Extremus: Year 76

« < » > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2, and by Pixlr AI image editor

Jaunemus, as Lilac told everyone it was called, is more oblong than Earth’s moon, Luna. It is made up of different elements in different ratios, and is believed to have formed via co-accretion, which is to say that it coalesced at roughly the same time as Verdemus, using a shared accretion disk at the dawn of this star system’s creation. This is relatively rare in the galaxy as most co-accretion events will happen for icy or gas giants, but not as easily for terrestrials. Luna, for instance, was formed due to an impact event instead. Due to its less spheroidal shape, its high centrifugal forces from rapid spin, and its significantly shorter distance to its host planet, the surface gravity of Jaunemus is extremely varied. All in all, however, an object will never be greater than seventy-five percent as heavy as it would be on Luna, which is already 16.6% its weight on Earth. Once the Kamala Khan scanned the entire surface of the planet, the Verdemusians agreed that the logical next step was to scan the Jaunemus too. It quickly found an anomaly. The sensors could detect no energy readings, but it picked up on a spot that was sitting at exactly the same gravity of Earth. That would be impossible naturally. The camera didn’t see any visible signs of human intervention, but there has to be something here, likely hidden below the regolith.

Eagan is maintaining his duties in the hock building, watching Ilias Tamm, having taken over for Lilac, who has better things to do with her life now. She and everyone else are landing the Kamala Khan now for a new mission, to investigate the Jaunemusian gravity anomaly. Belahkay will remain on the shuttle in case something happens. The rest have each put on the armor modules and helmets of their Integrated Multipurpose Suits to begin the search. “You good?” Lilac asks him.

He holds up the a-okay sign. “Yes, but I should be asking you that.”

Lilac returns the sign, and swings it around to get the group’s response. One might assume that Spirit would have become Tinaya’s second in command, but she didn’t want the job. “Okay. We go out two at a time, since that’s the maximum number of people who can fit in the airlock. I’ll go first with Niobe. Spirit and Totle will be next.”

“I’ll go first,” Tinaya insists. Without bothering to wait for a response, she phase-shifts right through the hull of the shuttle, and gently drifts down to the ground. She holds the a-okay sign back up so others can see her through the window. Then she begins to walk around on her own.

Following their airlock procedures, the rest of them follow suit, though on their own vectors. It’s not particularly organized, but this is a search party, on the hunt for something unnatural, like a trapdoor, or even just a small sensor array.

“Naya, where are you? Where did you go?” Spirit questions.

Tinaya turns around. “I’m right here!” She starts to wave her arm.

“Can’t see you.”

“I’m waving!”

“No. You’re not.” Spirit starts to point. “One, two, three...four, including myself.”

Tinaya points to her own self. “Five.”

“Tinaya! What are you talking about? Are you invisible?”

“I don’t think so.” She was looking down as she was walking, but now she looks up as she’s turning around again, away from the group. Before her is a large structure, obviously built from the same stuff that the moon is made of. It’s several stories high. There is no way they would have missed this. She is invisible, as is whatever this place is. Niobe is even further along than her. She’s closer to the structure. “Niobe, you don’t see the building in front of you? You’re about to run into it.”

Niobe stops. “I am? I don’t see a thing.”

“Walk forward slowly,” Tinaya suggests. “Hold out your hand, and feel for it.”

Niobe does this. Her hand ends up passing right through the building, and then the rest of her.

“Are you inside of a building?” Tinaya asks.

“No. I’m...it’s...there’s nothing here.”

“It’s your glass,” Lilac guesses. “You walked through a dimensional barrier, and didn’t even realize it. Anyone else who tries is just going to miss it entirely.”

“Okay. I’ll investigate, and report back.”

“No, you won’t,” Lilac argues.

“Yes. I will. I’m in charge.”

“You may as well be on another planet,” Lilac goes on. “We can’t help you. Come back out, and we’ll have Belahkay build a magic door for us.”

“On it,” Belahkay agrees.

“I can’t get hurt, I’m made of glass,” Tinaya jokes ironically.

“Don’t do it,” Spirit says.

“Come stop me. I’m already through the wall.” She’s standing in a dimly lit hallway now. There appears to be a dead end to her right, so she shrugs, and heads for the left. As she walks, she reports to the group what she’s seeing, as boring and nondescript as it is. Walls standing on the floor, holding up the ceiling. There’s nothing interesting here, until there is. She finds herself in what looks like a giant’s library, except inside of storing books on the shelves, it’s artificial gestation pods. Thousands and thousands of gestation pods. It looks like that one scene in The Matrix.

“Are they occupied?” Belahkay asks.

“Hold on, let me get closer.” Tinaya approaches the nearest stack, and looks through the view window. “It’s...it’s Omega Strong.”

“Really.” Spirit says, not sounding much like a question.

“This one is Omega too. And also this one. They’re all Omega.”

“Maybe they’re not really Omega,” Niobe offers. “Maybe they’re Anglos, from Project Stargate.”

“Does it matter which?” Aristotle questions.

“Yes, it does,” Niobe contends.

“I found a terminal. I’ll research what’s going on here.” Tinaya steps over to it, and starts browsing. None of these systems is secure. As secretive as these operations are obviously meant to be, you would think that someone would at least password protect it, even if it’s not quantum encrypted. “I found the main systems,” she says. “Life support...now on. Dimensional veil...off.” As she’s looking through more of the data, which mostly includes health and quality tracking information for each of the Omega clones, her friends walk through the front door, and meet up with her. By the time they arrive, the atmospheric generators have finished making this chamber breathable.

They remove their helmets. “Find anything else?” Spirit asks.

“Yeah, I was just about to talk to the little virtual assistant.” She presses the button, and says, “bloop,” at the same time.

An Omega hologram appears next to her. He sizes her up, as well as the group. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Neither are you,” Tinaya points out.

“Yes, I am,” Hol!Omega volleys.

Tinaya breathes deeply. “Report.”

“I don’t know your security clearance,” Hol!Omega replies.

“Clearance Level Crystal,” she replies, phasing her hand through the nearest pod, then pulling it back out again.

“Interesting. I still can’t tell you anything,” Hol!Omega says apologetically.

“Okay.” Tinaya claps her hands. “Belahkay, prepare the warhead. We’re blowing this place to smithereens.”

“No, don’t do that,” Hol!Omega begs. “Fine, I’ll tell you. Just stop threatening violence. Jesus.” He throws up a second hologram, this one showing the Anatol Klugman, which is waiting in its hangar under the surface of Verdemus. “After years of debate, the council of Extremus finally decided to build a warship to deal with the threat of the True Extremists, who have been discovered to be the descendants of a time travel event that seeded life in a region of the galaxy known as the Goldilocks Corridor. Here, they have built what is now known to be the oldest self-sustaining civilization in this reality of the universe. At first, we believed them to be isolationists, who were only on-board Extremus to divert the ship to a new vector, away from their dozens of worlds. We have since learned that an ever-growing faction of purists are building an army with the intention of destroying Earth, and the rest of the stellar neighborhood. To our knowledge, they currently intend to leave Extremus alone, but that’s obviously not good enough for us. We can’t just sit by and watch our brethren die in a holocaust.

“My original self, Saxon Parker attempted to broker a peace treaty, but he was ultimately killed for his efforts, along with a number of my Anglo brothers, who were originally put in place to operate the Project Stargate colonization ships. Since the Anglos are not equipped to fight a war, they have returned to their responsibilities. It is up to us to put a stop to the Ex Wars.”

“I thought that it was called The Bears War,” Tinaya points out.

Hol!Omega frowns. “If someone called it that, they’re either an Exin themselves, or heard it from an Exin spy. It is their term for it.”

Tinaya looks over at Spirit, who begins to seethe. “Thank you for telling me that. Now I know who in the Bridger section cannot be trusted.”

Tinaya is choosing to trust that Spirit is being honest about that, and isn’t the Exin spy that they should be worried about. She nods. “Go on, Omega.”

“The Anatol Klugman was designed for an army of clones.” Hol!Omega looks down at a line of pods. “My clones. As you know, I was created as any other Anglo, but I renounced my calling, and struck out on my own. Saxon took my place, and his reward for this was a horrific and painful death at the hands of an enemy who knows no honor. I vowed to donate myself to the cause in the most literal and profound sense. I will pilot the AK to the Goldilocks Corridor, and wage war with them to keep them away from Earth. The way I see it, it’s the least I could do.”

“The Klugman,” Belahkay begins, using Tinaya’s helmet’s speaker to stay in the conversation, “it doesn’t have a reframe engine. Why waste the time moving at only relativistic speeds?”

“A number of reasons,” Hol!Omega responds. I wanted to maximize the real estate in the ship so that more Omega soldiers could fit. Secondly, a reframe engine poses a safety risk. It’s honestly a wonder the one on Extremus wasn’t damaged by the micrometeorite strike that took out our engineering section decades ago. It’s a very delicate piece of machinery, which requires constant maintenance at scale. This need would be disadvantageous during a battle when every fighter counts. Lastly, a reframe engine is unnecessary to accomplish our goals. Using data from the future, we know when the Exin army will launch their assault on the stellar neighborhood. Before they do this, their soldiers will be scattered on various worlds populated by innocents. We wish to contain the theatre of war to their staging planet, and they will only be at that location during a relatively short window.”

“You speak as if you are Omega Proper. Are you not but a copied version of him, while the original remains on the Extremus?” Spirit asks him.

“I am the uploaded consciousness of the original Omega...not a copy. There is no other on the ship at the moment. As I’ve said, I have dedicated myself to this. No mission matters if this one is not seen through.”

Spirit closes her eyes respectfully, and nods once.

“Your plan,” Aristotle begins to say. “It will fail.”

“I’m sorry?” Hol!Omega questions.

“I know the campaign of which you speak,” Aristotle goes on. “The Exin army overwhelms your ship in days, and moves on to their goal with barely a second thought.”

“How is that possible?” Tinaya asks him. You’re only from about eighty years in the future. It will take much longer for the Klugman to arrive, and begin this campaign.”

Aristotle stands fast, and says nothing for a moment. Everyone waits for his answer. “I was not always in the time period where Team Matic found me. I do not speak of it for the dangers of intervening in the timeline, but I believe that I can stand by no longer. Omega, your warship will fall, and your clones will be annihilated. I urge you to reconsider your strategy.”

“What would you have us do?” Hol!Omega asks him.

Aristotle breathes deeply. “Your choice to protect innocent lives by localizing the battlegrounds is a noble one, but by allowing your enemy to concentrate its forces, you also allow them to maintain their home field advantage while limiting your own access to resources. They will be exhausted in the midst of a bombardment of fighters that you cannot hope to stave off. You may be underestimating their ground weapons.”

“I didn’t think that they would have any ground weapons,” Hol!Omega admits. “They never planned on fighting so close to home.”

“They are more prepared than you realize. They have been planning a defensive for millennia, fearing the wrath that the stellar neighborhood may descend upon them one day. That’s why they’re so pissy and violent,” Aristotle explains. “A more effective approach would be to pick them off where they live, while they are off-guard and not expecting hostilities. But I understand that you would never do this—I would not either—so I instead suggest taking your resources with you. I can aid in this effort, and will agree to do so.”

“What do you mean?” Hol!Omega asks.

Tinaya is very worried, especially since Aristotle just rather casually suggested putting civilians at risk. They still don’t know how old he is, and they have clearly not heard everything he has been up to. “Yeah, what do you mean?”

Aristotle hesitates to answer again. But he does. Boy, does he? “They have a staging planet…so take one of your own with you.”

« < » > Table of Contents

Extremus: Year 75

« < » > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2, and by Pixlr AI image editor

Eagan Spurrs is not a man, and that is not a derogatory way to put it. Artificial intelligence is a complex subject. There is no clearly defined point when a robot becomes truly self-aware and conscious. There are ways to test this, but no one here is qualified to do such a thing. Not that they would have to anyway. Eagan fully admits to being artificial. Research into the field of AI started in the 20th century, and by the end of the first quarter of the 21st, generative AI was the hottest form on the market. These were extremely sophisticated programs, which could answer unique queries, often in ways that would not inherently give their true origin away. They were used to analyze and synthesize vast amounts of data to organize people’s lives and work, and teach users about various topics, but they couldn’t actually do anything. Humans were still needed to implement any ideas that their collaboration produced. The natural evolution of them was the realization of something known as Performative AI.

PerAI is an offshoot of GenAI, and in fact, requires the latter in order to function. A request is fed into the system, and a response is formulated. This response is sometimes an answer to a question, but it also sometimes requires the manipulation of other systems. For instance, one might ask a GenAI how to write the code for a website. A PerAI could come up with that answer too, but also plug the code directly into the coding program itself, and even debug it. Further advancements allowed PerAI to be incorporated into robotic substrates, so that they could perform physical tasks in the real world; tasks which they hadn’t necessarily ever been asked to do before. That’s when the general population really started taking notice. All of the sudden, all of your chores could be done by someone else. Your handy dandy personal robot could wash your dishes and clothes, mow the lawn, and buy your groceries. This solved a lot of problems in the world, even if it took a little time to be adopted. But in the end, who would bother spending all their time on work that bored them, tired them out, and prevented them from enjoying their life? Only people without the money. Fortunately, that problem was eventually solved too, thanks in no small part to the advent of General Intelligence, but that’s a topic for another time.

Eagan is a PerAI with an android body. It took Tinaya and Belahkay a few frustrating minutes to figure this out, though. Being such an old technology, neither of them was initially aware of Eagan’s limitations. He can tell them why he was created, and what his job is here, but not why, or why anyone built the structure. Who was supposed to live here, and who decided that? It’s his responsibility to welcome new residents, and teach them how the megablock works. Or rather, it was going to be his job. Ever since the time mirror exploded, no one else will be coming here, leaving Eagan without a purpose. He’s not even been allowed to enter the interiors unless accompanied by a human, which is why he’s been staying out of the elements in this wikiup.

There’s another question, which they will likely never get an answer for. When Belahkay’s crew first showed up here, they scanned the surface of the planet. That was how they found the settlement in the first place, and started getting involved in the survivors’ lives. The megablock is the biggest above ground structure across the globe. It should have been easily spotted by the Iman Vellani’s sensors, so why wasn’t it? According to Eagan’s information, construction began eleven years ago, so it should have already been visible a few years ago. Belahkay dispatched a drone scout to explore the buildings while the two of them had lunch together. Once the survey was done, the three of them left the area with the images and specifications to report back to the group. Everyone else was just as surprised, and couldn’t explain it, but it did prompt them to find out whether there was anything else hiding around here.

Most of the visiting starship crew are gone by now, but they left them with a shuttle to use as they wished. The Kamala Khan has been slowly flying all around the world unmanned, looking for energy signatures, right angles, and even lifesigns. For the last several months, nothing has come up, besides a heavy water processing plant under the ocean, which will help refuel their fusion reactors. Today, the shuttle has detected something else. It’s an underground complex, hard to detect with the shuttle’s limited sensors. It’s running on very low power, presumably due to the now absence of a human presence. But that’s just conjecture. The group has not yet uncovered what the purpose of this facility is. They’re going down to the main level right now. It’s a long ride.

More than a kilometer underneath the surface, the elevator stops, and the doors open. They’re immediately struck by what’s been hiding down here. They stare up at it, gradually walking forwards to the guardrails, and then they keep on staring. “It looks like the Extremus,” Lilac points out.

“It’s a battleship,” Tinaya determines. “Look at that exterior weapons array. That down there looks like the entrance to a fighter bay.”

“Why the hell are they building this?” Belahkay questions.

“Who are they?” Aristotle asks.

They all look over at Spirit, who rolls her eyes. “For the last time, I didn’t know everything. SCR&M. Safety, Compartmentalization...” she says, stopping before the last three words of the mantra. The Bridgers were there to maintain order in the event that it was necessary, but we didn’t have our fingers in every pie. That was... Tinaya’s purpose.”

“Lataran was also a spy,” Tinaya reminds her. “Now she’s the Captain.”

“Yes, and either she was keeping this whole thing a secret, or the other Bridgers were keeping it from me. All I know is that I don’t know what this is.”

Belahkay moves over to a console, and starts flipping through the information. “I think I know why we weren’t able to detect this before,” he soon says. “It’s running off of extremely low power, prioritizing frugality over speed.”

“Why would they need to do that?” Tinaya asks. “If this planet, with its abundance of resources, is nothing more than staging grounds, why not get it done?”

“The megablock,” Spirit realizes. “That’s to house, and probably train, an army, and maybe even raise them. That would take time. Getting the ship done quickly wouldn’t be necessary, so you may as well save the hydrogen.”

“Wait,” Niobe jumps in. “Who were they planning to fight?”

Tinaya and Spirit exchange a look, and simultaneously say, “the Exins. We believe this world to be relatively close to where they live.”

“It makes sense,” Aristotle figures, “to find the one world perfectly hospitable to humans to prepare for an attack.”

“Belahkay, keep doing what you’re doing, and report in when anything interesting comes up,” Tinaya orders. She didn’t set out to become the leader here for their tiny little group, but whenever a decision has needed to be made, they’ve routinely looked to her to make it. Everyone just fell into their roles. “Niobe, you can stay with him. Spirit, there are three more levels. Explore with Lilac, stay on comms. There could be people living down here for all we know, or more Eagans. Totle, you’re with me.”

“Where are we going?” Aristotle asks her.

“Into the ship, of course,” she replies.

They step into the second elevator, but this one is fully exposed, and running down the side of the hangar. They then have to get into a third elevator in order to go up into the ship. They begin to search it with flashlights, but the lighting systems turn on by themselves to show them the way. Tinaya was right that there is a hangar bay here, but it’s for transport shuttles, not fighter jets. They are apparently troop transports for ground assaults. The fighters, on the other hand, are designed to shoot out of tubes that litter the hull everywhere there is not some kind of gun to protect the battleship itself. They find the bridge, the engineering section, and a few staterooms, but the rest of it is taken up by stasis pods. Tens of thousands of fighters can sleep here in wait for the long journey ahead of them. Belahkay would be the one to figure out where exactly they were going to be sent, and how long it would take them to get there, but unlike the Extremus, this is not a generation ship. The people who were meant to live here would lie down one second, then wake up the next, but it would be decades later in realtime.

Who were all these people expected to be? The battleship could accommodate the entire current population of Extremus, and still have plenty of room to spare. Even if every security officer and reserve soldier were conscripted into this, there would be absolutely no need for this much space. There was never any reason to build something quite this large unless they had more time to build their army. Or perhaps they had some other means in mind, like cloning. The ethical ramifications of this whole endeavor is making Tinaya’s head spin. Lataran was keeping this from her, and the Extremusian people. This is not what the mission is about. If the Exins were going to attack, then protecting the ship they already had is the only thing that ever made any sense. This thing is new. If it had been built in the past with plans for it to meet up with Extremus before it flew out of range, that would be one thing. But they’re in the present day, with no hope of catching up without a new time travel event. None of this makes any goddamn sense. They need answers. They need to contact their people, now more than ever. This is no longer an extended vacation. Now it’s a mission.

When they’re done searching the whole place, they meet back up with the rest of the group on the mezzanine level. “Anything interesting? Any people?” Tinaya asks.

“Just some labs and offices,” Lilac reports. “Nothing of note. No people.”

“You?” Niobe asks.

“It’s a sleeper ship,” Tinaya answers. “No crew quarters. Everyone in that megablock could fit in here. It was...disheartening to see.”

“We didn’t come all the way out here to wage war,” Spirit agrees.

“It’s fully operational,” Aristotle continues. “We could teleport out right now, and go. The automators are still building a few things, but all vital components are done.”

“Belahkay?” Tinaya prompts.

“I can confirm everything that you’ve been saying. The weird part about it is that it doesn’t have a reframe engine. The Goldilocks Corridor, their destination, is 216 light years from here, straight back down into the galaxy. It was gonna take them 216 years.”

“I didn’t think that we were that close to the Milky Way,” Tinaya remarks. “We should be pretty deep into the void by now, given Captain Yenant’s new heading.”

“We’re not far.” Belahkay acts like he didn’t realize that the rest didn’t know that.

“We also found out the name of the ship,” Niobe goes on, building some suspense. “It’s the Anatol Klugman.”

« < » > Table of Contents

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 27, 2399

« < » > Table of Contents

When Leona was in college, in the second reality that her brain has been blended to remember—the one where she studied astrophysics, rather than film—she was always taking a lot of classes at once. For four semesters straight, she had at least a full load, if not more. The first semester of her sophomore year, she had to get special permission to take more than the maximum number of hours allowed. It was extremely taxing, but worth it. She had to learn a lot of ancillary subjects if she wanted to succeed. If she didn’t understand computers, she wouldn’t know how to model star systems. If she didn’t study geology, she wouldn’t know the difference between a volcanic rock, and a meteorite. She took the summers off to relax, justifying that she deserved a little time to herself, but it was a lie, as it’s not like she wasn’t working at all. That’s when she took extra classes, at the community college, and a few at the learning annex.

These were mostly designed to teach her how to learn better, and prepare her for the upcoming regular school year. It was in these classes that she learned things like basic library sciences, speed reading, hacking, and the skill that she’s using a lot of today, multitasking. Aldona has asked her to help revamp the entire global defense strategy, and she’s doing that. She’s fulfilling her commitment. But she’s also doing other things. Winona gave her access to the security systems on the base, so she would know how to incorporate the government’s preexisting protocols into the new orbital defense grid. She used the security feeds to keep an eye on her husband and Ramses, as they were secretly teleporting the latter’s new satellite up to Mangrove Zero. She knew what they were doing the whole time, but she didn’t say anything, because she needed to keep these people happy long enough to get what she needed out of them.

The security cameras do not allow audio recording, for legal privacy reasons, but as a loophole, they do stream audio. You have to be watching a live feed of any given camera in order to pick up sound, but you won’t be able to return to it later. This is where Leona’s multitasking skills failed her. While she was consolidating the command codes into a master code known only to her, she was also shoring up the orbital station-keeping fuel reserve calculations, locating the room where the starter nanites were being stored, and downloading the complete list of everyone involved in the Mangrove Program. She had been keeping an eye on Mateo and Ramses’ progress all the while, but stopped paying so much attention to it when it looked like they were just about done with their little mission. She didn’t notice when Aldona ran up to them with a teleporter gun, because she had lowered the volume to concentrate on those very precise fuel measurements. By the time she turned the volume up, Ramses was already gone, and she was only able to catch the tail end of the conversation before the audio was lost forever.

For whatever reason, Aldona doesn’t want Mateo to go back up to the ship, and she’s willing to let Ramses wither and die up there alone to stop it. She shot him with the gun, transporting him to hock, no doubt. So before Aldona came back, Leona had to add yet another task to her then-current caseload. She had to find out where Mateo was, and how to get him out. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to do that right away, because she was still not done with her other stuff.

“Have you seen my husband?”

“Not since the meeting yesterday,” Aldona lies.

“I’ve been so busy, I worked through the night, and never went back to our quarters,” Leona says. It’s not a lie, but not the whole truth either, of course. “I went to take a quick shower a couple hours ago, and he’s not there.”

“Hmm, I don’t know.”

She’s not going to accuse Aldona of anything. “The kids are okay, though, in case you were wondering. Carlin is old enough to take care of them both now.”

“Right,” Aldona agrees, though she’s not spent any time with them.

“Anyway, here are the plans.” She hands her a tablet. “You have a thousand rockets already, I suggest a thousand satellites to start. You can always add more.”

Aldona peruses the data. “This is perfect. I wish I had thought of it.”

“Yeah.”

“I appreciate this. I’ll get the nanofactories back online with their new directive.”

“Cool. I’m gonna go to bed. Hopefully Mateo comes back by the time I wake up.”

“I’ll let him know you’re looking for him if I run into him first.”

“Thanks.” Leona leaves.

Mateo has been awake in his cell for hours. He’ll sit on his bunk for a few minutes before getting sick of it, and lie down. Then he’ll stand up, and maybe pace a little bit. Standard bored prisoner behavior. An action movie would put his movements on a loop to make it look like he’s still there while the heroes sneak in and rescue him. But Leona has something they don’t. She has deepfake technology. She can generate new footage that’s based on his patterns. While she’s walking down the hallway, she initiates the program she wrote during her last multitasking session, and heads downstairs.

“Miss me?” Mateo asks, standing up to greet her.

She goes right up to the bars, and pulls him in for a passionate kiss. “I knew where you were all along.”

“I figured. It took us a long time to get that satellite up there. I thought it was weird that we were never caught.”

“There are things I needed to do here. They’re done; we can go. I had to prioritize though, and decided not to access the layout for Mangrove Zero, which is different than the newer models. Is it an okay place to keep children?”

“I didn’t see much of it.”

“We’ll have to risk it,” Leona decides. “When Aldona realizes you’re gone, our bridge to this place will have been burned, possibly the one to the government as a whole.” She punches in the code to unlock the gate.

They casually walk back up to the residential section, where Carlin and Moray are staring out their viewport like the rolling waves are a TV show. They pack up their belongings, then Mateo teleports the two of them up to the ship. When he returns to the room, Aldona is there. She always knows how to show up at the last minute. “Why?”

“You shot my husband,” Leona says. “That’s reason enough.”

“No, you were planning this for a long time,” Aldona assumes.

“Not that long,” Leona says. “I’m just that good. You should have agreed to help us find Alyssa. She’s part of our team. You’re not. That’s never a good position to be in.”

“I have full control over Mangrove Zero,” Aldona claims.

“Not anymore,” Leona replies coolly. She holds out her hand.

Mateo takes it, and teleports them away.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 26, 2399

« < » > Table of Contents

“Why would I be here to kill you?” Mateo asks, taking a step back to look as nonthreatening as possible. “Is someone trying to kill you?”

“That’s what Aunt Aldona told me,” he replies. “She said I have to stay up here, because it’s not safe down on the planet.”

“When you say Aunt Aldona...?”

“She’s a family friend; not a real relative.”

“I see.” So the connection is nebulous, and may not help them understand exactly where Aldona came from. She was in the afterlife simulation, but how—and why—was she resurrected, and where did she go from there? How did she meet this kid, and his family? “Well, I’m not going to hurt you. I didn’t even know you were here. My name is Mateo. Mateo Matic. What’s yours?”

“Cedar. Cedar Duvall.”

Mateo perks up. “Your parents are Curtis and Cheyenne.”

“Yes, do you know them?”

“Yes, I know them pretty well. I’m going to go out on a limb here, and assume that you’ve heard of time travel? I mean, real time travel; not just as a concept?”

“Of course,” Cedar says.

“Mateo, what’s the hold up?” Ramses asks through the radio.

The son of Curtis and Cheyenne Duvall is living—possibly totally alone—on a spaceship orbiting Earth. He was brought here by a dead and resurrected woman from another reality. It’s bad enough that Mateo now knows about it. He trusts Ramses, but Aldona doesn’t, and Cedar doesn’t even know him. Their team is having trouble with Aldona, and her choices, but she’s not evil, and he has no reason to believe that she’s not genuinely trying to help. The only way to protect this kid is to tighten the circle as much as possible, which means not so much as telling his wife about it. It’s the only respectful thing to do. The problem is, Mateo is a teleporter. What’s a good reason to not have returned to the hangar to retrieve Ramses in a matter of seconds? “Uhh. I’m, uhh...trapped under this octagon thing. I was just rearranging the equipment a little to make it more organized.”

“Well, I...can’t help you,” Ramses returns.

“No, it’s okay, I’m getting it off. I’m just doing it a centimeter at a time. Give me a minute or two.”

“Why are you lying?” Cedar asks.

“Your aunt is trying to keep you safe. I’m not going to interfere with that, but we have work to do up here, so is there any place that you think would be a good hiding spot? Just so you know, Ramses will need to access this cargo bay, the bridge, engineering, and maybe a common area for food and rest.”

“There’s a safe room behind reclamation. I could survive there for a week or two.”

“That’s perfect, he won’t need that. Go there, and don’t come out unless you hear two knocks, a pause, and then three more knocks. Does this all make sense?”

Cedar starts to leave, but stops. “Why are you helping me?”

“It’s what we do.” Mateo lifts the heavy satellite part that he mentioned to Ramses. He finds the business end of an uncovered screw, and drags it along his leg to draw some blood. “Now go.”

“Thanks.” Cedar runs off.

Mateo gives it another minute, to make sure he can no longer hear footsteps from here. Then he sets the part down carefully, and returns to the surface.

“Are you okay?” Ramses asks.

“I’m fine,” Mateo says. “I’ll heal.”

“Next time, just wait for me. I know how all this stuff goes.”

“Good point. My bad, sorry.”

“It’ll be fine. Now let’s go.”

“Wait! You’re not going anywhere!” Aldona is running towards them with a gun, looking like some kind of federal agent.

“You’re gonna shoot us?” Ramses questions. “Really!”

“It’s a teleporter gun,” Aldona explains. “It’s programmed to send you to hock in the bottom level of the base.”

“You think you can shoot us faster than I can teleport out of here?” Mateo poses.

“I only need to shoot one of you,” Aldona reasons. “You’re standing far enough apart. He can’t teleport without you, and you don’t have anywhere to go without him.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Mateo volleys. He jumps to right behind her. “Behind ya.”

Aldona spins around, and fires the gun, but that was just a distraction. Mateo immediately jumps to Ramses, and takes him up to the ship. She can be forgiven for not thinking this through. She’s desperate to protect her nephew. She doesn’t know that she doesn’t have anything to worry about.

After getting Ramses to where he needs to be, Mateo jumps right back to the hangar again. Her arms are hanging down, and she’s about to hyperventilate. “Cedar seems like a good kid,” he says to her.

“So it’s too late,” she laments.

“Too late to keep him a complete secret, but not too late to keep him safe,” Mateo says. “I didn’t tell anyone else about him. I didn’t even tell Ramses.”

“He didn’t see him yet?”

“No, and he won’t. I told Cedar to hide in the safe room. I don’t think Ramses will need more than a week up there. Once the satellite is deployed, he should be able to work it remotely, like any other satellite.”

For a second, she looks hopeful, but it fades. “No, it doesn’t matter. It’s just a matter of time before someone else finds out about him.”

“I don’t know what about your past—or future—interactions with us have made you think that we can’t be trusted, but I assure you that Cedar is safe. We would never hurt him, and we would never let anyone else hurt him either. People from all over the multiverse know that that shit doesn’t fly with us.”

She shakes her head. “You don’t understand what he’s up against.”

“You’re right, I don’t, and I don’t need to. Because anyone who’s after him doesn’t know what they’re up against. We don’t lose. Besides, I can guess why he’s at risk. No one will tell us what the Sixth Key really is, but one thing we have figured out is that Cheyenne is very special. The Officiant jumped at the chance to take a favor from her. If Cedar is half as important, it’s no wonder you’re working so hard to keep him a secret.”

She shakes her head again, but not lamentably this time. “If you have learned and surmised all that, you’re already too much of a danger to him. I’m sorry, I can’t let you go up there again, or bring Ramses back.” She shoots him in the chest.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 25, 2399

« < » > Table of Contents

Alyssa went into the panic room to meditate in the dark yesterday. There’s only one way in, and one way out. It wasn’t designed for a criminal to get away undetected. It’s there to protect the homeowners from intruders while they wait for help to arrive. If she had left through the door, he would have seen her, and if she had teleported out, she would have said something. She wouldn’t have just disappeared. If for no other reason than to be here for her brothers, she would never have done something so irresponsible. Something happened to her, and Ramses is determined to remedy the situation. Since the Bridgette is already in Southeast Asian Oceania, he requested transport from the government. The McIver boys are here too, because now there’s no one else left to take care of them. Vearden has gotten everything he needs from the house by now, so he’s able to stay with Arcadia at the hospital permanently.

Mangrove One. Ramses thought the team had contributed a hell of a lot to this world’s development, but it’s nothing compared to what this Aldona woman has done, and she did it in a fraction of the time. He knows how to build nanofabricators, but he made a deliberate choice to withhold such technology. It’s not exactly the Prime Directive, but he didn’t think that these people deserved quite that level of sophistication, so he never bothered. He didn’t even want them to know that it was possible. Welp, the cat’s out of the bag, and he’s going to take advantage of it. There’s a spaceship at this ocean facility capable of reaching orbit, and sustaining life. There are other space agencies, of course, but gaining access to them would require reading too many people in to the whole time travelers situation, and would be a political nightmare. Ramses needs to deploy a new temporal error scanner, and this Mangrove Program is his only reasonable way of accomplishing that.

While Mateo stays with the kids, Ramses pleads his case to the little committee they formed here. It consists of Winona, Aldona, Leona, and a couple of other people, whose names may or may not also end in -ona. They never introduced themselves, and they have yet to say a word. Aldona is speaking now. “I’m sorry, we can’t do it.”

“And why is that?” Ramses questions. “It’s just a little satellite. All I need is a means of getting it up there.”

“You’ll just have to do what you need from the ground,” Aldona insists.

“The point is to get in orbit, so it scans the entire planet,” Ramses argues.

“Yes,” Aldona says, “and I do not feel comfortable with that. Honestly, if I had been aware of the last time you scanned literally every human brain on the planet, I would have tried to stop you back then.”

“Winona?” Ramses asks. “You let her push you around like this?”

“She’s...helping us,” Winona defends.

“More than we are,” Ramses says. “Got it.”

“It’s not like that,” Winona claims.

“No, no, I get it,” Ramses begins. “What you’re trying to say is that she has you over a barrel, and the water’s freezing. No, I understand perfectly. You lost your balls.”

“Watch it, Ramses,” Leona warns.

“Do you not want to rescue Alyssa?”

“Of course I do,” Leona contends, “but we’re not even sure she’s gone. It’s barely been a day.”

“Funny how differently you react when it’s not your husband,” he condemns.

“Watch it, I say,” Leona repeats.

Ramses sighs. “If you’re not going to let me take Mangrove One, then I need some temporal energy to make a few jumps up to Mangrove Zero. The equipment is too heavy to carry all at once, so I’ll have to partially disassemble it, and take multiple trips.”

“Why is it any heavier than the one that Mateo took up to the AOC the first time?” Leona asks.

“This one does a little more than just scan for temporal errors,” Ramses says. “I figured I might as well feed two birds with one worm while I’m up there. I didn’t know that I would get so much pushback.”

“Well, if you won’t even tell me what else that thing does, then I’m definitely not letting you go up there. Permission to enter Mangrove Zero is also hereby denied,” Aldona decides.

“You can’t stop me,” Ramses tells her.

“Do you have the temporal energy it would require to make it up there?” Aldona asks, annoyingly confident that she knows the answer, and feeling no need to wait for it. “I thought not. Permission to procure more is denied as well. I’m not telling you that you can’t go look for Alyssa, but you won’t do it by invading the privacy of everyone in the world. It’s my job to protect then, and I won’t have you undermine me.”

Ramses can’t accept that. He will find her. He doesn’t care how many bridges he has to burn. There may not be enough time to synthesize more temporal energy, and he doesn’t have a lab anyway. Here’s hoping he’s right that Mateo doesn’t run out anymore. He fumes at Aldona for another few seconds, then does the same for Winona, and especially Leona. “I don’t know if you and I will ever be okay.” He doesn’t lead them to believe that he’s going to go over their heads. He just tries to walk out of the room. He nearly runs into Mateo in the process.

Mateo places a finger in front of his lips.

Ramses has already faltered at the surprise, so he tries to cover with a cough. “Harrumph. I’m fine. You’ll be hearing from my lawyer,” he spits at them unconvincingly. He nods like that was a good save, and then leaves with Mateo.

“I was listening in,” Mateo says once they’re safely out of earshot.

“I gathered that.”

“I can’t believe that Leona isn’t backing you up. She must know something that we don’t. But if that’s true, we can only go on the information we have at the moment, and at the moment, it looks like the right thing to do is get you up to that ship.”

“I’m glad that someone around here hasn’t lost their mind yet.”

“No, the reptilians can’t catch me; I’m too fast for their chemtrails,” Mateo jokes in a conspiratorial tone.

After a laugh, Ramses takes Mateo to the hangar, where the new satellite has been set aside in the back corner. Together they disassemble it into more manageable parts. It takes them the rest of the day. It’s a surprise that no one surmises what they were doing all this time. Ramses accesses the blueprints for Mangrove Zero, so Mateo  knows where the cargo bay is. It’s only upon his last jump that something happens that they didn’t plan for. Aldona claimed that Mangrove Zero was completely unmanned. She was either lying, or mistaken.

“Hey,” the teenager says. “Are you here to kill me?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 23, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

Leona has been at a retreat for the last five days since she was forced to accidentally kill Solomon Powers, the star of the hit talk show, Balance of Power. She didn’t technically have to kill him, but she lost control, and hit him too hard against the side of the head during their fight, and that was that. Now she’s in control of a broadcast program that she doesn’t want. They have reportedly been running repeats until she comes back out the woodwork, and gives them direction, which she’s not interested in doing. She certainly doesn’t want to host it. She just wants to go back to the way things were before, whatever that means. Winona has her tucked away on a special patch of land that serves both as the training grounds for intelligence department recruits, and a safe haven for furloughed and retired operatives, officers, and agents.

It’s been nice, but it’s time to leave. Her people need her, especially Mateo and Ramses, who will be returning from the Facsimile dimension in a couple of days. “Wait,” Winona says after Leona explains as much.

“Wait for what?” Leona asks.

“Ugh, I was hoping you would stay at least one more day, so we could clean it up for you. It’s ready to fly, though, and I suppose that’s what counts.”

“What’s ready to fly?”

“Come with me.” Winona leads her across the ranch, into one of the hangars. There’s only one aircraft there at the moment. It looks strikingly similar to The Olimpia.

A man is looking it over, and tapping on his tablet. “Oh, I thought we had until tomorrow. I’m so sorry, sir, I must have screwed up somewhere.”

“You didn’t,” Winona assures him. “She’s decided to leave early. I had to move up the presentation. Agent Matic, this is yours. We heard what happened to your last one.”

The engineer nods. “Same overall dimensions as your old model, but it sports a more streamlined and accommodating interior. More private lofts, no cubbies. Less room in the cockpit to leave more space for everything else, but that’s okay, because more systems are automated than ever before.” He pauses while Leona takes a quick look at the inside. “It’s also vacuum compliant.”

“It can launch into space?” Leona questions.

“It can self-propel from a fusion reactor,” the engineer clarifies. “It has to be launched as a payload on something else, though. Apparently you have your own special engine too? Mr. Abdulrashid left us in the dark for that part of the design.”

“Ramses knows about this?”

“He asked for an upgrade,” Winona reveals. “He’s been planning this for a while.

He always has a lot of irons in the fire. Leona nods at it. All she can think is how much Heath would like this. She didn’t kill him, but she is responsible for it. She feels responsible for everything. Being the captain is great until you count up all the pain it’s caused. She should step down and disappear. Wouldn’t everyone be happier?

“What do you think?” the engineer asks, proud of his work. “We still need to clean it, but it’s sky-worthy, and space-worthy. And subaquatic-worthy, and—”

“I love it. Thank you.”

“What are you gonna name it?” Winona asks. “Not the Olimpia again, right?”

“That’s not my call. My team needs to become more of a democracy.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, December 7, 2275

« < » > Table of Contents

This wasn’t the first time that Mateo and Leona returned to the timestream to find their environment having changed dramatically. Mateo once broke his leg when the train he was on at midnight was no longer under his feet. Later, he and Leona woke up in a forest that experienced a devastating fire sometime during the year. Now on this planetesimal, in this hangar, their instinct was to venture out, and just figure out what was going on. Olimpia didn’t think that was such a great idea. “Computer, whisper mode.”

“Yes, can I help you?” the AI offered, but in a much quieter voice than she generally did.

“How did you get into this hangar? Is it where you landed?” Olimpia asked.

“I was transported here after landing,” the computer replied. “The outpost on this planetesimal was established five years ago.”

“Has anyone made any attempt to breach the hull of the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?” Olimpia continued.

“They have made attempts, but all have failed. They wanted to get in carefully, and without damaging anything.”

“Do you know what their hypothesis is regarding the nature of this ship?”

“I am not cognizant of that.”

“No one has been in here,” Olimpia stated to the group. “No one knows that this thing has been empty for the last five years, let alone that last nineteen, and that people have suddenly appeared out of nowhere. They probably think it’s from an alien race, but they’re afraid to do anything to upset some kind of cosmic balance.”

“So, what should we do?” Leona asked. She was happy with not being the one to have to come up with all the solutions for a change.

Olimpia considered it for a moment. “Let’s just bail. Why go out there and introduce ourselves? We’re not here to meet them. They’re not supposed to be here at all. Our business is on Earth. Let’s teleport to maximum distance, and continue doing that until we reach our destination.”

“Leona, can you plot a course that avoids detection until we reach Earth?” Angela questions.

“I can’t, but the AOC herself can.”

“I don’t wanna, like, try to force anyone to agree with me,” Olimpia said, a little defensively. “This is just what I think we should do. Anyone else have any ideas? I mean, it’s entirely possible that the hangar was built for us, and the people out there have been waiting for our return, because they’ve known who we were the entire time.”

“If we were meant to go talk to them,” Mateo began, “then something would force us to do so. Like you said, let’s just bail.”

Everyone else seemed to agree as well, much to Olimpia’s relief. Though they had been friends for the last three years, she still felt a little bit like an outsider...like her opinion mattered less than the rest of the group. Of course that wasn’t true. Hopefully they would be able to convince her otherwise in time. For now, they needed to get out of here. Leona and the computer synthesized the present-day solar system. They accessed a detailed map, which told them where every outpost, every ship, every beacon was right now. Knowing this was going to allow them to teleport to blindspots, where no one would be able to detect their presence. They wouldn’t go full burst mode, because that endangered the integrity of the hull, but if they teleported fast enough, even if they accidentally got too close to a sensor, they would be gone before it could verify what it was seeing, and maybe mark it down as a technical error.

It took them most of the day, since the best route didn’t max out their teleporter range, and they couldn’t go through the manifold highway, so it wasn’t the fastest, but they made it back. They were now in the hangar where the Sharice Davids was once kept. At first, it didn’t seem like anyone was using it. Then four people came out of the shadows. No, they weren’t in the shadows, they were behind them. They appeared out of an illusion of a wall, but behind it was the past version of the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ramses, Tracker, The Stitcher, and Flex. These were the four people Leona found to help them with their fight against Erlendr Preston. That was in an old reality, though, if they weren’t mistaken. Why were they here now?

“You’re not supposed to arrive until next year,” Leona said, looking at her watch. “We thought this place would be empty.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” a past version of Ramses said. “We’ve come here to meet you, and it seems we’re right on time.”

Leona shook her head. “We are future versions of your friends. If Past!Us are gonna show up today, then we have to get the hell out of here.”

“It’s okay,” Mateo tried to assure her. “I think I have this figured out. It’s a different reality. We don’t have to worry about a paradox. In fact, we should save them some trouble, if we can.”

“That’s dangerous, Mateo,” Leona warned.

Nerakali suddenly appeared with past versions of Mateo, Leona, and Jeremy.

“I think it’s kind of too late,” Future!Mateo said.

Nerakali took a step forward. She was surprised, but not shocked. “Report.”

Future!Mateo smiled, and looked over at his crew to make sure no one wanted to say anything for themselves. He decided to take charge of this situation. “First, let’s do introductions. Future!Jeremy Bearimy, Future!Leona Matic, Angela Walton, and Olimpia Sangster. Over on this side, we have my good friend, Ramses Abdulrashid. Next to him is Vidar Wolfe, Tonya Keyes, and Yadira Cordosa. Lastly, we have a younger version of Nerakali Preston. She is still alive, and it looks good on her.”

Nerakali rolled her eyes, but couldn’t hide her own smile. “Anything else?”

“We’re not just from the future,” Future!Mateo went on. “We’re from an alternate reality. Nothing you do will impact what has happened to us. What’s done is done. Fortunately for you, we went through the heartache for you. We can fix your Erlendr problem. Then once we do...” He hesitated.

“Once you do...” Past!Mateo pressed, “what?”

Future!Mateo sort of started focusing on his alternate self more. “This timeline ain’t big enough for the both of us.”

“You’re suggesting we assimilate with each other?” Past!Mateo presumed.

Future!Mateo shook his head. “We’ve made a lot of friends since 2275. I don’t know what you’ve been through, who you’ve met. I don’t even know when you and I diverged. But at some point, someone suggested to me that they could get me and Leona out of here. They could take us to a place where the powers that be, and the choosing ones, couldn’t get to us. They called it Havenverse.”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“That dream is dead for us,” Future!Mateo revealed. “Leona, you agree?”

“Yes,” Future!Leona said, completely sincerely. She hadn’t thought about the prospect in a long time.

Future!Mateo continued, “I’ll get you there. I’ll reach out to someone I know who knows someone else, and we will find you a ride. Would you like that?”

“What are you gonna do?” Past!Mateo asked.

Future!Mateo chuckled once, and looked lovingly over at his wife. “This is our life now. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, not anymore.”

She smiled back.

Past!Mateo and Past!Leona did the same with each other. “Can we do that?” the former questioned. “Can we just...bail?”

“I think we deserve that, don’t you?”

“I guess, I just...”

Before either of them could produce a definitive answer, a horn echoed throughout the facility. The Transit came flying across the room out of one portal, and into another. Just as before, it stopped. But that was 2276. What was it doing here a year early? Why was everyone a year early in this timeline? Saga didn’t come out this time. It was a man that no one recognized. That was another thing, no one was frozen in place this time around. Everyone was seeing this happen. The man cleared his throat while he was consulting his handheld device. “My name is Wyatt Bradley. I have been asked to come out here, and inform you that we are looking for Evaluator Nerakali Wilson.”

“Scroll up, buddy,” Nerakali said.

Wyatt swipes up on his device. “Oh, you’re right. Nerakali Preston. Sorry about that. I think Wilson’s already on the train.”

“I’ve always wanted to meet her,” the real Nerakali said excitedly.

“Can you even go?” Future!Mateo asked. “I mean...because...”

“I’m sure the universe will figure it out. I have been summoned.” She started to head for the ramp.

“Wait,” Future!Mateo said, prompting his friend to stop. “Can you take two more? Can you take them to a different universe, somewhere that’s outside of the war?” This would be easier than trying to communicate through Amber.

Another man appeared from the train car. “We do not rescue refugees. Are they fleeing oppression?”

“Yes,” Future!Leona claimed. The truth was too complicated to say whether she was lying or not.

“I’ll send word to The Strongbox. If they accept your application, then they’ll be here immediately after we leave. If not...then you’re out of luck. I don’t make those decisions. That’s for Thack to worry about.”

Nerakali tried to leave again, but Yadira said, “wait,” as well. “I was told to get on the train by someone who knows the future.”

“You’re already on it,” the unnamed man said.

“Oh.”

The man sighed. “I suppose you can’t have too many Flexes, can you? Come on.”

Yadira looked back to make sure everyone was cool with her decision, and their facial expressions showed that they were. Now both she and Nerakali started trying to make it up the ramp.

“Wait, I have to know what this is,” Vidar said.

“If you come, you have to fight. This is a war transport vessel, not a ferry.”

“I...have to know,” Vidar explained.

“Very well. Does anybody else want to come, besides the refugees?”

No one else seemed to want to, so finally, the three conscripts were able to start leaving. But there were two more delays. Before Vidar could make it past the threshold, he disappeared. He then started jogging up from behind the group. “Sorry, sorry. I just kind of had to...die first. But I’m resurrected, and back!” Having returned from the afterlife simulation, his loop was now closed, and his destiny was his own to do with it as he pleased. The same thing happened to Nerakali, whose death was also predetermined.

Once the doors were closed, the Transit left through its portal. A much, much smaller vessel appeared from its incoming portal, and stopped in the same place. A woman came out from it. “I hear we got some refugees?”

“Are we sure about this?” Past!Mateo asked. “This isn’t going to cause any problems for the timeline.”

“We’ll handle it,” Future!Mateo said honestly.

“Thank you,” the two of them said simultaneously. As they were boarding, the woman introduced herself as Rosalinda. They heard a scream, and the ship disappeared.

Mateo clapped his hands. “Gang’s all here. Let’s go take care of The Warrior.”

« < » > Table of Contents