The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 18, 2500

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The ladies were gone. Leona, Olimpia, and Romana were on a trip together in the Pacific Northwest, predominantly the Portland area. Mateo could have taken time off of work to go with them, but he wasn’t invited. Instead, he was staying home. Ramses was spending a lot of time here too, hanging out to keep him company. They had planned on playing cards with a couple of driver friends, but both of them fell through, so now it was just the two of them. “You can play cards with just two people,” Mateo reasoned. “You can play with just yourself, if it’s the right game.”

“That’s depressing,” Ramses pointed out. “Let’s just find someone else.”

“This last minute?”

“It’s not a big party; they’ll be able to leave whenever they want to. What about those twins next door?”

“Angela and Marie.” Mateo leaned over in his chair, but couldn’t quite see through the window, so he stood up. It still wasn’t enough, so he just stepped over. “Yeah, they’re out there in their garden. Seems as though that’s all they do.”

“Maybe they would like a break,” Ramses suggested. Maybe they’re always out there hoping a couple of cool guys will invite them to something better.”

“I’ll see.” Mateo walked out of the house, expecting to do this alone, but Ramses was trailing behind him. “Hello, Waltons. Are you free this evening? We got a poker game going, and there are some extra seats at the table.”

Marie and Angela exchanged a look. “Do you have RPS-101?” asked the former.

“Is...that a drink?” Mateo asked.

They laughed. “No,” Angela said. “It’s a game. We have a board, if you think you might like to learn.”

Mateo exchanged a look with Rames, and then shrugged. “Yeah, we’re up for something new. It’ll just be the four of us.”

“Great.” Marie stood up, and started to remove her gardening gloves. “Marie Walton, computer programmer.” She shook Ramses’ hand.

“Computer engineer,” Ramses replied.

“I know.” She smiled.

“I’m an addiction counselor.” Angela shook his hand too.

“There won’t be any drinking,” Mateo explained, worried that maybe she was worried about it.

“It would have been fine if there were,” Angela promised.

The twins wanted to shower first, which was fine, because the gaming table wasn’t set up yet. A half hour later, they showed up with their game board. It was a giant wheel with 101 objects written in the wedges. The entire game was pure chance, with absolutely no strategy involved. One player spun the wheel, and randomly landed on one of the objects. The other player spun next, and if it was better than the first one, they won. It was the most boring thing that Mateo had ever experienced, and he couldn’t understand why they liked it so much. They couldn’t explain it either. They just had this peculiar fascination with it, like there was a secret dimension to the game that they simply hadn’t reached yet. Mateo wasn’t so sure, but he did find himself mysteriously landing on Sponge a lot. Maybe there really was magic to it. Despite this inexplicable intrigue, everyone agreed after a while that it was literally played out. They switched to regular old poker. They had to explain the game to the Waltons first. Well, Ramses did. Mateo knew the hands, but he didn’t understand it on the level that Ramses did. That was why he served as the region’s engineer. Mateo certainly couldn’t do it without him.

After hours of this, they took a break to get up, use the restroom, and scavenge for food. Ramses and Marie ended up in a discussion about their jobs, and it was kind of looking like they were never going to start playing again.

“There’s something I’d like to show you,” Angela said to Mateo. She tilted her head towards the east. “Back at our place.”

“Okay,” he said. Hopefully she wasn’t coming onto him. Managing a three-person relationship was complicated enough. They didn’t need to add a fourth. He followed her back to her house, and into what she called their study.

“Did you know that there are more than two kinds of twins?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, you can have identical or fraternal—or in the case of two girls, sororal. You’ve probably heard of this distinction, but there are other variations. Precisely when the egg splits, or whether it was fertilized before the split, or after, makes a difference. There are other factors. You can even have two twins with two separate fathers!”

“Is that what you are?” Mateo asked, not sure where she was going with this.

Angela giggled as she took a file folder out of the top drawer of a desk. “No.” She opened the folder, and folded it under itself before handing it to him. “We’re not sure what we are.”

Mateo looked down at the top piece of paper. “I don’t understand what any of this means. DNA methylation, telomeres...”

“Down at the bottom.” Angela just pointed at the sheet in general.

Mateo read it out loud, “biological markers inconclusively suggest an aging abnormality that places Subject B roughly four years ahead of Subject A. Yeah, I still don’t know what that means.”

“Marie is older than me,” Angela tried to explain, “by four years.”

“How is that possible?”

She shook her head. “We don’t know. It’s not the only weird thing about it. We understand that RPS-101 is stupid and boring, but we wanted to play it with you two to see what would happen. You keep landing on Sponge. I keep landing on Heart. And there’s also the matter of the hemlock.”

“Excuse me?”

“We all drank hemlock.”

“I don’t know much, but I know that that’s toxic.”

“Yeah, it should be. But are you even a little queasy?”

Mateo turned away. “You poisoned me as some sort of test?”

“Do you remember moving here, to your house, I mean?”

“Yeah, of course I do.”

“I don’t. Neither does Marie. We’re just been here forever. All we do is garden.”

“And play Rock, Paper, Scissors, and drink hemlock.”

“Do you feel stronger when you go out in the sun?”

“Lots of people like the sun.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Mateo sighed. “I guess so. Is that not normal?”

“No, it’s not.”

“What does it mean, when you put it all together, that we’re superheroes?”

“Well, we may be super, but we’re not heroes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure your job is very fulfilling, but it can be done by a computer.”

That was a bit of a sore subject. While it was true that RideSauce valued the human touch, his role was also under constant threat of being automated. The only reason they hadn’t pulled the trigger was because customer satisfaction was a reflection of staff satisfaction, which was reportedly tied to their ability to receive help from real humans. If the pendulum ever swung to the opposite direction, even for only a day, his job would be gone so fast, a new tenant would be in his office space by lunch.

Angela took her lab test back, and returned it to the drawer. “I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but there’s something going on around here. I feel like nearly everyone around me is fake. There’s a reason we ran these tests on you two. You, your wife, your daughter; they all seem like real people. You seem like the only real people. Everyone else is just sort of...weird. Wouldn’t you say?”

“No,” Mateo argued. “My assistant feels real, as does one of my drivers, Boyd.”

Angela grabbed a notepad from the desk. “Boyd. And what’s your assistant’s name?”

“You’re not going to poison my friends too!”

“Understood, but you only listed two more people. Can you think of anyone besides them?”

“Yeah, my rival...Pacey.”

“Pacey, with an e?”

“You’re not—I mean, you can poison him if you want, I guess. But you stay the hell away from my wife and daughter, you hear me.”

“Well, your daughter wouldn’t be able to survive it.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I dunno. Why did I say that?”

Mateo decided to sit down in one of the guest chairs. “If I’m being honest, there are some things I know or think about the world around me, and the people, which don’t seem true...but do?”

Angela flattened her skirt under her thighs and sat down in the other guest chair. “I think I know what you mean. Leona and I had tea the other day, and she made an off-handed comment about how I was once engaged to a man named Ed. That’s completely untrue, I’ve never been engaged, yet it still somehow felt right. I could picture him in my mind. He was dressed weird, like he lived in a different time.”

“Maybe it’s a past life.” He stood up and laughed as he put his face in his palm. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m even entertaining these scifi ideas. Past lives? That’s not a thing.”

“Aren’t they? We don’t know,” Angela pointed out.

“I designed a spaceship.” The two of them looked over to find Ramses standing in the doorway. “I thought it was just for fun, but...I think it works. I mean, it’s really detailed, right down to how the fuel is injected into the engine.”

“He showed it to me,” Marie said as they were both walking all the way into the room. “I can’t make heads or tails of it, but I can tell that he put a lot of thought into the design. If it wouldn’t work, it’s well-thought out at the very least.”

“We were talking,” Ramses went on. “I’ve never been sick. Neither has she, nor her sister. My memories seem...not fake, but too perfect, like they’ve been carefully curated for my mind.”

“Did she tell you about the poison?” Mateo asked him.

“Yeah,” Ramses said with a nod. “We took it a step further.” He bent over, and unplugged a surge protector from its wall, along with all of the appliances connected to it. “Do you care about this?” he asked Marie.

“No,” she said as she was taking it from him. She pulled it back like a baseball bat, and slammed it straight into Ramses’ face. He didn’t even move. It didn’t seem to hurt at all, and didn’t do any damage whatsoever.

Apparently inspired by the two of them, Angela grabbed a letter opener from the desk, and tried to jam it into Mateo’s neck. It didn’t hurt either, and didn’t break the skin. It did do damage to the opener, though, bending it into a slight curve.

“We are superheroes,” Mateo guessed.

“Or it’s the simulation hypothesis,” Ramses decided.

“Explain that one again?” Mateo asked, jokingly without laughing, because he hadn’t ever heard of it, though it did not sound humorous.

“We’re all living in a computer simulation,” Ramses began. “Usually, it’s used in an attempt to explain the nature of reality itself, and where we all are in general. But in this case, it could just be the explanation for where we are...the four of us.”

“Six,” Marie corrected. “We think Mateo’s family is part of this too.”

“More,” Angela corrected Marie’s correction. She lifted up the notepad. “Mateo came up with a few names of people he interacts with who also appear to be real.” She used airquotes around the last word.

“If we’re just in a computer,” Mateo asked, “how do we get out?”

“Typically?” Ramses asked. “You can’t. You can never really know what’s real, and what’s not. It’s not like the movies, where you can will yourself out of it, or where the developers hid secret powers that let you take control. If the simulation hypothesis is true, we have absolutely no free will. Not only can they shape our world to their liking, but they can adjust our minds as needed. We’re not necessarily real either.”

“So, what do we do?” Angel asked him.

“Our two main choices are to keep our heads down, and hope our creators see fit to at least keep us alive in whatever definition that should be for the simulation. Don’t make waves, don’t rock the boat; just play along.”

“Or we keep bashing each other with office equipment,” Marie offered.

“Or we try to talk to them,” Mateo suggested instead. “I told you, Angela, that my rival, Pacey seems real too. There’s more to it. He actually seems, somehow...more real.”

“You think he’s one of them? An avatar of one of the developers?” Angela figured.

“Might could be,” Mateo said. “But I don’t wanna do anything until my girls come back home. It’s not safe for them here, but it’s not like it’s safe wherever they are now. What if they’re on a different server, or whatever? At least if they come back, I can keep an eye on them.”

“Okay, then we wait to do anything,” Marie said. “They should have a say in whatever decision we make anyway.”

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Extremus: Year 77

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The Verdemusians are split. Aristotle and Belahkay have decided to stay with Omega as he prepares to send his clones off to fight a war against the Exin Empire. It’s not even just that everyone else wants to make love, not war. They also want to keep Verdemus off of the empire’s radar. They went to great lengths to give them the impression that the planet was destroyed, with the solar system left soaked in exotic radiation. If the Exins get the slightest hint that it might still be intact, it could have disastrous ramifications for Extremus. Aristotle wants to use the power that he inherited from his father to transport the entire moon from its orbit to the Goldilocks Corridor. But even if that works, it might lead the enemy to decide to launch another attack against them, and that would not be good.

Over the course of the last several months, the two factions have lived separately from each other, with the warriors working on Jaunemus while everyone else stays on Verdemus. In addition to maintaining the gestational stasis pods for the clones, they’re developing a lot more infrastructure on the moon, including weapons manufacturing plants, ground-based artillery, and who knows what else? Tinaya has separated herself from it both physically and mentally, as have Spirit and Niobe. Lilac travels back and forth using the shuttle. Aristotle is her son, and even though she doesn’t agree with his choices, she’s not going to abandon him. She knows his father more than anyone here; probably more than anyone in histories. She is, therefore, the only one qualified to help him succeed in his mission to transport an entire moon hundreds of light years into the galaxy. If he’s going to do this—and he is going to do it—he needs to practice with smaller objects, and shorter distances, first. It’s going to be years before he’s ready for the big show, and even then, they can’t leave right away. If he’s anything like Maqsud, the trip will be all but instantaneous. Their window will not be for another couple of centuries. They’ll need to make use of those stasis pods for themselves.

Niobe has been pretty depressed lately. Aristotle is like a brother to her, but she feels that she has to distance herself from him. She’s the least accepting of his choices out of all of them, and she’s holding that over his head by cutting him off entirely. Either he comes back into the family, or he never gets to see his little sister again. He can’t have it both ways. Tinaya has been trying to be there for her without straying down the path of trying to get her to change her mind. Lots of people will say that family is family, and you’re required to love them unconditionally. But this is neither healthy nor practical. She has to protect her own mental wellbeing, and if that means breaking ties with someone she feels to be detrimental to that, then she has to do it. You may be on her side, or you may be on his, but either way, she has the right to make her demands of him, just as he has the right to do that for her, should he come up with anything. For the moment, he appears to be bothered by it too, but he’s committed to his decision, and has not tried too hard to reach out.

Niobe has mostly been focusing her efforts on the megablock. The way she sees it, the Omega clones have no choice but to fight this war if they have nowhere else to live anyway. She wants to make this place as inviting as possible, so that any would-be deserters actually have the option to live out their lives in peace on a beautiful planet. She’s been fabricating beds and other furniture, as well as other synthesizers for a sustainable lifestyle. None of the clones is even awake at the moment, but once she receives word from Lilac that this has begun to happen, she’ll be ready to make her case to them. She doesn’t know what they’re going to say. The clones are an unpredictable bunch. They aren’t all perfect copies of Omega. They’re more bred than grown. Each one was programmed to come out slightly genetically different than the one before, eventually cascading into a rainbow of diversity that Omega himself could not have predicted. Around 31% of them are female. The first ones that were found in the pods were the earliest of models, which was why they were indistinguishable, but the latter ones look like completely different people. They have names too, but these were computer generated, because it was too many for Omega to come up with himself. Niobe is thinking about asking them to choose their own once they are finally awakened.

“Have you sent the message for me?” Niobe asks as she’s checking the pH level of the outdoor swimming pool while it’s filling up. The neighborhood is going to be really nice, so that can’t be anyone’s argument against making use of it.

“I relayed it. I’ve not yet received a response.” Tinaya requested permission to begin releasing the clones so they can make their choice about what they’re going to do with their lives. As the time lag to and from the moon is only 1.21 seconds, she could have had a somewhat realtime conversation with them without superluminal communication equipment. The response delay would have been annoying, but bearable. Still, she chose to send an email instead in case Omega and Aristotle grew angry at the suggestion. She doesn’t need that kind of anxiety right now. They can reply when they’re ready, and hopefully after they calm down from their first reactions.

“Can’t you just order them to do it?” Niobe asked.

No, she can’t. “Sorry. You know that that would only cause more problems.” Since no one else was willing to say it, Tinaya had to remind herself that she is only the ad hoc leader, not a real one. She stepped up when no one else wanted the job, but they can stop listening to her at any time, and she can’t punish them for it. Some of them have indeed stopped listening, and fighting them on it isn’t going to help anything. It will only lead to deeper hostilities.

Niobe nods. “I know.”

Tinaya’s armband vibrates. She had to switch to this form factor because her watch’s wristband was irritating her glass skin at the ulnar styloid. After years of this, she’s still not used to the increased surface area of the notifications. She flinches, then looks at it. “Speak of the devil.”

“What’s it say?”

Tinaya sighs. “They’re open to discussion, but they have one condition...”

“Lemme guess, I have to be there in person.”

“Yes.”

“This is just an excuse to get me to forgive him. They won’t agree to anything.”

“You don’t know that,” Tinaya tells her.

“Think about it, what if every clone switches to my side? Even if they let that happen, they’ll just have to make more clones to replace them. And if those clones also defect? Where does it end? They need that army, and they’re not going to let a little thing like me get in the way of it.”

“So why are you taking this position if you think it’s not going to do any good?”

“Because if I die on this hill, Aristotle will have to come back to bury me on it.”

“That’s a really cynical viewpoint, Oboe.”

Niobe shrugs her shoulders, her lips, and her eyebrows. Tinaya has also had a hard time wrapping her brain around Niobe’s mature mannerisms. Her body is only twelve years old, but she’s actually lived about seventeen years at this point. She’s practically an adult, and everyone has to work hard to remember to treat her as such.

“Are you going to meet with them, or not? I’ll moderate if you agree.”

Niobe thinks about it, but she has little choice in the matter. This is what she’s been preparing for for a year. “Set it up, please.”

They choose to use the Kamala Khan as neutral ground, orbiting the Lagrange point one. It makes sense to use the shuttle for this as it originally came from the Iman Vellani, half of which was designed as a diplomatic vessel for talks like this one. Fortunately, they don’t need such grand accommodations, nor some kind of seasoned professional to mediate the negotiations here. They’re on opposing sides, but they still care about each other. Omega is speaking on behalf of his side, since it’s his project. Aristotle is there for support, but he does not have much say in the matter. Spirit is serving in the same capacity for Niobe. Tinaya is facilitating healthy and productive communication while Lilac has stepped away from this for fear of exhibiting a conflict of interest. She has instead returned to her Hock Watcher duties while Eagan is on board the shuttle to be available to provide snacks, or whathaveyou. Who knows where Belahkay is right now?

The talks have been going okay, but they’re at a stalemate at the moment. Omega recognized just as easily as Niobe the slippery slope that could result in giving the clones a choice. It is also not lost on him that the entire reason he’s here, and not fast asleep on a Project Stargate colonization module, is because he made a choice for his own life decades ago. Yes, he’s trying to make up for it now, but he’s never claimed to regret this decision. He feels that he’s done a lot of good while he was working with Team Keshida in the Gatewood Collective, and since coming on board Extremus. All Niobe asks is that he give the same chance to his own people. If they all choose not to fight, then it was probably a bad idea in the first place. Forced conscription is not the hallmark of a democratic or fair society in the least.

They’re in a short recess for now. Aristotle has asked to speak with Niobe alone on a personal matter, so they have sealed off the control section, which is the only private part of the craft besides the lavatory-slash-airlock. Tinaya is leaning back in her chair, watching Eagan like a nature photographer waiting for her subject to pounce on its prey. He’s not going to do anything of the sort. He always stands perfectly still unless someone calls upon him for something.

“Creepy, isn’t it?” Spirit asks, guessing at why Tinaya is so distracted by the robot.

“What? Oh, no. I mean, yeah, but...whatever. I was just thinking...”

“Are you feeling...urgeful?” Spirit asks. “Because there’s a subroutine...”

“Jesus, Spirit, no! I’m happily married. I was thinking about a robot army. They wouldn’t be carbon copies of Eagan, but they also wouldn’t be self-aware. They could mount an offensive without the risk of any loss of life.”

“I considered that.” Omega was taking his alone time in the airlock, but has since returned. “You didn’t think I considered that? I didn’t start making clones out of some sense of poetic symmetry. I ruled out a robot army during the initial planning for this operation due to many reasons, but there was one big, irrefutable one, which is all I needed to decide against it.”

“What might that be?” Spirit questioned.

“The Exins are...well, they’re confused, and they have been indoctrinated. They’re easily swayed by their leader’s outrageous claims, because he’s literally the one who created them. They other people,” he says, using the word as a verb. “All foreigners are bad, and unrelatable. To make their enemies nothing more than walking machines would only exacerbate this issue. It may seem like all I want to do is kill, kill, kill, but I would much rather end the war with only the one battle. I want them to see their enemies as real people, just like them, who deserve to empathized with, and understood. It’s much harder to kill a sentient being than to destroy a toaster. They’ll still do it, but I’m hoping that every time they do, it gives them pause, and that those pauses eventually add up to them questioning whether they’re even doing the right thing by fighting at all. That’s why I don’t want to sacrifice my army to the megablock. If we lose them, we’ve already lost the war, and in that regard, we’ve lost Earth and the stellar neighborhood too. I can’t let that happen”

“I can’t speak on that,” Tinaya admits. “I’m the impartial moderator.”

Omega chuckles. “You’re not, and I never expected you to be. Don’t worry, I’m not going to tattle on you to the Multicultural Interstellar Association of Space Mediators Association.”

“My asthma?” Spirit quips.

Omega breathes deeply as he’s taking a cup of iced tea from Eagan’s tray, and looking at the bulkhead to the control room as if he can see right through the door. “I relent. I’ll start waking them up in groups of 147, and asking them what they would like to do. But I warn you, I’ll strongly advocate for them to stay on course. I’ll allow Niobe to be there, but she will not be allowed to speak unless the fraction of them who choose her ask to hear from her. If they do—if they exist, and they do, they’ll go off alone while the rest are returned to their pods to await their training periods. That is my offer.”

“Don’t tell me,” Tinaya says. “Tell her.”

Omega takes a sip of his tea before spitting it out. “Ugh. What did you put in that? Ginger?” He sets the cup back down on Eagan’s tray. Anyway, yes, I’ll tell her when she gets back out. You were right to place us on a break. I needed time to think.”

When Niobe does come back, they see that she’s been crying, but her body language doesn’t imply that she’s trying to protect herself from Aristotle. They seem to have worked out their differences. They return to the table, and start hashing out the details. The next phase of the project is planned to take over a year. Every three days, 147 more clones will be awakened from their gestational pods. The situation will be explained to them, as will their options. Niobe will be present for each of these meetings, along with Tinaya, who will be there to make sure that everything remains fair and honest. They’re not sure how many of them will take them up on the offer, so they will have to figure out how to adapt as those numbers start to become apparent. All those who choose to go to war will go back to their stasis pods until such time as they are revived again to train for their respective responsibilities. The real question is if any of them on either side will later change their minds, and what they’ll do about that.

In the meantime, Aristotle is not allowed to set foot on Jaunemus anymore. He’s allowed to continue to practice his time power, but he’s not to have anything to do with the war. When the time comes, he can transport the moon to the Goldilocks Corridor, but must then leave the theatre of war right away. Niobe will have been in stasis during that time as well so they don’t lose time together. On the same day that the last group of 147 are awakened, Aristotle sends a message that he’s ready to begin his final test yet. He wants to send everyone else back to the Extremus.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, November 9, 2247

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The next mission took them to Varkas Reflex, where an egress window opened up, not to bring someone else in, but to send them to the main sequence. They stood by patiently until the timer transitioned them over. They found themselves standing in the control room for a launch pad, where a pretty small ship was waiting. Hokusai was at the controls, operating the buttons, while Loa stood next to her as an assistant. They looked over. “Uhh...do you want us to scrub the launch, errr...?”

“No,” Leona said casually. “That version of Leona needs to go where she’s going, as do Sanaa and Eight Point Seven.”

“Okay,” Hokusai said. She leaned into the microphone. “Launch in eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, good, luck.”

Unlike the rockets that silly ancient humans used to get off the surface of the planet, the Radiant Lighting shot straight into the sky without sound, and without damaging the surrounding area. The hull, and pad, both glowed, but that was about it. It disappeared from sight quickly, and went on its way towards Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. It would arrive in less than a year. There, Past!Leona would have a few adventures with Trinity Turner, Ellie Underhill, and a few other people, until Mateo showed up seven years later, and further complicated matters.

Hokusai made sure everything was still going smoothly, and then finally exhaled. “All right. Report.”

Leona took the explanation. “We’re from as far into the future as 2278, but we went back to 2019, and have been moving forward on a new pattern ever since. These are our new team members: Jeremy Bearimy, Angela Walton, and Olimpia Sangster.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Hokusai Gimura, and this is Loa Nielsen. We just watched Leona, Sanaa, and Eight Point Seven leave for a planet called Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida.”

“I remember her telling us about this,” Angela said. “Sounds like a beautiful place.”

Hokusai agreed. “We may go ourselves one day. Don’t say anything if you know something about our future that contradicts this.”

Leona pantomimed zipping her lips shut, not that it mattered. Nothing about what they knew of Hokusai and Loa’s future prevented them from one day traveling to Tau Ceti. They, in fact, did not know much about what would become of them. They lost touch.

“Do you need help with anything?” Jeremy asked. “Or were we just sent here to watch the launch?”

“Who sent you here?” Hokusai asked.

“Nerakali,” Leona answered. “She sends us on missions. People usually come to us, but sometimes we go to them. And sometimes we’re not expected to do much. This could be more like a vacation, just so we can relax, and catch up with old friends.”

“I see.” Hokusai nodded.

“Who’s hungry?” Loa asked. “We were just about to eat.”

“We don’t want to impose,” Leona said.

“Nonsense,” Loa assured them. “It’s not like food is a scarce commodity. Can you imagine a world like that?”

They gathered in their home, and started eating a lovely lunch together. It was cooked by a friend of theirs, who liked to do it the old-fashioned way, instead of using a food synthesizer. It was his passion. Loa asked them about this new mission they were on, so they took turns explaining how it came about, and how things were going now.

“Yeah,” Hokusai agreed, “I can’t imagine it’s a sustainable pattern. A lot of people needed help with a lot of things in the past, but not so much anymore. But you seem to suggest that you have a choice of patterns now. How’s that, just by switching off these special cuffs of yours?”

They hadn’t said anything about dying, and going to the afterlife simulation, which made their patterns a little more complicated, and a lot less tied to the whims of the powers that be. The cuffs alone weren’t completely necessary, but they were a good excuse. It was just better for them to not reveal any secrets about how life and death worked in the universe. “Yes, the cuffs. We could suppress Jeremy’s pattern, and return every year, like we used to. Or we could suppress mine and Mateo’s pattern, and come back every Tuesday and July. Or we could suppress both, and just be present all the time, or even go wherever in the timeline we want, assuming we find a traveler to help. I don’t know why we haven’t done that. Surely Nerakali wouldn’t try to stop us.”

“I know why we can’t do that,” Mateo’s anger was bubbling, just a little bit. The pot would have needed to sit on the burner longer for the water to be considered boiling. “The Superintendent. He’s responsible for everything.”

Like all these people, Mateo had free will. He wasn’t in complete control of his own life, but he wasn’t helpless either. That was just how the world worked. You’re always bound by responsibilities, and urges, and biological imperatives. You live under social expectations, and community rules. You can’t just do anything you want to do, and you are not omnipotent. Perhaps salmon were a little bit more beholden to a higher power than others, but that power is generally not abused. Except in cases like this. I won’t allow the argument to be rehashed, and I’m getting tired of writing myself into the story, so while Mateo has traditionally been free to speak his mind on the matter, that changes here.

Everyone’s memories of the last few moments were erased, and the rest of the conversation was able to continue. They didn’t talk about their present, or even current, lives. Nearly everyone here had a life before time travel, so they shared stories about those times, when they were ignorant, and things were normal. Jeremy and Olimpia didn’t have many stories like that, but they did their best. While their respective lives revolved around something they couldn’t control, there were days when they could just live in the moment, and be happy. Once the party was over, Hokusai and Loa went off to do their own thing. That was when Nerakali showed up, sporting a somber expression. She sat down at the table with the transition team, and started picking at the remaining food.

“Are you okay?” Mateo asked, concerned.

She took her time responding. “You picked up on something that I’ve known for quite awhile.”

“What is that?” Leona prompted.

“There is an expiration date on this whole mission series, just like Étude, and the Savior of Earth program. It’s also why Beaver Haven Correctional only goes for so long, and why time travel in general dies down eventually. The future belongs to the vonearthans, and the starseeders. It’s not that you can’t travel that far into the future. Plenty of us do, but there’s a lot less activity than there is in previous centuries. The troublemakers don’t find it fun anymore when the rest of the population has their own superpowers, and the helpers like us don’t have anyone to save anymore.”

“Where are you going with this?” No, now Mateo was concerned.

“I’m saying that it’s over. I put off this conversation, but those dumb farmers were the last mission, realistically speaking. I could keep transitioning people for you, but I wouldn’t have much reason to, and you wouldn’t be serving much of a purpose. My other teams are experiencing similar problems, but it was easier to tell them, because I didn’t have personal relationships with them.”

“It’s over,” Jeremy echoed, nodding his head with his hand cupped over his mouth.

“It feels like we weren’t doing it for very long, but I know you had a lot of missions under Jupiter’s supervision,” Nerakali continued. “I’m sorry I didn’t have some special series finale as a send off, but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Danger sort of always just fades away, slowly to be replaced by safety, compartmentalization, redundancy, and modularization.” She was referring to a characteristic of space travel that was designed to lower the chances of something going wrong, but the idea had wider implications.

“What do we do now?” Angela asked. “I’m centuries old, but I feel like all that time, I was just preparing for this part of my life. Can we go back? Can we start a pattern?”

“Everything’s been taken care of,” Nerakali said with a single shake of her head. “I can’t tell you what you should do from now on. I can only tell you what I’m going to do. I’ve been the ultimate procrastinator, and it’s time to face the music.”

“Nerakali?” Leona asked, assuming they would all know what question she didn’t want to ask.

No one said anything.

“Nerakali,” Leona repeated, “how many steps do you have left?”

Nerakali smiled. “One more. If I try to travel away the next time, the universe will just straight up not let me. I’ll be within the hundemarke’s spatio-temporal range. Trapped. Trapped in the inevitable.”

“Well, that’s okay, because—”

“Don’t tell me, Leona, what you know of my future. I know it has something to do with Ellie Underhill. It’ll make it easier if I go in blind.”

“Why did you bring this up?” Leona went on. “You can put off that last step all you want. We’ll take you to a safe planet, and protect you from harm. You can live centuries just fine, I’m sure.”

“It’s like I said,” Nerakali contradicted, “it’s over.”

“Don’t do this.” Leona wasn’t ready to say goodbye.

“I’m not going to be doing anything,” Nerakali said. “I need Mateo to do it for me.”

“Me? Are you asking me to kill you?”

“You did it for Boyce, and my brother.”

“Yeah, and I don’t wanna do that again.”

Nerakali nodded, acknowledging his feelings. “I don’t need you to push me so much as I need you to erase my memories just before I fall. Someone else can push, if they want, or I can try to rig up some kind of Rube-Goldberg Jigsaw death machine.”

“Okay, I’m not saying I approve of your suicide,” Mateo began, “but why would you need someone to erase your memories?”

“Because I love you, Mateo,” Nerakali explained. “I have to go back to 2107, and be your worst enemy. I have to be trying to take revenge for my brother’s death. I can try to pretend, but it would really help me out if you just...make me hate you again.”

“I don’t understand why you have to do this,” Leona said. “We already know that our actions have altered events in the main sequence.  Zeferino died twice, even before our transitions began, which I don’t really understand, but it happened. When he stabbed himself, his body didn’t disappear, and return to the Colosseum.”

“That’s complicated,” Nerakali said. “I don’t actually understand it myself, but I was told to ignore that apparent paradox. That doesn’t mean we make another one. This is what I want. Please.”

Mateo did indeed know about her future. Death was a lot less problematic than everyone throughout history thought it was...or at least the atheists. The truth was that the afterlife existed. People didn’t go up to sit on clouds and play the harp with angels, but their consciousness persisted, and Nerakali was no exception to that. He didn’t want to erase her memories, and he didn’t want to kill her, but he knew she would survive it. She already had.

Fortunately, Mateo knew quite a bit about what he could do given Nerakali’s brain blending abilities. He didn’t have to erase her memories, and in fact couldn’t if he wanted her to be a good person when she went up to Pryce’s afterlife simulation. All he needed to do was suppress them, and let their return be triggered by something. This could be a code word, or a gesture, or an image...or a traumatic event. Back in 2107, The Warrior didn’t kill Nerakali instantly. He stabbed her through the chest, and only decapitated her once he managed to get his hands on the hundemarke, which was what prevented them from changing this event. Mateo could work with that. Once she experienced that first wound, there was nothing she could do, and she no longer needed to hate them. Her memories could come back in those final seconds, so she would be able to take them with her.

“Okay,” Mateo said. “I’ll do it.”

“Mateo,” Leona said. “We have to talk about this.”

“It already happened, Leona,” Mateo argued. “She’s ready. We have to respect that.”

“Thank you, Mateo,” Nerakali said warmly.

“Just me,” he demanded. “No one else needs to see this.”

Nerakali transitioned them back to The Parallel one last time, but then the group stayed behind while Mateo and Nerakali took a dimensional gravity platform towards the nearest remote cliff. The surface gravity on this planet was far too high for them to stand on. Certain buildings were designed with lower gravity, and this platform was just a mobile version of that. They drove out there in silence, only speaking once they arrived.

“You know what you’re doing?” Nerakali asked.

“Exactly,” Mateo said. “Take all the time you need, though.”

“As you said, I’m ready.” She started tapping on her Cassidy cuff. Then she took it off. “Let’s switch. You still need my brain blending powers to do this, but before you push me off the ledge, you’ll need to steal the cuff back, so I don’t take it with me. Press this button here on the primary, and it will release yours from my wrist.”

“I understand.”

“I’m really grateful for this,” she said sincerely. “I just wish I would die feeling that way. I wish I could die remembering myself, and who I became, and how I grew.”

He smiled. “You will. I told you...I know what I’m doing.” Without another word, he reached up to her temples, and stuffed the last however long amount of time into the darkest parts of Nerakali’s mind.

When it was over, she had changed. She looked at him with a seething hatred. “You.”

“I love you too, Nerakali Preston.” He tapped a button on the primary cuff, which unhooked the one he usually used from her wrist, and summoned it to him magnetically. Then he pushed her off the edge, and watched her disappear.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, October 21, 2228

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Now back on Earth once more, the AOC teleported to the transition window, and the crew waited for it to open. When it did, about a dozen men and women were standing there, holding weapons. They were extremely confused, having never seen any form of time travel before. Mateo decided it was best that he approach alone, with his hands up. “We mean you no harm,” he promised. “Why don’t you go ahead and put down those guns? You don’t need them here.”

They quickly retrained their guns on him. “What is this?” one of the men questioned. “Some kind of holo-trick?”

“Not a trick,” Mateo said. “You’re in a different reality. Whatever quarrel you have in the other world, it doesn’t exist here.”

“Bullshit!” he fought back. “Hold steady, boys! They’re just trying to get us to give up!”

“Give up what?” Mateo asked.

“Our land!”

“Who’s trying to take your land?”

“Like you don’t know.”

“Assume I don’t. You ever given anyone the benefit of the doubt before? What if I’m not lying? What if it turns out you’re pointing those things at friends, rather than enemies? How bad would you feel if you pulled the triggers, and you were wrong.”

The man faltered, but did not relent.

“Tell me your story. Perhaps I can help.”

The man waited a moment to respond. Then he eased himself, and held up three fingers. Everyone else lowered their weapons as well, except for three of them. They were clearly a team, since they knew which three his instructions were referring to. They were all dressed differently, though; not wearing uniforms. They didn’t look like soldiers, but farmers. Were they farmers? Was that still a thing? “We’re farmers,” the man explained. “We work at The Last Farm on Earth. Every job—every single job—has been taken over by some robot. We are the last human laborers in the world, and we can’t let go, no matter what you say!”

“I don’t know who’s trying to take your jobs, but I’m not. That’s not me. I’m just here to help. My windows, I don’t control them. They open up, and someone comes through. It’s my job to provide whatever it is they need, so I know how important it is to feel useful.”

“We don’t feel useless. We dig in the dirt with our hands, and we provide for our families, and we like it!”

“I don’t doubt it,” Mateo said. “Keep going. Who were you holding those guns against before the window opened?”

“The government, of course. They want to shut us down. They say we can keep farming in one of those giant towers, but that’s not real farming. That’s more like lab work. We wanna feel the sun on our necks, and the sweat in our eyes, and the bugs on our skin.”

“I get that.” He didn’t. “Why do they want to close the farm?”

“They want to turn it into another nature preserve, as if the world doesn’t already have enough of those already. That’s all there is now! Nowadays, people just live in computers. They don’t struggle. They don’t know the value of work.”

Mateo nodded. Personally, he didn’t care about any of this. Work was dumb, and he always admired the future people for figuring out how to get rid of it. Nerakali probably didn’t open the window to fix their stupid little farming problems. It most likely had something to do with whoever it was they were about to shoot. But still, these people were radicals, and even if he could stop them today, they would take up arms again tomorrow. The transition team wouldn’t be here tomorrow, so the solution had to come now. “All right,” he began. “How much money did you make last season?”

“Money? We don’t have money anymore.”

“Then how are you providing for your family?”

“With the produce that we...produce.”

“Okay. Your only customers are yourselves?”

“No, we distribute to the wandercrafts.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what those are.”

The farmer was taken aback. “They’re hover vehicles that people live in. Instead of arcologies, seasteads, underwater stations, or in space, they fly over the lands, enjoying the beauty of this world.”

“I see, so the establishments provide their own food, but the wandercrafts rely on farms like you to provide.”

“Well, I mean, they can always pop into the nearest arcology for a resupply. And...”

“And what?”

“And we’re the last farm, I told you that.”

“Oh, you did, yeah.” Yeah, Mateo wasn’t really listening to his ranting. “When was the last time a wandercraft came through?”

He mumbled something under his breath.

“I can’t help you if you’re not honest.”

“A year and a half!”

“Jesus, man. You’re not farmers, you’re toilers.”

“It’s just because people don’t—”

“...know the value of work, I get it.” Mateo sighed. Honestly, he tried real hard in the beginning, but his heart wasn’t in this one. It was just so ridiculous, and his mind kept drifting back to his relationship. Things were okay for now. Both of them just wanted to take it slow, and focus on their missions. It looked like that might be coming to an end, however. There just wasn’t a lot of danger in the world anymore, and people like them weren’t so necessary. If a farmers union was their biggest problem, then the main sequencers were probably doing okay too. He spoke into his cuff, “Leona, could you teleport to my location?”

Leona appeared next to him, and the farmers reacted by lifting their weapons once more. She paid them no mind. “Yes, my love?”

“What’s that, uhh....?” Mateo tried to remember. “What was that planet, the first one you went to? When you brought me back to life?”

“Proxima Doma,” she replied.

“And didn’t they have that one dome...?”

“Yeah, the Oblivios live in a special dome, where they think it’s the entire world, and they live like pioneers.”

“Yeah,” Mateo remembered, “you ever heard of that?”

“The Oblivios?” the farmer echoed. “Yeah, we don’t want our memories to be erased.”

“Do you have a better idea?” Mateo asked Leona.

Leona shook her head. “Not in this time period. In the future, there will be other primitive worlds in the stellar neighborhood, but not for a while.”

“Are you immortal?” Mateo asked the farmers.

“No, we’ll die one day, as God intended.”

“You got kids, though.”

“Of course we have kids.” The farmer seemed offended.

“How do they feel about farming?”

“They’ll learn one day, before we die. Our legacy will live on.” He looked proud of the decisions he had made.

Mateo started walking forward with a purpose. “I’m going through the window to take care of this. Please step back, so you don’t get sucked in. We’ll reach out when it’s safe to return.” He didn’t try to contact Nerakali. She was definitely listening at all times. He just kept walking forwards until the window opened up, and delivered him to the main sequence.

Two drones were hovering over the shoulders of a woman. She didn’t seem surprised by his arrival, or by the farmers’ original disappearance. “Greetings. I’m Inês Coleman.”

“I’m here to solve this crisis. I’m pretty sure you were about to die,” Mateo warned.

“That was my guess as well,” Inês agreed.

“Why are you pushing so hard to shut then down?”

“We’re not pushing that hard,” Inês defended. “This is the first time we’ve asked for them to relocate to one of our vertical farms.”

“They don’t want to do that.”

“Yes, I was picking up on that before you transported them to your reality.” Hm. She seemed to understand what he was.

“Just leave them alone. Their kids don’t wanna do this. Their parents will die out, and the era of human labor will officially be over.”

“Yeah, I really just came to make sure they knew all their options. We would love to close this sector. In fact, I’m not allowed to leave this planet until I return the last of the farmland to the wild. I can wait, though. I can wait them out.”

“Very well, so it’s settled.” Mateo turned to go back through the window. “Wait, where do you wanna go?”

“Gatewood,” she answered.

“Are you packed and ready?”

She looked down at herself. “I always have what I need on my person. I’m an elevated human.” Elevated humans were a form of transhumans that focused on biological upgrades, rather than technological implants. They didn’t feel the need to be able to interface with computers, or have superstrength. They just wanted to be able to live pretty much forever, and not worry as much about all the little inconveniences of being a regular human. They could last longer without sleep, rest, or nutrition, but they remained at least a little reliant on such things. They were immune to genetic disorders, and extremely resistant to disease.

“Nerakali, let’s just switch places,” he said into his cuff. “Send the both of us to The Parallel, and return the farmers to their farm in the main sequence.

“Can you really take me to Gatewood?” Inês asked, hope in her eyes. “I know they’re planning a mission there, but it’s classified. We’re all thinking the probe found signs of aliens.”

“I know people.” Mateo assured her. “I can get you there. And no, there aren’t any aliens...yet.”

So Nerakali sent the farmers back to toil in their lands for no reason, and brought Inês through to start a new life. They transported back to Kansas City, where Nerakali opened yet another window, right where some friends were preparing for their mission.

“You want us to take her with us?” Saxon questioned.

“Will that be a problem?” Leona asked.

“It’s a two-person job,” Thor clarified.

“Is there room for a third person?” Leona pressed.

“Space is not the problem,” Saxon replied.

“Then she can go.”

Saxon was suspicious. “What do you know of the future? Is this her destiny?”

“We’re from an alternate reality,” Leona explained. “She wasn’t there before, but she will be this time around.”

“Okay, well we don’t leave for another two and a half years,” Saxon told them.

“That’s fine,” Inês said. “I really appreciate it.”

Thor wasn’t convinced. “You do know that no one lives in the Gatewood Collective, right? We’re meeting up with the only two other people stationed there.”

Mateo smiled. “That’s what you think.”

Thor nodded, knowing it was best he not push the matter. He was different in this reality.

“Good luck,” Mateo said to the trio. “Two to beam up, Madam Preston.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, October 18, 2225

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Mateo sat on the bench, pressing his forehead against the palm of his hand so hard, it nearly punched a hole in his leg with his elbow. Nerakali stood before him, patiently waiting to make sure that his rant was over. “I can’t help you, Mateo,” she finally said somberly.

“I know,” Mateo replied. “No one can.”

“I don’t mean that,” Nerakali said. “I can’t help you, because I’ve never been in a relationship before. My siblings and I were all created with two powers. I have the ability to travel through time. Zef had the ability to be an asshole. Arcadia is the one with the ability to fall in love with humans. She has an unhealthy, and let’s face it, twisted way to show her love, but it’s there.”

“Are you saying I should talk to her instead?”

“Oh, absolutely not, don’t do that. You’re the target of her obsession. If you don’t get Leona back, my sister will seize her opportunity, and come after you again.”

“Great, so it’s pointless.”

She reached down, and forced his chin up to make eye contact. “I can’t help you, but I know someone who can. You should talk to her first, but I’m certain that she’ll want to do some couples counseling.”

Mateo looked away, and searched through the version of his notebook that listed all the people he knew that he kept in his mind. “Mallory Hammer?”

Nerakali smiled. “That’s right.”

“Leona won’t go for that.”

“Leave that to me. You talk to Dr. Hammer today, and I’ll make sure Leona gets there tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay.”

“All right, I’ll summon her.”

They were finally on their way to the stellar neighborhood. A lot of their transitions involved them crossing back into their own timelines, but that wasn’t so common anymore. It appeared that they were doing that again by going to Bungula, Alpha Centauri, which was where Leona was the first time she experienced 2225. At this point, both she and Mateo were off of their pattern, and living one day at a time. They weren’t together, though. While she was here, he was millions of light years away, on Dardius. This older and wiser version of Leona could remember pining after him, wanting desperately for them to reunite. That seemed so stupid now. She still loved him, sure, but their time apart probably did them good, and it would again. Either way, she was grateful right now, because if she had to meet her alternate self today, at least he would have no chance of also being there.

They connected the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to a Nexus, and jumped away to Bungula. When the transition beacon first appeared on their screens, it said that they had two hours to get there, but once they landed, the countdown started dropping rapidly. They ran out of their ship, and over to where the window was meant to be. The timer got all the way down to thirty seconds before it went back to normal speed. “What the hell was that?” Leona questioned. “Were we in a time bubble, or something?”

“I don’t know,” Jeremy said, “but there’s something different about this window.” He was looking around in AR mode.

“What is it?” Leona questioned, looking around herself. Bungula in the main sequence looked exactly as it did in The Parallel, which didn’t make any sense. While it was entirely possible that the people in this reality would deliberately recreate the design of their main sequence counterparts, the ones in the main sequence would not have done the same on their end, and this was of clear Parallel design. There was something wrong with the cuffs, or the transition window, or both.

“Uhh...Leona?” Olimpia said. “I see what’s different.”

“What?” Leona asked.

“It’s you,” she replied vaguely. “You’re the one flickering.”

“I’m flickering?” That didn’t sound good.

“Yeah, I see it too,” Angela confirmed. “What does that mean? Are you going to transition to the other side?”

“Oh, shit,” Leona realized. “I know what this is; it’s an ambu—” All of her friends disappeared, leaving her alone in what looked like a waiting room.

Dr. Mallory Hammer peeked her head through a door, and smiled. “Mrs. Matic? We’re ready for you now.”

Leona frowned. “I did not agree to this.”

“Still, you need it.”

“I wouldn’t think a reputable doctor would try to give someone counseling without their consent,” Leona argued.

Dr. Hammer sighed. “There are two doors in this room. You choose. Do you want things to get better, or do you wanna be a whiny little asshole? One of you has taken the first step, but this is a three-legged race, and he can’t go anywhere with you.”

“Oh, great metaphor,” Leona said sarcastically.

Dr. Hammer ducked back into the room, but left the door open.

Leona looked over to the exit, and then back to the first door. “Goddammit,” she muttered under her breath. She walked into the room to find Dr. Hammer just sitting down on her chair, holding her tablet. Mateo was on the couch, sitting as far from the door as possible. He somehow inched even farther away upon seeing her. He was recoiling. “Okay, you make it look like I’m an abusive partner.”

“Is that how you see yourself, Mrs. Matic?” Dr. Hammer posed.

“No, of course not,” she argued. “He’s being dramatic. I kicked him out of the house, because he was acting crazy, and I didn’t feel safe. Now he’s projecting that onto me, like I’m the bad guy.”

“No one said you were the bad guy,” Dr. Hammer assured her. “Why don’t you have a seat? Yes, right there, it’s fine. You don’t have to cuddle, but if you weren’t both trying to make this work, then instead of talking to me, you would be speaking with The Officiant about a divorce.”

“Is that even possible?” Leona asked.

Mateo twitched.

“I mean academically,” Leona clarified. “Sort of. No, I mean—” She was this close to hyperventilating.

“It’s okay,” Dr. Hammer said. “Take your time.”

Leona composed herself. “The Officiant made it sound like divorce wasn’t a thing. I don’t want to bring her into this, because I’m worried I misunderstood, and divorce actually is possible, and that she’ll force it upon us.”

“Okay,” Dr. Hammer said. “That’s good. Mr. Matic, do you agree? Do you not want to get divorced?”

“I don’t want a divorce,” he stated.

“So, we’re all on the same page. I don’t want you to divorce either. Now, we all know each other. My name is Dr. Mallory Hammer, but please just call me Mallory. I don’t say that just to sound friendly. I really do prefer my first name. Can we all use first names in here?”

“Yes,” both of them said.

Mallory straightened her skirt, and considered that path forward. “I would like to open the floor for each of you to...tell me where you believe this tension in your relationship is coming from. You will do this by taking turns, and will not interrupt each other. I spoke with Mateo yesterday, and I don’t want to poison the discussion with what I already know about what he believes, so Leona, you should go first.”

“It’s just been tough to be around him,” Leona began to explain. “He’s so unpredictable now. Ever since he and Angela had that run-in with the Ochivari, he’s been different. He had to literally lose his soul to save lives, and even when we got that fixed, he’s been weird. I just never know what’s going to happen. Truthfully, it scares me.”

“That wasn’t my fault,” Mateo argued.

“What did I say about interruptions?” Mallory questioned.

“I’m sorry.”

Leona wanted to respond to his claim anyway. “I know it wasn’t your fault. Maybe none of this is. Maybe that psychic woman who fixed you didn’t do it right, or maybe this is just an unavoidable side effect. It doesn’t really matter, I still feel unsafe.”

The two of them waited in case Leona wasn’t finished, but she was, so Mallory prompted Mateo to tell his truth. “I think she’s been just as unpredictable. She used to be so patient and understanding. And not just with me. She would meet someone knew, and always give them the benefit of the doubt, and wanted to help. I’m not saying she doesn’t help anymore, but she just looks so...tired of it. Do you want out of this pattern?”

Leona didn’t answer.

“I don’t want to do this opening statement thing,” he complained. “I want her to answer my question.”

“I don’t have an answer,” Leona said. “That’s not true, I do. Because I don’t. I don’t want off this pattern. For the first time, I feel like I am helping people. Maybe we did it a little in the beginning, but it wasn’t our purpose. We didn’t have a purpose. Now that we’re finally free of the powers that be, I feel like we’re putting some good into the universe.”

“That may be true,” Mallory jumped in. “Of course, I mean to say that it is true, you’re doing good things. But the question is, do you have to be on the Bearimy-Matic pattern to do it? Do you have to be on any pattern to do it? Plenty of people do great things with their lives, and they live one day at a time. They don’t travel through time, or go to other planets. Do you think it’s possible that you actually are perturbed by the new pattern? It used to be that you showed up every year, but now it’s sometimes three years, and sometimes it’s twenty. That must be hard”

She hadn’t been so mindful of this, but yeah. When Jupiter was in charge, it was somewhat antagonistic. He didn’t give them a choice. Now that Nerakali was the boss, it did seem a little weird that they were still bound by the same arbitrary limitation.

“That’s true,” Mateo said. He appeared to have been thinking the same thing. “Why do we skip so much time? That’s not necessary at all. Do we even need to skip any time? Couldn’t we just take off our cuffs?”

“No,” Leona replied. “Thanks to Tamerlane Pryce. When he resurrects people, he doesn’t—or maybe can’t—give people powers, but he can replicate patterns. Or maybe he can just replicate ours, because skipping forward in time isn’t the same thing as going into the past, and creating a new reality, or manipulating time in some other way.”

“Oh, that’s right, I forgot,” Mateo mused. “Still, we can suppress our pattern. Or we can just suppress Jeremy’s. Our cuffs give us those options, and Nerakali gives us access. She hasn’t limited us, as far as I know.”

“Is that what you want to do?” Leona offered. “Do you want to switch off the patterns? I suppose these cuffs are exactly what Missy, and all those people in Ansutah, were looking for. We’re using them to share, but that’s only one use.”

“Are we doing this? Are we going to try to change the game?”

“We’ll have to ask the others what they think.”

“First, what do you think we should...” Mateo looked around, but there was no sign of Mallory. “Dr. Hammer? Where did you go?”

“She disappeared,” Leona revealed. “I saw her out of the corner of my eye. It looked like she did it on purpose. She picked up her phone and cup of tea just before.”

“Why?” Mateo wondered.

“I think we’re back on track. Or at least we’re on two tracks that are about to connect with each other.”

“The question is, when we do reach the railroad switch, will we slip onto the same track seamlessly, or will we crash into each other?”

Leona stood up. “I suppose that’s for us to decide. One of us will have to get there first to avoid a collision.”

He nodded.

She reached a hand out to him. “Let me be the one to speed up. If you keep going as fast as you have been, we’ll miss each other.”

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