The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 23, 2475

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They programmed the Vellani Ambassador to travel at slightly lower than maximum reframe speed. There was no specific reason for this. They just felt like letting the ship arrive at Castlebourne at the same time they did. It took exactly 365 days to cover the distance of about 108 light years. The Ambassador fell back into subfractional speeds only moments after they all returned to the timestream. Elder had been kept in stasis the whole time, and they wouldn’t wake him back up until they scoped out the area. He was not in good shape mentally, and they were neither equipped nor prepared to help him deal with whatever demons he was fighting.

“Wh—what am I looking at here?” Mateo asked.

“Another unusual and unexpected thing,” Angela noted.

A few centuries ago, people were getting bored with regular old golf. Again. Of course, pioneers had already developed other forms of golf that went beyond the traditional, like speed golf, and arguably, frolf. Tricky Golf was a new iteration, but the only difference was the design of the ball. The course was the same, the rules were the same, but the strokes were a lot harder to keep low. Instead of dimples, the ball had bumps. Poor aerodynamics dampened the lift, and shortened the range, and accuracy was much more difficult to pull off. This resulted in a great deal of frustration, and even anger. But players knew exactly what they were getting into. There was a reason why normal golf balls were made with dimples in the first place. It was never random. The bumps were just as intentional, but this time, to make it a greater challenge.

Tricky Golf was more fun to watch for some, especially when players started tossing their clubs around, and cursing the wind gods. It never really took off—pun intended—for obvious reasons, but there’s a market for pretty much everything, so it never died out either. Some serious professional players even used it as a tool during their training. If they could sink a Tricky Golf ball, they could handle a regular one with ease. That was the idea, anyway. And it would seem that someone who had access to this world took inspiration from Tricky Golf. Maybe it was only a coincidence, but as an ironic occasional viewer of the alternative sport, Mateo chose to believe in a connection. The entire surface of the planet was covered in geodesic domes. Though, to be fair, they weren’t all the same size.

“Ram, open a channel; all frequencies.”

Ramses tapped a few buttons, then pointed to her.

“Vendelin Blackbourne, are you there?” She waited, but received no response. “Kestral McBride? Ishida Caldwell? Anyone on the Stateless Mothership Jameela Jamil, or one of its capital ships, please respond.” Still nothing. “Is anyone receiving this signal?” Not a peep.

“I’m picking up an ACS band,” Ramses declared. “Would you like me to play it?”

“What’s that?” Olimpia asked.

“Automated Control Signal,” Leona explained. “It’s essentially what independent robots and AIs use to coordinate their efforts. Go ahead, let’s here it.”

 Ramses shifted the signal to the speakers. It just sounded like white noise and beeps to them. R2D2 would probably know what they were saying.

“Can you translate?” Marie asked, smiling a bit, hoping that it didn’t sound like a dumbass question.

“Sort of,” Ramses replied. “Largely...build. They’re saying build to each other, over and over again. There are a bunch of other embedded messages layered on top of each other. It would take our computer some time to convert the specifics, but...”

“Don’t bother,” Leona ordered. “Just send one back. Translate...don’t build. Override anything that interferes with this new directive.”

It took him hours to complete what sounded like a simple task to the less knowledgeable in the group. There were a ton of security protocols preventing exactly what they were trying to do; hacking into the system to change its behavior. He only managed to do it by locating the emergency shutdown procedures, which were there to prevent something catastrophic from happening. According to the data that Leona was pulling at the same time, that was exactly what had happened, though the consequences were probably relatively minimal, at least for now.

There was an old thought experiment called the Paperclip Maximizer Theory. The question was, what if you commanded an automated machine to make paperclips, and programmed no other objectives or subroutines into it? What could stop it from fulfilling its mandate ad infinitum? What would happen once it ran out of the usual materials? Would it eventually decide that humans would make good paperclips? From what Leona could tell, that was basically the trigger. Before he left, Vendelin must have commanded his automators to make more dome habitats. In his unexpected absence, they found no reason to stop. He probably forgot about it, and had never come back since leaving, dying, and ultimately ending up working with Team Keshida.

While they were gathering all of this information from the construction logs, the Ambassador was in orbit. The sensors detected 83,839 domes in total, though one of them wasn’t finished when they stopped the robots, so Mateo decided to call it an even 83,838.3. Actually, several of them weren’t completely finished, but the last one wasn’t even airtight yet. Once they were confident that there was no danger on the planet, the whole group teleported down to just outside the main dome. This was the one that was already present when they first came to this world over a century ago. Other automators had built up this dome beyond the castle that was there before. There were now four stone walls to protect it against the approximate zero threats here. There were towers, a keep, and a trench for a moat, though it was not filled with water. Vendelin was clearly into medieval times, because this was what he chose for his own dwelling, but other domes had their own themes.

The dome on one side of the first one was modeled on feudal Japan, while the one on the other side appeared to have been inspired by The Wizard of Oz, or maybe Wicked, complete with a green palace, and a yellow brick road. Another one nearby appeared to be a giant golf course. They teleported into Castledome to see if they could find out more information from the local computers. While the smarties were deep in the complicated data, the other four each grabbed a tablet out of the dispenser, and started looking through what was evidently a visitor’s brochure, which stored a directory of all the domes. Roughly 3,000 of them were indeed designed as their own special getaways, leaving the other 80,000 so far undesignated. Some of them were based on historical periods, while others were inspired by fictional media. A few of the concepts were too large in scope, so they combined multiple domes. There was a Westworld analog, which Mateo went straight to in the directory just out of curiosity. It boasted a full complement of robots, just as the source material did, though it was unclear whether they had actually been built, or if the full amusement park was planned for the future.

It was Marie who realized that a lot of the domes weren’t in the directory, because they were planned for traditional residential units. These were typically less exciting, though they were still meant to house like-minded individuals. Many hundreds of billions of people could pretty much move here starting today. Even though this rock was uninhabitable on its own, Vendelin had big plans for it. Maybe he really had been trying to destroy other planets, to get rid of the competition.

“Found it!” Leona suddenly shouted.

“You found the master code?” Ramses questioned.

“What? No, that’s...encrypted,” Leona replied. “What I found was Vendelin’s personal quantum identifier. This can reach him wherever he is, as long as she’s sufficiently near a quantum computer, even if it’s not his.”

“How does a PQI know where he is if it isn’t his device?” Angela questioned.

“If he’s logged into one of his accounts on any device, or if he has an implant, it will send a near-field signal to any and all quantum computers to identify him.” Ramses sighed, and redirected his attention to Leona. “I thought you were looking for the master code. I want control over all these things.”

“Vendelin can give us that,” Leona explained. “He already has it; we wouldn’t have to hack anything.”

“Wait.” Ramses looked away from everyone. “So do I.” He unceremoniously disappeared.

No one bothered to ask him where he had gone. They just went back to their devices. Mateo was particularly drawn to a dome that purported to simulate a zombie-infested city. He always wanted to test his mettle in such an environment. But what kind of safeguards were in place for something like that? None?

Ramses returned with some kind of portable storage device. Mateo recognized it, but couldn’t quite recall what it was used for. He knew that it wasn’t just for transferring any ol’ files, though.

“No,” Leona decided. “Is that him? No,” she repeated.

“In all likelihood, the Jameela Jamil is still in the Dardius galaxy,” Ramses began to reason. “He’s not gonna get your message. He hasn’t even responded to the one we tried to send him before. This is our only hope...unless we just wanna bug out, and forget the whole thing.”

“No!” Olimpia cried. She wanted to try the citywide escape room dome, if it was even available already.

“What is that?” Angela asked, nodding towards the device.

“Who is that?” Marie corrected. “I’m guessing it’s Vendelin. Why do you have it?”

“We rescued him from the afterlife simulation,” Leona answered instead of Ramses. “We then downloaded his consciousness into a new substrate. We shouldn’t still have this q-state, though. It’s unethical to keep extra copies of intelligent beings without their permission.”

“I didn’t keep it intentionally,” Ramses defended. “I was busy, I forgot.”

“That’s no reason to use it now,” Leona argued. “It would still be unethical. He has not authorized a duplicated emergence.”

“Isn’t he good now?” Olimpia asked them. “I’m sure he would understand.”

“Part of what caused his improvement was his exposure to Team Keshida,” Mateo said. He faced Ramses again. “The version that you have stored in there hasn’t experienced any of that. I agree with Leona. I say we find another way.”

“You could always ask me for the code.” It was Hrockas, standing in the doorway. While Vendelin Blackbourbne had laid claim to what would come to be known as Castlebourne in what he believed to be a game called Quantum Colony, Hrockas managed to unlock access to Pluoraia, which was one of the rare populated worlds. He was devastated to learn that he was not just playing a game, but messing with real people’s lives. He was part of the team’s effort to locate Vendelin, and bring him to justice. What the team didn’t know at the time was that this justice was in the form of an execution.

“How are you here?” Leona asked him. “I thought they shut everyone out.”

“Teagarden opened the quantum terminals back up in a limited capacity,” Hrockas answered. “They gave me permission to come here. They did that with a few of their top players.” He used airquotes. “As long as we don’t travel to any of the populated worlds, they’ve allowed us to continue our construction efforts.”

“So, it was you?” Ramses pressed. “You built all these domes?”

“No, I couldn’t control the automators in the beginning, so I leaned into it. I only designed most of the themes. I hoped to open it up to visitors by the end of the century.”

“We scanned for both human and mech lifesigns,” Leona divulged with suspicion. “You didn’t show up.”

Hrockas laughed. “This is a castle?” he said in the form of a rhetorical question, like she was an idiot. “They’re for defense? It’s shielded,” he finally clarified after she failed to see where he was going.

“Anyone else here we should know about?” Marie asked.

“No, just me. Like I said, I was planning for a Grand Opening in 2500.”

“Are you telling me that Zombie City is ready to go, or at least nearing completion?” Mateo asked, hope in his eyes.

Hrockas debated the answer in his head. “It would take me a few hours to initialize the sim, but yes. I mean...kind of. I’ve programmed all the enemy NPCs in those worlds, but then I realized that something like that would need other survivors, unless enough real people sign up at the same time. Trust me, I’ve tested it out on a smaller scale, and it’s boring unless you can run into other people trying to win.”

“Why do all this?” Leona asked. “A virtual simulation can accomplish all the same things in a fraction of the time.”

“There’s something very exciting about getting your own physical heart pumping,” Hrockas replied. “They’ve done studies. People tend to prefer real world simulations over virtual constructs if they can help it. VR is best left for worlds that break physical laws. They don’t need to co-opt everything.”

“Well...” Leona began, hesitating. “I need this planet.”

“For what?” Hrockas asked.

“Yeah, for what?” No one else knew what she was thinking.

She wasn’t sure how she would be received. “There are some people living under an oppressive regime about 16,000 light years from here. I would like to set this up as a sanctuary world; the final destination of an underground railroad.”

Hrockas chuckled. “Did you see how many domes there are? I don’t know how many people you’re worried about, but I’m guessing there’s plenty of room. The way I see it, anyone who ends up here is a potential customer, so go ahead, and bring ‘em on down. Whenever you’re ready.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 9, 2430

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Ex-908 was unlike the other two planets in the Goldilocks Corridor that the team had been to. The first one was at medieval-level technology. The second one was more like the 2030s. This world was far more advanced, with an early-warning outer system defense grid, and multiple space stations in orbit. Fortunately, the AI on this little ship was intelligent enough to avoid being detected. It stayed out of range by hiding on a planetesimal in the inner edge of the transtellar debris cloud, which was smaller than the Oort Cloud that was around Earth.

“What are we going to do here?” Angela asked. “We’re trying to find the bad guy, but what exactly are we expecting to accomplish on this world? Or the next one? Do we have any protocols, procedures, or plans?”

“Good question,” Mateo said. It took him a few seconds to realize that everyone was waiting for him to answer it. “Why are y’all lookin’ at me? I’m not the captain.”

“This was your idea, though,” Marie pointed out.

“Wull...” He fumbled for words. “Why are you listening to me? I don’t know what the hell I’m talkin’ about!”

“It’s okay, honey.”

“Look at them, salivating like honey badgers, acting like I have all the answers. This is just what we do, try to stop all the bad shit happening when we find ourselves in a position to make a difference.”

“Okay, okay, it’s fine. Relax,” Leona encouraged. She looked into his eyes, and started to breathe methodically until he matched her. Then she gestured for him to continue while she talked. “This is the most advanced civilization we’ve run into. There seems to be some air of mystery surrounding the emperor of this empire, of whatever it is they call him, but maybe they know something. Let’s go and ask.”

“The last one could stop us from teleporting,” Olimpia reminded her as she was rubbing Mateo’s arm up and down, since he was the one who suffered from that technology the most. “We were smart to leave one of us in the ship, but that could have easily not been enough. We may not be so lucky this time.”

“Ah.” Ramses disappeared into his lab, and returned a few seconds later. He was holding a damaged gizmo with wires loosely hanging out of it. “The spatial tether. Yes, I almost forgot. In the future, I might be able to help us avoid it altogether, but until then, I’ve designed some clippers, which will break us out of it.” He held up the remote that he had been carrying around lately to do other things, like disrupt Bronach Oaksent’s interstellar holographic projection. The only thing is, there’s only one. If any of us gets caught, you’re gonna need me.”

Leona takes it out of his hand, and turns it around in her own. “How long will it take you to build another one?”

“A second remote that does everything? All day,” Ramses answers. “A cheap knock-off that only clips spatial tethers? A couple hours, maybe.”

“Stay here and do that,” Leona orders. “I’ll take this one in case we need it. Hopefully, if they have such technology, it operates on the same principles. If not, you’ll be up here to save us.”

“I’ll stay with him,” Olimpia volunteered. “I don’t think anyone should be alone. I can be your little assistant,” she said to him.

“I would love that.”

“Okay, we’ll split into three teams. The second group needs to go find this planet’s version of The Caretaker. Vitalie, I don’t know if you wanna do that, or if you very much don’t want to...”

“If not me,” Vitalie!324 began, “at least someone she recognizes. So either you or Matt. The other iterants never met Angela-slash-Marie.”

“I’ll do it,” Mateo said. “Whatever questions need to be asked to find Oaksent’s ruling world, I’m not the one to ask them. It may end up in a fight, who knows?”

“Okay,” Leona agreed. “I’ll go start askin’ questions, and knockin’ heads. Mateo will find Vitalie!908. Ramses and Olimpia are staying with the ship. By the way, keep moving. Break orbit, if you have to, which I think you probably will. Go into darklurking mode. We’ll still be able to communicate through our comms. I don’t think more than two need to stay here, though. Nor do I think finding the other Caretaker is more than a two-person job. So who wants to join my husband while the other two come back me up?”

Both Angela and Marie raised their hands.

“I don’t know what that means,” Leona said to them.

“We both want to help Mateo,” Marie clarified. She looked over at her sister. Then they dropped their hands down simultaneously for a round of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Marie won after the third game.

“All right, is everyone ready?” Leona posed.

They nodded.

“Rambo, navigate us to the planet. I want you to look for three things. Number one, the biggest, baddest seat of government you can detect. Number two, the remotest region on the surface. Number two, the most complex cave system that’s still remote. If something goes wrong, jump to, and hide in, the caves. We can find each other while avoiding pursuit. Once we know where to go, we’ll split. Group Confrontation will go to the city. Group Stasis will find the other iterant. She seems to usually be away from civilization. Obviously, Group Breakthrough will stay with the ship, which I’m realizing now still needs a name.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Mateo claimed.

She was thrown off a little by this, but didn’t push it. “Okay. Let’s do it to it!”

The quickly-conceived plan went as well as they thought it would. Speed was key, which Leona knew. Orbital defenses sprang into action, but they weren’t fast enough for them. The three groups jumped to their respective missions, and no one was caught. Not yet, anyway.

As it turned out, they might not have to worry about spatial tethers preventing them from teleporting. When they appeared in the lobby of what appeared to be some kind of capitol building, no one batted an eye. They walked up to the reception desk. “Hello. My name is Captain Leona Matic of the...” She faltered. “Well, I gave my ship away, but that doesn’t matter. We need to talk to whoever is in charge here.”

“In charge of what?” the receptionist asked. She looked pretty young to hold the job, and didn’t seem to care about it. She may as well have been chewing gum.

“The planet.”

She yawned. “I heard he’s dead.”

“Not Bronach Oaksent. I mean, in charge of this world specifically, or maybe even just this city?” Unlike the first two planets, this world had several distinct cities, and any number of smaller towns in between. This one was the largest.

“Oh, the Prime Minister. He’s on the top floor, but—”

They didn’t bother listening to her full explanation. They just jumped right up there and started to look around. There were people hurrying about, but it didn’t feel like a crisis. This just looked like a Tuesday. One of them made the mistake of walking a little bit slower than most. Angela gently stopped him by the arm. “Pardon me. Where can we find the Prime Minister?”

“He’s back there. Can I go now?”

She let him go, and they walked down the hallway until they reached the big double doors. Angela opened one while Vitalie!324 opened the other. Leona barged in through the center. A group of men were in the middle of a conversation around the long table. They stopped and looked over at the disruption. “Good afternoon, folks. My name is Leona Matic. Perhaps you’ve heard of me. It seems that your god-king is a pretty big asshole. I’m aimin’ to take him down. Problem is, ya see, I don’t know where he is. You tell me what you know, I’ll leave you be. You stand in my way, I’ll take you down first.” She teleported randomly around the room, which wasn’t impressing them. “You may know people who can do this. You may be able to do it yourself. But I have other tricks up my sleeve, so don’t test me. Where is the seat of power for this Exin Empire? My guess is you call it Ex-001, but I dunno.”

The man at the head of the table was the only one standing. He tugged down on his sports jacket authoritatively, and began to come around the corner. “Emergency teleportation.” Everyone disappeared, except for him. “You’ll leave them be, because they got nothin’ to do with this. Your fight’s with me.”

“You’re not Bronach Oaksent,” Leona accused.

“No, but I run this rock. We have heard of you. We were just discussing your team. You’re a problem. You’ve been to two planets already, not counting the, uhh...traitors. I think you’ll find that you won’t be able to bully us like you did 275 and 324. They are...irrelevant, especially Ex-324, which is in the state that it’s in because it doesn’t provide Oaksent with what he demands. And you’re wrong, the primary system is not called Ex-001. You could never begin to understand our naming conventions.”

“What’s the main world called?”

The Prime Minister smirked. “I can tell you what it’s called, but that doesn’t mean you’ll find it. No one goes to Ex-69, not even me.”

Leona cleared her throat. “Do you know the significance of the number 69, sir?”

“Oaksent calls it the Divine Figure. That’s all we need to know. That’s more than you deserve to know.”

Angela wrote it out for him on a whiteboard. “It’s two numbers having sex.”

Leona never broke eye contact with the Prime Minister. “Your leader is a fucking child. Tell me where he is, or I’m gonna fuck up your shit.”

“I would rather die.”

“Weird nerd,” she mused. She tilted her head away. “Ramses, are you locked on?”

“We’re in, sir,” he replied through comms. “What do you wanna do?”

“Burn up the biggest one,” she ordered. “I want this world to be defenseless.”

The Prime Minister’s face couldn’t decide if he felt horrified, or confused. “What are you doing? What are you burning?”

The phone on the back counter started to ring.

Leona paced around menacingly. “We were wondering, why would your world need the kind of defenses that it does? It doesn’t make any sense. This is an empire in the middle of nowhere. No one out there knows that you exist. And the other two planets don’t have it. You don’t care about Ex-324 and Ex-275. So are you fighting against outsiders like us...or amongst yourselves? We didn’t speak long, but Oaksent didn’t strike me as the type who would have some sort of inherent opposition to civil war. You’re not his little babies. You’re his playthings. Hell, he probably stirs up conflict on purpose. I suppose I’m more like him than I thought, because I’m doin’ the same thing. If you keep refusing me, there will be nothing left to defend you, except for her.”

Vitalie raised her hand up, and waved with her fingers. “That’s assuming you can convince her to stay here as your Caretaker. The rest of your defenses will have burnt up in the atmosphere.”

“What do you want?” the Prime Minister demanded to know.

“I want to know where your god-king is!”

“I told you, no one knows that!”

“Ramses, on my mark, drop another one, but don’t worry about avoiding populated areas this time.”

“Wait!” He struggled to catch his breath. “You would do that? You would kill innocent people? That’s not the Team Matic I grew up hearing stories about.”

“You must have heard sanitized versions of those stories. The way I see it, you’re fighting a war on multiple fronts. I consider you to be an enemy combatant, and I’ll do what I need to do to protect the lives of the people that I care about. The Welriosians weren’t hurting anyone, and your boss tried to destroy them all. What happens when the vonearthans make it this far out? How will you react?”

“It’s not my job to react to outsiders. We’re the farest from the stellar neighborhood out here. That’s the whole point.”

“What is Ex-908’s responsibility to the empire?” Leona asked.

The Prime Minister took a breath. “These are testing grounds. Ex-182 regularly attacks us to see how we survive. If you destroy even one more of our satellites, we’ll all die. These aren’t games, the stakes are real.”

“I’ll leave you with what you have left if you tell me what you know, like I’ve asked a thousand times already.”

“I really don’t know where Ex-69 is, but I know someone who might. Ex-42 could have the answers you need. I think it’s about 24 light years away. It’s where we keep all of our data. It’s like one giant space server.”

“Ram, you know where Ex-42 is?”

“There are thirty-one planets between here and there.”

“That’s our next stop.”

The Prime Minister looked over at the phone. “I never answered it. Which satellite did you destroy?”

Leona looked at him incredulously. “I didn’t destroy any of them. Ramses was the one calling you on that phone. He was able to hack the communications network, and not much else quite yet.”

“You were bluffing,” he realized.

“We were that time.” They teleported away.

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Microstory 1972: Team Lead

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Director Washington: *from the car console video screen* Report.

Reese: My team was able to generate a map of every place the owner of the phone that the meteorologist called has been. Two teams are stationed for a stakeout. Tech support is watching a second location, in case he shows up there. I’m situated in between.

Director Washington: You got a name?

Reese: We got a blurry face from a redlight cam. He was caught twice on the same corner using a cell phone at the time of two known incoming calls that our target received. But they’re on the lookout for anything suspicious. Agent Miazga’s on it. He knows how to spot someone who’s guilty of something, whether it’s the same guy from the photo, or not. Facial recognition couldn’t find him, though, so we’re being cautious.

Director Washington: Very well. Report back in off-schedule when you have the suspect in pocket.

Reese: This call already is off-schedule. Is everything okay?

Director Washington: Has SI Eliot made any attempt to contact you?

Reese: He called the headquarters twice. Tennison handled it. I’ve maintained contact with her; everything’s going fine there. The new agents are settling in. They’re eager to meet Leonard, I’ll admit that.

Director Washington: It was more important for him to be down there with you. I made that decision, and I’ll stick by it.

Reese: Well, I wish this process had gone faster. I don’t know if this guy will ever return to where we think he lives, but he was here or something. We’re sure of it, whoever he is.

Director Washington: That’s fine.

Reese: Hey, why were you asking about SI Eliot?

Director Washington: He’s a good investigator. He knows that I sent you on an off-the-books mission, and he’s not happy about it.

Reese: You still don’t trust him?

Director Washington: I’m almost certain that he’s not a traitor, but I would feel a hell of a lot better reading him in if we had more than one enemy in custody. I’m not trying to rush you, but sooner would be better.

Reese: Madam Director, are you asking me to find a loophole in the law?

Director Washington: I’m not asking you to do anything, but if you were to unlawfully enter the premises of a suspect’s presumed residence, all I’m saying is that someone would be there to make sure that you don’t catch heat for it. So if he never shows up, and you need to get back on the trail, then do whatever it takes.

Ophelia: *through the radio* Team Lead, this is Team One. We have eyes on the target. He’s heading upstairs.

Reese: *into the radio* Team One, this is Team Lead. Hold fast. *to the screen* This could be it. I don’t think we’ll need to skirt any laws here. I’ll call you back.

Director Washington: Goodbye, Agent Parsons.

Reese: *into the radio* Team Prime, do you have a visual?

Sasho: *through the radio* Negative, Team Lead. We can’t see the front.

Reese: *thinking first* Okay, Team Alpha, go, go, go. Take him down at his door.

Microstory 1971: Team One

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Leonard: So, I hope this doesn’t sound judgy, because I’m genuinely interested. Who takes care of your kids while you’re out on stakeouts, and other missions? You have four of them, right?

Ophelia: My eldest stepson is 23, so he takes care of the two little ones. His sister’s in college right now. She’s in Baton Rouge, actually, so I’m geographically closer to her than the others in Kansas City. But I won’t be visiting her, of course. None of them has any idea where I am, or what I do now. I still don’t really know.

Leonard: What do they think you do?

Ophelia: They believe I’m a merch rep. I claimed that it was a promotion. I supposedly go all over the country, helping the satellite stores introduce new merchandise.

Leonard: Oh, that sounds nice. Nice and safe.

Ophelia: Yeah, no need to worry them. It was a bad cover, though. The idea was that I needed an excuse to be out of town all the time, which is why I volunteered for this assignment. Well, I didn’t know that I would be camped out in front of a restaurant, waiting for a mysterious possible traitor to come back home. I just asked to go in the field at the first opportunity, ya know, to sell the lie about having to travel for work.

Leonard: It’s not a lie. I have a feeling we’ll be doing more and more of this kind of thing as the department grows.

Ophelia: True, but I’m not so sure how I feel about it anymore. I miss them so much. I don’t mind the job itself, but I underestimated how much I prefer to go back home to them at the end of every day.

Leonard: Reese is a reasonable man. I’m sure if you asked for more domestic responsibilities, he would understand. We’re all trying to find our place here. Sasho thought he was gonna run the jail, because it was the obvious choice, but he’s been working hard with Sachs. He’ll be a spotter in no time.

Ophelia: Yeah. I’m sure you’re right.

Leonard: So, what about the other parents of your kids?

Ophelia: My first husband is dead. He was already a deadbeat, so it wasn’t much of a transition. My second husband and I drifted apart, but he’s still fairly involved. Mostly in a monetary sense, but we all have an okay relationship with him. He tried to go back to his girlfriend, who mothered my stepchildren, but it didn’t work out either. She’s still alive, and still a deadbeat.

Leonard: You care for her kids as if they were your own?

Ophelia: They are my own.

Leonard: *awkwardly* Right. Of course.

Ophelia: It’s all right, I know what you meant. They’re great kids. A lot of children in that position would idolize their birth mother no matter what, but they know who’s been there for them, and they consider me their real mother. They call me mom; just about always have. Wait, is that him?

Leonard: *holds up a photo* This is pretty grainy, but I think so. It looks like our guy.

Ophelia: *into the radio* Team Lead, this is Team One. We have eyes on the target. He’s heading upstairs.

Microstory 1970: Suspect

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Reese: Anything yet?

Micro: No, man, I’m sorry. These Mississippi systems are crazy. How can I put this? It’s not like they have the best security in the world, it’s more like their protocols are all over the place, it’s impossible to find anything. I don’t understand how anyone makes contact with anyone else. There’s so much data to sift through, and you don’t have the AI systems that I would normally use. These damn redzones are killing me. I haven’t been able to get any more hits for the last two days. If you haven’t found him yet, he may have left the state. If he’s done that, we’re gonna need a new lead.

Reese: Well, it’s okay. Just do your best. I know it’s been a few days; we’ll get there.

Micro: *laughing* Don’t trust people so much. It hasn’t been a few days. It’s been several. When someone screws up, you need to let them know, so they do better.

Reese: That’s exactly what I do. But I don’t like wasting time. You know how well you’re doing. Me reiterating it isn’t gonna make it go faster. Just get it done, Duval.

Micro: Yes, sir. That’s more like it.

Anaïs: Don’t worry about that, Micro. I found him. Here’s a map of our suspect’s most frequent locations. This one is a hotel, but he spends the majority of his time right here. There’s an apartment above the restaurant, so I think that’s where he’s staying.

Reese: Where did you get this?

Anaïs: I can’t tell you that.

Reese: No, I’m sorry; that’s not acceptable. You need to explain yourself right now.

Micro: There ya go. Let ‘er have it.

Reese: Duval, stay out of this.

Anaïs: What’s it matter? This is where he is, whoever he is.

Reese: My people have been looking into this week. Half these locations were already on our radar, because Micro found part of the trail. I’ve had our people fishing around, and they always come back with no bites. You keep disappearing without any assignments, and now you suddenly have all the answers. How did you find out about this apartment? It’s in a redzone, which we just found out about. It’s nearly impossible to trace anyone there. That’s probably why he chose this spot.

Anaïs: Look, I know you’re upset—

Reese: I’m not upset, I’m worried. If this intel is good, then it still needs to be verified. Otherwise, it’s not actionable. I need to know where you got this, and how.

Anaïs: You want it verified? Fine, verify it. Micro, plug these missing waypoints, and see if they match up with whatever else you already have.

Reese: No, no, no. You don’t give orders. I give the orders. Barring that, Leonard is in charge. Now, you’re my tactician, which means that you act when we have somewhere to go. You don’t find us the target in the first place unless I tell you to. Even so, if my people are stepping out, and getting their information from bad places, then we’re in trouble. It means I can’t trust you. Can I trust you, Agent Altimari?

Anaïs: Yes.

Reese: Then prove it.

Anaïs: Okay. I’ll tell you about my past. But not in front of her.

Microstory 1960: Checking In

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Reese: Good, you’re both here. Just checking in. We didn’t talk at all yesterday after everyone split up with their respective teams. Did everything go okay?

Myka: Yeah, no problems. Nothing to report.

Leonard: I have something to report.

Reese: What is it?

Leonard: The hacker is from another universe; evidently came here the same way I did, and it wasn’t her first time either. She’s been on this planet longer than any of us. I don’t know if the government knows this, or not. If they don’t, I think we shouldn’t tell them.

Reese: That’s...an interesting development. No, we should definitely not tell them. Out of everyone they hired for this new department, they were most worried about her. I would ask you to keep an eye on her, but I’m not going to talk to her about it for now.

Leonard: Understood.

Myka: You came in here already with a nervous look on your face, Reese. What’s up?

Reese: The OSI Director wants to speak with me. I don’t know what it could be about.

Myka: Well, I’m sure it’s about this, right? You just started a new department. We’ve not really done anything yet, but she probably wants to take your temperature on it. That’s what you’re doing with the two of us right now, yeah?

Reese: I’m hoping to get the three of us on the same page, in case something’s wrong. Leonard, what you told me about our hacker, that’s good. Is there anything else I should know? No matter how insignificant it may sound, we should share it.

Myka: Well, Navin really does take naps. He wasn’t joking about that.

Reese: Yeah, it’s a medical condition. He cleared that before he took the job.

Myka: Then I can’t think of anything else.

Leonard: You should talk to SI Eliot first. Take his temperature, if I’m using that idiom correctly. I’ve never heard it before.

Myka: That was right.

Reese: That’s a good idea. *dials Myka’s phone*

SI Eliot: *through the speakerphone* This is Eliot.

Reese: Hey, Hisham; it’s Reese. You got Myka and Leonard on the line too.

SI Eliot: What’s up?

Reese: We just wanted to touch base with you regarding this conference call that the Director requested for tomorrow. Do you know anything about that, and is there something I should know before that happens?

SI Eliot: Oh, it’s not a conference call. She’ll be coming down.

Reese: Okay, well, see, that worries me. We’re not really ready for prime time. Like, does she know about Misra’s naps? And Woodloch’s computer isn’t working right...

SI Eliot: This isn’t about you, Reese. She wants to see how the building turned out. If anyone gets in trouble, it’ll be the contractors we hired for the remodel.

Reese: Are you sure?

SI Eliot: I’m sure. Hey, I gotta jump on another call, but you’ll be fine. *hangs up*

Reese: Okay, now I’m really worried.

Leonard: Yeah. He’s lying.

Microstory 1959: My Funny Valentine

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Leonard Miazga: *lowered voice* Hey, can I talk to you for a minute? In private?

Valentine Duval: Sure, what’s up, dude?

Leonard: Here, over here. So, Reese introduced me earlier, but I should reintroduce myself. I’m Leonard Miazga, but you can just call me Leonard. Do you go by Valentine? Or do you have, like, a hacker name that you prefer?

Valentine: It’s Micro, but Val is fine IRL.

Leonard: Okay, Val. I just wanted to ask—and I don’t wanna be presumptuous. I mean, I don’t know what you were going for. Maybe it was random. Maybe it wasn’t anything. I don’t know. Maybe I just completely misread what you did, and actually nothing happened at all. So I’ll sound like an idiot when I finally get this out. Though I suppose, since it’s taken me so long to get through it, I already do sound like an idiot.

Val: Is this about the wink?

Leonard: Yes, it is. You winked at me, right? I wasn’t imagining that.

Val: You weren’t imagining it. Where I’m from, winking is a way to convey emotional information without words, and—if done correctly—without others knowing that any information is being shared in the first place, let alone what it is.

Leonard: Okay, but...why would we be sharing information? We couldn’t possibly have met before today. Let’s just say that I’m...

Val: A traveler? Yeah, Leonard, I know where you’re from.

Leonard: Because you’re a hacker.

Val: Yes, but there are other signs. You sort of...smell a certain way.

Leonard: Oh.

Val: Not a literal smell. The way you hold yourself, and the way you walk. I knew that you were from another universe. I realized that you were cognizant of this fact after observing you myself for all of five seconds. You act like a stranger in a strange place.

Leonard: So you were just winking because you know my secret. Though, it’s not really a secret. It just hasn’t come up yet. I suppose we’ll have to tell the others sometime.

Val: Yeah. And also I’m like you. I thought you realized that.

Leonard: What? You are? Are you from my world?

Val: *shaking her head* No, I’m from Salmonverse.

Leonard: Oh, I’ve heard of that. I can only specifically recall hearing about two universes, and that’s one of them. How long have you been here?

Val: I got here a couple years ago.

Leonard: How? Did you always know you were on the wrong Earth?

Val: Westfall, just like you. I’m aware of it because I already knew about time travel and stuff, so my mind couldn’t be rewired to account for the strange differences, of which there are many. Did you know they don’t even have a word for toads?

Leonard: *doesn’t care* Huh?

Val: They call them creepfrogs. That’s so stupid. They’re a different species!

Leonard: Val, I don’t care about any of that. I want to know about you. You seem very unsurprised by any of this, and I have a million questions, starting with—

Val: How to get home? You can’t. This is your life now. Y’all best get used to it.

Microstory 1956: Introduction Circle

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Reese: Thank you all for being here on time. We’re wading through uncharted territory here, and I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but I’ll admit to being rather nervous. I’ve never started a new department in the government before, and most people here have never worked for the government at all. The first thing I want to do is go around the room for introductions. Behind me are the other leaders, Leonard and Myka.

Leonard: Hey, I’m Leonard Miazga. I used to be a parole officer, but now I’m an alien.

Myka: Myka Tennison, we’re just creating welcome baskets for all of you right now, which we should have thought to do before. Don’t mind us.

Reese: Perfect. Now we’ll just go around the circle. Let’s all be honest; you don’t have to be embarrassed. I don’t care who starts first; either the person to my right, or my left.

Freewoman 4: I guess I’ll go first. My name is Henley Grahame. I’m an ex-con, and I’m not embarrassed about it. They call us freewomen, but I’ve never cared about that term. I am not easily offended. And just call me Hen.

Shadow Team Leader: Hello, Hen. It’s nice to meet you. I’m Celandine Robles. I was an agent with the Office of Special Investigations. Most recently, I was the leader of a shadow team, which is what put me on the path to ending up here. I’ll be continuing to run a team from the field, while still reporting to Agent Miazga at the home office.

Leonard: Not an agent.

Freewoman 3: Yanna Strøm. Also a criminal. Don’t ask me what I did to end up in prison. I’ll never tell.

Shadow Team Member 2: Uh. Okay, I’m not one for public speaking. I’ll just say I’m Inge Flynn, and I’m an agent too.

Freewoman 2: Ophelia Woodloch. Freewoman. Mother of two. Stepmother of two. Wife of non. Ready to kick some alien ass. At least inasmuch as I’m allowed to, based on whatever authority I’m granted. But not you, Leonard. You seem pretty chill.

Escapee 4: Navin Misra, I’m a man of few words. I was told that I would be allowed to take naps throughout the day, as long as it doesn’t interfere with my work. Don’t ever wake me up, and we’ll be cool. Oh, and I have been to prison, but I’ve seen the error of my ways, and I’m ready to make up for my past sins, and begin to make a positive contribution to the betterment of society. I guess I’m not a man of so few words.

Shadow Team Member 1: Anaïs Altimari, shadow team member; specializing in infiltration and deep undercover. I imagine I’ll keep doing that kind of thing here.

Escapee 1: I’m a smuggler. I can get you whatever you want. I’ll be working with Miss Myka here for procurement, but I promise not to steal.

Reese: Your name?

Escapee 1: Oh, sorry. Timotei Barber.

Former Jail Guard: I am Sasho Dreyer, disgraced former jail guard for the KC Central Law Station. I’m a criminal, because I technically let several detainees escape on my watch, but I was never formally charged. I too would like to kick some alien ass.

Hacker: Valentine Avalon Duval, hacker extraordinaire. Let’s see, how would I describe myself? Let’s just say that I’m outta this world. *winks at Leonard*

Microstory 1945: Cutting Teeth

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Leonard: Hold your fire! I know them!

Reese: I do too.

Shadow Team Leader: Yeah, I recognize them from the files.

Leonard: Look who’s in the back.

Reese: I see him. [...] Jail Guard, We’re surprised to see you, especially with those two.

Former Jail Guard: Well, after what happened, I was fired. They said it wasn’t about the escape, but we all know it was. It turned out to be the greatest thing that ever happened to me. But that’s a roundabout story. I’m sure you don’t have time for it.

Leonard: And you two? How did you end up here, and why?

Escapee 4: Part of that is part of Former Jail Guard’s story.

Shadow Team Leader: I need to know the truth; the whole truth. If there’s a leak or a weakness in our organization, we have to understand it so we can fix it. No one was meant to know about this operation. How did you find out about it?

Former Jail Guard: Well, if you insist, I’ll get into it. Like I said, I was fired, but not before I met you, Agent Parsons. I was inspired by your words at the law station, and I started looking into applying to Fugitive Services. Of course, I’m not really qualified for all that. Apparently everyone needs some kind of predating story?

Reese: It’s not an official requirement, but it’s an unwritten custom that FS doesn’t accept you unless you’ve already caught someone. Most people go after small fish; a simple bounty that any rookie could find. They’re usually hiding at their girlfriend’s.

Former Jail Guard: I didn’t wanna do that. I wanted to cut my teeth on something pretty big. I met with your former partner, and he—perhaps unwittingly—gave me the impression that no one was really looking for the five escapees. It’s not like the competition would have been my greatest obstacle, but I still figured I had a better shot. And obviously *points* I found them. Well, I found most of them.

Escapee 1: Four out of five ain’t bad.

Leonard: Where are the other two?

Escapee 1: Escapee 2 and Escapee 3 didn’t want to stick around. He let them go.

Former Jail Guard: They told me about how Agent Parsons found the fifth escapee. The story was really weird, so I was intrigued. I think we uncovered a lot, right? We learned about the bond groups, and the OSI. You were in a fancy hotel at one point. I just knew that there was something more to this, so I reached out to...someone who could help me hack into the OSI’s system.

Shadow Team Leader: So there is a weakness.

Former Jail Guard: There was a leak. Don’t worry, it’s been plugged since, but not before the three of us discovered that there was something freaky going on in the middle of nowhere Wyoming. We didn’t know for sure that we would find you here, but we knew there would be something. We saw the footprints leading here from the road, so—

Shadow Team Leader: Wait, what? Footprints? There should be no footprints.

Former Jail Guard: There was one set, leading in this direction.

Shadow Team Leader: We wiped everybody’s tracks on our way here, including our own. Weapons up again, folks. Someone else is here.

Extremus: Year 49

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Tinaya Leithe is a tertiary school student, on the Captain’s track, which means that she is specializing in ship administration. As she is part of an elite group of preselected potential future captains, she has gained access to a number of sections and systems that the average Extremus passenger does not. As a brilliant technical specialist, she has granted herself access to even more, allowing her to see the truth regarding certain vessel secrets which only the highest of executive crewmembers know. It’s been a long time since she’s exercised such abilities, though, at the request of her aunt and former Captain, Kaiora Leithe. That is about to change. Even after all this time being indoctrinated into crew mentality, she and her classmates have not yet met the new captain. They are today, and she needs information on him.

The closest thing Tinaya has to a best friend, Lataran Keen is with her. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

“We are not doing anything,” Tinaya contends. “You’re just watching.”

“That’s called an accessory,” Lataran argues.

“I’m not going to get caught. I know what I’m doing.”

“It’s sure taking you long enough.”

“That’s part of it. If I just pushed my way into the personnel files, they would be able to trace me. If I don’t want them to even know that I accessed these, I have to go the long way around.”

“What do you even want to know about the new captain?”

“I don’t know what we’re gonna find. I’m looking for skeletons, ticks, weird sexual proclivities.”

“That last one is not going to be in his file.”

“It’ll be in his medical file.”

“Naya, are you hoping to get him dismissed from his position?”

“No, not unless there’s something to be found.”

“Which there won’t be. There is nothing you can read in there that no one else knows about. Someone put it in there in the first place, and yet he was still selected as Captain. If you’re looking for dirt, you’re wasting your time.”

Tinaya exhales sharply, and stops what she’s doing for a second. “My aunt selected Trudie Haynes to succeed her as the leader of this ship. The council went against her. I wanna know why.”

“There’s a flaw in your plan.”

“How do you figure?” Tinaya questions.

“If you think that Tamm got the job for...untoward reasons, then you’ll be hacking into the wrong file. If it’s anything at all, it will probably have something to do with what he knows about someone else.”

She stops again. “You’re right.” She waits for a moment, then gets back to work, but shifts gears. “I need to retrieve everyone’s files. That will take me a little longer.”

“The meet-and-greet starts in thirty minutes. You have to be there, or you won’t become captain when the next shift comes up.”

“This stupid event is not a requirement.”

“No, but if you feel the council operates with bias, then they would probably not be above holding your absence from this one stupid thing against you.”

Tinaya stops yet again. “You’re right. You’re too logical for your own good.” She closes out all of the windows, and erases all evidence that she so much as attempted to break into any highly restricted files. “That’s why you’re number seven.”

Lataran shrugs. “Better than eight. Better than eleven.”

“Not as good as number one.”

“You’re not number one.”

Now Tinaya shrugs. “Li and I have been leapfrogging each other since we graduated from pre-cap. I’ll find a way to get ahead of him on the leaderboard.”

Lataran takes a deep breath. “This is good. You should probably shower and change anyway. I definitely need to.”

Tinaya pulls her collar away from her neck, and smells it. “I think it’s fine.”

Lataran stares at her.

But you’re the logic queen.”

“That’s right; the only position higher than Captain around here.”

Tinaya does as she was told when Lataran leaves to do the same for herself. One of the benefits of being seriously considered for the job of Captain is having one’s own cabin, which would usually not be assigned until a regular student begins their licensure at age nineteen. Not only that, but these are some of the nicest cabins on the ship, akin to what some of them will have once it’s time to join the executive crew. There are a total of eleven of them in their class. One or two may wash out in the next two years before college begins, but the likelier outcome is failing out of the college program early on, or not exactly failing out, but being removed from the council’s internal and secret list of serious candidates. It’s impossible to know for sure who is on that list, but it’s pretty easy to know if you’re off of it, based on some dark mark on your record.

It’s also possible to be on the short list without ever going through the program. Captain Soto Tamm, for instance, didn’t know anything about how to captain the ship, and he still made it because the captain’s track is guarantee of nothing. Still, it’s weird, and suspicious that they chose someone with no relevant education, and also against the previous captain’s wishes. That’s why Tinaya wants to find out what’s up with him. Why would they do this? What is so damn special about him? Maybe nothing. The few who have sat in that seat since the Extremus launched 48 years ago have been plagued by scandal and intrigue in a way that no one thought plausible. This journey was supposed to be a smooth and uncontroversial one, but it has turned into a mess. Maybe that’s why.

Lataran returns when it’s time to go to the little dumb party. She tilts her head. “That dress looks familiar.”

Tinaya smooths it out from her stomach, down her thighs as she’s looking at herself again in the mirror. “It was my grandmother’s.”

She frowns kindly. “That’s sweet.”

The two of them head down the corridors. Even with all of their exceptional privileges, they’re still not afforded teleportation rights. They may never, as the rules are pretty strict these days, and have been for a while. Theirs is not the only class scheduled to meet the new captain. Every student on the captain’s track from age fourteen to twenty has been invited, however almost none of them is here yet. In fact, a quick headcount shows maybe one from each of the other classes, yet everyone from Tinaya and Lataran’s year. What the hell is happening? “Hey, where is everyone?” she asks a boy whose name she can’t remember. He’s two years ahead of her. “They’re protesting.”

“Protesting what?”

“The captain,” he says as if it’s obvious.

“I didn’t know that we were doing that.”

“We are not. Besides the second years, everyone here is either at the top of their respective leaderboards, or they’re close, and don’t want to risk losing the chance to rise. Everyone else said screw it.”

“Why were we not informed?” Lataran asks him.

The boy looks at her, then eyes Tinaya. “Because of her. As you know, each class is ranked separately, but that’s only officially. Unofficially, she’s number one, and she always will be, unless she dies, or something. The lesser number ones are here, because we’re the only ones with any semblance of a chance of being picked for fourth shift.”

“It’ll be the fifth shift,” Tinaya reasons.

“Not everyone counts Olindse Belo.”

“I do. Maybe that’s why I’m number one on this unofficial list.”

“You’re number one, because you’re a legacy, and because there are rumors of people on board who know about the future.”

“You shouldn’t believe rumors. Everyone on this track should want it, and should be proving that every day, in every way,” Tinaya argues.

“Hey, man, you’re preaching to the choir. I’m here, ain’t I?”

“So really, they’re protesting her, and our whole class?” Lataran presses.

“Oh, no. It’s definitely about Soto Tamm. We didn’t so much as decide not to tell you all, as we didn’t think you would be interested. We’re not of the right ages.”

Tinaya frowns and regards the pathetic crowd. Captain Tamm has not arrived yet—probably hoping to make a grand entrance—so the few kids are milling about, nibbling on snacks, and sipping on drinks. “You’re not wrong. I have to be here. Honestly, one of us should be the next captain. If we’re protesting because they selected out of pool, all the protestors are doing is increasing the chances that the council will feel compelled to do the same thing again next time.”

“Exactly,” the boy agrees. “So it’s decided. No one here today gives up.”

There he is. It’s Captain Soto Tamm. He walks in with that political smile, immediately starting to shake people’s hands as he passes by them. Unlike someone who is greatly admired, the kids aren’t reaching out for him, though. He’s initiating all of the greetings. Tinaya doesn’t like him mostly because he wasn’t Aunt Kaiora’s pick, but that’s mostly a personal reason. Thinking on it now, she really can’t be against the choice to appoint an out-of-the-box candidate on principle. None of the prior candidates was perfect on paper, and they all got to where they ended up for the unusual decisions they had made. As a dumb kid, she has obviously not been involved in current ship management, but from the outside, he seems like a decent guy, and a fine captain. At least, he hasn’t given them any real reason to distrust him. Perhaps he will as time goes on. This is just his first year.

He continues to greet the kids, and talk with each one of them personally, expertly ignoring how few of them actually chose to show up. He conspicuously ignores Tinaya completely, though. That tells everyone everything they need to know about his thoughts and intentions. She will be the next captain, and he’s going to make sure of it.

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