The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 27, 2399

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Mateo is closest to the window. He looks out of it to see whether it explains why no one else is here. Based on what they’ve learned from Heath and Imani, even on the off hours, the auditorium is never empty. Whether the speakers are rehearsing, or worshipers are praying, this place is never as dead as it is now. It’s also falling apart, as is everything outside, which can really mean only one thing. “We’re in the Facsimile. Did we just skip over the entirety of Saturday?”

“Why did you bring us here?” Leona demands to know from Dalton.

“I just reset the timeline,” Dalton begins to explain. “Anyone who was still in the Third Rail has forgotten everything that’s happened in the last few days. Well, they didn’t forget. To them, it never happened. I brought everyone here so you will remember. This is not a gift. I did this so that you will know for the rest of your few remaining days that you did this to yourself. When the Reconvergence comes, you will have no hope of escaping. Reality will collapse, and you’ll just blink out of existence.”

“We’re supposed to be friends,” Leona reminds him. “Why are you doing this?”

“We’ve  not been friends for a long time,” Dalton argues. “As for why I’m doing this, I’m not. I told you, you brought this on yourselves. All you had to do was build your little satellites, and save your little refugees, and leave the rest to me.”

“So you’re just going to kill us,” Leona states.

“Alternate versions of most of you will remain. For the rest, you’re collateral damage. I’m sorry it had to come to this.”

“We know how to get out,” Mateo contends. “You’re not dooming us.”

“I am, though. The door in the un-Salmon Civic Center has been closed. It’s technically still there, but I filled it up with cement. You could try to chisel through, I guess.” Dalton looks at his watch. “I don’t like your chances.”

“There’s still time,” Leona pleads. “Don’t do this. When we get out of here another way, and we will, because we always do, you’re going to regret it.”

“Whatever. I’m not too worried about it.” Dalton reaches out towards Alyssa. “Come dahling,” he says in a British accent.

“I’m not going with you,” Alyssa spits back. She takes Mateo’s hand, but she’s not doing it just because they love each other. She’s slipping him a note.

“This is non-negotiable. You’re gonna give them false hope that all they have to do is teleport to the Constant, or something.” He takes her by the hand, and whisks them both away.

“I don’t understand,” Senator Morton says. “What is this place?”

Leona explains to all those not already in the know where they are. If they don’t find the exit by midnight, they will be stuck here for another week, and that’s assuming they can make it by the time it hits midnight again. That may be what Dalton wants. His primary objective seems to be getting people out of his way. As far as they know, though, he doesn’t kill people. This seems very unlike him, and unless he’s just another version of Constance, there is another way out of here.

“There is,” Mateo jumps in after Leona’s done. He holds up Alyssa’s note. Scribbled quickly in god-awful handwriting, it says BACK DOOR. “There’s another exit.”

“Great.” Aldona throws up her hands. “There’s a back door somewhere, but we have no clue where.”

“Aldona,” Leona begins, “if you know something about the future that will help us, now is the time to ignore my rules of time travel, and just tell us.”

“I would tell you if I did,” Aldona replies. “I was not aware that this would happen. If Dalton has the power to reset the timeline, maybe nothing I knew of the future has done us any good. I don’t know. I just don’t know anymore.” She’s distraught.

“We don’t have time to search the whole planet,” Leona complains, “even if he let us keep our trusty teleporter. I have access to an aircraft. Ramses specifically designed it to be duplicated into this dimension, and be ready to go if and when we ever needed it, but where are we going to take it?”

“I know where we need to go.” Tarboda looks at Mateo. “We’ve been there.”

Mateo looks puzzled. Then he starts to think. “The antipodes,” he realizes.

“Which antipodes?” Leona asks.

“What is an antipode?” Labhrás asks.

“Kansas and Madagascar,” Tarboda answers Leona. “I don’t know for sure that it’s right, but there’s a weird dimensional thing out there, and if I were to install a back door, the first place I would think is the opposite of where I put the front door.”

“That makes some sense,” Winona encourages.

“It’s our only hope. Can everyone walk? Our aircraft will fly, not none of the other vehicles in this dimension are operable, and the Lofts are about an hour away.”

The group starts the hike northward from the Plaza to the Crown Center area. They don’t slow down, and they don’t make any stops. Their destination being very intentionally the farthest point on Earth from where they are now, it’s pretty much the longest flight they could possibly have to take. The jet is small, and barely big enough to fit all of them. Not everyone has a seat, but they’re not exactly worried about federal regulations at the moment. There is not enough time to make more than one trip. Ramses engineered it to be fuel efficient, and that meant sacrificing speed. It takes them the entire rest of the day, placing them within minutes of their midnight deadline. They don’t even have time to find a landing spot in all this dense vegetation. There aren’t enough parachutes for everyone either, so they have to triple up, which is also extremely dangerous, but they don’t jump from very high. Leona and Tarboda go last after gaining some altitude, and making sure the jet flies off into the distance.

“Leona takes out her phone. “There’s no GPS here, but the terrain is the same as it is in the Third Rail, so I can get us there.”

“I can get us there,” Tarboda insists. “They were walking before, but now they’re running. With only a few minutes to spare, they find the half-hut. From the looks of it, it’s the other half. This is obviously not where Cheyenne and her key friends are living, though, because they were able to access the portal on a day other than Salmonday.

“Okay,” Leona says. “I’ll go first, and if I don’t come out in one minute, assume this is a one-way trip, and just follow me. If it’s killed me, well...you would have died in a matter of weeks anyway, right? All right, see you on the other side!” She runs through. Thirty seconds later, she peeks her head back through. “It’s two-way. Come on in.”

Everyone files in, with Mateo as the caboose. They’re in a world of white, like the Construct from The Matrix. A vague blur appears before them like a TV with a bad signal, then solidifies into Cheyenne. “You’re back.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Mateo begins. “We wouldn’t have come, except—”

“I was just gonna say that you’re right on schedule.” She points. “Walk that way.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 26, 2399

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Leona is grateful for the delay. It gave her the time she needed to practice Alyssa’s illusion power. As a bonus, with their relationship with her patched, Alyssa herself was able to teach her what she needed to know. It’s crazy that this is the same young woman they met less than a year ago. She was so ignorant, but so patient and welcoming, and now it feels like she gets this stuff better than they do. How much did Dalton tell her?

The sanctuary is packed. No, they don’t call it that. It’s just the auditorium. This religion thinks it’s different than the others, as if using more generic terminology somehow makes it less demanding of blind devotion. But they’re all the same. This, Mormonism, Christianity, Scientology. The details in their stories are irrelevant and interchangeable. Any wisdom or truth in their claims are overshadowed by their insistence that this is the only path to righteousness. That’s why Leona is choosing to reveal herself to this audience. While anyone will be able to log on and watch, this audience here is going to see what she can do in person, and they will instantaneously switch loyalties. Imani Pettis doesn’t think that’s going to happen. She thinks it will only strengthen their faith in Dalton. That’s just because she’s been too close to it for too long. These people are here because they don’t think for themselves. It’s not that they can’t; it’s that they don’t want to. Leona is going to wean them off of that mentality, but first, she needs their attention.

She’s sitting on the stage, watching the church leaders go over whatever garbage they’re trying to convince of the congregation. This is an introductory meeting house, so there is a lot they don’t know about the faith yet. Most of the agenda involves simply encouraging them to stick around and find out, rather than actually telling them something that helps them live better lives. Anyway, who is Leona to judge their methods? It obviously works. It’s probably not doing much today, though. Everyone knows that Leona is here, and that she’s here to do something big. Some in the audience may have no intention of converting to Daltomism. They just want to watch the big show from up close. A show is what they’ll get.

Now it’s her turn. She swallows her stage fright, and stands when Imani introduces her as the current leader of the new nation of Arvazna. “Thank you, Madam Pettis.” She turns towards the audience. “As she told you, I’m Leona Matic. What she didn’t tell you is that I...am from another world. I mean that literally,” she adds through the muted whispers of the doubters. “We call it the main sequence. Your world is the Third Rail. Over the next week or so, I’m going to be getting deeper into the secret truth, with the help of my new publicist team.” She smiles, and gestures towards two other people sitting downstage. “But I wanted to give you all a taste of it first, because I want you to understand something. Dalton Hawk...is a man.” Apparently, he’s never actually gone by his last name here, but they seem to understand who she means. “He is a man of immense power, but he is not a god. I should know...we were once friends. I honestly don’t know what happened between us. A lot of time has passed since we last saw each other. More for him than for me, I imagine.

“I know that this is hard for you to believe, especially those in the smaller congregations, who are watching from your own meeting houses. Some may have already turned off the feed, and I suppose I won’t be talking to you. I’ll be talking to the rest of you, who are open-minded, thoughtful, and interested in learning the truth. Now. Speaking of those watching from home, and other places, what you see here today is real. You may assume it to be nothing more than camera trickery, but I assure you that these holograms are powered by me, and me alone. What I’m doing is reaching across space and time, even to other realities. I’m copying photons of light from these places, and displaying them before you. The images I’ll be showing you really exist, somewhere, somewhen. Dalton Hawk has a different ability. He can conjure physical objects from these other realities that I mentioned. Again, it’s not that he is not powerful, but be wary of the tales the Word of Dalton tells you. They are not all true. He is trying to get you to believe in something, and he figured that something may as well be him. I’m just trying to show you the truth.”

That said, Leona turns herself into the accepted likeness of Dalton. The audience’s interest is piqued, but a sophisticated enough holograph machine could project such an image. This is why, after showing them a few more images, she recruits some help. Alyssa appears out of nowhere, and takes hold of Leona. She transports them both to a meeting house in New Orleans. This was part of the schedule, so the feed automatically switches to this new stage. She releases a few new holograms: of a giraffe, of a whale, and of the moon. Each time, she turns herself into a different celebrity that anyone from the Third Rail would recognize. She then hops off the stage, and starts shaking people’s hands. All of this could be fake unless tons of people can corroborate that they made physical contact with an individual. Alyssa teleports them again, this time to a meeting house in Vancouver. They repeat the bit all over the continent, and then all over the world.

The last location they go to is the largest meeting house in Kansas City. It’s the one where Heath started when he was a child. The crowd is cheering, ecstatic that their church was chosen to become part of the big show. They’re starting to believe too. It has to be real. It has to. After she’s done shaking hands, Leona climbs back on stage, and prepares to finish her speech from here. The back doors open suddenly, loudly like in a movie. Their ploy worked. She was confident that it would, but she never thought that Dalton would show up this quickly. They all assumed he would try to reach out to them covertly afterwards. But here Dalton is, walking down the aisle in his billowy robes.

He steps onto stage, and approaches her. “You got my attention.”

She tries to hand him her microphone. “Care to speak to your congregation?”

Dalton looks out over the audience, and into the main camera. “Did you notice I don’t have my cane?”

“Yes, Alyssa said she lost it.”

Dalton eyes Alyssa, who’s remained downstage and quiet this whole time, until it’s her cue to transport them to a new location. She’s scared of him. “Yes,” he confirms. “That seems to have led you to believe that I have now been stripped of my power.”

“Well, we know you have some level of mastery over the Omega Gyroscope too.”

He nods. “This is true. but that’s not my power. This is.” He raises his hand.

“Oh, shit.” Leona doesn’t know what’s going to happen, but it won’t be good.

“I am...inevitable.” Dalton snaps his fingers, and everyone in the auditorium disappears, except for him, Leona, and Alyssa. A bunch of new people are here now, though. Some of their friends have come, but so have the resurrected people who are supposed to be locked away in the black site. Heath and Vearden are notably absent. It’s nighttime. “I just undid everything.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 4, 2398

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It’s impossible to estimate how long Mateo has until he can no longer teleport, or how many times he can do it, or even how far he can travel altogether. Ramses ran every test he could come up with multiple times, and couldn’t come to a solid conclusion. Mateo is not losing the ability little by little. It’s fluctuating unpredictably, and will likely only become more unreliable with time. He may start to have trouble aiming at his destination, or lose a lot of time in a given attempt. Where he is when he’s not at Point A or Point B is unclear, but the answer could be incredibly dangerous, whether he knows what it is, or not.

“What about the timonite that’s stuck to my hands? Is that dripping off, or what?”

“I don’t know,” Ramses admits. “I don’t know enough to figure out how to detect it. I’ve scanned your hands, and it can’t tell whether there’s any timonite there at all. It can’t even detect the weird telekinetic outer layer that the god dude gave you.”

“I guess I’m more worried that I’m going to lose that, and go back to midasing everything I touch, dispatching it to an innocent, unsuspecting universe.”

“The guy who gave that to you was wildly powerful, based on Leona’s descriptions, and what I’ve witnessed for myself. I doubt that it has a time limit, and if it does, it’s surely based on the integrity of the timonite that it’s there to contain.”

“I sure hope you’re right,” Mateo says.

“I’m sorry that I can’t do anything about the other thing.”

That’s okay. Having that power back felt nice, but it’s not like he was used to it. He spent most of his life without the ability to teleport, or do anything like that. He was born to be a salmon—he’s not supposed to make his own choices—so anytime he has is gravy. “Don’t sweat it. We’ll get out of this reality, and go back to the way things were.”

“You’re mighty confident these days,” Ramses notes.

“I’m trying not to be so stressed out and worried. Everyone else is having a really hard time right now, and the best thing I can do is stay calm, and help where I can.”

“That’s a very mature thing for you to say.”

“Well, I am hundreds of years old, or thousands, or just a regular adult, depending on how you’re measuring time,” Mateo muses.

“I measure it with this.” He takes a wand from his cabinet, and waves it around.

“What is that?”

“It’s a temporal...a temponeural, umm...”

Mateo laughs “What? What are you trying to say, guy?”

“I’m not sure what to call it yet. A neurotemporal something something detector.”

“What exactly does it do?”

Ramses hovers it over Mateo’s forehead. It makes a noise. Once it’s finished, he inspects the readout. “Hmm. It says that your consciousness is a few seconds old.”

“So it needs work.”

“Yes.”

Mateo thinks that he might possibly have a halfway decent idea, which he hopes won’t sound stupid. “Could you scale that up?”

“How big?” Ramses asks.

“Big enough to scan the whole world?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 5, 2398

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Mateo handed the headset back to Alyssa, because she was the one who needed to hear the message about her sister, Trina. After confirming that it wasn’t a prank, she hung up, and asked him how this was possible. It’s a complicated relay system they have. They discovered that certain signals can pass through the bubble that separates the duplicate of Kansas City Metro Island from the rest of the Fourth Quadrant. Radio waves don’t penetrate the barrier, but light can, which means that they can use a laser communication system rigged up on a ship that Great Britain has stationed nearby. Details are scarce, but Trina apparently survived the trip to the past, made her way back to present day, but since she had no way of entering the Third Rail, she crossed over into the Fourth Quadrant. She obviously had help, because she didn’t know about the portals. She and the other travelers weren’t even still around when the team discovered the truth about Easter Island and Stonehenge. They got lucky, really.

“Why can’t we go back?” Alyssa asks. She keeps expecting a different answer.

After Leona came to rescue Mateo, Winona, and Tarboda using the Easter Island portal, that portal closed up behind them. It was almost as if it were sentient, and decided that no one else needed to pass through. It’s not gone completely, though. The connection remains intact, just not on a physical level. It now resembles the Kansas City Island barrier, however, in this case, they don’t need lasers. Just before the rescue team departed, Ramses had finished the prototype for an interdimensional communications booster capable of exchanging transmissions between realities. He had hoped to use it to reach out to someone in the main sequence, but that hasn’t worked so far. The sealed off portal is impossible to traverse, but on a hyperdimensional level, it’s closer than other realities are to each other. “We can’t get over there anymore,” Leona explained.

“But Mateo can teleport at will. Maybe he can teleport though the barrier,” Alyssa suggests. “You haven’t tried that, have you?”

That’s not a crazy idea. If anyone can do it, it’s him. He’s maintained the strongest connection to what little temporal energy they have been able to find in the Third Rail, though they still don’t know why. He was unable to reopen the portal before, but he should try again. He has his fancy new timonite skin now. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

Leona sighs, not because she doesn’t want to help, but because she knows that this isn’t going to turn out as they hope. Their plans never do. They may make small wins that add up over time, but big swings like this don’t go well. She knows that she can’t stop them from trying it, or wanting to. When a problem arises, they’ll rise above it. They always do. “Okay, I’ll run the pre-flight check on the Olimpia.”

“We don’t need that anymore,” Mateo reminds her. He reaches out and takes Alyssa’s hand.

“We don’t know the limitations of your power,” Leona warns him. “You may only get a few jumps before you run out.”

“Only one way to find out.” Mateo jumps the two of them away, but they don’t make it to Easter Island. They don’t make it very far at all. They’re in Ramses and Leona’s lab, locked in a cell, turrets pointed at them from above. “What the hell?”

Ramses perks up, and takes his headphones off as he’s spinning around in his chair. He starts laughing at them like a kid at the zoo when the simians start to throw feces at people. “What are ya in for?”

“Ramses, what the hell is this?” Mateo demands to know.

“This is a failsafe,” he explains. “If you try to teleport in or out of this building, or within a hundred meters of it, you’re gonna end up in the boo-boo cage.”

“And are we married to that name?”

Ramses pretends to think about it. “Umm...yeah, it’s perfect.”

“Listen, I know you’re paranoid after what happened with Erlendr, but is this really necessary?” He looks up at the guns.

“Oh, those aren’t real. They’re just there to look menacing,” Ramses explains.

Leona enters the lab. “I didn’t know that thing was online yet.”

“I just activated it twenty minutes ago,” Ramses tells her before redirecting his attention to Mateo. “I was going to ask you to test it, but then I got this great idea for something else, and you know how I get sometimes. I had to write it down right away.”

“I do know you,” Mateo agrees, “and you know me, so you know that when I’m ready to do something, I’m ready. Can you let us out?”

“Depends,” Ramses says. “Where are you gonna go?”

“Easter Island,” Alyssa replies. “I want to speak to Trina myself.”

Ramses nods. “I understand that. I hope it works.” He accesses the app on his handheld device, and shuts down the power dampener that’s been keeping Mateo’s teleportation powers from working.

“Be careful,” Leona instructs. “Were I you.”

“Were I you,” Mateo echoes. He takes Alyssa’s hand once more, but something goes wrong. Technicolor bulk energy begins to run up her hands, towards the rest of her body. “Oh, no. What happened?” He steps away from her, but the damage has been done. The best thing he can do now is hold on tight, and try to go with her.

“Turn it back on!” Leona runs over to the cabinets on her side of the lab.

“What?” Ramses asks.

“Just do it!”

Leona opens one of the cabinets, and takes out a huge bag, which she straps to her shoulders. “Is it on?”

“Yes,” Ramses answers.

Just before Alyssa and Mateo disappear, Leona presses her own emergency teleporter, which reroutes her into the cage. She wraps her arms around the both of them, and hitches a ride into the bulk.

They land in a dark forest. Random junk is all around them. A few things they recognize, but others Mateo never banished. Either he chooses to banish them in the future, or he loses control of his power of suck. Or maybe he’s not the only one with the banishment ability. Leona reaches behind her back, and pulls out a shotgun. She scans the area, looking for signs of danger. She tenses up when they see a figure approaching.

It’s Ramses. It’s actually Ramses’ body. Time is a funny thing, so it may or not be him. It could be Erlendr, or even someone else. “I’m not here to cause problems.”

“Who are you?” Leona asks forcefully.

“I’m who you think I am. I’m Erlendr Preston.”

“Get on your knees.”

“Are you going to kill me!”

“On your knees! Hands on your head!” She drops her bag and finds a set of zip cuffs, which she gives to Mateo. “Tie him up. We’re taking him with us.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 4, 2398

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Leona thought that Mateo might need some time to get used to his new ability, which really just recreates the normal human ability of moving things around with his hands. As it turned out, it wasn’t a difficult concept for him to grasp, pun intended. Instead, he spent most of the day trying to move things with his mind. He figured that there was a non-zero chance that the range for his telekinesis was wider than Jacinto let on, or perhaps even that he was mistaken about it. No such luck. Once he had concluded his attempts, Mateo took Leona’s advice to apologize to people for how he treated them. He wasn’t the worst ever, and he certainly had his reasons to be depressed, but he could have handled it better. Everyone accepted his apology, and no one was angry.

Today is a new day, and Ramses has asked him to come down to the lab for some tests. They’ve been so preoccupied trying to help Mateo that they forgot the entire reason he had a problem was because they were trying to get the timonite to get Trina back. They need to get back to that, if it’s even possible, and if this will help at all. But first, precautions. Ramses is in the middle of testing the chain when Mateo walks in. “Are you about to turn into a werewolf?” Mateo asks.

He laughs. “Haha, no. This is for my protection. If some of the timonite leaks, this rope will pull the hazmat suit off of my body, while my body is chained to the wall. At worst, the suit disappears.”

Mateo eyes the contraption. “Are you sure that’s going to do you any good?”

“It’s the best I can do,” Ramses answers quickly. “We have no understanding of this stuff. Sure, I trust that the telekinesis god has found a way for you to live a normal life, but we still need to study the timonite, and as long as it’s on your hands, keeping it in a controlled environment is going to be tricky.” He turns around for a moment.

“I understand,” Mateo says. “You’re still using tools and gloves, correct?”

Ramses turns back around to reveal that he’s been in the process of putting on said gloves. “But of course, my dear.” He snaps it against his wrist dramatically. It tears. “Ahh, crap! That was my only glove! All is lost!”

Mateo can’t help but laugh with him, though Lord knows he tries. “You’re a card.”

“I’m glad to see you smile again. It was touch-and-go for a while there.”

Alyssa’s voice comes on the speaker. “Mateo Matic to reception, please. Mateo to reception.”

“Wanna see a cool trick?” Mateo asks. “This timonite may travel the bulk, but it seems to have regular temporal energy too. Put this in your report.” He teleports away.

Mateo takes the phone headset from Alyssa. “Who is it?” he whispers.

“Guv’ment,” she replies.

He puts it on. “This is Agent Commandant Mateo Matic of the super secretive Secret Department Six Department.” He winks at Alyssa. Ramses is usually pretty good at putting him in a good mood with his own good mood.

“That is not what that stands for,” Winona says. “We received a relay from the other side of the portal that apparently originates from The Fourth Quadrant KC?”

“A message from whom?” he asks, showing Alyssa the blah-blah hand gesture.

“It’s from the daytime president? It says that Trina is alive. Don’t try to look for her. You will see her again when you return to the main sequence.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 3, 2398

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Guideliner Jacinto Lerse does not have telekinesis so much as he is telekinesis, or at least a form of it. It is so far unclear what he’s going to do for Mateo’s problem, but he and Intentioner Senona Riggur were confident that this would fix it. He wasn’t even the first person that Senona reached out to. There is evidently this whole subculture of empowered immortals who are busy doing their things across the bulk, similar to the network of choosing ones in salmonverse, but on a far grander scale. They are reportedly from the same universe, having the occasion to work together over the aeons. Based on what Leona told them, they have realized that she has actually been to their brane before, though at a much, much, much later point in its timeline than their respective origins.

Jacinto uses his abilities to carry Cheyenne back to the Olimpia, easily ignoring the protests from Zacarias’ soldiers, until the Coronel gives them new orders anyway. They spend one more night on the base, so she can recuperate without traveling. When they get back to the craft, Leona shakes hands with Zacarias, agreeing to keep the discovery of the Nexus a secret. They’re going to tell the rest of the team, but he doesn’t need to know that. Jacinto tells them that they don’t even have to bother turning the vehicle on. He lifts the entire thing into the air with his mind, opens the ceiling up, and flies them over the ocean, back to Kansas City, as if it were nothing more difficult than blowing a mote of dust away.

Once they arrive at the Lofts, their new friend parks the Olimpia in the basement garage. They take the elevator upstairs, expecting to find Mateo in their apartment, the third floor common area, or maybe Marie’s unit. Cheyenne and Bridgette stay up there while Leona takes Jacinto down to the first floor where Alyssa is operating reception. She is presently on a call, so they have to wait until she’s finished with the client. It sounds very important and promising. “You’re back.”

“We’re back,” Leona echoes.

“Was it a fruitful trip?” Alyssa asks, snickering for some reason.

“We’ll see,” Leona replies. “Do you know where he is?”

She rolls her eyes, but quickly tries to backpedal with an awkward blink when she starts to worry that the man’s wife won’t be super okay with that. “He’s on the roof.”

“Alone?”

“He’s never alone,” she assures her.

They get back on the elevator, and head all the way up. Marie is sitting in a folding chair that is holding the door to the outside open. She looks displeased and fatigued, but not angry. “What’s going on?” Leona asks.

“I’ll let him explain in his own words,” Marie answers. She slaps both of her thighs with finality, and stands up. “My shift is over.” She steps into the elevator before the doors close.

Leona leads Jacinto onto the roof where they can see Mateo several meters away. He’s sitting alone in his underwear and one of his vests, a variety bowl of citrus fruit on the table next to him, and he’s covered in juice. Before he notices that they’re even there, he picks up another lemon, and lets it explode all over the place. He glances over his shoulder as they’re giving him a berth. “Oh, hey, you’re back.”

“Looks like you went a little crazy, huh?” Leona asks in a patronizing tone.

“Well, when you can make lemon grenades, how could you not go a little mad?” He spots Jacinto. “Hey, stranger, think fast.” He grabs an orange, and tries to throw it.”

The orange stops in midair, and hangs there. Before the technicolor bulk energy can spread all around, Jacinto uses her power to recede it, and make it disappear. He then telekinetically peels the fruit, brings it up to his mouth, and bites into it. “Too sweet,” he muses.

Mateo is impressed, but not excited, because he hasn’t figured out yet that this is the reason why Jacinto is here. “Cool trick, bro.”

“Do you want to control your new gift, or do you just wanna...stew?”

Mateo grabs a lime, and throws it as high as he can before it too explodes. “I dunno, this is kind of fun.”

Jacinto gives Leona a moderately frustrated look. “I can do nothing without his consent. I’m a diplomat.”

“What exactly can you do?” Leona asks him. “Maybe that will help him agree.”

“I can give people abilities,” Jacinto begins. “And I can restrict them at will. He’ll have a special form of telekinesis called parakinesis. He’ll still have to use his hands, and he’ll only be able to exert as much force as his muscles will allow, but he won’t technically be touching anything. All I need to know is the imminent value, which is—”

“The point at which two objects are close enough to interact, I understand. How would you test that?”

Jacinto holds his palms upward. “With my hands. Stand up,” he requests.

Leona sighs when Mateo just looks at her without doing anything. “At the very least, you’re being rude by remaining seated in the presence of company. Stand up!”

Mateo stands, and looks down at Jacinto’s hands. “I don’t know what happens to the things that I touch, but I’m pretty sure it works on people.”

“Yes, I would also like to know where these objects go, so we’re going to feed two birds with one worm.” He looks between them. “You don’t have that metaphor here?”

“I thought I made it up,” Leona says.

Jacinto shrugs. “Maybe you did.” He faces Mateo. “Come on. You can’t kill me, and I can always come right back here, a second later from your perspective.”

“Okay.” Mateo decides to take a chance. He places his own hands upon Jacinto’s.

“Oh, that’s pretty close,” Jacinto notes as the technicolor energy is spreading over his body. As soon as he disappears, he opens the door from the elevator bay, and comes back to them. “All right. You are sending objects to another universe, and they all appear to be showing up intact. I thought you might want this back, though.” He hands Leona her fusion work, which was one of the first things Mateo transported. It’s good that it’s safe and sound again, out of potentially dangerous hands.

“What happens now?” Mateo asks.

“It’s done.” Jacinto shrugs again. “Pick up another fruit.”

Mateo carefully removes the last grapefruit from the bowl. Nothing happens, it just stays there in his hand. Or rather, it doesn’t. He’s technically not touching anything.

“Would he...theoretically...?”

“Be able to temporarily disable the TK, in case he needs to get rid of something? It could lead to some questionable ethical territory, but you did wish for that, didn’t you? ’Kay, high ten, bruh!” Technicolor energy spreads over him once again after Mateo slaps his hands. “Peter Parker’s uncle and all that! You have heard of Spiderman, ri—?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 29, 2398

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Mateo can’t shower himself. He can’t feed himself, he can’t clothe himself, he can’t even open doors. He has sent a number of random items to God-knows-where in an attempt to gain control over his newfound ability, but he’s confident in his assessment that he has been blessed with suck. He’s basically King Midas, except that at least that guy was surrounded by a bunch of gold. He can touch his own skin, which is a small miracle, but if he was able to transport himself, maybe he could find out where he’s banishing everything else. It might still be the key to finding Trina.

Leona has returned from the store, where she picked up a number of stylish vests for him to wear. He’s fine with pants, as long as someone helps them on, but shirts are a no-go. A single brush against the skin from his wrist to his tips, and it’s gone. Vests are really the only type of clothing with arm holes big enough to avoid an issue. But that is nothing compared to the humiliation of needing help going to the bathroom. He really had to go while his wife was out, and Marie was the only one around who he felt comfortable enough asking. She did so without complaint or awkward tension. “Are you mad?” he asks.

“That Marie helped you with your clothes?” Leona asks.

“Yeah.”

“Did you cheat on me?”

“Of course not!”

“Then of course not, I’m not mad. What kind of person do you think I am? If you were an amputee—or your hands were mutilated—we would probably have a nurse for you, who would be doing the same things.” She carefully gets the vest around him so he can stop walking around topless.

“That’s true, it’s just...”

“It’s just that we’re family, and we’re all here to help you get through this.”

He appreciates that, but he’s having trouble expressing it. He can’t really express anything right now but frustration, anxiety, and depression. Once Leona is finished, he plops back down on the chair, and hangs his arms over the armrests. It’s not very comfortable, but it keeps his midan hands away from everything. “Thank you.”

She frowns down at him, slouched there. “You know, this could be a blessing.”

“How so?”

She steps over to the table, and picks up a package they received earlier today. “This is our new shower mirror.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

She removes the mirror from the box, and then tosses the box to him.

He instinctively reaches up to catch it, banishing it to the unknown. “Why did you just do that?” he questions.

“I’m your garbage man! I go across the land!” she sings as if that’s a song he’s meant to be familiar with.

“We don’t know where it went. We don’t know if it went to the same place as all the other stuff.”

“That’s why Ramses is in Lebanon.”

“He’s not going to find anything there.”

“We’re working on a way to get him into Russia. He’s just starting his field work closer to home. The Olimpia is almost ready to fly at optimum efficiency again.”

“He’s not going to find anything there either.”

“Mateo, that timonite sat there for upwards of millions of years without transporting anything anywhere. Otherwise, it would have destroyed the whole planet. Something has to be able to render it inert.”

“It was inert because it was sitting under immense pressure,” Mateo argues, “pressure which would vaporize my hand, if not straight up kill me. I unlocked it. I relieved that pressure. And I seriously doubt there is anything in the universe that can shield against bulk travel. There’s nothing anyone can do. Hope is a teardrop in the ocean. Once it falls, you’ll never find it again, but you may drown in the attempt.”

Leona nods. “I applaud you for your hypothesis that it remained inert due to the pressure. That’s not something the old Mateo would say.”

“Maybe Erlendr is controlling me psychically again.”

“Maybe.” She doesn’t believe that, but her own mind is somewhere else already. He’s right, they can’t recreate the pressure of the depths of an undug mine, but he’s wrong about there being no hope. There are others with the ability to travel the bulk, which means that they must have ways of controlling how that happens. They must have access to materials that react to it differently than normal baryonic matter. Maybe that’s neutrinos, maybe it’s dark matter, but whatever it is, it has to exist. There is only one place on Earth that might have it, and they weren’t planning on going there until the winter. Well, it’s in the southern hemisphere, so really, it’s more about it being summer at the destination. Hopefully it’s not just a main sequence location, because then they really might be searching for teardrops in the ocean.

“I know that look,” Mateo says. “You’ve come up with an idea.”

“I need to order a few more things,” Leona tells him with a smile. “I’ll have you throw out the boxes for me.”

“Gee, thanks.” He cracks a smile. “What do you need?”

“For one, a good winter coat. I hear Antarctica is freezing this time of year.”

Microstory 1707: Ram

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I hear a knock on the door, but I don’t get up. I can’t, I’m too out of it. They knock again, and announce themselves as the police. I would be grateful for their arrival if I didn’t know that the door is attached to something with a string. I don’t remember what the other end of the string is attached to, though. I just know it’s bad. They give me one more warning before deciding that I’m up to no good, and they’ll have to force their way in. On the monitor, I see two more officers appear with a large red object. They swing it back, and strike it against the door. I try to scream for them to stop, but they don’t hear. It’s not their fault. I don’t think I can get enough sound to come out of my body. I feel like I’ve been screaming this whole time, and nothing has happened. What did those guys give me, and how can I possibly power through its effects? The battering ram strikes the door again. The noise rings in my ears. I try to reach up to rub them, but my hands just end up falling off, and floating up into the air. I’m pretty sure that’s not actually happening, but it might as well be, because I still have no control over them. As far as I can tell, they’re not even mine anymore. Perhaps they were never really mine, but God’s. He was the one who put me on this Earth, and gave me this life. He decided who my parents were, and how I was raised. He chose the skills I would grow up having, which would inevitably lead me down this path. I’ve always disliked believing in such a God, as it shifts all blame away from people. If they are not responsible for their own actions, what right does anyone have to punish them? We should all be punishing God, shouldn’t we? The ram strikes a third time. A crack appears, but that’s about it, and I may even be imagining that. I can’t trust anything I see, or anything I think. Strike four.

I didn’t think someone could get more than three strikes, but there’s a strong possibility that we’re not playing baseball. When I was a boy, my neighbor down the street would take me to games. It took me a long time to realize how strange that was. He never did anything to me, mind you, but my mother didn’t know that. I don’t remember them ever talking to each other for an extended period of time, so she could get to know who he—what the hell was that sound? Is someone at the door? I look over, but don’t think that’s a door, because it’s all bulging and splintery. Doors are meant to be straight and flat. People are yelling on the other side. They sound pretty mad if you ask me, but I don’t know why, since everything is so okay. Sure, there’s a splodey thing attached to that door, but as long as they don’t open it, we should all be totally fine. They hit the door a sixth time, or was it seven? The bottom of it falls into the room, still partially attached to the top, which is staying surprisingly strong. A gigantic rat the size of a man scratches and punches at the door in order to break it off completely. He crawls in and scurries right towards me, then holds a gun to my chest. “Tom,” I say to the big rat. He doesn’t know what I’m talking about, probably because rats don’t speak English. “Rom,” I repeat. He shakes his head and argues, “ram.” He points back to the red thing they used to get through the door. It’s sitting on the threshold, right under another floating hand, which is trying to unlock the door. I shake my head. That’s not what I wanted to say. This isn’t about Tom, or rom, or the ram, or the bomb. Oh wait, no, it is about the bomb. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell them. “Bomb.” The rat’s four eyes widen as he looks back at the door, and traces the string with his eyes. He’s too late, the door opens.

Microstory 1406: Triumph of the Triumvirate

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Only weeks after Rothko arrived on Durus, Effigy came back, hoping to use a different tactic to get what she wanted. She had had just about enough of Escher getting in the way of her plans to bring all of her people into this universe, and she thought she finally had an advantage over him. On the outside, Rothko was a really good person. He was compassionate, thoughtful, and ready to help anyone who crossed his path, whether he knew them or not. Yet he carried a darkness inside of him that he was only beginning to discover, and being a master manipulator, Effigy believed she could exploit these two sides of him at the same time. She could turn him over to her side, both by appealing to his instinct to be helpful and understanding, and to his inner demons. She began to communicate with him when he was apart from the other two. She didn’t whisper in his ear, or claim that his friends weren’t good for him. She didn’t even charge him to keep their new relationship a secret. She just became friends with him, and taught him how to use his time powers, and let him decide for himself whether he was going to reveal the truth to the rest of the Triumvirate. Most choosing ones develop an instinct for their abilities. They don’t know exactly how they work, but they know how to use them, just like a baby will learn to walk, pretty much no matter what, even if you try to teach them not to. Rothko, however, was particularly unskilled with his, and he needed Effigy’s help. He was a lot smarter than she gave him credit for, though. He could see what she was trying to do to him, and as long as he stayed grounded, he felt he could overcome any psychological poison she tried to use on him. He let her keep thinking that they were becoming real friends, but it was all just an act, so he could learn from her. He recognized that she was his best hope of figuring out how to use his gifts. He proved his loyalty months later; to himself, to his friends, and to Effigy. One thing he had always wanted to do was restore Escher’s hand. Now, the range of his powers was limited. While it was indeed called reality-warping, it didn’t give him free reign over the whole universe. It was localized. He could only make small changes, and only within the immediate area. He was disrupting physics, but not quite breaking any laws. The energy he used had to come from somewhere, and a lot of his work were more illusions than real alterations. There was a way, however, for him to give Escher his hand back. There was a reality out there where Escher didn’t lose his hand at all. This reality was unstable, and short-lived, but that didn’t matter when it came to  time travel. He could still access that timeline, and take from it what he needed. He stitched events from this microreality into the real one, and returned the hand, as if it had never been removed at all. This was great; the Triumvirate had beaten Effigy yet again, and she was furious, because it meant she hadn’t really found a weakness at all. Sadly, their new, happy, and intact life together was not destined to last forever. In utilizing his powers in this way, Rothko had unwittingly opened the world up to much larger changes in the future, and none of them would prove to be powerful enough to stop what was coming.

Microstory 1404: Wish For One’s Hand

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As the Twoarchy of Savitri and Escher continued on together over the years, the planet of Durus began to transform. Watershed remained the only source of water, but as the rain fell on this one spot, it flowed from it, and irrigated the surrounding areas. The land was inappropriate to live on, both due to all this uncontrollable water, and because of the rocky terrain that led to it, but there was some room for farming. While Savitri had already spent ten years there, figuring out how to survive, and Escher was particularly fond of camping, neither of them had had any past experience in agriculture, but that was fine. There was more than enough for them to eat while they worked on some trial and error. It wasn’t particularly nutritious, and it wasn’t at all tasty, but they got by. In only a few seasons, they had a well-maintained garden to take care of their needs, and they were actually kind of thriving. They entertained each other with made up stories, and they played games. They even finally got some wood, and carved little figurines to use as chess pieces. Neither of them knew how to play correctly, but Escher had seen it before, and as long as their contrived rules were consistent, they were both happy. They never stopped searching for a way to return to Earth, though. This planet was much, much smaller than Earth, allowing them to explore pretty much the entirety of it...eventually. Escher never did find the weird magical basement complex that brought him here, and Savitri had no clue what had happened to her when she was a toddler. They didn’t stress about it, though. Getting worked up about being stuck on this world wasn’t going to make their situation any better, and in fact, would make it much worse. So they made the best of what they had, while simultaneously holding out hope that they would one day be rescued.

After nine years of this, the Twoarchy found themselves face to face with none other than Effigy, which all but proved once and for all that Savitri was indeed who she said she was, and not simply Effigy in disguise. The actual Effigy was an alien from another universe, who was trapped on this planet, just like them. She could jump through time, but it wasn’t easy for her, and she didn’t have as much control over it as she wanted. At the moment, she was trying to reopen the portal to her homeworld that Escher had nearly destroyed upon first arriving. A trickle of time monsters had come through every once in a while, but they were small, unstable, mostly harmless, and usually more afraid of the Twoarchy than the Twoarchy was of them. Effigy now heralded an influx in monsters that were far more dangerous. Escher knew that he needed to stop her again, and do it the same way he had nine years prior, but this time, she was ready for him. She timed it just right so that a terrible monster known as a speedstriker exited the broken portal, and attacked the Twoarchy. It was violent, and angry, and too fast for either of them to fight off using traditional means. It was here that Savitri learned she was special too. She would learn more about her powers later, but her instincts saved her again, and diminished the speedstriker’s speed. At this point, it was still a killer, though, so it took the both of them to fight back, and win the day. Unfortunately, the battle did not end without casualties. Poor Escher lost his hand completely. He knew he had to persevere, though, and he didn’t need two hands to do it. With Savitri’s boost in strength, he drew from Effigy’s portal once more, and kept it in disrepair. Monsters could still get through—worst ones now—but at least the full army was held back...for now.

Microstory 1285: The Boy and the Chocolates

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A class of young school children was on a field trip to the mall in the center of town. There were many fascinating specialty stores there that were able to keep the children busy for hours. One sold all sorts of art supplies, while another was dedicated to music. There were restaurants of all kinds, and even a small theatre where the students sat to watch a local production of a popular play. There was also a candy story, which the students were specifically warned not to enter. A half hour before they were set to leave the mall, however, the teacher revealed that they would indeed be going into the candy store, but that they would be going in together, and in an orderly fashion. The kids were all so very excited. The owners of the candy shop were a friendly couple who liked to bring joy to children’s lives. So they agreed to a deal where each student would be allowed to take on fistful of candy from one of the dozen or so jars that they had laid out on the table for the occasion. The children were very good. Each one stood patiently in line, and waited their turn. One boy amongst them was a little different than the others. Due to a condition he had had since birth, he was rather large for his age, and he always felt a little out of place. His classmates weren’t too terribly mean to him about it, but he did experience a few jokes here and there. One thing he loved was chocolate; probably more than anyone else here. He could live off the stuff for the rest of his life. Unfortunately, when it came to be his turn, he found that he could barely fit his hand inside the jar, let alone grab a fistful of sweets, and pull them out safely. It was a rule that each child would only be able to take as much as they could in one go, but it was looking like he wasn’t going to get very many. He reached as far as he could, but the best he could do was grasp one piece between his index and middle finger; one lousy piece, and it wasn’t even his favorite kind. “Surely we can bend the rules this one time,” one of the shop owners said. “We shall pour some into his hand.”

“Only if that’s okay with the rest of the students,” the teacher said.

The boy was saddened, for he did not think his classmates would let him do things differently. But he was wrong. They gladly gave him permission, with no hesitation. After all, they had already received their own candies, and weren’t going to get any more, whether he got his own fill, or not.

This story was inspired by, and revised from, an Aesop Fable called The Boy and the Filberts.

Microstory 921: Hand Sanitizer

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I discussed hand sanitizer in the Stepwisdom entry about Cleanliness in general; wherein I recount my first experience with the stuff as being God-adjacent. For someone like me, cleanliness is extremely important. I’m not a germaphobe, mind you. I get sick all the time, and it has been this way my whole life. I’m not afraid of being infected by something, and I’m about 83% that, if the zombie virus ever plagued this world, I would be immune to it. What I have a problem with is cross-contamination. My OCD is what gives me the need to control the nature of my environment, but it’s my autism that dictates what how that environment should ideally be. There’s this trope you can find on the web called Blessed With Suck. Basically, a character will be burdened with some supernatural ability that is mundane, pointless, or downright inconvenient. There are a lot of superpowers that I occasionally believe myself to possess, like being able to see the future, or sensing other people’s emotions. The one power that I actually do have, all the time, is the ability to feel the ick around me. If you were to clean a table thoroughly, I would be able to touch that table, and tell that it’s happened. No big deal, right? Anyone can intuit the cleanliness of an object. Now imagine you ran your palm along the tabletop. Your hand isn’t particularly dirty; you weren’t picking your nose, or chalking up to climb a mountain. It was just your hand. Well, I can tell that too. I won’t know exactly what happened, but I’ll be able to tell that something contaminated that surface, and it’ll bother me. I once worked with this girl in a room where all the tables were pushed together, and we sat around it. She would put her feet up on her section, and—I dunno, doodle “Mrs. Donald Trump” in a notebook, I guess. When it was lunch time, she would go grab her food, and place her fork on that table...right where her shoes were. Then she would use that fork to pick up food, and put it all in her mouth. She was putting dirt in her mouth, along with animal feces, and God knows what else she’d walked through. Because she was a crazy person. People think I’m weird for walking around with hand sanitizer, but it makes me feel safe, and it makes it a lot more difficult for me to put poop in my mouth. Can you honestly say the same?

Microstory 725: Credos, Convention Two: Collaboration, Chapter One

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The wandering child lifted his hand from the canister and admired it. The water of light inside had left a film over his skin that glimmered and shone brightly. He could use this light like a torch. He did not know how long it would last, but it was a lovely gift. He opened the second canister, and then placed his other hand inside of it, excited to watch another story unfold before his eyes. It began like this. There once was a world of great strife. Other planets had experienced world wars that soaked the land in blood, and tore it apart, and many more would have such conflicts, but this was unlike any other. There were dozens of countries, and each one was fighting all of the others. Long before this time, a summit was held in a neutral zone. Hoping to prevent all future war, alliances were deemed criminal. This meant that any nation wishing to wage war against another would have to do so by their own resources. All imports would have to cease immediately. The hope was that leaving them so defenseless would cause them to think twice about what they wanted, and ultimately choose to let their grievance go. For many years, this worked, and the world saw peace. But something happened, and a chain reaction of hatred boiled over upon the hearts of all nations, leading to a crisis that threatened to destroy all life. As a small miracle, however, this major conflict did end before everyone died, though the population was diminished significantly. Where once there were billions, there now were only hundreds of thousands. Not all nations survived with more than a few individuals, in fact. The world was all but dead, but these survivors thought up a plan. Instead of multiple countries, they would converge into one. There would be one nation; one peoples; one world. And a second great peace began. In order to maintain this peace, they imprisoned the former leaders of their respective original nations. All of them had survived, for they were greedy aristocrats living safely in bunkers and fortified towers. And ye, the story of collaboration is not over.