way of life in the first place. So shortsighted.”

“Why did Tertius leave? He didn’t even tell us that he had a daughter,” Mateo said, worried about how she would react.

“Well, he gave up on the Oblivios a long time ago. I don’t know why I’ve been holding on. I suppose in rebellion to him. I told him, if he left, he couldn’t come back. He has respected that, which I appreciate.”

“It might not have been as long for him as it’s been for you,” Leona reminded her. “I didn’t get the sense that it had been a full 300 years since he last saw me.”

Aeterna shrugged. “Whatever.”

“What if...” Romana began. “What if you did see him again? Would you be mad?”

Aeterna considered the question. “A year ago, I might have been, but as I said, this is all ending anyway, so it would be fine. I’m not gonna break down crying, and hug my daddy, but we wouldn’t fight. Well. I wouldn’t pick a fight. Let’s just say that.”

Romana accepted this answer, and decided that this somehow translated to her taking a matchstick out of her breast pocket, and setting it down on the table ceremoniously.

“What’s that?” Mateo asked.

“It’s a muster match. Light it, and Tertius Valerius will appear.”

“He gave this to you?” Mateo pushed harder. “Why would he do that? Did he know that we would end up here? Did you?”

“Of course she did,” Ramses deduced. “She brought us here.”

Romana’s demeanor didn’t change. She remained cool. “I spend more time in the timeline. I get to know people. He asked me to come here. He said that anytime would be all right, but he clearly really wanted it to happen by 2525, so I’m glad we got a move on with it.”

“I don’t like that you did that,” Ramses admitted. “I don’t like that you messed with my slingdrive.”

“I don’t like that you lied to me,” Mateo added.

“This is between a father and his daughter, but a different father and daughter,” Romana defended. She redirected her attention to Aeterna. “He asked me not to light it. He said that you have to do it, so it’s up to you if it gets lit at all. He did want to be here with you when the tower becomes detectable, but he understands if you’re not ready, and will accept it if you never are.”

Aeterna stared at the match for a moment before picking it up. She held it between her thumb and forefinger for another moment, until slipping the other end between the thumb and forefinger of her other hand. She was about to break it, or was at least contemplating it. No one knew what was going through her head, but it looked like an internal debate as her nostrils flared, and her lips moved, suggestive of the words that she was thinking of. At last, she let go of the match with one hand, and scraped the head against the wooden table. A flame burst out of it. It looked like any normal lit match.

For a second, nothing happened, then a smoke portal appeared a couple of meters away. When the smoke cleared, Tertius was standing there. He smiled kindly at his daughter, barely registering that there were other people in the room. They just regarded each other, her not being able to move, and him not wanting to make the first move. Suddenly, Aeterna burst into tears, and ran over to hug her dad.

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Microstory 2533: Patient Relative

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My father has been battling cancer for years now. It’s been so hard to watch him struggle. I’ve sometimes thought that the treatment was worse than the disease. I’m still not entirely convinced that that’s not true. It always seemed crazy to me that the only way to fight it off is to make it sick. It’s like shooting the hostage. One of the bullets might hit the hostage-taker too, but is the price worth it? Well, now we don’t have to worry about it anymore. No more tests, no more chemo. No more sleeping half the day away, no more spending the rest of the day worshiping the porcelain god. He’s going to be cured. Our application was just accepted. Now we’re just biding our time until the appointment. Per sound advice, he has continued his conventional treatments, not because we think the appointment will fall through, but because we don’t want to take any chances. He’ll stop a week before, because that will be the end of another round, and so he can feel better for the trip down to Kansas City, but no sooner than that. This is going to be such a relief. I’m excited to have my dad back, but all he’s been talking about is my education. I dropped out of college when he was diagnosed so I could go back home to take care of him. He’s always thought I resented him for that, but I didn’t care for school anyway. It’s not like I was training to be an engineer, or a lawyer. I was getting an undergraduate degree in underwater basket-weaving. It might have helped me get a job, but it wouldn’t help me make better money. That’s one thing you have to remember when you’re trying to decide whether you’ll go or not. It helps you get in the door, but it doesn’t keep you in the room. Your boss and your hiring manager may like to see it on your résumé, but if you suck at the job, they’re not going to say, “oh, but she’s a graduate. Better give her a second chance. We would fire her right away if she only had a high school diploma.” No, that’s not a thing. I’m happy where I am now, and I love living at home. I love my dad, and I like spending time with him, regardless of what brought me back here in the first place. He wants me to go back to school, but I think it’s mostly about the symmetry of it. For him, he doesn’t like to start something without finishing it. Things like that are just always hanging over his head, and he can feel them. It makes his condition worse, worrying about something undone, even if it doesn’t need to be done. He once finished a bowl of soup that was making him nauseated just because when you have a meal, you eat until it’s gone. He immediately threw it up, but guess what? He threw it all up. I hope getting the cure will help alleviate the stress from all that. I can’t wait. I’m probably more excited than he is.

Microstory 2531: Accountant

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There’s not much I can say about my job. We all know what accounting is, and we all know it’s boring. Even accountants find it boring. We do it, because we’re good with money and numbers, and the job usually helps you make a lot of money. The starting wage is higher than a lot of people only start making near the end of their careers. That’s not me bragging, it’s me following in my mother’s footsteps, because I was a child of divorce, and lived in two homes growing up. My parents separated when I was five years old, which is when kids really start to pick up on how the people they see live their lives. That is, it’s when you start noticing the difference between your rich friends and your poor friends. It’s when you catch the news out of the corner of your eye, and realize that there’s a lot of pain in the world. It’s basically when you wake up to the harsh realities of life. My mom was an accountant, and my dad was a temp. She lived in a house. He lived in an apartment. He was a good guy, and they maintained a decent relationship. He found a place as close to her as possible, so I was eventually able to walk between them at the end of every week. But like I said, I saw the difference, and it moulded me into the person I am today. They say that becoming an accountant is safe, and for the most part, that’s true, but there’s a caveat. If you’re no good at math, walk away. Walk away now. No career accountant failed a math class in high school, or college. It just doesn’t happen. And that’s okay, there are plenty of great paths for you. I walked down this one, because I knew what was on the other side. That’s always been very important to me, because I was lacking that during the divorce, when I didn’t understand what was going to happen to me. Things have ended up okay, but I hated that uncertainty. Numbers are not uncertain. There is an answer to every equation, even if you don’t know what it is. I take comfort in knowing that if there’s an error in the bookkeeping, it’s possible to find it. It’s not abstract or hidden. You just have to know where to look, and that’s what I do. I make sure there are no errors. I make sure that the right amount of money is coming in, and the right amount is going out. It’s not easy, but it’s not ambiguous.

Microstory 2511: Landis Tipton Himself

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My name is Landis Tipton, and I don’t like to brag about myself. I really think that anyone in my position would do the same thing that I did. They might not do it in the exact same way, but they would have done everything they could to help. For one, while being awake for several hours every day, and meeting thousands of people, is exhausting, it doesn’t compare to what lots of other people do for work. I breathe on people. That’s it. It’s so simple. I get situated in my big apparatus, and breathe. Each time I cure someone, that’s all it feels like. It doesn’t drain me of energy, it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t make me uncomfortable. Anyone could do what I do and feel fine. I mean, I’m breathing anyway. I might as well cure someone while I’m at it. They take really good care of me here at the hotel. They treat me like a god, even when I don’t want them too. Yes, I have a personal assistant, a personal chef, a bodyguard, a nurse, a doctor, and a masseuse. I’m not gonna sit here and claim that I’m not living a privileged life. You expect me to say a but here, but there is none. It’s a good life. The least I can do is make it count. If I weren’t doing something to earn it—if I were just randomly born a king, or some stupid thing like that—I would have no appreciation for any of this. My dad used to try to teach me that I had to contribute positively to society, in one way or another. I never understood that until five years ago when I started this Foundation. To clarify, I knew what he meant when he would tell me that, but I failed to recognize its importance. I’m contributing now, and I feel lucky to be capable of doing it in this way. They’re getting close to a panacea, and I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life after that. Would my father still be proud if I just hid away, and stopped working? My friend insisted that I take in a salary for this. I insisted that it be a modest amount, but after all this time of everything I need being paid for by the Foundation, it’s added up to being more than enough to live happily, and without having to find another job. My problem is that I’m not all that bright, and I never actually had a salaried position before this. So I was thinking in terms of an hourly rate. I work twelve hours a day, which may sound like a lot, but again, I just sit there and breathe on people. Not exactly grueling...kind of monotonous, really. I do work seven days a week with no vacation time, but my evenings are pretty relaxed, and I don’t have anywhere that I want to travel to, so that’s not a problem. The hotel has been paid for, including the suite that I live in, and I’ll probably stay here after the panacea goes on the market. So that means no rent. Even when I have to start paying for things again, like food and utilities, I doubt I’ll ever break $2000 a month. A pay of $15 an hour for five years has added up to over $300,000. If I do that math, it should last me about...thirteen years. Hm. I’m not making as much as I thought. Well. I’m sure it’ll be fine. I’m not greedy. I’m just Landis.

Microstory 2502: Father of the Cure

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I’m going to be totally honest here, Landis and I have not always agreed. His mother always believed that he was gonna move on to do great things, but the kid was approaching his thirties, and he had nothing to show for it. Don’t get me wrong, I love him to death, and nothing he could have done would have been able to change my mind. I just remember wishing that he would have some kind of ambition. I wasn’t one of those fathers who had a plan for their kid, and they were going to follow it no matter what. I only had a few requirements. Number one, he had to learn a second language. Most of the world understands English, and I feel like the least we can do is meet them halfway. You can’t learn them all, but you can at least learn one. Well, he didn’t do it. He didn’t even try. He did the bare minimum in school, in his language classes, and everything else. He wasn’t an idiot, but he was a poor student, because he lacked motivation. I only got him into sports to teach him discipline, and perseverance. I didn’t care if he became obsessed with it, or even if he liked it. He could have switched to theatre or A/V Club, if that’s what struck his fancy. I chose baseball, because that’s what I was familiar with, but I made it clear that he had a choice. What he didn’t have a choice in was doing nothing. He couldn’t just coast through school, and work minimum wage for the rest of his life. I know, that might seem unrealistic. Someone is working minimum wage, that’s why it exists. I just wanted him to want more out of his life. Again, he didn’t have to do anything that I specifically chose for him, but he had to have at least some passion about it, even if that passion was for the money itself. He had to contribute positively to society, and if that meant sticking with that minimum wage job, well, I figured I could get over that. At least he was doing something. But he kept losing them, and having to find something new. Secretly, I think that he preferred it this way. He gets tired of things, you see. He doesn’t quit because he’s no good at it, but because he just doesn’t wanna do it anymore. It becomes tedious. I’m actually kind of surprised he came up with his foundation, because it’s the same thing; day-in, day-out. I can’t believe that he can take it, but I’m proud of him, and I’m happy for him. I never expected him to cure the entire world. I would have just been happy with him holding down a job for longer than six months. But he went for it. He really went for it. He exceeded all of my expectations, and I regret every doubt I ever had for him. That’s my kid, and I’m grateful for him.