The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 3, 2399

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Leona asked Alyssa for help with a new special project, and told her about how someone had stolen every weapon from the Parallel, at which point Alyssa admitted that she was involved in the major heist, at the behest of Aldona, who was apparently trying to prevent the devastating Reality Wars of the future. She evidently didn’t think that the Parallel would be able to retaliate against this clear act of aggression, but she was wrong. There is no such thing as a ship without any weapons, for the ship itself is a weapon. At high enough speeds, any object can wreak havoc on another, and according to Parallel!Ramses, that is precisely what an army of angry militants are intending to do. They will be here tomorrow.

“I’m sorry,” Aldona says. “We had it all planned out. This was supposed to save us. There’s more than one reason it took me as long as it did to carry out that mission. We didn’t think they would be able to find me, and even if they did, we didn’t think they could amass a contingency that fast, and even if they did, they’re aware of the Reconvergence as well, and we assumed they would be too busy preparing for that.”

“Who is we?” Leona asks. “Who are you working with?”

Aldona shakes her head. “You don’t know them. They weren’t originally in the time traveling world. We got together because we thought we could change things.”

“Change things, you did,” Leona notes. “Our orbital defense grid. How close is it to being finished?”

“It’s finished, as is the one here in the Fourth Quadrant” Aldona says. “But neither would be enough. It can’t handle the onslaught that Mister Abdulrashid is claiming to be headed to the Third Rail. I really am sorry.” She means it.

“However big their fleet is, we’ll just have to be twice as big,” Leona says, looking at Alyssa as if she can do anything to help this situation.

Alyssa nods, but only because she’s listening intently, and expecting Leona to elaborate on her plan. She doesn’t actually know how they’ll accomplish such a thing. “Wait, me? Am I meant to do something? Oh, I have no idea. Where do you get an army on such short notice? Can the main sequence help us?”

“No, the two of us can,” Leona tells her, just as vague about it as before.

“I don’t understand.”

“We don’t have an army, but we can make it look like we do. We’ll make it seem as though all of their efforts will be futile. I’ve seen it done on TV before.”

Long pause. Alyssa is half-grimacing. “We don't have enough power between us to pull that off.”

“'We don’t draw temporal energy from ourselves; we draw it from other sources, and what does this world happen to have a whole hell of a lot of right now?” Leona poses. They may even be able to siphon the temporal energy from all the new people.

“That’s a crazy idea,” Aldona says, hoping this doesn’t make Leona more mad.

The truth is, Leona isn’t all that mad. They did what they thought they had to do to make the universe safer. They didn’t have all the variables. No one but someone like Bhulan Cargill can see the timeline branches like that, and she’s had every chance to use her powers for good, but she’s wasted most of them. Leona also wants the Reality Wars to be stopped before they begin. They’ll get through this. Leona’s plan is crazy, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work.

“It won’t work.” A young woman is approaching from inside the Kansas City bubble. Voices don’t normally pass through the dimensional barrier, but for her, it’s like it’s not even there. She proves as much when she steps through it without issue. “Hello, all, my name is Kyra Torosia. I’m glad to finally be meeting you, Mrs. Matic. You and your husband played a significant role in the history of my planet.”

“Durus,” Leona acknowledges. “How did you get it changed?”

Kyra laughs. “Most of the residents escaped to Dardius when Durus was finally deemed uninhabitable. Time powers were gone, and there seemed to be no hope. But a few of us stayed. A Nexus explosion imbued me with a great and terrible power. I have been fighting many wars on many fronts ever since. This is only my latest. Your plan is very creative, and I commend you on that, but I have a better one.”

“I sure hope so,” Aldona begins, “because if we can’t find a way to save every single Third Railer, I won’t be able to live with myself.”

Kyra nods. She’s very regal for her age, probably as the result of being treated like a god by whoever renamed a whole planet after her. Not that she doesn’t deserve it; what does Leona know about it? Kyra smiles at the small group. “How would you feel about initiating a little convergence of our own?”

“How would we do that?” Alyssa questions.

Kyra breathes in. “You’ve heard that I belong to a bloodline of Keys, but have you ever considered why the bloodline has anything to do with anything? Sure, any child of a  Preston is going to be immensely powerful, but Arcadia is not even a Key; she’s the Keyholder. Curtis is a Keyholder too. So why? Why us?”

“Is it because of you?” Leona guesses.

“I can move planets,” Kyra explains. “I can move them through the bulk, and by extension, across realities within a single braine. The Reconvergence will be difficult, and my biggest feat ever, what with the trillions of worlds I’ll be expected to move, but it’s doable, thanks to my family. Transporting your one planet to another reality ahead of schedule is practically nothing compared to that. If there weren’t already another version of Earth here, the residents of Earth!Three wouldn’t even notice.”

“Are we really talking about doing this?” Aldona asks. “Are we going to move the planet? What will the other Keys and Keyholders say about that?”

“They’ll say, thank you...more please,” Kyra replies.

Just then, they hear a rustle in the bushes. A man rounds the bend. Kyra reaches out to help him through the barrier. “Ah, Ansel. Come meet my new friends. Leona, Aldona, Alyssa, this is Ansel Haywood.” Vearden’s father.

“It’s nice to finally meet you, sir.”

“Likewise,” he replies. He seems rather shy.

Another rustle, and then a woman about Kyra’s age appears. “And this is our daughter, Allison. Don’t let our similar ages fool you, she’s my little baby.”

“Mo-om,” Allison complains.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Leona says, “though I’m not sure how accurate Vearden’s stories are, since I’ve known multiple versions of him.”

“Speaking of which,” Kyra goes on, we were all hoping to meet our granddaughter-slash niece. Could you transition us to the Third Rail? I could technically do it myself, but I think I ought to save my energy.”

“Certainly!” Leona agrees. She takes out her device. “Everyone take an arm.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 28, 2398

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Alyssa and Ramses continued to discuss the plan to fake Leona’s death with Arcadia and Vearden. Their live-in guards got in on the conversation too, contributing their experience and expertise as career military servicemen. The National Intelligence Agency has an entire department tasked with faking people’s deaths, usually for witness and turned asset relocation purposes. Their methods usually involve using completely unrelated corpses as proof; they’ve never done anything like this, but they have not been read into the situation anyway, so no one is allowed to reach out to them about it. This is all very ghoulish of them, but they keep reminding themselves, and each other, that it would be a lot worse if they were planning an actual murder. The point is to prevent someone from dying, and if all goes according to plan, no one will get hurt at all.

Here’s what they’re going to do. First, they’re going to transfer Erlendr’s consciousness from the Insulator of Life, into Leona Reaver’s body. Well, first they have to convince him to play along, but assuming that he does, they’re going to equip him with concealed body armor to prevent anyone else from managing to actually hurt him before they get the chance to complete their performance. He’s going to make himself known in a very public space where Leona’s face is sure to be recognized. They will pick a place that is having a parade, or something, so it will be really crowded, and possibly even filmed and streamed. They’ve not chosen any event yet, because they’re not yet certain of their timeline. They may plant operatives in the audience to make sure Erlendr isn’t standing out in the open without anyone noticing.

Their fake bounty hunter—which will be an undercover SD6 specialist—will then begin his or her pursuit. If any other hunters happen to be in the area, other undercovers will run interference against them. The chase won’t last long, or go far, because they want the audience they end up with to be able to see the whole thing. Erlendr will duck into a car, and drive off a little ways before a bomb goes off. This is the trickiest part of the magic trick, because they don’t want anyone else to get hurt, so it has to be highly controlled, and focused, but not so focused that it looks like maybe Erlendr survived it. The timing has to be perfect too, because they can’t allow people to see the Leona Reaver body disappear when fate intervenes, and sends it to the other timeline. Tinted windows will be key, along with maybe a little remote driving.

They have to control for security cameras, audience involvement, and other crazy eventualities, this is not something that they’ll be able to pull off today. That’s probably all right, though, because they want Arcadia’s baby bump to get a little bigger, in case she gets recognized after the thing. That brings them back to the crux of the plan, which is Erlendr’s participation. He has no loyalty to them, so figuring out a decent incentive was the hardest part, and they did need to come up with one, because if they tried to force it on him, he would probably claim to be a twin or triplet in public, and ruin their whole gambit. They think they have a way to go about it, but they’re going to need Arcadia’s help. They don’t really have a Plan B if they can’t get him to cooperate.

“This won’t hurt the baby, right?”

Ramses smiles. “First of all, no, it wouldn’t. But I knew you would be concerned, which is why you’re not going in cerebrally. You’re just going to use these.” He holds up the goggles.

“What does that mean?”

“I’m connecting my brain to the simulation, which will make it feel like I’m really there...except I always turn off my pain receptors. You, on the other hand, will only be able to see what it looks like through regular VR. You won’t feel a thing, but you can pilot your avatar using this controller, if you want.”

“Okay.” She accepts the googles.

“Lyss?” Ramses asks.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want her to be alone in there, even just as an avatar, so I’m going to set myself up first, and then you can push that green button in the corner of the screen to activate her once I’m jacked in, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Then when she gives you the signal, press the purple button.”

“Green button, then purple, got it.”

“Thanks,” he says to her. “Are you ready?” he asks Arcadia.

“I know kung-fu,” Arcadia says casually as she’s wrapping the goggles around her head. She might actually know it for reals.

Erlendr sits up in his cot, and blinks at the lights that have just turned on. They’re not real eyes, just visual coding that’s been programmed to become distressed due to virtual lighting changes to make it feel more real. “What’s this about?”

“Are we having fun yet?” Ramses asks.

“Barrels. What do you want?”

“We would like you to help us save Leona Matic’s life.”

“This oughta be good.”

Ramses and Arcadia go over the plan, altering certain details, so he doesn’t know too much about it yet. He has to agree to help them first, then he gets to know exactly how they’re going to fake his death.

“You want me to knowingly put myself in harm’s way, all for a woman that I couldn’t care less about? What’s in it for me?”

Ramses clicks the button on a little fob. The wall behind him, opposite Erlendr, falls backwards, and lands in the grass. The field of daisies where Bhulan was staying is there. Erlendr could run out and frolic if he wanted to. “This is a sign of good faith. You can live there, instead of in this room. If you don’t agree to help us, we won’t even put you back in here. That’s how important this is to us.”

Erlendr starts to speak in a weird mocking voice, but it’s hard to tell who he’s mocking. “They let you try it free? It must be good!”

Ramses looks quizzically at Arcadia.

“It’s an old television advertisement,” she explains.

“Oh. This isn’t your reward. Like I said, it’s a good faith gesture. Your reward...is this.” He takes a half-step to the side to get out of Arcadia’s way.

She takes off her ruana, and lifts her shirt to reveal the bump on her belly. It’s just a virtual construct, but Ramses built this avatar by scanning Arcadia today, and extrapolating what she would look like if she still had her real body, and it was pregnant, instead of Leona Delaney’s body. “If you don’t help us, you’ll never meet your granddaughter, because she will be killed before she can even be born. Now, Alyssa.” She transforms into the image of her current self, as Leona. “What say you, father?”

Erlendr frowns. “I’ll do it, but your plan sucks, I have...many suggestions.”

Microstory 1877: Obeying Gravity

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I don’t remember where I was when we first put a man on the moon. What I remember is that I made a point not to be near a television or radio. I was a dumb little rebel back then. If normal people were into something, then I had to not be into it. Funny enough, I stayed away from drugs and alcohol for this reason, which is probably the only good choice I made in my youth. Normal people cared about grades, and finding good jobs. It was a long phase, but I finally grew out of it. I still didn’t care about things like the moon landing, but I wish I hadn’t been so eager to avoid it. Of course, I would later be able to watch the footage—and more recently at my leisure—but it just isn’t the same as knowing that millions of others were watching the same thing. Then again, everything I did, including not watching the landing, has led me to this moment. Because of this thing my niece told me about called the Butterfly Effect, I may never have met my future wife, nor had the children that we had, and without them, I wouldn’t have met my first grandchild. She was born in the most unusual circumstances, but not by accident. You see, even before people went to the moon, humans have been trying to live up in outer space. At first just for a little bit, but further missions increased the duration. Part of this research was to study other things about low gravity, but a not insignificant amount of it was to test an organism’s ability to survive under such conditions. Obviously no creature evolved to live this way. We were all designed by nature to exist in this exact atmosphere, with this amount of surface gravity. Some are better in water, and some can even fly, but we’re all the same in this regard. If we want to visit other planets, and other star systems, however, we have to figure out how to adapt. We have to learn.

As of yet, scientists don’t really know what any of that looks like. They have some ideas, but these ideas have to be tested first. We can’t just fly up here, and hope it works out. Can it be done in the first place? What do we have to do to prepare ourselves? Should we create certain habitats, or is there a way to modify our bodies to cope with the atrophy, and other health problems that come with low gravity? All of these questions are being studied on a new mission that my family and I were selected for. Most astronauts have to go through a series of tests, and be in peak physical condition, in order to qualify for even the most modest of missions. Not us. The whole point is to understand how normal people handle low-g. We were each chosen for a number of reasons, but my daughter, her husband, and I are up here to test family dynamics, along with a few other things. For instance, it’s important that scientists know whether people can have children in space, and now we know they can, but what will her physiology be like? Will she be able to go back down to Earth after this mission is over? If so, will she have to acclimate in a certain way? This is a dangerous mission, but we all agreed to it, and I’m proud to be a part of something so vital to the future of our species. Not every person, and not every country, is on board with this, but my nation has a space program of their own, and they didn’t need anyone else’s permission. As morbid as it may sound—and as unethical as you may consider it—our team believes it’s important for us to get these answers under controlled experiments, rather than experience them as surprises. Until today, many have died in the attempt to travel to space, but I’m honored to be the first ever to pass on while already all the way up here. The last thing I see will be a great thing of beauty.