The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 2 EXT

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For a year, the Ambassador stayed in a relatively low orbit around Ex-001, monitoring its developments on the surface. It occasionally flew off to expel its waste heat from the hot pocket on the other side of the host star to avoid detection, but then it flew right back to continue collecting data. There was no indication that either Bronach or Elder was aware of its presence overhead, so the invisibility protocols were holding. It didn’t hurt that it automatically relaxed them while it was on the other side of the planet, and that the ground inhabitants hadn’t bothered deploying any sort of satellite of their own. Oaksent probably believed that there was basically no way that anyone else could be around this far out in the galaxy, this far back in time. Which was ridiculous, because if they were able to travel here from the future, so could anyone else.

When the team came back, Leona and Ramses started skimming the data. The forefathers of this budding civilization were doing exactly what could be reasonably expected of them, but also a few unexpected things. They were staying within the confines of the geodesic dome despite the fact that the planet was habitable, evidently out of an abundance of caution, and so that their business could be taken care of in a controlled environment. They may have gotten the idea to do this from Dubai on Earth, which adopted this lifestyle back in the late 21st century. It became an isolate, determined to maintain its outdated and violent societal norms against a backdrop of global progress. The population dwindled over time, but the dome was still there the last time anyone checked. Here, in the seed of civilization for the Exin Empire, the population was expected to survive, and eventually expand. Should they let it happen?

The two of them had selected 147 people for the first generation, gestating each one about thirty times faster than normal until they were all in their teens. Not being the fatherly type, they used androids to raise these rapidly grown individuals from then on. They taught them everything a good group of indoctrinated slaves needed to know. Math, Science, Language, Physical Fitness; these were all on the schedule, but at their most basic levels, and history was nowhere to be found. They didn’t teach them anything about where they came from, and they steered clear of philosophy and ethics. It was no one’s job to question authority. There was only Bronach’s word, and their obedience.

Elder was reportedly under duress the entire time, though he seemingly grew tired of feeling the defiance in his heart so strongly. He fell into a routine, and just did whatever he was told, like it wasn’t even him anymore, but an automaton with no free will. If Team Matic was going to put a stop to this, rescuing the one person who Bronach needed to keep his plans moving forward was likely their best option. Elder didn’t want any of this, but Bronach wasn’t smart enough to do it on his own. If they were to take that tool away, what would he be left with? Then again, what would the consequences be for the team interfering in any form, let alone in such a monumental way? This wasn’t the first time they had changed the past, but it would probably be the biggest, and the hardest to predict. But also, what did it really matter at this point? Things already had changed, just by them coming here in the first place. The timeline was already new. There was no going back to the old one, unless maybe if they happened to run into Dilara. This was the earliest in the timeline they had ever been to, except when they were in The Constant during its early days. Was that the solution? Contacting Danica?

“Danica and the Constant are 16,000 light years away,” Leona reminded Olimpia.

“That’s nothing,” Olimpia replied. “We could just take the slingdrive there.”

“The slingdrive?” Ramses questioned, having not been listening to the conversation too hard until now. “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”

“Yeah, because it’s like a slingshot,” Olimpia explained. “You can pull back, and let go, and it will generally go in the direction you’re aiming, but precise targeting is difficult at best, especially when you’re first learning. You’re bound to miss the mark on the first few attempts.”

Ramses frowned.

“No one’s mad at you,” Leona told him for the umpteenth time. “I think we’re supposed to be here anyway. I mean, we could have ended up landing in the timeline a thousand years ago, which wouldn’t have done us any good. Yet we happen to wind up just when the Goldilocks Corridor is getting interesting? That’s no coincidence.”

“Well, anyway,” Ramses began, “if that’s how we’re framing the quintessence drive, then trying to get to Danica would be foolish. I obviously don’t know how to aim this thing. We may indeed find ourselves a thousand years off course or worse.”

“That’s not what she’s saying,” Mateo decided. “There’s a learning curve with this new technology. It might not even be you, per se. Maybe the ship just can’t handle the quintessence yet, and needs to learn. Right now, we have a single point of data, which is our arrival two years ago. You need more data, which means you need more jumps.”

“Hold on,” Marie interjected. “Aren’t we trying to do something here? Shouldn’t we be saving Elder, or—I dunno—assassinating the Oaksent?”

“They were just saying, it would be too dangerous,” her sister insisted. “I don’t think we should be messing with the past any more than we already have. Ramses, aim for the future, and if we go to the wrong place, then try again. Keep trying until we get there. Every time we show up in the wrong point in spacetime, we should do as little as possible until that next jump.”

“Maybe we wouldn’t be changing time,” Mateo offered. “Maybe we always did come here to save Elder. We don’t know that that’s not what always happened. No one in the Corridor in the future ever mentioned him. Perhaps he’s but a footnote in history because we took him out of the equation at the right time. That’s the thing about changing history; if you don’t know that you’re doing it, you can’t be at fault. You might just be fulfilling your destiny; closing your loop.”

“He’s right,” Leona confirmed. “Getting him out of there could be our only purpose here. Society is incredibly advanced three thousand years from now. If we don’t take Oaksent’s toy away, maybe they turn out even more advanced. Maybe that would be changing the timeline.”

“I think that’s a weak justification,” Angela contended. “I still say we do nothing.”

“Hon, I think this may be one of those times that calls for a vote, even though we’re not a democracy,” Mateo said.

“Not yet,” Angela said, raising her voice too much. “I need time to build my case.”

“You’ll have the time,” Leona promised with a hand upon her friend’s. “We have all day to make a decision. Pia can jump down there and grab him in a matter of seconds if that’s what we decide to do. They’ll literally never see it coming.”

“I would like to do it,” Mateo volunteered. “If we agree to it, that is.”

“Why?” Leona asked him.

“I wanna help. And I don’t think I need to be invisible, though I do think I can pull that off for a limited time.”

“We’ll vote on that too,” Ramses suggested.

Marie shook her head. “Whoever goes can’t be invisible. We keep calling it a rescue, but we don’t know for sure that he’ll want to leave. That’s just what the satellite images imply. He may want to be there, or he may have his own plan. Either way, if he doesn’t want to come with us, he should have the right to refuse. I’ll agree to a rescue mission, but not an abduction. I won’t be party to that.”

“Good point,” Leona agreed. “Angie, you want time to formulate your argument? Tell us when you’re ready, and we’ll listen to it. I can’t tell you that the decision has to be unanimous, but we’ll consider every option carefully.”

“Do I get a vote?” It was Bronach Oakset. He was lounging on the couch. Except he wasn’t really there. Looking closely at the way he was sprawled out there, it was clear that he was on a different couch, and was merely projecting his image into the ship, just like he did on Welrios. Which was good, it meant their defenses were holding. But it also meant that they needed better defenses. No one should be able to come up here to spy.

Even so, just to be sure, Mateo stepped over, and attempted to smack him in the face. Yes, his hand went right through.

“Yes, daddy,” Bronach replied grossly.

“Goddammit,” Leona lamented.

“Oh, no, did I ruin your plans?” Bronach joked. “Look, I’ve told you in the past, and I’ve told you in the future. I can’t be beat. I know everything. I know where you’ve been, what you’ve done...where you’ll go, and what you’ll do. You want Elder, go ahead and take him.”

Without hesitating, Mateo disappeared. After a long detour, he reached the surface, where he grabbed Elder, and attempted to teleport back up to the ship. “Guys, I’m stuck,” he said through comms.

“Did I forget to mention the teleporter trap?” Bronach asked with a maniacal laugh. “Why do you think we’re in that dome, you idiots?”

“Shut it off,” Leona demanded.

“I’m not doing that,” Bronach replied. “The stopping and starting process is a major pain in the ass. But I’m having one of our people escort the two of them to the exit, where they’ll be free from the spatial field. I wasn’t kidding; you want ‘im, you got ‘im. But don’t think for a second that any of that matters. I scanned that man’s quantum state years ago. I can always bring him back. You’ll be taking a clone, and that will have zero impact on what I accomplish.” He sighed, and stood up to look around the room. “You will always fail. Best get used to it.”

Mateo and Elder appeared on the other side of the room.

“Welcome back!” Bronach exclaimed in a terrible approximation of sincerity.

“Let’s try this again,” Mateo growled. He steadily, but not too quickly, approached Bronach’s hologram, and swung a punch at him. To everyone’s surprise, it worked. Bronach fell back, tripped over his couch, and tumbled back behind it.

“How did you do that?” Leona questioned. “Is Oaksent just playing around?”

“No, he’s not.” Bronach stood up, and wiped the blood from his lip. “I second that question, how the fuck did you just do that!”

Mateo lifted his leg, and slammed it into Bronach’s chest, making contact once more, and forcing him down hard to his back. “I thought you knew everything. Now get the hell off my ship, and erase every single copy of Elder’s brain scan!”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 1 EXT

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Since it was too risky to even attempt to use the quintessence drive again, Ramses engaged a short reframe burst to the planet where the signal was coming from. Once they arrived in orbit, they found there to be no lifesigns aboard the other ship. This wasn’t surprising as the design suggested it to be completely automated, meant to prepare the surface for habitation at a later date. It deployed dropships to begin construction on geodesic diamond domes, which was funny, because the atmosphere was fairly comparable to Earth’s. With only a minimal amount of bioengineering, any organic human should be able to survive unaided by external technologies. Leona posited that the onboard systems were not smart enough to realize this. They were programmed to build domes, and fill them with oxygenated air generated via electrolysis, so that was precisely what they were doing. It didn’t even seem to detect the Vellani Ambassador’s presence at all. So they just stayed out of its way.

Curious, the team hung out for the rest of the day until midnight central hit, staying invisible so they wouldn’t be seen by anyone else. The domes were completed by the time they returned to the timestream, and a second ship had arrived in the meantime. There could be people here now. “I’ll go down,” Olimpia volunteered.

“Just you?” Leona asked.

“Well, I wouldn’t dare go alone,” Olimpia clarified. “Perhaps Mateo could come with me for support? I believe that I can keep him invisible too, but taking any more may be too difficult.”

Leona sighed. “No one’s going down right now. Rambo, just keep an eye on the surface. Send an invisible probe, and gather some recon data for us. Pia, could I speak with you for a moment?”

When they were alone in the second pocket dimension, Olimpia spoke up rather defensively. “I know what you’re going to say, but this is how I contribute. I can’t dispatch and control probes, and I can’t mediate diplomatic discussions. I happen to be good at invisibility, so let me use that.”

“I don’t have a problem with you leaning on your strengths. I don’t have a problem at all. But I did want to speak with you about you and my husband.”

“What about us?”

“He told me what happened in the simulation.”

“I don’t know what he said—”

“He told me the truth,” Leona interrupted. “He told me that the two of you have been inching towards each other ever since you met, like a derelict satellite caught in a decaying orbit.”

“Okay, well I don’t know that I would describe it like that...”

“You’re right, because the satellite would just burn up in the atmosphere. And I don’t want that. The metaphor doesn’t work anyway, because it doesn’t account for me.”

“What are you saying?” Olimpia asked.

“Do you know who Serif is?”

“Yeah, she was a clay woman who came to life while you were living on Tribulation Island. She left to go save the multiverse from the Ochivari’s virus, or something.”

“She was carved from stone, not clay. She was more than only another member of our crew at the time. I was in love with her. I still am, to an extent. My brain contains memories of her that never took place. Mateo didn’t even have those fake memories, though, and when he disappeared from the timeline altogether, she and I only grew closer, because I couldn’t remember him either. When he came back...it was like falling in love with him all over again. And Serif was...sort of left out in the cold. Our three-person relationship didn’t work, because it was uneven.”

“I’m still not following.”

“There are six of us here, and we all love each other, in various ways. Angela and Marie are sisters who were once the same person. Mateo and Ramses are best friends. He and I are married. And you? You’re falling in love with him, if you haven’t already. I believe that he’s experiencing the same thing, at his own pace.”

“I’m not a homewrecker,” Olimpia argued.

“I know, and I don’t want you to be. None of us does. That’s why it’s a problem. Even if you push through it, ignore your feelings, and find someone else, this connection between you two will never go away. Instead of letting it be the way that it is, I propose a—shall we call it—an unconventional response. As I said, we all love each other, so I don’t think it’s completely impossible for you and me to...”

Olimpia shook her head slightly as Leona trailed off. “To what, fall in love with each other too? To save your marriage, and the team, you want to force a polyamory triangle?”

“Well, I don’t see it as being forced.”

“Are you even attracted to me?”

“Have you even seen a mirror before?”

Olimpia blushed a little. “This is weird.”

“I know, and it may blow up in our faces, but if we don’t try something, it definitely will. I don’t want one of us to become the next Serif. Nothing has happened between you two yet, so let’s go on this journey together. Let’s not keep secrets, and hide our true selves. You don’t have to come up with an excuse to spend time with him. You and I would be better suited for the ground mission. You have the invisibility, I have the brains. I didn’t mean to say it like that, I’m sorry. I know that sounds mean.”

“It’s fine,” Olimpia assured her. “I know I’m not stupid. I’m just uneducated, because whenever my teacher tried to ask me to respond to a query, I would give the answer several times in a row.”

Olimpia was the only one still wearing a Cassidy cuff, but still Leona would forget that this was because of her sonic echoing time affliction. She had a pretty good reason for her lack of life experiences. “Right, I get that.” She paused for a moment. “So. Are you willing to try this weird thing? It’s unusual, to say the least, but I don’t just want to be the jealous, resentful wife who denies my man’s desires because society has told me that only two people are allowed to be together at any one time.”

Olimpia reached up, and took a lock of Leona’s hair out from behind her ear to let it fall in front of it.

“What was that for?”

“So I could do this...” She reached up again, and tucked the hair back behind Leona’s ear, placing their faces close together as well. “Gut reaction, how did that feel? Uncomfortable? Awkward? Breathtaking?”

“Both B and C maybe,” Leona answered.

Olimpia giggled. “I suppose that people date each other all the time without knowing where it’s going. That’s the whole point of the dates. All we’re doing is agreeing that true love is the end goal, and admitting that if we don’t reach that goal, I’m gonna die alone. I’m a time traveler, and my options are limited. So if you and I can’t make it work, it probably means that the only reason I fell in love with Mateo is because, to me, he may as well be the last man on Earth.”

“So, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll take it slow, start with a first date; no sex.”

“No sex,” Olimpia agreed. “No sex...at all. If you really want to give this a shot, I think you two need to pretend like you’re not already together, just for a time.”

Leona nodded, considering the parameters. “I think that makes sense. Polyamory doesn’t work unless there’s mutuality. Without that, it just devolves into polygamy.”

“Yeah. So it’s settled. You and I will go down to check out the dome while Mateo sets up a romantic date for us.”

“Is that what we settled on, that he does all the work?”

“You and I had the hard conversation,” Olimpia reasoned. “Let him do something.”

The two of them called Mateo into the pocket to essentially have the same conversation all over again until he came to the same conclusion. It was definitely weird until he looked at it from the correct angle. They had to be active participants in this situation, rather than trying to let the chips fall where they may, and hoping that none of them flew up to hit someone in the eye. He had no problem with staying home to set up their first three-person date together while the womenfolk went off to figure out what was going on with the planet below.

Ramses agreed to help once he was clued into the new dynamic. “Dude, that’s great, man. Two ladies, I hear that’s kinda the dream.”

“It’s not like that,” Mateo argued.

“Bullshit. Ya know, you can appreciate someone for their mind, and their body at the same time.”

“What would you know about it?” Mateo asked.

“I still have sexual needs, I just choose to fulfill them on my own.”

“So, you’re not annoyed that I’ve found two special people, and you’ve not even found one?”

“Nah, it’s cool. Really. I’ve always been ultra-focused on my work. Creating something that does exactly what I want it to do is the closest thing to a relationship that I’ve ever needed. I might have thought twice about turning myself into a time traveler if I felt the compulsion to seek out a mate.” He stopped setting the plates down. “Ugh. This dimension is so bland. I can’t work with this. I think you need to have your date in a simulation.”

“No, it has to be a real place with real food,” Mateo contended. “If I just ask the computer to make something perfect, I’ll have done nothing.”

“Let me help.” Angela was in the doorway.

Mateo was worried. “Angie, I didn’t know you were in this pocket.”

“I was bored. And you forgot to switch off your comm disc again. We all heard everything.”

Mateo widened his eyes in horror. “Leona?”

“It’s fine, love. Just locker room talk. It’s perfectly normal to have a conversation with your friends about someone you haven’t had sex with yet.”

“Huh?” Ramses was as confused as Angela.

“We’re starting from scratch,” Mateo explained. He turned away to speak into his disc again. “Okay, I’ll see you two tonight. I won’t say I love you, because I don’t know you very well yet. Okay, love you, bye.” He tapped it off. “Dammit.”

“Aww,” Angela feigned fawning.

“Did you say you could help with something?” Mateo asked her, embarrassed.

“This new girl you’re seeing,” Angela joked, “called it four-dimensional holography. We all appear to have our own specialties, and mine is being able to generate images that last across time without me having to be focused on them. I can just set something up, and walk away, so I’m confident that I can make this room look like anything,” she said, looking around, and taking mental notes of a few ideas.

“Wow. That’s very exciting, and not the least bit concerning since I seem to be the only one who’s not particularly good at creating holograms in any special sort of way.”

“I don’t have a specialty either,” Ramses claimed.

“Are you kidding me?” Mateo asked. “You take our power, and replicate it in technology. This ship is invisible.”

“Yeah, well, I guess.”

“So, what were we thinking?” Angela asked, putting the conversation back on track. “Grand banquet hall? Kitschy theme restaurant? Low stakes fast-casual joint?”

Mateo thought through his options, which were apparently limitless. “Um. Let’s go with quaint small town bar and grill that used to be City Hall before they built the new one ten years ago.”

“I think I can make that work.” Angela began to throw up some holograms, adjusting bits and pieces here and there, taking in input from the two guys and her sister, until they had something as original as possible while still channeling photons from real places elsewhere in spacetime.

After Leona and Olimpia came back from their little mission, they showered, and showed up for the date. Marie served as their waiter, because she wanted to be a part of it too. She has a hypertime food synthesizer to make the food, but she elected to sit and wait to make it feel more real. The dinner was nice. They didn’t hold onto the ruse about being strangers on a blind date. They discussed their real lives, acknowledging that they were quite familiar with each other already. The whole team was there, with Ramses and Marie having their own meal together as friends. So they were able to hear the mission debrief too. A very young Bronach Oaksent was in the dome with none other than Elder Caverness. They were seemingly the only two people on the planet, besides the secret spies. They were currently calling it Ex-001, which Leona once mistakenly believed to be the seat of power for the Exin Empire. So it did exist, but instead of being the most important world, it was simply the first one to be settled. It made Mateo wonder, what would become of it thousands of years from now? Would it end up holding secrets that were just waiting to be exploited?

The meal was a success, which wasn’t surprising, because they were all friends, and there was nothing to fight about at the moment. As promised, it did not end in sex. In fact, Mateo retired to his own room in the second pocket dimension, as he would if this really were his first evening with a new prospect. They chose not to worry too much about what was happening on Ex-001, or how they would involve themselves. They couldn’t be sure how much would change during their interim year. As it turned out, quite a lot. There were now 147 new people living there.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 8, 2429

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Just as the old man and the little girl were finishing up packing their belongings, they heard a commotion outside. Mateo had led the authorities right to their doorstep, which meant it could no longer be theirs. No matter, the girl had to return to her life, and the old man had no strong feelings about this place. This was a suburb of the city, which was why it took the teleportation detectors a little longer than last time to dispatch a strike team. Mateo lifted the girl in one arm, and placed his free hand on the old man’s shoulder so they could all disappear just in time. They should be fine here, clear on the other side of the world, where the rest of the team was waiting. Even if they could be traced, it would take a long time for anyone to catch up to them. The government’s main concern was probably the city anyway, not the rest of the planet.

“Where’s the woman?” Mateo questioned.

“We dropped her off back in the city,” Marie replied. “We were listening to your conversation.”

“She wasn’t happy about it, but slaveowners don’t get a choice, do they?” Olimpia added with an evil smile.

Leona knelt down in front of the girl. “What’s your name?”

The girl couldn’t answer. She turned away shyly, and hid behind the old man.

“Niobe Schur,” Lilac answered for her.

Mateo nodded, and approached. “You’re all three from Extremus.”

Lilac shook her head. “That girl and my son have never set foot on that ship. We found a planet that was suitable for human life in the intergalactic void. We found it interesting, so we decided to stay and study it. Both of the kids were born there.” She gestured towards Niobe. “She to two scientists assigned to research the ecosystem, and Aristotle to me and a visitor who randomly showed up one day.” She smiled at the memory of her late love interest, Maqsud Al-Amin.

“Can you tell us more?” Leona urged gently.

“Sudy disappeared. It was a passionate but fleeting relationship. I had to stay on Verdemus, and he had to go explore the universe. It was a long time before I realized that I was pregnant, and I had no way of contacting him. So I raised our boy there, hoping at some point the father would come back for a booty call, and I could tell him the truth. He never came back, but someone else did.”

Angela patted her on the back comfortingly.

Lilac went on, “an asshole from our ship took the majority of the researchers on Verdemus hostage, and I don’t have all the details, but he blew it up. I was in charge of guarding the planetside hock, and he was my first prisoner after years of sitting around with nothing to do. That’s why I survived the explosion, because the hock was deliberately built far from the settlement. Thank God her parents asked me to look after her that day. Others weren’t so lucky. Anyway, the fact that we stayed on the planet was a secret from the rest of the ship, so I tried to raise them there together until one day, the portal back to Extremus was also destroyed, and the kids went missing.”

“So how did you find them?” Mateo asked.

Lilac took a breath. “A man who looked a lot like my child’s father came, and said he would take me to Aristotle. It wasn’t until later that I realized he was Aristotle himself, all grown up, and there to close his own time loop.” She chuckled at this. “He transported me to Welrios, where we found the younger version of him. Adult!Aristotle left, and we settled down with the locals. We were happy there for a few years until the whole doomsday device tried to destroy us. And now you’re all caught up.”

“Except you never said how Niobe ended up on EX-324,” Ramses noted.

“I still don’t know that,” Lilac admitted. “Seems to be quite the coincidence. Someone other than an Al-Amin took those two kids from Verdemus, and dropped them off on different worlds here in the Goldilocks Corridor. Now it’s not all that crazy. I don’t know if you know this, but Extremus was the source of the Exin Empire. Bronach Oaksent was one of us at one point. Exactly what went down, and why he betrayed the mission, is above my paygrade, but all of these star systems,” she said as she was drawing a line across the sky with her finger, “sit directly on the same vector as Extremus. It’s why we had to divert into the void in the first place. He went back in time to plant his flag long before Extremus even launched, and he went to deadly lengths to prevent us from ever knowing anything about this region of the galaxy. He wants to keep it secret, from everyone. That much I know, and the last time I checked, we were at war with him, because he eventually decided that we knew too much, and also probably that the planet of Verdemus was too close for comfort. Which is ridiculous, because it’s, like, 24,000 light years away.”

“That’s farther than the stellar neighborhood,” Leona pointed out.

Lilac tilted her head, shrugged her shoulders, and widened her eyes. “They’re probably next. Because they’re calling this the Three Bears War. And I don’t think it’s just a reference to the children’s story. I think there are four combatants, and if one of the bears is Extremus, the other is liable to be Earth.”

Mateo nodded, and took the homestone out of his pocket. He waved it for Lilac to see. “We can undo everything that happened to the children after they left Verdemus. Well, we can’t undo it—”

“I know what that thing is,” she promised. “I understand how it works.”

“Then you know that you can go with her,” Mateo began, “but you have to be absolutely certain that the first time she experienced nonlinear time was when she disappeared, and ended up in the Corridor.”

“I’m sure of it,” Lilac responded.

Mateo stood up straight, and looked around at the group. “Is this what we want?”

“Are you sure Aristotle is back there already?” Leona asked the old man.

“I gave him the other stone...he disappeared.”

Mateo handed Lilac the stone. “Say your goodbyes. Sheriff? You can go with them too, if you want.” He separated himself from the crowd, and took in the scenery. This was a beautiful world, mostly untouched by man. They were on the edge of a meadow. Below them down the hill, the vegetation became more and more sparse before leading to a vast red desert. They could see for miles.

“I came here to do a job,” Kamiński said. “If that’s done, I would like to go back to New Welrios.”

“I think we can do that,” Leona agreed.

“Then what?” Angela asked.

“Rambo, you still have that star chart?” Mateo asked.

“Yeah.”

“Doesn’t say where the primary planet is, though?”

“No, I don’t think these people are allowed to know it.”

Mateo turned back around. “Then let’s go find it. Unless it’s not my place to decide, I think I’ll call us Baby Bear.”

Shortly thereafter, Niobe and Lilac took the homestone away, hopefully back to their home on Verdemus, but there was no way to know that. If all went according to plan, they would have landed there nearly 90 years in the past. Trusting that it worked, those left behind teleported back up to their little ship, and returned to Ex-324. They sent Sheriff Kamiński to New Welrios, and the old man to the planet natives, but they didn’t stick around to exchange information with anyone. It was up to the two societies to learn to live together, and to carve out some semblance of a decent future. Vitalie!324 and Ramses!324 had their ideas about what that looked like, just like Vitalie!275 had plans for that world. That wasn’t Team Matic’s responsibility. They had a new mission. The other copy of Vitalie!324 would tag along to help, at least for now.

Their next stop was Ex-908, which was the other planet where Aristotle might have trotted to, because it was on a similar trajectory as Ex-275. There appeared to be no pattern to the numbers, and how they were determined; at least none that Leona and Ramses could detect. Her first guess was that it was based on Project Stargate, and the Galactic Coordinate System that was devised to organize the endeavor, but this didn’t match up either. They were probably more or less random, and served only to illustrate to the citizens that their identity wasn’t even worth casual thought.

They were all in the pocket dimension, because that was the only part of the ship where they could actually fit and move around. Come midnight central, they would suddenly find themselves at their destination, so most were taking it easy. Ramses was in his lab, as per usual. “What are you working on?” Mateo asked, walking in.

“I’ll give you three guesses,” Ramses said, dismissing whatever blobby image was on his screen so that Mateo couldn’t see.

“Is that sarcasm?”

“Do you detect sarcasm in my emotions?”

“No.”

Ramses smiled. “No, I just want you to guess. It’s a game.”

Mateo was getting smarter. He would be completely unrecognizable to himself at the age of 27. He wasn’t just accumulating more knowledge, but learning to be better at observing his environment, gathering facts, and sometimes even coming to the right conclusions with them. He looked around now for clues, but Ramses was making no effort to shield his view of anything, so there probably wasn’t anything specific that would help shed light. Still, just the act of looking around felt helpful. “You’re designing a new ship, aren’t you?”

Ramses laughed. “Damn! Good job! Yeah, this Breakthrough Starshot-lookin’ thing has been a good temporary solution, but I think we can all agree that we need something real. If we’re gonna fight this Bronach Oaksent prick, and his evil empire, it has to be something on par with the AOC. Care to come up with the name?”

“Hmm.” Mateo had been recently watching the versions of the comic book adaptations that they made in this timeline. “How about...The Iman Vellani?”

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Source Variant: Planet of Hats (Part III)

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Saxon talked a little bit more about Project Stargate, Operation Starseed, and two other interrelated endeavors called Operation Anglo, and Operation Soul Patch. Apparently, Projects are publicly known massive undertakings, while Operations require a little more secrecy, and are often used to support the projects. He evidently cloned himself millions of times, and sent each one of them to a different section of an unfathomably huge ship, which would break apart, and start exploring the galaxy. He was the OG Saxon, however, and was able to exercise a little more independence because of it. Following some research, before the Stargate ship was able to break apart too much, he switched places with one of the random Anglo clones, so that he would be stationed on this planet. According to early synthetical readings, the world that would one day come to be known as Orolak was rated at .982 on the Terrestrial Habitability Similarity Index. A perfect score would have been 1, so this was pretty good.

Saga!Two and Vearden!Three did what they could to help Saxon with his work. For most of the worlds that were being seeded with evolved human-based life, the first generation would be raised by some form of artificial intelligence, but either way, they couldn’t do it on their own. The humans were responsible for maintaining the growth pods while the Orothsew subjects were still in preliminary biological development. Once they were born, they were then responsible for protecting them, and teaching them how to live. They went over the basics: finding food, eating, sleeping, not killing, etc. They didn’t teach them any math or science. They didn’t tell stories of Earth, or explained how it is they came to be. Hell, they didn’t even speak to them, because then the Orothsew would learn English, and they were meant to form their own language. It was only their job to make sure they survived long enough to propagate the species. Once the first phase of their social development was complete, so was the job.

To unwittingly mark the occasion, they open a door to get something to eat, and all three find themselves transitioning to what they soon learn to be a different point in time. Based on stellar drift, it’s almost exactly two hundred years later. They had set up a little village for the first generation of inhabitants several kilometers away from the facility where they were grown, but that facility still existed, and it’s where the humans were living once it was safe to leave the children alone for extended periods of time. The place is still here, just as they left it, but automated systems had buried it underneath a hill, so that it perfectly blended in with the environment. Orothsew progress was still in its infancy, so any exposure to advanced technology could disrupt their continued social development. It’s not quite the Prime Directive from the Star Trek franchise, though. If the powers that be transported all of them to this moment in the future, then it’s obviously for a reason, and that reason probably doesn’t involve too much passively observing from a safe distance.

It does involve some observation, though. They look through the data the facility has been keeping track of since they were gone. The population rose at a predictable and steady rate until something terrible happened eighty-three years ago. An infection spread through the village, and though the villagers had the good sense to isolate all who were showing symptoms of the disease, they didn’t consider quarantining asymptomatic people who might have been exposed to the pathogen. All told, the population took a hit of three hundred and fifty-eight people, but it could have been so much worse. It could have spelled the end of the species, and Saxon has been reluctant to answer what they would have done in that situation. Though, to be fair, if that were to ever happen, the PTB would probably step up, and send them in to stop it. Perhaps that’s why they’re here now. Maybe there’s another disease coming, or some natural disaster that the Orothsew are woefully unprepared for.

Saxon is still looking over the numbers, head in hand. “Five hundred and ninety-one.”

“How many should there be?” Saga!Two asks.

He shakes his head. “Around fifteen hundred. More.”

“This happens,” Vearden!Three assures him. “Humans went through a lot more than this, because they didn’t have us.”

“Yes, they did,” Saxon says.

“What?”

“Huh?” Saxon has gotten lost in his thoughts.

“What do you mean, humans had us?” Saga!Two questions.

“Oh, sorry. Well, I should be clear; they’re a theory. There are some inexplicable anomalies when we look back at the hominid population hundreds of thousands of years ago. Our ancestors survived some things they probably shouldn’t have. These disasters were just shy of being enough to wipe out the species entirely. Humans from what’s considered to be the very first timeline ever supposedly went back in time and saved their own ancestors, thus propelling us towards a more stable population growth rate. If this is true, it’s before the powers that be or The Gallery existed, and the changes they made were so dramatic that not even one individual was born in that timeline, and also in any other since.”

“So, there’s no proof any of this is true,” Vearden!Three says.

Saxon goes back to looking at the data. “No, but there’s strong evidence.”

“You’re human,” Saga!Three says in a non sequitur.

Saxon stops dwelling for a moment again. “Yes, why?”

“Why do you know so much about us? Who taught you all this?”

He chuckles. “You people spend a lot of time talking to each other to get information. Word of mouth is full of errors, lies, and truths lost in translation. I’ve heard so many contradictory claims about who the powers that be are, and what they have to do with the choosing ones. There’s a whole library out there that’s maintained by The Historian. I got access to it, and I did what I do best; I studied my ass off. I’m not saying there are no inaccuracies or biases in those books, but they’re at least based on research. You should be careful when someone tries to tell you what’s going on. They may not be right.”

“Thanks, professor,” Vearden!Three snarks. “I’ll remember that the next time I travel to one of the dozens of other universes I’ve gone to.” It’s true that, after traveling all over the bulkverse in The Crossover, he has a few experiences Saxon could never begin to understand, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t things he could learn from the legit astronaut. His advice certainly isn’t unreasonable.

“Vearden,” Saga!Three scolds.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Saxon sighs and moves on. “Well, the disease is over. It ran its course decades ago. I’m looking at atmospheric and seismic readings; I don’t see anything else that gives you a clue what you’re back here to accomplish.”

“What would you be doing if you hadn’t jumped forward two hundred years?” Saga!Three poses. “That is, what would you have been doing for the last couple centuries?”

“I dunno,” Saxon answers, “but I wouldn’t still be here.”

“Oh, no?”

“No, I would have left after the last member of the first generation died, which they already have. Once no one was left alive who was grown in a pod, it would have been up to the remainders to sustain their population unaided. If you do have a job to do here, I’m not sure I should even help you. I didn’t, like, sign an oath, or anything, but I wasn’t meant to stick around forever.”

“So our door cut you off from your job?” Vearden!Three laments.

“I should clarify,” Saxon begins. “Vonearthan intervention ends after the first generation in most cases, including this one. It didn’t have to be me. As soon as I disappeared, automated systems took over.”

“That’s comforting,” Vearden!Three says with an extended nod. “It doesn’t tell us why it is we’re here now, though.”

As if there were a correlation between his words, and what was happening in one of the now several Orothsew villages, an alarm goes off. A live feed from a microdrone disguised as an insect comes up on the main screen. Since none of them speaks the Orothsew language, subtitles appear as well. Two males are fighting in the middle of a crowd. They’re not at full fisticuffs yet, but their argument is as heated as it is petty. It’s over the hand of a mate. One of them will push the other, or knock his hands out of the way. Waggling fingers and rude hand gestures; this is getting bad. But it apparently can’t go further in the here and now. The Orothsew have rules. The duel is scheduled for tomorrow, at high noon. The three humans aren’t sure what a duel in their culture involves, because they don’t mention details during the fight, but one thing the monitoring systems know is that they haven’t invented guns yet, so that’s something.

“We have to stop it,” Saga!Two declares.

“We can’t,” Saxon contends. “We can’t go out there like this. Back when we were teaching the wee babies how to survive, looking human was fine. They didn’t pass that information down to their own children, because they didn’t yet understand. Even if they describe us generations from now, no one will believe in ancient astronauts, just like people on Earth never did. But they’re already developed enough to record quasi-accurate history akin to the Bible. We can’t show our human faces; we just can’t.”

“I can help with that.” A woman walks in from the other room. A human woman. The three of them take a quick glance at each other, but their facial expressions do not suggest that anyone already knows who she is. She tries to shake their hands, but they’re reluctant. “It’s a good thing I’m not easily offended. If my visage makes you nervous, I can always take a form you are more comfortable with.” With no more warning, she suddenly transforms to look exactly like Leona Matic.

“Who are you?” Vearden!Two asks. He’s never met Leona before.

“My name is Alyssa McIver. I’m an illusionist. I can make you see whatever I want you to see...as long as what I want you to see exists at some point in spacetime. I can’t conjure imaginary visions; just superimpose real ones.”

“Could you, then. Umm...?” Saxon was uncomfortable. “Could you go back to your real face?”

She does as she’s asked. “I can help you blend in with the natives. I’ve done it a million times.That was my job almost a thousand years ago on the AOC.”

Now Saxon is interested, and more receptive. “So it’s true; the source variant theory. This is going to keep happening on other worlds.”

“It already has,” Alyssa confirms. “Source variants are fabricating aliens where there would not be aliens naturally. What you’re doing here; infiltrating the natives, and secretly helping to fix their problems? That’s what I and my crew did in the third millennium.”

“What year is it right now?” Vearden!Three asks her.

“Nine-two-seven,” Alyssa replies.

“What? No, I mean by the Earthan calendar.”

“Oh, you mean the old calendar. Three-five-two-seven.”

This freaks him out. “Why do they restart the calendar? Does the world end?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Alyssa says dismissively. “Do you like hats?”

“Alyssa,” Vearden!Three presses. “Does the world end?”

“I’ve taken the liberty of guessing what kind of hats you’ll be more comfortable with.” She removes three hats from her bag, each of a different design. One is a snowcap, the other a driving cap, and the third is something none of them knows enough about hats to designate. “No one will see the hat, of course. It will just make you look like a, uh...”

“Orothsew,” Saxon helps.

“Orothsew,” she echoes. “Yes. When I was on the AOC, I would just maintain the illusions myself, but I’m not sticking around here, so Holly Blue imbued these with my powers.”

They take the hats graciously.

“I do have some more questions,” Vearden!Three says.

“Cool. I gotta go, though. Bye!” She may teleport away at that point, or she just makes herself invisible. Either way, she’s gone.

They’ll probably never know what prompted her to come to the future to help them, but they’re grateful. Now it’s time to go stop that duel. They don’t realize until later how absolutely vital it was that they stop it. Either of their deaths would have caused catastrophic problems later on.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 10, 2248

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Located nearly twelve light years from Earth, Tau Ceti enjoyed a strikingly high number of low-mass rocky planets in orbit, but only one of them coalesced satisfactorily within the star’s habitable zone. This planet was named Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, which is Arabic for ostrich egg. Surface gravity was a little higher than Earth’s, but still well within acceptable parameters for an unenhanced human. It had a magnetosphere, liquid water, and oh yeah, a breathable atmosphere. It was the only world within spitting distance known to harbor life on its own, and for that reason, more colonists signed up for the journey than for any other stellar neighbor.

When Leona came back to the timestream, Sanaa was gone, but it looked like she parked The Radiant Lightning in a warehouse. The soothing voice of a young woman she once met was flowing through the internal speakers of the ship, as well as those in the warehouse. As Leona walked towards a small structure built on the floor inside the wide expanse, she could see the broadcaster inside.

“But for those of you who don’t dig polka rap, I got somethin’ for ya that I think you’ll really love. This is from a mid twenty-first century Korea twang band called Alliterative Spoonerism. Here’s their most popular single, What Was Jenkem Used for Again? It’s seventeen minutes long, so I can take a break to talk to my friend, who’s visiting from out of town. I’m DJ Mount Alias, and this...is Salmonverse Radio.”

Leona stepped into the studio just as Ellie Underhill was finishing her segment. “What is this? You broadcast music across time and space?”

“I do, yes,” Ellie replied.

“How come I’ve never heard it before?”

“It’s geared more towards shapers, or displaced salmon who are on long-term missions. They often need a taste of home, or at least modern life. You’ve not really had much need.”

“How long have you been doing this?” Leona asked.

“From my personal timeline, three years. This region of Bida is fairly remote, so we don’t have to worry about interfering with the colonists.”

“We?”

“She means me.” It was Paige Turner. She crossed the room from the other door, and presented her hand. “Hi, I’m an alternate version of Paige Turner Reaver-Demir. You can call me Third!Paige, or Trinity.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Trinity. You’re telling me there’s a second Paige out there I’ve also never met.”

“Well, it’s complicated. The three of us met you back in 2025, when you went back in time to save Brooke Prieto from Tribulation Island. It was only after that moment that we split. It’s this whole thing that involves going back in time to stop myself from killing someone, and then going back in time to try again, because I failed the first time.”

“You’ve been here ever since?” Leona asked.

“For the most part,” Trinity replied. “It’s been about two hundred and thirty-five years, but I wasn’t always alone.”

“I don’t know that your math is right,” Leona questioned. “You said we met in 2025, which means you would have had to go back even further—”

“I technically did,” Trinity interrupted. “I can move faster than light, but light moves at a constant. I teleported here from Earth, which is twelve light years away. So when I was looking at Tau Ceti, I was looking at it as it was twelve years prior. I first appeared on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida in 2013.”

Leona nodded. This was sound logic. “What have you been up to this whole time, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I’ve been terraforming.”

This confused her. “Are you telling me this world is only habitable by your efforts?”

Trinity shook her head. “No, it was habitable, but inedible, and in some places, toxic. I’ve been gradually manipulating the plantlife and water composition to make it so that people can live here carefree.”

Leona didn’t know what to say.

Trinity went on, “you can’t eat everything, but if you do, chances are you’ll be all right. There are no deadly pathogens, or poisonous animals, or anything like that. It’s the closest thing to paradise you’ll find.”

“That’s...amazing. What made you think to do that? And how?”

“I got both the idea, and the technology, from the future. In my timeline, Bida was a terrible place to live. Humans came here with such high hopes, but found themselves profoundly disappointed when they started running chemical tests. Just about everything here would make them sick, if not straight up kill them. All the water had to be filtered to an impractical degree, and it just wasn’t worth it. They abandoned it for centuries until someone got the idea to tailor the ecosystem to human needs.”

“Is that ethical?” Leona asked. “I mean, if life evolved here to be the way it was, did we have the right to change it?”

“It’s not ethical, no,” Trinity agreed. “That’s why I did it myself before a single colonist arrived. That way, vonearthans are free from all moral culpability.”

“Do the colonists know? I mean, I’m sure they don’t realize you exist, but are they aware that the ecosystem was recently altered?”

“Well, they don’t know Barnard’s Star was once orbited by a low-mass rocky planet, so I doubt they’ll figure it out.”

“Huh?”

Trinity didn’t elaborate on that bombshell. “It was going to happen. Unethically terraforming a world isn’t the kind of thing the powers that be would have sent a salmon to correct, and it’s not like there are lots of other choosing ones running around making things better. I could have either exercised some futility in an attempt to prevent the vonearthans from manipulating the properties of life on this world, or I could just do it for them, and save their souls.”

Leona realized it wasn’t her job to police the people around her. Choosing ones and humans alike are always going to be running around, making bad choices. As far as questionable ethics went, at least this was in question, and not so undoubtedly wrong. “I understand, and I appreciate the precarious position you were in.”

“And I appreciate that.”

Leona just wanted to change the subject. “Where are Sanaa and Eight Point Seven?”

“They got stuck on the other side of the planet,” Ellie explained. “They were wanting to be here when you returned, but an unexpected storm appeared, and held them up. Don’t worry, they’ll be fine, but they won’t be back until tomorrow.”

“You don’t have emergency teleporters, or anything?”

Trinity chuckled. “Ellie’s broadcast is the only exception to a rule I came up with. There will be no time powers on this planet while I’m in charge.”

“Are you in charge?” Leona questioned. Surely the colonists wouldn’t know that she had been here for two centuries. They would get that she was an upgraded human with an indefinite lifespan, but they wouldn’t understand how she traveled twelve light years in the early 21st century.

“I’m in charge of all salmon and choosers. They’re welcome to come, but they have to follow my rules. I’m not alone in this position.”

“I don’t mean to argue with you, because I’m totally fine with that. I’m just curious what your rationale is. I don’t know what went through in your timeline.”

“Leona, this is an isolate. Did you not know that?”

“It is? No, I didn’t.”

“Yeah, the colonists who are coming here wish to remain separated from Earth, the rest of the stellar neighborhood, and anywhere else in the galaxy the vonearthans end up traveling to.”

“Oh, wow. I try to keep up with current events, but I never heard anything about that.” Leona must have fallen behind.

“The first colonists left in 2235, and arrived this year,” Trinity began to explain. “On the day of that arrival, the last three exodus ships left Earth, bound for Bida. Once they get here in 2260, no one else will come, ever again.”

“Why?”

“They want a fresh start. They’re not going back to pioneer days, or anything, but they’re hoping to free themselves from humanity’s past. They want to live on a world that hasn’t seen bloody wars, and nuclear bombs, and segregation, and all the other bad things we’ve done in our history.”

“They do realize they can’t escape that, right? No matter how far they go, or how much they cut themselves off from the rest of their people, the past will always remain right where it is.”

“They don’t see it that way.”

Leona wasn’t finished, “if they tell stories of the world that came before, it will continue to impact their lives, and if they don’t, it will probably repeat itself. They can’t win.”

“Again,” Trinity argued, “they don’t see it that way. Anyway, I’m not here to judge them, or poke holes in their logic, and neither are you. I’m here to protect them. What they definitely don’t know is that they can’t control what time travelers do. I can. I don’t want any Kingmakers, or Door-Walkers, or Saviors, or Caretakers. The timeline began on Year One, which is 2248 by the Gregorian calendar, and it will not be manipulated, even to save lives.”

Leona suddenly got real nervous. “You didn’t specifically list me and Mateo—partially because we were never given a cutesy nickname—but should we be on it? I came here on a ship built by a human, retrofitted by another human to be essentially faster-than-light. Mateo is on his way here on a different ship, with two other choosing ones. Unlike other salmon, the powers that be don’t give us definitive missions, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have them. We weren’t explicitly sent here, but they may want us here, just the same.”

Trinity didn’t know where she was going with this. “What’s your point, Leona?”

“What if I’m here to manipulate time, in my own way? What if Mateo will be coming here for the same reason? What do we do about that?”

“If you’re worried you’re going to break my rules, then you should get back in that thing right now, and leave,” Trinity decided.

“I’m not leaving without my husband.”

“I’ll send him your way. You can go to Glisnia, or better yet; YZ Ceti. It’s only a light year and a half away. He’ll be with you in no time.”

“None of YZ’s planets is habitable enough,” Leona contended. She did keep up with some current events. “And Sanaa doesn’t have the resources to orbit a flare star for years on end.”

“You don’t know that Sanaa would want to go with you. She’s agreed to not use her telepathy.”

Leona took a deep breath. “I suppose that’s true. But I also don’t want to do that. Mateo is coming here, and I’m staying put until he does so. One-point-six light years might as well be a million if something goes with either of our ships.”

“I’m not gonna let you interfere with these people’s lives, or their life choices.” Trinity was starting to raise her voice.

Leona matched the new volume. “I don’t think you have a choice. Just think about what the p stands for in PTB.”

“That’s enough!” Ellie’s voice supernaturally boomed throughout the entire warehouse. “Leona, no one’s trying to keep you from Mateo. Trinity, the rules don’t apply to her, or him. They never have, and you won’t be able to change that. You would have to break your own rules, and use your own power, to have any hope of going against the powers.” She stopped talking for a moment, but it was clear she wasn’t finished yet. “Now. Any two versions of you are friends at any point of time, in any reality. Kiss and make up, and I don’t want to hear any more about this. Que sera, sera. The Bidans will survive.”

“Bidians,” Leona and Trinity corrected in unison.

“There,” Ellie said in relief. “The fight is over. And so is the song, which means I have to get back to work. Trinity, perhaps you can give our new guest a tour of the planet?”

“That can be arranged,” Trinity said.

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