Microstory 2505: Health Smeller

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I can smell your health, and heal your ailments. I was Landis Tipton before Landis Tipton was Landis Tipton. While we gifted him with all of the Vulnerabilities, mine is the one that he uses primarily, if not exclusively. I want to make it clear that I did not waste my gift when I had it. I too healed people. It was at a smaller scale, but you have to understand that none of us believed that we could announce ourselves to the world. Before Landis was brave enough to stand in the spotlight, it felt too dangerous to be open to the public. We decided that we had to be very selective with our clients. Of course, that didn’t always work out, but we did our best. I think we helped a lot of people. Everyone we chose was entitled to a healing, but it was sort of usually considered secondary to the other—more abstract—therapies. People get sick; it’s a way of life, and I didn’t think that there was anything I could do about it. It didn’t even occur to us that my gift of healing could one day be synthesized into a mass-produced cure-all. What people really needed was to feel better about themselves, and realize their dreams, even if that meant shifting those dreams to things that were a little more realistic and attainable. I’m not saying that I was a pointless member of the team, but we did see our responsibility as being more holistic. On the contrary, my job was very important, and should not be discounted. You see, healing begins from within, but physical pain and suffering is real, and it can make it impossible to feel like your life can get better, even if you’ve not been stricken with some serious disease. Everyone has something. They have joint pain, or frequent headaches, or circulation issues. I could fix all of that. Maybe not permanently, but those first few days after the clients met us were incredibly vital. It was at least one less thing that they were worried about while they were trying to move on, and improve their situations. It gave them a new baseline by which they could judge the things that happened to them in the future, both good and not-so-great. Healthy body, healthy mind, as they say. I have heard people ask Landis what people’s health smells like, but I have never heard his answer. That’s probably because he’s so busy saving the world. That’s not me being resentful, but it does lead well into the answer to their question. When something is particularly wrong with someone, their health typically smells sickly sweet, like spoiled fruit. The disease is rotting away in their body, creating a build-up of waste, and generating a toxic smell that anyone would perceive as being wrong, if their noses were designed to detect the right signals. Poor general health, on the other hand, is bitter, with metallic overtones, and I could sometimes cure that too, but generally not. So if you ever meet Landis in person, and he’s a little shy or standoffish, I can’t speak for him, but that might be why. People just kind of smell bad all the time, even when they’ve been cured. It’s unsettling, but it’s part of the job, and I for one think that Landis faces it valiantly.

The Sixth Key: Living Under a Rock (Part I)

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When all the inhabited terrestrial bodies and ships in the five previous concurrent realities were sent into the Sixth Key, they were mostly dumped where they were, relative to each other. There were a number of exceptions. Residents of the Parallel had managed to colonize just about every rock worth standing on in their version of the Milky Way. This included a bunch of random rogue worlds, and some planetoids, but nearly all of the more massive ones too. Other realities had done the same thing, just to a fraction of a fraction of a degree. This meant that there were multiple Proxima Domas, multiple Teagardens, multiple Waizidis, even if they went by other names. There was plenty of room in the new universe, but it threw off the gravitational distribution. There were also some worlds from other galaxies that had to be ported over. Another thing that altered the gravity was a lack of a central black hole. Sagittarius A* was not habitable on its own. It was too dense, and too deadly. Some used it for power, but there wasn’t anyone standing on its surface, and if there was no one on its surface, it wasn’t saved.

There was an empty void in the middle of the galaxy now. Some star systems that were orbiting their version of it were sent flying through space on a new trajectory, filling this void with the occasional isolate. One of these worlds happened to only have two people standing on it. It didn’t even have a name, but since it was supporting life when the Reconvergence happened, it too was shunted through the cosmic escape hatch. Not only did Echo’s parents not know that any of this was gonna happen, but they also didn’t know that anything had happened. All they could tell was that they lost all communication systems, and they were stuck there. Alone.

They made the best of their situation. The planet had an atmosphere, though not much life. They had to plant and grow their own food, but they took joy in their work, and they were happy. They ultimately conceived a child together, and raised him there the best they could. They socialized him in a virtual simulation filled with NPCs, but in the end, it was just the three of them. And then it was just two. And then it was just one. Echo Cloudbearer has been entirely on his own for the last few years, not knowing how to get to civilization, or even really whether he should. He spends some of his time in the simulations, but has grown bored with them over the years, and visits them infrequently these days. He mostly sits amongst the flowers, and strolls along the pond. It’s not perfect, but it’s home, and he’s content. This is all about to change.

As Echo is sitting against his favorite rock, he hears a whistling sound from up above that he’s never heard before. A body appears out of nowhere up in the air, and falls down hard on the ground. It’s glowing red. He approaches with caution, but he can’t get too close. A searing heat is threatening to burn off his eyebrows. He just stands there watching as the glow fades, and the body cools off. It’s a beautiful woman, and she’s not moving. She must be dead, and not because of the fall, but the metal object that’s jammed in the back of her head. When it feels safe, he kneels down beside her, and checks her life signs using the skills his parents taught him. Yeah, this woman’s definitely dead. He looks back up at the sky. Could it be? Did she fall through the atmosphere? No, she wouldn’t still be intact, and he’s sure he saw her appear out of thin air, not simply grow larger and larger as she fell closer and closer. All this time without ever meeting another soul, and the first new person he sees is already dead. What a joke.

Saddened by this bizarre and disappointing development, Echo does his duty, and buries her in the ground. There is no way for him to know if this is what she would have wanted, but that is what his parents told him to do with them after they were gone. Once he’s finished with his work, he stands beside her grave out of respect. He wants to say something nice and reverent, but again, he never knew her, and he’s also very inexperienced with talking. He isn’t necessarily naturally quiet, or reserved. It’s just that he and his parents knew each other so well. They had a shorthand, and often got things done without needing to speak. He grew used to that, and after they left him, he had even less of a reason to open his mouth. So he just stands there for several minutes, staring at the mound of dirt piled upon the new grave. After enough time passes, he just goes about his usual business.

The next morning, Echo does what he does every day, and wakes up to stand on the hill. He likes to survey the land. This is the best vantage point in the area. This is where his parents originally settled, and he has never left. There doesn’t seem to be a need to. Everything he could ever need is right here. That’s why he buried the stranger on this hill. It seemed like she deserved it, whoever she was. He quickly realizes, though, that now it can no longer be his lookout spot. It’s not his anymore, but hers. Something green in the dirt catches his eye. Is that a blade of grass in the center? He reaches down to get it out there so it’s more uniform, but discovers it to be stuck in the dirt. It’s...growing from it? He didn’t plant anything here, and even if he had, he tilled it up so much for the burial that no shoot could have survived long enough to be visible already. No, this doesn’t make any sense. Echo knows every species that grows here. There aren’t that many, so it was easy to learn when and how to plant them, which ones to plant separately, how much water each type needs. This kind of looks like one of his ohedlan trees, but there’s something off about it.

Echo continues to go about his life. He eats, he sleeps in his shallow little cave, and he makes waste. Each morning, the new magical tree has grown taller. The bigger it gets, the less it looks like an ohedlan tree, or anything else he’s familiar with. His best guess is that the dead woman had a seed of alien origin in her pocket, and it fell out while he was burying her. He tends to it, just as he would any other plant in his little garden. He makes sure that it gets water, and protects it from the kol beetles. They may be here to help, not hurt, but he can’t tell, and the tree remains too young for him to take the risk. Perhaps when its older, he can find out what they do to it. For now, this is his baby, and he’s not going to let anything happen to it.

It’s the fastest-growing tree he’s ever seen. In only about a year, it’s at full maturity, with a hardy trunk, strong branches, and blue leaves. It’s beginning to flower, but is not yet bearing fruit. That’s when it starts to talk to him. He’s not even all that surprised. He knew there was something special about it right away. The fact that it seems to have a brain is crazy, and he’s never heard of it before, but he understands that he knows very little about how the rest of the universe works. This could be entirely normal elsewhere. “What is your name?” the voice asks.

“Echo Cloudbearer. Yours?”

“We have had many names, but I have decided to settle on Clavia.”

“Are there more than one of you?”

“There once was,” Clavia replies. “We are now one.”

This is unsettling to Echo, though he would not be able to articulate why. “How do you grow so fast?”

“Time ain’t nothing but a thang.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“We spoke up to warn you. You have shown us kindness where you did not have to. You could have let us fend for ourselves, and perhaps even died, yet you put in effort to help. We owe you a debt of gratitude.”

“Tending to my garden is all I have to do,” Echo replies. It’s true. His life is pretty easy going. He has the kol beetles to contend with, and a few other critters, but for the most part, the plants take care of themselves. They’re low maintenance, yet they still bear fruit. His life may be boring, but it’s satisfying.

“Still, you deserve to know that you will not be alone for long, and we do not mean us. We are still young and weak, and will not be able to protect you. Others will come. They’re coming for us. You must leave this place, and find somewhere to hide. They will harm you if you stand in their way, and they may interpret you as a threat whether you mean it or not.”

“What will they do when they get to you?” Echo questions.

“That is none of your concern,” Clavia says nicely. “You must hide,” she repeats.

“I protected you as a sapling, and I’ll protect you now. That is how I was raised. To hide would be to dishonor my parents, and I will not succumb to my fears.”

Clavia doesn’t respond right away. “Very well. We respect your wishes. There is not much that you will be able to do, though. To answer your question, we do not fully grasp the intentions of those coming for us. We know only that they are on their way. We believe that they detected our birth, and are coming to investigate.”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

“I’ll be ready.”

While it’s true that Echo’s parents settled in this spot, it is not where they first landed. On the other side of the rock formation in the middle distance lay the remnants of their shuttle. It did not crash, but it was damaged during a lightning storm, and has been gathering dust ever since. They stayed there for a few months while they were starting the garden, at which point they abandoned it forever. It was never forbidden for Echo to venture this far out, but he’s only been here once, and hasn’t had any reason to return until now. There are weapons here. He doesn’t know how to use them, but perhaps the sentient tree knows. That’s not all he’s after. Echo wears very little as the environment here is almost always favorable. Even when it rains, the temperature is mild, and the wind isn’t too bad. His clothes were apparently made out of seat upholstery, and other miscellaneous fabrics from their shuttle, but that’s not what the two of them were wearing when they arrived. They were in spacesuits with all sorts of tools and gadgets attached. After they died, he removed their suits from their bodies, and connected them to some kind of port on the outside of the shuttle, as per their instructions. He was told that they would be ready by now, but they never explained what they meant by that. He’s grown up to be about the same size as his father was, so his suit fits perfectly. It’s a lot more comfortable than his regular outfit too, he feels so safe and contained.

“We did not know you had that,” Clavia acknowledges. “We can only see things that are happening, not conditions that remain static.”

“You know now. What about these things? Will they be useful to us?” Echo’s parents called them guns.

“Those are dangerous...but we can teach you.”

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The Fifth Division: Solid as a Rock (Part V)

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Ingrid wanted to be discreet, and not change the timeline. Yeah, it could be their chance to prevent all this horror from ever happening, or the result could be even worse than before. There is no way to know which path you’re on until your fate is upon you. That’s why the representatives from the various Sixth Key cultures are all here right now. They were trying to prevent themselves from meddling with their people’s futures. And now their worst fears might be realized. She and Onyx were hoping to slip in, rescue the fabled red fruit, and sleep away unnoticed. But that’s no longer possible. The regular blue magnolia fruit pod that they took to get here was more powerful than they knew. It has brought with them a bunch of noisy gold. Killjlir and Andrei come around the tree, ready for battle, surprised to see the two of them, but even more surprised by all this random treasure.

“Was this all about a heist?” Andrei questions. “Are we trying to thwart a heist? Are we doing a heist?”

“This has nothing to do with anything,” Ingrid explains. She looks at the garbage strewn about the ground. “This is a transport error.”

“Fair enough,” Andrei decides. “You’re dressed differently. Yet you left about thirty seconds ago.”

“A lot has happened since then,” Ingrid replies. “It’s been longer than thirty seconds for me.”

Ayata suddenly appears. “How did you beat me back here?”

“I’m from the future,” Ingrid says plainly. “And I need you four to do everything that I say. We don’t have much time before the enemy arrives.”

No one argues.

Ingrid looks over at Killjlir. As terrible as she feels about her new friend being injured, it’s even worse to be considering urging them towards the fall. Unfortunately, she really has to hope that this is all predestined, and she’s just working on closing her own loop. Killjlir has to climb that tree, and they have to fall, so they can float down the river towards the tunnels, and set this whole time travel rescue operation in motion. “Climb the tree on that side. There’s a red fruit at the top that we need.”

“Yeah, I was starting to climb it when you showed up.”

“Good,” Ingrid decides. “I’ll be climbing on this side. This is a stealth mission. One of us has to reach it.” She looks at Ayata and Andrei. “You two have to fight, and keep them from catching us, or even spotting us.”

Andrei tenses up. “Understood. Get on up.”

“What do I do?” Onyx asks.

Ingrid winces. It should be obvious. “Hide.” There’s only one vertical object on this island, and it’s the tree. Luckily, there’s an alcove at the base for him to curl up in. He might still get caught, but since he’s a pacifist, they may not hurt him, especially since they’re planning to blow up the tree anyway. It all depends on how psychotic the First Explorer’s human agents are.

Here’s how the timeline should go. When the enemy comes, Ayata and Andrei hold them off while Ingrid and Killjlir go for the red fruit. Ayata and Andrei lose, but don’t die. The attackers plant their bomb, and bug out. That hopefully leaves enough time for the five of them to escape too.

Onyx gives Ingrid a boost up to the first branch while Ayata does the same for Killjlir on the other side. Ingrid is just starting to reach the foliage when evil Tamerlane Pryce and the other chick show up, but Ingrid can’t see them. It doesn’t sound like they see Killjlir, though, so they must have scurried up far enough already to be concealed by the leaves. Meanwhile, Ingrid quickly moves too high up to really hear the conversation. This close the tree, her ears are overwhelmed by a low hum coming from it. It’s only now occurring to her that it has been doing this the whole time, but it felt so natural and normal, she didn’t notice before now. The trunk lets out the sound consistently while the leaves echo it back as they rustle, like a sound visualizer. She keeps pulling herself up, branch by branch, trying to stay as quiet as she can. These people absolutely cannot know that there is any hope in saving all of this beauty.

As she’s heading up towards the very top, she notices that there aren’t any other fruits up here. They were thinning out, and now they’re gone. It feels like a wasted opportunity. They’re going to need to get out of here as fast as they can, and they’re certainly not going to be able to outrun it. They could try to jump into one of the rivers, like Killjlir incidentally did in the future past, but she was severely injured, and only survived because a magic branch kept her alive, and she happened to float towards the underground bunker. Ingrid doesn’t even know which river goes that way. No. They don’t just need the one red fruit. They also need blue fruit pods, at least one each. She’s so high that she and Killjlir can finally see each other. They stare for a moment, not knowing if it’s safe enough to utter a word. There’s no need. Ingrid just points at them, and then points upwards. She points at herself, and then downwards.

That’s all Killjlir needs to know. They nod, and get back on their way.

Ingrid carefully starts heading back down. She’s not carrying a bag, or anything, so the best way to handle this is to find a branch that happens to be holding several pods, and just break that whole thing off to keep them all together. Another thing comes to her mind. They’ve both been up here a long time. She occasionally hears the clanking of gold, strongly suggesting that the fight is still going on down there, but should it be? Shouldn’t the tree have exploded by now? She tries to multitask, and think back to when she experienced this before. After evil Pryce and that woman disappeared, Ingrid and Iolanta continued to fight each other, but it didn’t last long. And the explosion wasn’t long after that. No, this timeline is all wrong. They’ve changed things. Maybe it doesn’t matter, but maybe it means everything. If she could only hear better what’s happening down on the ground, she would know what to do.

No, it definitely doesn’t matter. She needs these fruits. That’s her only job right now. She’s found the branch that she was hoping for. Five pods are hanging from the tip, which is precisely how many they require. It’s too thick closer to the trunk, though. She’s going to have to crawl farther out to make a clean break. She would much rather inch her way down, but she doesn’t have time for that. The explosion could happen any second. She slides out there as fast as she can, but before she can reach her goal, the branch that she’s standing on cracks first. In a last ditch effort, she reaches out for the bundle of fruit pods, and takes it in her grasp. She falls with it through the branches below, and crashes down on the ground.

Her head hurts, not like a simple headache, but sharper and tighter. It’s concentrated on one very specific spot. Ingrid tries to reach up to find out what’s wrong with her, but she can’t move her arms. She’s either actually paralyzed, or just too injured to move right now. It’s cold, though. It’s cold and wet.

Onyx’s face appears above her. “Don’t move,” he whispers. “I won’t lie to you, it’s pretty bad. We’re gonna get you fixed up, though.”

“What happened to me?” Ingrid can feel her own mind being blanketed over by confusion. She’s trying desperately to hold onto her wits, but they’re slipping away from her in realtime. She’s dying, and her brain is turning the lights off one by one.

“You fell on a crown. It’s jammed into the back of your head,” Onyx explains.

She can still tell that she’s holding the bundle of fruits. Hopefully she’s lifting it up towards him, so he gets the idea. She can’t leave, but everyone else should be able to. “Where are they?” Ingrid struggles to ask.

“They’re inside the tree, trying to set off the bomb at the heart, as they said.”

“And the others?”

“Ayata and Andrei. They’re pretty hurt too, but I’ll feed them the healing sap as.”

Someone else walks up. Ingrid can’t turn her head, and moving her eyes isn’t enough. Onyx doesn’t look happy, though, so she’s guessing that it’s one of their enemies. “You get away from him.”

The woman whose name Ingrid still doesn’t know steps into view. “You think because you changed the timeline, you’ve made things better?”

“You know?”

“I’m omniscient, you insufferable dimling,” she claims.

“Why are you doing this?”

The woman pulls her face into an evil grin. “For this.” She swings her hand into view, showing that she’s holding the red fruit.

“What is it to you?” Ingrid questions.

“It’s an end to my competition,” the woman answers. Ingrid can see her fingernails begin to pierce the skin of the red fruit pod. Unlike the blue ones, it does appear to contain juice. It looks a lot like blood as it’s running down the side of her hand, and her arm. She twitches when a stick bursts out of her chest. Her blood starts spilling out too. Some of it spurts and drips on Ingrid’s face.

“Did you see that coming?” Killjlir asks, having been the one to impale the defiler.

The woman hasn’t stopped smiling. “Yeah. Sure did.” Her hand opens.

The magic red fruit falls into Ingrid’s mouth. For some reason, her reflex is to bite down. It feels a lot different than the other one. As she noticed, it’s juicy, and maybe is indeed made of blood, since it has a bit of a metallic taste, but with a pleasant sweetness to it. The juice runs down her throat, into her lungs, and her stomach. Her whole body pulsates with a power that she’s never felt before. Still, she can’t move. She just begins to know what’s happening around her without being able to see it. Everything starts to move in slow motion. Killjlir angrily tosses the woman to her side next to Ingrid, but falls to their knees, having also been injured prior to this. Onyx lunges towards them to help. Ayata and Andrei are both lying on the ground a few meters away. They’re reaching out for each other, but they’re probably not gonna make it. As soon as Tamerlane steps out of the tree portal, a fire sparks at his feet, and rises up the trunk of the magnificent magnolia tree. As it’s shooting up to the sky, it billows out, and threatens to engulf the lands as it did the first time they tried this. Time moves even slower...and slower.

The power surging within Ingrid intensifies. It too spreads out. Two primal force of nature, preparing to battle it out on this one tiny island. Or maybe not. Ingrid’s energy reaches out for Onyx and Killjlir, as well as Ayata and Andrei. It forms a protective bubble around them, but it doesn’t stay put. It drags them all together into a single entity, and spirits them away just before the wrathful fires can consume them all.

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The Fifth Division: Rock of Gibraltar (Part IV)

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The wave of fire is drawing too close, and Ingrid has no choice but to duck into the bunker with Selma, who leads her down the steps to safety. Once they’re at the bottom, they run through the corridor, and into a wide open room, which must be a gym. Nearly everyone is here, notable absences being Killjlir, Ayata, and Andrei. Horrified, the survivors are watching a bird’s eye view of the destruction on the surface, as likely streamed by a sentry drone. Princess Honeypea is crying into her brother’s shoulder while the other Horticulturalists do everything they can to hold back their own tears. They are distraught, though. There’s nothing they can do to fix this. They don’t know about the whole garden world out there yet. Is it Ingrid’s place to tell them? Did the tree have another plan in mind? What the hell are they supposed to do now?

No one seems to know, but Storm knows that it remains her job to be the leader. “The universe has suffered a terrible loss,” she begins. “Most people in existence don’t even know that this place once stood tall and proud and beautiful. Those who did may never learn that our world was destroyed. We have a lot to talk about. Some of us have lost our purpose, others a home, and some of you, a temporary refuge. I don’t know that I can get any of that back for any of you, but I know that we’re all exhausted and sad. The barracks are down the hall, to the right. It’s okay if we sleep here tonight, Weaver?”

“Of course,” Weaver says sincerely.

Storm nods gratefully. “Get yourselves cleaned up, find something to eat in the kitchen, and then get some rest. We’ll reconvene tomorrow once everyone’s up to it.” She looks at Pinesong to say something to him quietly, but stops to say one more thing to the whole group. “Oh, and anyone who blames themselves in any way for what happened, just don’t. We faced an impossible enemy, and we lost. There’s nothing you could have done. Don’t let the anxiety keep you awake.” Now finished, she does move off to the side with her own people so they can whisper in private.

Ingrid is dirty and bloody, so she takes a shower, and lies down in the medical pod for a bit, but she isn’t ready to sleep. She’s too curious. The fire has finished roaring down its path of destruction, leaving the whole dimension in ashes, but the drone seems to have crashed, or just been switched off. If she wants to see what it looks like out there now, she’ll have to go back outside. She dons a respirator mask, and starts walking back up the stairs. Before she has the chance to open the cellar door, it opens on its own. Killjlir is standing there. They’re soaking wet and coughing violently while holding a broken branch tightly in one hand. There are a few flowers growing from it, and one blue fruit pod hanging from the tip. Whatever Killjlir has been through, it’s a wonder this thing is as intact as it is. They pass out, and fall into Ingrid’s arms.

Ingrid carries her new friend back down to the bunker, and into the infirmary. She places Killjlir in the same pod that she was just using, and carefully removes the branch from their grasp so the machine can track their vitals, make its diagnosis, and execute the proper treatments. They’re not doing well, but they’re not going to die. They suffered wounds all over their upper body that are consistent with hand-to-hand combat, and cuts on their legs indicative of crawling through a bower, or perhaps climbing a tree. They have some level three burns too, but the most pressing threat right now is the water still in their lungs. The little robot arms turn them to their side, and then stick a tube down their throat. It suctions some of it out of their lungs while the rest of the fluid manages to leak out of their mouth. The pod leaves Killjlir on their side while it moves on to the next issues, in order of severity. After removing the necrotic tissue, it triggers rapid in situ dermal regeneration to replace the missing skin. It seals up the cuts with a liquid bandage, and breaks down the bruises with something that it calls a macrophage therapy. Lastly, it begins to emit an ultrasonic wave up and down their body to stimulate blood flow for accelerated healing. Ingrid finally exhales in relief, seeing that her friend is going to be okay. This is a strange feeling to be having for a person she once called her enemy.

Storm walks in. “They’re alive.” It’s unclear if this is a question, or a statement.

“Yes,” Ingrid replies.

“Have they spoken?”

“Not yet.”

“Were they carrying that?”

Ingrid looks down at the branch, now in her hand. “Yeah, I don’t know why.”

Storm steps forward. “May I?” She accepts it from a reluctant Ingrid, then runs her hand along it like it’s a violin that she’s just crafted. “Bark...wood...flower...fruit...”

“Did they bring it here for a reason?” Ingrid asks.

“I fell on it,” Killjlir explains with a very hoarse voice. The pod reacts to this development by administering a nebulized soothing agent along their pharynx. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to stick the tube as far down as it did before. Killjlir clears their throat, and tries again. “I was climbing the magnolia when this asshole whacked me in the head. I fell back, and the branch broke my fall, but then I fell the rest of the way with it into the water. The current took me away, but I could see the fiery explosion above, and feel some heat. I’ve been floating ever since. I don’t know how I got here.”

“I carried you from the entrance,” Ingrid tells them. “You were walking on your own before that.”

“I couldn’t have,” they say with a dismissive shake of their head. “I was dying.”

“The tree wasn’t a single consciousness in a single whole organism,” Storm says. “When you broke the branch, you took a little piece of its mind with you. It might have given your body the strength it needed to make it here from the river bank. We’re only about twenty meters from it, I would say.”

“So, it’s gone?” Killjlir asks? “It’s all gone.”

Storm smiles, and raises the branch. “This is still here. It’s a symbol of resilience and strength.”

“The fruit,” Ingrid poses, “can it be planted? Will it make a new magnolia tree?”

Storm shakes her head. “It’s a virgin fruit, like an unfertilized egg. There is no seed inside this pod.”

“That’s why I was climbing,” Killjlir tries to clarify. “The Pryce guy, he told me to retrieve the red fruit on the top of the canopy.”

“A red fruit?” Storm is confused, but intrigued. She pulls the blue fruit off of the branch, and squints at it. “We’ve always wondered what was preventing it from producing seeds. If you’re right, something must have triggered it, but just this once.”

“It’s all about energy.” Princess Honeypea is standing in the doorway.

“Temporal energy?” Storm guesses.

“It metabolizes lots of different forms of energy, including temporal, yes. It typically uses it to produce its leaves, flowers, sap, and virgin fruit, but it doesn’t have enough to make a seed, and didn’t have any reason to until today. When the bad guys broke the dimensional barrier down, the energy that Pinesong usually channeled to keep it up was all pulled into the earth at the same time. This gave the Magnolia a surge of power, which it used to produce a miracle. Like you said, just this one time. It was a last ditch effort to survive.”

Killjlir turns away from them. “I was its only hope, and I failed.”

Honeypea smiles and lifts the clear casing of the pod. She gently rolls Killjlir back over by their shoulder. “You were only a distraction.” She takes the fruit from Storm’s hand. “I can go back to that moment, and fulfill the task just before the fire overwhelms this world.”

Storm snatches it right back. “No. It’s too dangerous. There are ways that we can rebuild. We won’t allow visitors this time. At all. The magnolia was only one tree out of the many thousands of specimens that we’ve saved over the ages. Saving it would accomplish hardly anything.”

Ingrid takes the fruit this time. “It’s the only one that hasn’t already been saved,” she insists. “The rest are out there.” She makes a general gesture towards the surface. “The tree showed us as much. This whole world is lush with your vegetation, untamed and breathtaking. You’ve just never seen it before.”

Storm studies Ingrid’s face for signs of deception. Then she looks over at Honeypea, who shrugs. “I didn’t know. If this is true, Pinesong’s barrier was always thinner than we knew. Maybe he did it on purpose.”

“I did,” Pinesong confirms after they call him in, and bring him up to speed. “I made the barrier weak so seeds could and would travel through it. It’s actually structured to facilitate the right wind currents. That’s also why I insisted on including the birds and the bees, so they could propagate certain specimens in their own way. I regret it now, though. The walls would have held had I made them stronger.”

“Those defilers would have broken through eventually,” Ingrid believes. “And we would have been left with nothing. You saved all the beauty. It was the right call.”

“I just can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” Storm says to her husband.

“You were so focused on a structured system. I just didn’t want to contain life like that, and I was afraid you would force me to change it. I’m sorry.”

“We’re time travelers,” Princess Honeypea begins. “Maybe what you did in the past was caused by it being necessary in the future. Maybe it was always going to end like this.”

“Then it’s my responsibility.” Pinesong takes the fruit from Ingrid. “I’ll go back and find the magnolia seed.”

“How many can go?” Ingrid questions.

“Only one,” Storm answers.

“No, this is a big one. It could carry two,” Honeypea determines.

“In that case, whoever goes, I’m going with,” Ingrid decides. “They’ll need protection, and it won’t hurt to have a second set of eyes on the seed. Once we do get it, it doesn’t mean the day is saved. We’ll have to find a place to plant it way out there.”

“Then it has to be Onyx,” Honeypea suggests. “He’ll know exactly where it needs to go. Assuming there is water out there?” she asks her brother specifically.

“Yeah, there’s even another confluence,” Pinesong replies, “though it’s only three rivers, not eleven. I don’t know if that’s where it would belong, though, or what.”

“That’s why it’s gotta be him,” Honeypea reiterates about Onyx.

Storm considers the options. They could go through with this and risk the timeline, as well as their own lives, or they could cut their losses, and leave the magnolia in the past. This won’t be an easy decision, so she decides to not make it right away. She orders everyone to go to bed while she stores the fruit and the branch it was once attached to somewhere safe, and secret.

It’s not secret enough for Ingrid, however. After some time has passed, she finds the hidden trapdoor, climbs down the ladder, and looks around for the specific hiding place. The room is full of all sorts of treasure. That’s literal. Gold, diamonds, and other precious jewels are strewn about like a dragon’s keep.

Before she can locate the safe, or wherever the fruit may be, she hears Onyx’s voice behind her from the shadows. “It’s not what you think.” He slowly steps into the light, holding his arms behind his back. “We’re not hoarders, and we’re not greedy. This stuff is meaningless to us.”

“Where does it come from?” Ingrid asks.

He breathes deeply as he’s hunting for the right words. “It grows here.”

“Come again?”

“I wasn’t here yet when Storm and Pinesong had the idea to build this world in the first place. They were on their own, and trying to do everything. His pocket dimension could only be so big, and she struggled to figure out where to plant the specimens. But apparently, these little trinkets have always come through since Piney’s sister came on board. You see, transplanting a plant is difficult on its own. Combine that with the need to transport it into a pocket dimension that’s inside a parallel dimension, and you’re just asking for something to go wrong. The Princess solved their problems, but this new method that she uses has a side effect. It attracts gold. Not raw gold, though, but forged pieces. She either doesn’t know why, or refuses to explain. That’s why she changed her first name to Princess. She thought it was fitting and funny. We toss it down here when we find a piece on the ground, because what else are we gonna do with it? Every item comes from a now defunct timeline. Putting it back in the real world would just flood the market, and as I said, it is of no use to us.”

“It is of no use to me either,” Ingrid agrees. “I’m here for something else.”

He swings a hand around to his front, revealing that he’s been holding the last surviving fruit of the magical memory magnolia tree. “Storm is out of her element. She’s just lost everything that she dedicated her life to preserving. She’s never gonna be happy with any decision she makes moving forward. Trust me, she wants us to make it for her.”

“What do we do?”

Onyx flashes those pearly whites, and swings his other arm around to toss her the branch that the fruit came with. He cups the fruit in both hands now, and tears it apart down the middle, handing one half to Ingrid. “Pop it in your mouth, and start chewing.”

She lifts up her half in customary celebration. “May all fall into your gravity well, but only your enemies hit the ground.” She stuffs it in and bites down. The flesh is spicy and bitter, and not juicy. She can feel the fibers shoot out as the fruits are crushed between her teeth. They crawl down her windpipe and her gullet alike. The tips puncture the tissue, and spread into every system—nervous, muscular; everywhere. An energy surges from them, and across every surface of her body, inside and out. Her skin glows blue, as does Onyx’s. The light that they’re both emanating sweeps out into the room, and when it fades away, they find themselves on Magnolia Island. They were aiming for the back of the tree, so Killjlir and Andrei wouldn’t spot them, but it doesn’t matter. All of the gold and jewels were spirited away with them. The treasures clatter and clank as they knock each other down the hill, into the water. The question now is, was this all predetermined, or have they just changed the timeline?

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Microstory 2363: Vacuus, August 9, 2179

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Dear Pascal,

I relate to your situation of not having access to certain foods. I’ve never had a simple apple before, nor any other tree fruits or roots. We only use vertical farming as of yet, but there’s a whole team dedicated to figuring out how to grow in Vacuan soil. I guess I shouldn’t say that they’re figuring anything out. They know exactly what they need to do, but it’s a massive undertaking, and they have to play the long game. I never told either of you, but we actually have our own domes! They’re much smaller, and not for habitation, though. They basically installed giant space heaters to thaw the frozen regolith. I think they’ve stuck warming pipes into the ground too, but it’s not my area of expertise, so don’t quote me on that. The ground is well thawed by now, but the soil is still not ready for crops. It’s really gross, but this is where pretty much all of our human waste goes. We used to use some of it for radiation shielding in our habitats, but we almost exclusively use a special fungus for that instead now, though that does feed on our waste. The majority of it is tilled into our new soil, so organic matter can provide nutrients to our future plants. They estimate that it’s going to be another few years before we can try root vegetables, and a whole decade before the fruit trees grow to maturity. We obviously took all sorts of seeds with us when we came here 37 years ago, even though we didn’t know what the environmental conditions would be like here, and I can’t wait until we get to use the ones that we’ve just been sitting on this whole time. Tell me what an apple is like. It kind of looks like a tomato, but the books don’t really describe the difference in taste. As far as our correspondence goes, I’m happy with whatever you feel comfortable saying, and with however often you want to send a letter. Just write to me when it strikes you. Condor and I have a weekly thing going, but I don’t think we have to force the same schedule just for the sake of it. I don’t blame you anymore, but I’m still hurt by this whole thing, and I find it easier to converse with someone regularly who I know had nothing to do with it at all.

Eat an apple for me, if you can find one,

Corinthia

Microstory 2361: Earth, August 1, 2179

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Dear Corinthia,

It’s Pascal again. Thank you for being so patient with me. It is now August 1, and communication restrictions have finally been lifted. It was such horrible timing. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job, and it’s very rewarding, but it does come with downsides. I hope it’s okay that I’m writing you now. I know that your connection to your brother has only gotten stronger since my first letter, which was my last one. So if you only want me to speak when spoken to, that’s totally fine. I want you to drive this relationship, or even decide whether it is a relationship, or not. I won’t take up too much of your time until you decide, but allow me to give you a few updates on what I’ve been up to. Our deal with the Australian dome has been a great success. Since we live on the ocean, we’ve gotten pretty good at using our resources sustainably, but we still have to trade with land-based regions more than they have to trade with each other. We have less space here for such infrastructure, and we’re not equipped to handle certain crops. Everyone has vertical farming now, but so many fruits and vegetables can’t be grown in these tight, efficient environments very well. We grow tomatoes and herbs just fine. Lettuce and green beans? We got those. But we have no way of planting trees, and even if we did, they have not had enough time to grow to maturity since we were established. So many others just don’t work with the techniques that we are limited to using in the confined spaces on this boat. We can’t exactly carry tons and tons of dirt over the sea. It is for these reasons that we lack fruits like apples and peaches, sprawling plants like pumpkins and cucumbers, and roots like potatoes and carrots. In exchange for some of their food, we agreed to take a number of immigrants on board. Since we’re so new, we still have plenty of space to grow as a human population. Others are running low. The funny thing is, as helpful as it is to the Australian dome for us to take those people, it’s actually good for us too, because that is what we need. We want to establish our own nation, and to do that, we need citizens. That’s probably why it’s gone so smoothly, because we’re all winners here. All right, I’ve taken enough of your time already. Just get back to me when you can. I understand that you’re busy.

With affection,

Pascal

The Fourth Quadrant: Hard as a Rock (Part I)

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In the beginning, there was one gargoyle named Oliver Spout. But then his pattern spread to three others. For the four of them, every day at sunrise, their bodies would slip into a stasis bubble, which essentially sent them forwards in time however long was necessary to reach sunset. For the rest of the world, hours would pass, but for them, only seconds. The length of daylight shifted throughout the year, so they always hated winter more than summer. Things got a bit wonky when their, Kansas City, was copied into the Fourth Quadrant parallel reality, leaving two of them on the original nighttime schedule, while the other two ended up only experiencing daytime. They eventually became the Presidents and Vice Presidents of this new world, sharing responsibilities across the diurnal cycle. Half a century ago, a team of heroes came to their reality, and gave them the technology they would need to break out of their patterns. Their consciousnesses were transferred to new clone bodies, freeing them to live at all times of the day. It was after this that Andrei was born to Skyler Spout and Kostya Orlov.

They all assumed that Andrei would be born completely normal. After all, he was the product of two clones whose pattern had been supposedly successfully stripped of them after they were downloaded into new bodies. Unfortunately, some of his mother’s gargoyleness seems to have been hardcoded into her DNA. While she never fell back onto her old pattern, Andrei grew up to experience one of his own. He has some choice in the matter, but not always. While his family’s perceptions of time were being slowed down to a fraction of a fraction of a percentage of what it should be, his perception is altered by a very minute amount. It only slows him down to about 99% of realtime. But during this time, Andrei is as hard as a rock. He can’t move, he can’t be moved, and if he’s not lying down when it happens, he’ll become incredibly fatigued while he’s waiting to return to the fray. Unless someone is there to help him out.

Selma Eriksen is the Vice President of the Fourth Quadrant Earth. After Princess Honeypea transports them from their neighbor’s penthouse on a planet called Hockstep, she looks over to find that Andrei has become stuck in one of his bubbles again. This can happen when he travels to a new world, but not always. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to predict when he’ll get stuck, or for how long. They’re standing on the manicured grass next to a fast-moving stream or river. Boats are tied to the bank, but she doesn’t know what kind they are. They kind of look like old, wooden motorboats, except there’s no motor. They’re surrounded by flowering plants, non-flowering plants, shrubs, and short trees. From what they’ve been told, this is a nature preserve of some kind, so this whole place could be designed with intentional obsolescence to protect the wildlife. “Nuadu, can you help me?” Selma requests.

“What’s wrong with him?” Nuadu asks.

“He’s stuck in a bubble. It’s not good for him to be standing up like this.”

“Put him in one of the broads,” Honeypea offers. “I thought you might like to take the scenic route to the Citrus Inn. I didn’t know this would happen to him.”

“Why would we go to an inn?” Cosette questions. “We’re not staying.” 

“You’re not speaking with the Magnolia until he’s ready...and he’s not ready,” Honeypea explains. “Everyone into the broadfloats. Four per. One on each needs to steer the rudder in the back. It’s pretty intuitive.”

Selma and Nuadu lay Andrei down on the floor of the boat. Since he can’t sit up, no one else joins them. Selma keeps an eye on him while Naudu steers. The steering section is raised up a little, so he can see where they’re going while still seated on his little perch. The river takes them in the right direction, but he has to navigate around rocks, limbs, and little whirlpools. The two rows of seats before him could probably fit six additional people total, but there may be a weight issue. If this thing has a rudder, it can’t sit too deep in the water.

The inn is wooden and rustic, with no electricity, but it at least has running water. It has no apparent means of climate control, but no one feels that this is necessary. The whole world seems to be sitting at the perfect temperature. The beds are simple in design too, but the mattresses are modern and comfortable. They’re not animals. Princess Honeypea tells everyone to get settled, because it could be a while. The Pryce Tree is a unique lifeform, the origins of which no one here knows much about. Trying to understand his motivations and sense of time would be a waste of their time. Fortunately, they have been assured that they are not wasting it just by being here. The garden is located, not only in another spatial dimension, but also temporal. They should be able to pick up right where they left off when they return to the Sixth Key.

Selma wishes they could have just spent a few nights here before, back when they were being isolated to protect the timeline, and then gone back several months later after the danger had passed. No one else is bringing that up, though, so she’s not going to rock the boat. Something strange is going on here. The magical tree’s power is awe-inspiring, and if there’s some other entity out there that rivals its might, that could be a real bad thing, and they could be in real big trouble, as could all of reality. They just have to hope that something can be done about it.

They reluctantly retire to their respective new rooms, and try to get some sleep. Selma is sharing one with Andrei. He doesn’t like to come out of his time bubble alone. It’s not typically she who has to wait on him, but she’s all he has right now. His relationship with Ayata is still too new for them to spend the night together, even though there’s nothing romantic going on here at any rate as Selma chose this particular room for its two beds. When she wakes up to use the restroom, she passes by him again, and sees that the bubble popped at some point, but he’s still asleep. If he’s in the right position, he can sleep while he’s in there, but it’s reportedly agitating, and he prefers to be able to change positions, and get comfortable. She takes care of business, then goes back to bed, waking up with the eastern sun a few hours later.

Andrei is hovering over her with a cup of tea. “Get any rest?”

She’s still groggy. “I should be asking you that.”

“The answer’s yes. Thanks for taking care of me. I should have liked to see the sights on the way down the river, though.”

“I’ll remember that next time,” Selma replies. They have a decent rapport, but they actually don’t know each other all that well. In the Fourth Quadrant, the President and Vice President run for office separately, and once the election is over, they operate independently, living and working on distant islands. This is done for practical reasons. If something should happen to the President, the VP shouldn’t be there to suffer the same fate. The whole point is that she’s the backup. This is the most time they’ve ever spent together.

Andrei takes a sip. “The princess thinks that the tree’s about to talk. Best get dressed, and grab something to eat. They have citrus here.” Citrus didn’t exist in their reality, and that’s because it didn’t start out as a full-fledged reality of its own. It was a pocket dimension at first, and citrus fruits can’t travel between the dimensions. All the lemons, limes, and oranges exploded every time a new region was expelled to it, both on the trees, and elsewhere. Grocery stores were a mess. That was their biggest concern when they were negotiating for their interests during the Rock Meetings. The other civilizations had citrus because they were really just from another timeline that ran concurrently with the main sequence. Selma and Andrei were not super satisfied with the results, but they had little to offer their opponents. But if there’s a way to get what they need from here, without the help of the rest of the Sixth Key, they might end up in a better position moving forward.

Selma gets up and dressed in a tunic that she found in one of the dresser drawers. Wearing it isn’t a requirement, but most everyone else in the group made the same decision, because they’re soft and convenient. General Medley is still wearing his IMS. He says it’s versatile, but it looks restricting and itchy. She’s never worn one before. Again, the Fourth Quadrant was once only a collection of pocket dimensions. By the time it was upgraded to full reality status, space travel was too much trouble with no projected rewards.

While Selma and Andrei, and a few others, are still eating breakfast, Princess Honeypea walks into the communal area. “The Magnolia will see you now. I will escort you upriver to the Confluence.”

“Can those broadfloat things do that?” Kalea Akopa of the Parallel asks.

“We’ll take the airboats,” the princess clarifies.

They climb in, and speed back up the river, past where they first appeared, and into what has to be what Honeypea was talking about. It’s this big open area of water, where even from their low vantage point, they can see other rivers moving off in other directions. In the center is an island of roots underneath a giant tree. They really weren’t kidding when they kept calling him that. They have only ever seen him in his human form. Mysterious blue glowing fruits are hanging down from the blue leafed branches. At the base is a gravestone where monarch butterflies are fluttering about. They stop by a flat and level part of the arboreal island, and step out one by one.

As soon as the last person gets out, the boat drives away on its own, and the human form of the Magnolia appears. Tamerlane Pryce wasn’t a good guy when he was just a regular person, but this is just what the tree chooses to look like, for whatever reason. It’s not really him, though...not anymore. They were never given a whole lot of details. He steps forward. “I apologize for the delay, but I was seeking information. I know what our issue is now, but I don’t know how to solve it.”

“Is season two of our unauthorized reality show moving forward?” Andrei asks.

“I hope not,” Pryce replies, “but as it stands, I can’t stop it.”

“Who’s doing this to us?” Cosette demands to know.

“She calls herself The First Explorer. She claims to have witnessed the big bang, and while she did so through some form of time travel, I believe that she sees herself as the first being to exist in the whole universe. This universe, that is; not Fort Underhill.”

“What does she want?” Selma presses.

Pryce Tree takes a moment to respond. “She’s convinced that she’s at war with Fort Underhill and the Sixth Key. She perceives you as a threat. She’s more powerful than I am, I’ll admit that...but she’s not more powerful than me and The Nucleus.”

“The Nucleus is a place, not a person,” Nuadu insists.

“That’s what you think.” Pryce sighs. “Still, we won’t be able to do this alone. We need human agents to accomplish some of our goals. Any volunteers?”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 4, 2486

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After Mateo and Ramses returned to Castledome, the latter hopped into their ship to run diagnostics on the slingdrive. Following careful examination and thought, he decided that it was not a good idea for them to try to jump again today. The good news was that they didn’t have to wait an entire year to begin the sidequest. Mateo’s daughters were capable of operating it on their own. They were going to have to learn sometime, and obviously all the systems were automated. While Ramses was spending time showing them the ropes, Mateo and Leona put their heads together to draw up a list of everyone they wanted to live here on Castlebourne with them. Darko Matic was first on the list. According to Dalton Hawk’s claims a while back, Darko’s last known location was the top of Monte Albán step pyramid in Mexico. This was where Dalton was killed, leading him to ending up in the afterlife simulation. Assuming there was no delay between his final moment on Earth, and his arrival in the simulation, this occurred in the year 2400.

While the team was gone, Kivi, Dubravka, and Romana took the Vellani Ambassador 85 years in the past to retrieve Uncle Darko. It was he who came up with the collective term of Kadiar, as that was the spelled out form of their first name initials as an acronym. They seemed to like it. Team Kadiar. Tertius was a part of their team too, but didn’t seem to mind being left out of the name. He wasn’t the only one to not be included, though everyone else’s role in this new operation hadn’t yet been fully fleshed out. Some would join the away team for the refugee missions, while others would remain on Castlebourne to work those refugees through orientation, and make sure they had everything they needed, as well as maintain some level of order as hosts.

Team Kadiar’s first stop after Darko was Baudin Murdoch’s architectural firm. His power would be invaluable on this world, speeding up construction on every dome by orders of magnitude. He agreed to the job with very little convincing. Over the course of the next year, more people were recruited to live on this world. This included Mateo’s once-mother Aura, and her husband, Samsonite, along with family friend, Téa. Ace and Paige came with a non-dead version of Serkan Demir. Kivi asked to bring in a version of Lincoln who didn’t literally know everything about everything. Next came Mateo’s once-father, Mario, and his wife, Angelita Prieto. They hoped to reunite with their daughter, Brooke, but she was off doing her own thing. She might show up later, once things were settled with the Exin Empire and the Ex Wars. Several other people agreed to live here too, like Kallias Bran and Aeolia Sarai. Lastly, they found a few less likely allies in Ida Reyer, Jericho Hagen, and Jesimula Utkin. Team Kadiar reportedly spoke with many others who didn’t have any interest in joining, or had too much work to do elsewhere, like Quivira Boyce and her team of time fixers, and the members of the Interagency Alliance Commission, which operated primarily around the turn of the 21st century. At some point during this, too, Dubra intentionally crossed her own timeline, and stole some DNA for a new clone body. It didn’t sound like that big of a deal.

There was one more major recruit on the list, and now that Team Matic was back, it was up to them to complete the mission, as the Matic girls were still too untrained to handle it on their own. Mirage was still presumably in enemy territory in the Goldilocks Corridor with Niobe Schur. Everyone was getting ready to go. They were checking their IMS and PRU systems. They were running a preflight check on the Ambassador. The hot pocket didn’t have much trapped heat, but it was purged anyway, so it could be as empty as possible. Mateo was looking for leaks in his helmet. Onboard diagnostics were capable of detecting such things, but as a point of redundancy, it was prudent to also have an external means of confirming the safety of the suit using an unsynced tester.

“You’re not going,” Leona told him.

“What?”

“You’re staying here.”

“You think you need to protect me?” Mateo question.

“No, of course not. Your daughters get one day a year with you. You can’t waste that time.”

“I’m on a different team,” he began. “I encouraged her to form her team, but I still need to stay with you.”

“I appreciate how you feel, but whether she says it or not, she needs you.” He had three daughters, but Leona was referring specifically to Romana, who was the youngest, and perhaps most vulnerable right now. “Ramses is staying too, for his work.”

“Have you talked to her about this?” he asked.

“No.”

“Good. I need to show you something.” He held out a hand, and when she took it, teleported them both to a farming dome. This wasn’t, strictly speaking, necessary when vertical farming had long ago replaced traditional methods, but Hrockas put a lot of effort into transporting live organisms on an arkship, and he didn’t want to waste it. Arkships were very rare vessels designed to store tons of organic material, such as seeds, and flora and fauna DNA. They were meant to seed life on other worlds, but the government didn’t just hand them out to anyone who bothered to fill out an application. It wasn’t even clear whether a single other one had ever been launched as the ethics of them proved to be the most complex and divisive of all. It was pretty insane that Hrockas managed to get one. He must have been able to prove that this rock was otherwise completely inorganic.

“This is nice. Come here often?” Leona asked in half sincerity.

They were standing by a tall fence, which was an even funnier thing to have here since there was no such thing as trespassers, or animals that needed to be kept penned in. Mateo had strung a bunch of different types of fruits from the top rail. A couple of them had apparently burst open, and there was fruit splattered on the wood and ground. “I was just practicing, and wanted my new abilities to be a surprise, but I guess you’re gonna need an early demonstration.”

“What new abilities?”

“Not really new, we just haven’t really been talking about it.” Mateo put his hands together in front of his chest in an unusual configuration. He then split them apart, leaving his left hand out where it was while pulling his right back towards him. A holographic arrow materialized between them, clarifying that he had been pretending to string it on a bow. He looked over at his wife, and winked. Then he let go of the imaginary arrow, and sent it flying towards the fruit. It struck a passion fruit, which burst open, and splattered all over.

She was shocked. “How did you do that?”

“I think I have that figured out.” He sauntered towards the fence, and pulled what remained of the passion fruit from its string. He tossed it over to her, so she could feel that it was real. “It took me a while, but then I remembered. The timonite.”

“You still have timonite in your system?”

“I don’t know, but it was definitely on my hands, which is why a lemon would explode if I ever tried to pick it up.”

“Yeah, I remember you doing that for fun in the Third Rail. We got that fixed.”

“Exactly,” Mateo agreed. “A god gave me telekinesis. I haven’t touched a single thing with my bare hands in months.”

“Oh, right. That was telekinesis.” She shook her head. “Wait, no, those were different hands. We transferred your consciousness to a new substrate. That body is gone. You shouldn’t have that anymore.”

He shrugged. “I guess it transferred too. I don’t know how telekinesis works. Do you?”

“No,” she admitted. “It’s not a time power as far as I can figure.”

He started talking with his hands. “I think it...integrated with my illusion powers, and created something new. We were wondering what my specialty was. Olimpia is better at invisibility. Marie is better at impersonation. This is my thing. I can make solid holograms.”

She shook her head again. “The god guy said that it was just really close to your hands. You weren’t meant to do anything at that great of a distance.”

“It mutated,” Mateo decided. “Again, we don’t know how it works. But it’s the best explanation. I’m not that strong right now, but with more practice, I might be able to create a giant fist, and smash into that fence. I’m Ms. Marvel!”

“Maybe in the movies, not the comics.”

“Well, our ship is named after the movie version, so...”

“Why are you showing me this? I mean, I’m glad I know now, and I wish you had told me sooner, but what does this have to do with the mission?”

“Leona, I can make an impenetrable force field for the VA out of light. I have an endless supply of missiles that I could send to an enemy.”

“Oh, hold on. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You literally just said that you need more practice, and if the arrow is the best you can do right now, I believe it. I’m not sending you out with this. I have half a mind to try to figure out how to suppress your pattern, so you can spend the next 365 days training with Prince Darko.”

“We need Mirage back,” Mateo reasoned. “I’m your best chance of getting her back safely. You need me.”

“This is a stealth mission,” she contended. “We’re going to be invisible. No one from the Exin Empire should know that we were ever there. I don’t even want our allies to know that we were there, save for Mirage herself. We are not ready for an assault. You’re not just unpracticed, you’re a liability. I was willing to discuss you coming along, and even bringing your daughters, but you just made the decision for me. You’re grounded until further notice.”

“You’re grounding me?” he questioned. “Like a child?”

“No, like a sky jockey.” She sighed. “Show this to Dubra. She has experience with lots of powers. We don’t have time to argue, and I’m not interested in your complaints. We’re going to get Mirage without you. I have spoken.”

He didn’t want to get into a real fight either, especially since he would definitely lose. She was the Captain, and her face certainly showed that she was giving him an order in that capacity, instead of as his wife and partner. He nodded respectfully. “We can maintain contact with the quantum messenger on the Ambassador, right?”

“We’ll be technically reachable, yes, but I want you to stay busy. They just opened a new scenic train in one of the domes. Right now, the landscapes are all computer-generated holograms, but I still hear it’s nice. It goes around the entire circumference of the dome, from a few kilometers above. So it takes about four hours to go from start to finish. Why don’t you get to know the girls there? You could have a nice lunch, talk about your hopes and dreams...”

“You can’t force this, Leona.”

“You can’t get anywhere with them if you don’t try.”

“So your suggestion is for us to ride around in a circle?”

“Very funny.” She paused. “It has slanted windows. You can look right down at the geographic features.”

“The fake features,” he pointed out.

“The topography is already there. That’s why Hrockas chose that spot on this planet, because it’s more textured than other regions. They just need to paraterraform it, which will take some time. The holograms are a stopgap.”

“You’re a stopgap,” he muttered under his breath, actually like a child.

“What was that?”

“I said were I you,” he lied.

“Yeah, that’s what I heard,” she lied back. She lowered him down by the shoulders, and kissed him on the forehead. “Qapla’!” She disappeared.

Mateo took only one moment to look back at his hanging fruit, and contemplate what he might do to accelerate his own training. By the time he teleported back to Castledome, the Vellani Ambassador was gone. It would never return.

He tried to call them on their comms disc, which were synced through a quantum connection to increase the range, but no one responded. They were probably too busy to deal with his incessant nagging. He reached out to Romana instead, who said that she was in Dojodome. It wasn’t just one big dome with thousands of dojos. It was modeled on Japanese architecture in general, so there were also ponds, gardens, and empty spaces. This was one of the big problems with the whole one dome per theme concept. A lot of themes just weren’t grand enough in scope to take up the whole 1.3 million acre area. Your only choices at that point, really, would be copying and pasting the same structures over and over again, or just leaving some of it as unused desert.

“Are you guys training?” he asked once he had teleported to Dojodome.

“Yeah, it’s scheduled as a solo day,” Romana answered, “so we each do our own thing. It’s how Uncle Prince Darko gets his breaks.”

“Do you really call him that?” he laughed.

“L-O-L, sometimes, he doesn’t like it. Hey, I thought you were going off to the Goldilocks Corridor. We said our good lucks at breakfast.”

“That’s what I thought too,” Mateo said, “but Leona kicked me out. She was right, they don’t need me out there. I want to spend it with you three, if you’re not too busy.”

“No, this is a perfect time. I was just gonna go for an extra run.” She fiddled with her armband. “It looks like Dubra’s at the South Pole at the moment, probably for a swim. And Kivi’s in...where is that? She’s on the move. Oh, that’s probably the Terminator Track. Ooo, I bet she’s on a date with Lincoln. I don’t have his location ID, but I’m sure he’s there too.”

“What’s the Terminator Track?” he asked.

“The pod’s speed is based on the rotation of Castlebourne in order to maintain a fixed position relative to the sun at that latitude. I think there are four pods. One is in perpetual sunset, and another at sunrise. The other two are in daylight, and nighttime...or is it twilight? Maybe there are five. I can’t remember, but they follow each other on the track.”

“Hrockas really thought of everything, huh?”

“I’ve helped,” Romana bragged, “but yeah, he pretty much had the big picture painted before I got here.”

Mateo took Romana’s arm to look at the little dots that indicated where all of Romana’s friends were currently located on the satnav, paying special attention to Kivi’s and Dubra’s. “I’ll let you do what you were planning on doing, and let the others do the same. But can we agree to meet one year and one day from now?”

Romana thought about it for half a moment, debating in her head whether she would try to make her sisters accommodate a daddy-daughters date this year. Having come to a decision, she nodded once, and said, “okay. What are you gonna do today instead?”

Mateo looked around the dojo, eventually zeroing in on a wooden dummy on the other side of the room. Drawing inspiration from his own comment from earlier, he reached his arm back, and shoved it in the air towards the dummy. A hologram of his fist flew away from him, as the arrow had before. It crashed into the training apparatus, bursting it apart. He smiled and admired his own work. “I have some training of my own to do.”

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