Extremus: Year 121

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Waldemar Kristiansen is going to whip this ship into tip-top shipshape, and that’s his private guarantee. The turn of phrase makes him giggle, but he doesn’t say it out loud to others. He doesn’t really say anything about it. He’s just going to make it happen, and people are going to accept his changes, whether they like them or not. Or they’ll die fighting it. He just needs to get out of this locked room first. Sure, he’s been in here for several months now, and he has not found any chance to escape yet, but he will. He’ll figure it out. He comes out on top. That’s his real job. That’s why he’s the captain, even though someone else has been masquerading as him since he won the competition for the chair.

Pronastus Kegrigia flashes back into the room after two weeks of no contact. “How’s tricks, my old friend?” he asks in that annoying speedvoice he uses. The guy doesn’t even try to slow his voice down so it sounds more normal to Waldemar.

“Let me out,” Waldemar says simply. It doesn’t feel like he’s talking slowly, but he knows that he is, and he can see how bored Pronastus gets while he’s waiting for him to finish what should be a quick and easy sentence. He recognizes that impatience. He has seen and felt it in himself. Pronastus is wearing his face, and he’s not using it right!

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Okay, that line was too fast. Waldemar could barely parse it. “Just be glad that I didn’t kill you.”

“You still need me,” Waldemar reasons. “You need me to tell you how to act like me. I’m not afraid of you.”

“I won’t need that for much longer,” Pronastus contends. “I only kept you alive to make a smooth transition to your new personality. I needed to start out with a familiar baseline, so people won’t detect a sudden shift in behavior, and grow suspicious, but I’m just about where I wanna be. Admiral Jennings is wary of me. I can’t tell whether that’s because he suspects that I’ve stolen your likeness, or he just knows that you’re a grade A asshole, and I’m stuck with your terrible reputation until I can slowly change people’s minds. That’s what the new personality is for.”

“I am not an asshole, I am the best this ship has to offer. I am not burdened by things like emotion or personal attachments. I only care about the success of the mission. If you will just let me have my life back, I will do a thousand times better than you ever could with my clone.”

“You’ll never get the chance,” Pronastus argues. “You won’t understand this, but I am doing everyone a favor by taking your place, including you. There are things I know about the future. You would have been absolutely miserable, and you would have made everyone else miserable trying to find happiness. Waldy, you can’t be happy. You’re neurologically incapable of it. I doubt you can even grasp the concept. Just stay in your slowmo world, and wait for the mercy of my bullet once I’m finally finished with you.”

“People will notice,” Waldemar tries to say. “Silveon knows me better than anyone. He knows what my brain struggles with. He’s the one who taught me how to act more like an emotional being. When he gets back, he won’t be fooled by you, no matter how gradually you change.” He intentionally didn’t mention his wife, Audrey, who also knows the real Waldemar, and won’t long be fooled by this impostor. Waldemar doesn’t love her, because he doesn’t understand what love is, but he is committed to her, and he genuinely doesn’t want harm to come to her. Pronastus better not be touching her.

Pronastus sighs, but sped up, it kind of sounds more like a cough, which Waldemar finds humorous. “I debated whether I would tell you, but now that I’m confident in the effectiveness of this timehock, I might as well be honest. Silveon doesn’t know anything anymore. Silveon is dead. He knew too much about me, so I had to kill him. He did not leave for an away mission on the Perran Thatch to get his mind off of his parents after they died. He’s been dead the whole time. It happened within minutes. They actually saw each other briefly in The Buffer. It really messed with their heads.”

Waldemar begins to seethe. He doesn’t love Silveon either, but he has been a good friend. He knew what Waldemar was. He knew that he was different, and didn’t feel things like the other kids. But he didn’t run away. He didn’t even just uncomfortably accept Waldemar’s differences. No, Silveon has been his greatest supporter since they were children, and actively put in the effort to make him a better man. It worked. Without Silvy, Waldemar would be an absolute piece of shit. He’s still not a hopeless romantic, but he recognizes the value in others, and that he should treat them with respect, because that’s what people expect out of him. Waldemar would not have become captain without Silveon’s personal sacrifices. He deserved so much better than this. In anger, Waldemar lunges for Pronastus, but as always, he misses. He’s too slow.

Pronastus smirks, and casually steps out of the line of fire. “Good job, buddy!” he jokes. “You almost got me this time, you’re getting faster.”

It’s true. Waldemar has been spending most of his time here improving his speed. If he can learn to move extremely fast, it might be enough to get him on the same level as this jerk.

Pronastus checks his watch. “I’ll have to get you another dose of the timesuck, and increase the potency so you’ll go even slower than before.”

“That will be even more frustrating for you,” Waldemar argues. “You grow impatient with how long it takes me to talk now. If you slow that down even more, our conversations will take forever. You’ll go mad.”

“I’ll live,” he defends. “You won’t.” He races towards the other door. He is annoyingly smart. The first time he came back, Waldemar tried to wait by the door to attack him and escape, but instead, Pronastus simply used the second entrance. He will always use the door farthest from Waldemar. There doesn’t seem to be any weakness to exploit. “Goodbye, Waldemar Kristiansen. I’ll be back at some later date.” He points to the food synthesizer, which he modified to only produce slop. “Better ration your meals from now on. As punishment for trying to hit me yet again, I’m not gonna refill the feedstock today. Good luck with that.” He leaves.

Waldemar sighs, defeated once more. Surprisingly, the first door begins to open again. Did Pronastus really just run down the hallway so he could come back? Waldemar happens to be standing next to it right now. That’s the whole point. He’s not that stupid, is he? No, he’s not, because it’s not Pronastus at all. It’s Silveon. “He told me you were dead. He took credit for your murder.”

“He deserves credit,” Silveon says. He sounds normal. His voice isn’t sped up at all. He’s really good at slowing down to match Waldemar’s slowmo mode. But why would he even think to do that? How did he find him?

“How did you find me?”

“I followed Pronastus,” Silveon replies as he’s rolling up Waldemar’s sleeve, and cleaning the skin with an alcohol pad.

The smell sickens him. His mother drank. He hated her. He hated her so much. Hate is one emotion that he can get behind. He turns his nose away so he can breathe.

“For a pathfinder, he sure is bad at spotting a tail,” Silveon goes on. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner. I had to make preparations first.” He’s sliding a rubber band up Waldemar’s arm now, and tightening it above his elbow.

“Not that I mind, but what exactly are you doing?”

“Fixing you,” Silveon answers. He takes a syringe out of his pocket. Slips the cap off with his lips, which he spits out onto the floor, and injects Waldemar with something.

Months ago, after a doppelgänger abducted Waldemar, and injected him with the timesuck, the effects hit him immediately, but they didn’t affect his body evenly, and not even instantly permanently. His heart felt like it was racing while his arms felt like they were swinging through molasses. His legs felt okay for a moment, but then his heart slew down more than ever. The image on the news erratically changed speeds as his brain was trying to figure out whether it was supposed to be framejacking or framelagging. This is all happening again now, about the same as before, but hopefully to more favorable results.

Silveon shows him a handheld fan. “Focus on this.”

Like the broadcast before, the fan keeps changing speeds. It sometimes looks like it’s running in reverse, and sometimes moving in slow-motion. After a minute or so, it settles into a more reasonable speed. “Okay, I think I’m okay.” Waldemar takes a step back, and performs some deliberate movements. He shakes his arms, kicks his legs, and jumps up and down a little. To him, when he was on the timesuck, everything felt normal; at least that’s what he believed. But unlike how it would be if this were a timesuck room, there was a biological component to the drug. He didn’t realize he was so stiff and held down until this moment, now that he can finally move about at normal speed. “That feels a lot better.”

“So you feel all right?” Silveon presses.

“Yeah, it’s fine. What you said earlier, did Pronastus kill you, or not?”

“He killed me all right, and I recall being dead, but I don’t have any details. All I know is that someone had the power to send me back, and they agreed to do so. I don’t know who it was, or anything else about it. I just know that they had to give me a clone body.” He pulls his cheek down. “My scar’s gone. See?”

Waldemar looks, but then frowns and turns away. He’s the one who gave Silveon the scar in the first place. When Waldemar was still quite young, and Silveon was even younger, it was the latter’s birthday. Waldemar had seen videos from the grand repository of entertainment of pranks where people slammed their friends’ faces into birthday cakes. But he screwed up, and a candle ended up being lodged in Silveon’s eye. The doctor made the necessary repairs to the eyeball itself, but it was days before anyone noticed an untreated secondary wound on the skin that had to heal on its own. It left a permanent mark on Silveon’s face, which could typically only be seen when you looked closely, but also sometimes under the right lighting, at the right angle. Waldemar is particularly adept at clocking it since he was the one who made it.

“Hey,” Silveon says in an assuring voice. “It’s okay. And it’s fixed now. My original body is gone. Probably stuffed into an incinerator. It’s like it never happened.”

“Except it did.”

“That’s good,” Silveon encourages. “That’s called guilt. We talked about that, remember? And this...” He waves his hand around his face. “This is forgiveness.”

He knows. “I remember guilt,” Waldemar acknowledges, “and forgiveness. I don’t need the flash cards anymore. I remember gratitude too, though I still don’t know if my face is capable of showing it, so to clear any uncertainty, let me say...thank you.”

“My pleasure,” Silveon replies. A genuinely good guy. Waldemar sometimes wishes he could be him, but also likes his own efficiency and resilience.

“Now. Where is he?”

“He’s probably back on the bridge,” Silveon begins. “Now, I have a plan to put you back where you belong without anyone ever knowing that it happened. What we’ll do is—”

“No, don’t worry about that. The plan is simple, and I’ll take care of it. You’ve done your part. Thank you again.”

“Waldemar, you can’t kill him. We’ve been over this.”

“No, I’m not gonna kill him. Is that what you’re worried about? You should have more faith in me. You’ve taught me a lot over the years. But this right here is captain’s business, and you don’t have clearance. I’m not going to give you any details, but I assure you, I won’t be murdering anyone. The next time you see me, it will be me again. We’ll come up with trust passwords so you’ll know I’m legit, but I don’t want to do that here, because he might be watching.”

Waldemar and Silveon leave the room to create their shared password to avoid any identification failures. The former then uses his biometrics to enter the Captain’s Stateroom. He has never stepped foot in this unit before, and it has been a long time coming. Audrey is there. “Good morning, wife.”

“It’s the afternoon,” she says.

“Right.”

“Didn’t you have work to do in engineering today? thought it would take all day.”

“When was the last time we had sex?”

“What?”

“When was the last time we had sex, or did anything sexual, really?”

“It was this morning,” she replies. “Did you genuinely forget, or are you mad about something, and trying to pick a fight with me?”

“It’s nothing like that.” He takes both of her hands in his. “I will explain everything, but you have the right to know that you were violated. That was not me, but an impostor.”

Audrey gulps, and stiffens her upper lip. “I understand. I mean...I don’t understand, but I understand.”

“Okay. I’m gonna go take care of something, and then we’ll have dinner together.”

“Okay,” she agrees solemnly. He has said things like this before. She’s a good girl. She knows not to ask questions, argue, or get in his way.

It takes weeks to find him, but Waldemar employs his secret police, and Pronastus eventually runs out of paths where he eludes the might of the true Captain of Extremus. The two of them are back in timehock, but their roles are reversed.

Pronastus is now moving too slowly to get out of his predicament, or fight back. “I have an advantage, though. I see the way forward. I will legitimately find a way.”

“Good luck with that,” Waldemar snaps back. “Unlike you, I’m not without mercy. You kept me in here for six months, I’ll only keep you here for three.”

“And then what? You’ll kill me?”

Waldemar chuckles. “No. Then your real torture begins.”

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Castlebourne Capital Community: The Monsters We Make (Part IV)

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Dreychan and Yunil were standing in the visiting room, waiting for the latter’s sister, Lubiti to be escorted in. They will be separated and protected from her by a nigh impenetrable window, but they were both still pretty nervous. They really shouldn’t be. Even if they were in the same room together, she was likely not physically dangerous. She and her buddies had concocted a plan to get Dreychan to die in what was meant to look like an accident. They had no reason to believe now that she would suddenly jump up and attack him if given the chance. Still, it was incredibly awkward. Dreychan as of yet did not know if the woman next to him even was Lubiti’s sister. That was mainly why they were here, but also to ask her why she did it, besides the obvious reason that they all thought he was a mole.

“You know we’re holding hands, right?”

“Oh, sorry.” Dreychan tried to pull away.

Yunil grabbed tighter. “No, I prefer it. I think Lubiti should see us like this. Even if it’s not real, we’re better off with her thinking it is.”

“Okay.” He didn’t mind it.

The door on the other side of the glass slid open. Lubiti walked in, looking up at the ceiling and walls. She looked calm, probably remorseless for her actions, and maybe thinking of a way to escape. She didn’t have the skills for that, though. She wasn’t the one who survived one of the hardest games in 2.5Dome. Her eyes finally settled on the two of them, standing there like they were going steady. Her neutral face fell into a frown. She walked farther into the room, and angrily placed two palms upon the glass. “What are you doing here?” she asked, focusing on Yunil.

“I—” Yunil began.

“Bup-bup-bup,” Dreychan interrupted to warn her. He needed to speak first so he could get an uncorrupted answer from Lubiti. He looked back over to Lubiti after Yunil nodded respectfully and quietly. “Why does this woman look like you?”

“Uh, because she’s my twin sister, dumbass.” Lubiti responded. “You’ve never heard of twins before?”

“Are you sure?” he pressed.

“Am I sure?” Lubiti echoed. “Yeah, I’m sure. You think I’m the idiot here?”

“Don’t talk to him like that!” Yunil shouted at her.

Lubiti scowled back. With a quieter voice, she asked, “so, what? Are you two together now, or something?”

“So what if we are?” Yunil questioned.

“I don’t care,” Lubiti replied self-assuredly. “It’s not my problem anymore. As far as I go, The Oaksent can come wipe you all out now. I’ll be here, looking like an enemy of Castlebourne. I’m sure he’ll welcome me back into the fold.”

“What the hell?” Dreychan asked. “You tried to kill me—”

“No,” Lubiti interrupted. “I didn’t try to kill you. I put you in a position where you may or may not have been in danger. What you did with your circumstances was your own business.”

Dreychan laughed. “If that’s your legal defense, I’d say it needs work. My point is the irony, that you should intentionally put me in a position where I could die for allegedly working for the Oaksent, and now because it backfired on you, you’re ready to start working with him instead? If you were in my position today, would you send you to 2.5Dome for revenge? Should I place you in the same danger that you made me face? I mean, you only thought that I was a traitor. You’re openly admitting that you are. How is that not worse?”

“I’m just trying to survive. My values have not changed. I place my fealty with anyone who can keep me alive. I once thought that was the Oaksent, then I thought it was Castlebourne. Now it’s possible that I was right before. I don’t want to have been right, but you have left me with few options.”

“No one is trying to kill you here,” Yunil reasoned. “That’s why we were right to seek refuge with the Vellani Ambassador, because our god would absolutely have killed us for any insubordination. The people here are different, and if you don’t understand that by now, why didn’t you ask to be taken to New Welrios instead, or Outcast Island?” New Welrios was an independent planet back in the Goldilocks Corridor. It was well within Exin Empire space, but it was protected by an extremely powerful engineer, and a population of isolationist rebels. A portion of them were the first to try to escape the empire’s grasp before they were located, and quite nearly destroyed. They ended up on Ex-324, where they eventually persuaded the locals to declare their independence as well. And Outcast Island? Well...they didn’t talk about Outcast Island. But it wasn’t really an island, at least not according to the dictionary definition.

Lubiti scoffed. “Did you come here for a decent reason, or just to shove your relationship in my face, because I really don’t give a shit. I never liked you, Dreychan. I was just assigned to get close to you.”

“This has nothing to do with that,” Dreychan answered. He will never tell her about the twin test. Lubiti would probably just turn it around and claim that no, Yunil actually wasn’t her twin sister, but an impostor. “I just wanna know if my origins are the only reason you thought I ratted us out to the Empire, or if it was something else I did.”

Lubiti looked up and to the side, feigning thoughtfulness. “Well, you were a loner; very quiet.” She made eye contact. “You were only on the Council because you had to be. You never participated.”

“That—” Dreychan started to argue loudly.

It was Yunil’s turn to interrupt. She did so to say what he was about to, but in a more articulate way. “He wasn’t a loner! He wasn’t quiet! You made him that way! You ostracized him from the very beginning. You didn’t even give him a chance. You just assumed that he would betray you, so you stifled his voice, and you turned up your stupid little noses. You created this monster in your head who didn’t exist, but the more you talked about it—the longer you believed it—the bigger that bogeyman grew, until you were so afraid, you lashed out at a perfectly innocent man who was just trying to protect his people.” She lifted their adjoined hands, and shook their fists at Lubiti. “Why are we together now? Because after all you put him through, he hasn’t frowned or become angry even once. He has been calm and determined. Did they let you watch his statement to the press?”

“It was a little late, I couldn’t help but notice,” Lubiti pointed out.

“Did you watch it!” Yunil repeated.

“Yes! They let us have access to the news and media!” Lubiti fired back.

“Did you notice that he didn’t even fucking blame you? He said he understood that you were just trying to do what you thought was best for ex-Exins, and all Castlebourners. He spoke of you with a level of respect and compassion that you could never reciprocate, and sure as shit don’t deserve! So you will stand trial, and throughout the proceedings, you will show remorse, because what you people did wasn’t just attempted murder. It was conspiratorial. It was coordinated and cold. Remind you of anyone?” She took a beat. “And now you have the audacity to suggest that you might run back into the arms of that genuine monster, like what we endured throughout most of our lives was fine as long as while he was oppressing us, he promised to keep us alive? You make me sick. I should have left you a long time ago. I have no sister. Rot in hell.”

With that, the scene completely changed. Dreychan and Yunil found themselves suddenly back in Council Chambers. They turned around to find Azad there with them, sitting comfortably in one of the audience seats. Did he only exist within these six walls? “What just happened?” Dreychan asked.

“We were monitoring your interaction with the prisoner. Number one, things were escalating quickly. While you were perfectly safe on the other side of the partition, it’s best not to let either side grow too angry. We like a calm, happy planet. That doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to feel what you feel, but we believe that it would have been unhealthy for you both to stay there much longer. We don’t think that any positive progress would have been made.” He stood up, and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Also, your speech was quite impactful and thought-provoking. I made the choice to pull you out at that particular moment because I didn’t want Miss Froenoe to have the chance to rebut. Would you agree?”

“Yeah, that was a good time to do it if you were gonna do it,” Yunil decided.

Azad nodded, satisfied with his choices. “Well, I better return to my usual duties. Call me if you need anything. Enjoy the chair.” The chair? He remained for two more seconds in case they needed to protest, and then he disappeared too.

Yunil took a deep breath, and faced Dreychan. “Well, that was a weird conversation. I mean with my sister, not with—”

Another interruption. Dreychan lunged forward and tackled her. He held her in a warm embrace, as tightly as he could without crushing her bones. She hugged him back, and then pulled away a little. They stared into each other’s eyes before she kissed him deeply on the lips. They made out for a minute or two, or maybe it was for a few years. Once they finally let go, neither one of them knew what to say, but thankfully, there was something there which allowed them to change the subject. “Was that here this morning?”

Yunil turned to look. “I would have noticed, but I know what it is.”

“What is it?”

“A brainscanner,” she replied as they were walking towards it. She ran her hand along the armrest. “Specifically, it’s a baseline imager, which means not only can it read someone’s neural patterns, but save them in the central database. This is how you control access to government areas and information.” She started fiddling with the touchscreen. “It looks like this is the main system, so all the workers who weren’t fired for conspiracy to commit murder are still on here. All you need to do is decide who—” She stopped. “I’m sorry. I don’t have the right to look at this.” She physically stepped back. “This is for your eyes only. You’re in charge.”

He placed a loving hand underneath her chin. “I want you with me on this. I trust you now. You just earned that. No one has ever said anything remotely as nice about me as what you said in that prison. No one has ever defended me like that.”

“Well, they should have,” Yunil said.

They kissed again. When they separated, they both looked down at the apparatus. It was mostly a comfortable-looking padded chair with a footrest, and an adjustable helmet, which was presumably what would read a person’s brainwaves. The screen was to the side of the helmet, and could be operated from an upright chair that sat perpendicular to the subject’s seat. Dreychan sat in this one, and started looking through the menu. “There are two notifications here already.” He tapped on the bell icon. “Dreychan Glarieda has been tasked with accepting an invitation for higher access privileges.” He looked up at Yunil. “Why wouldn’t I already have that? I can use the executive senior trains.”

“That might have been temporary while they questioned the detainees. This is probably official and permanent,” Yunil seemed to guess. “Tap to learn more.”

Dreychan looked back at the screen. “Let’s look at the other notification...Dreychan Glarieda is tasked with initializing and processing new user Yunil Tereth. Hmm. It looks like they already know that you should be involved.” He tapped on Learn more this time. “There’s a lot to fill out here. I have to decide on your job title and your responsibilities, and grant you access to all these places. Your basic info is already here, so that’s nice.”

“I probably shouldn’t be here for this,” Yunil decided. “I don’t want to sway your decisions one way or another.”

Dreychan brushed her worries away. “I’m gonna give you everything, I’ll tell you as much right now.”

“Including access to your private office?”

“I have a private office?” he asked. “Where do you see that? I don’t see that.”

“I just know you have one if you’re gonna be, uhh...Council Leader, or whatever job title you give yourself. That’s why you needed to find out more about the other notification. You have work to do for both of us.”

“Hm,” Dreychan began. “That’s a good point. What should our titles be?”

“We can worry about that later,” Yunil said. “I wanna see you in this chair.”

“I’m in the chair.”

“The other one,” she clarified, tugging him up by his underarms.

“The one at the dentist’s office looks like this.”

She aggressively threw him down in the subject’s chair, and straddled his lap. “Then open up for Dr. Tereth.” She started making out with him, this time for longer than before. Unable to control themselves, they ended up having sex too, which was highly inappropriate for the setting. Fortunately, while the chair was obviously never intended for sexual activity, it did have a self-cleaning function, which made sense, because it needed to be sterilized between uses.

Later on, Yunil was lying on her back on one the audience benches. Dreychan was looking through the chair interface again. It had everything here: every meeting recording, every bill they passed; everything. He could access it all. It would be a great resource to get up to speed with all the stuff he didn’t know about because he hadn’t been on any smaller committees, and who knew how many times they all met in secret without him to discuss their plans to kill him?

“I think I’ve figured it out,” Yunil said, still lying down.

“What’s that?”

“What do you think of Superintendent?” Now she sat up. “And I could be your deputy.”

“I love it. I’ll type it in right away.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 19, 2399

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When Mateo and Constance!Five first returned-slash-arrived in the Third Rail, everything seemed like it was going to be okay. It quickly turned into a horrorfest. A lone fisherman happened to be relaxing on his little rowboat in Danica Lake where the two time travelers came up. His first thought would not have been that they were a transhuman and an organic superintelligence from a parallel reality, but Constance!Five didn’t seem to think it was worth the risk. After taking a look around to check for other witnesses, she pulled the innocent man out of the boat, and drowned him in the water. Mateo was hopeless to stop her. He’s strong, but she’s much stronger. It would appear that she gave herself a better substrate than him. It’s a wonder that she did anything for him at all. She’s clearly completely self-reliant. And also evil.

Once the deed was done, Constance!Five demanded Mateo navigate them to an isolated location, where they would not be disturbed. Not wanting to put his loved ones in danger, he suggested they go to the Walton bunker in the middle of the woods. He didn’t know what she was going to do with him there, but he didn’t think she was going to torture him. After all, what did he ever do to her? She didn’t start right away. She activated a tablet that the team had left on the desk, and got to work. It took Mateo some time, but he eventually came to the conclusion that she was absorbing all the information she could find. History, politics, culture; all of these were unknown to her, and if she wanted to blend in, or complete whatever agenda she has, she’ll need to know everything. When she was done with that, she moved on to gaining personal information about Mateo and his life. She wanted to know everything he had been through, and she was willing to hurt him to get it. He hoped his upgrades would protect him against the pain, but she knew what buttons to push.

When she had everything she wanted out of him, that’s when the true horror began. As it turned out, she was far more advanced than he ever could have imagined. Like something out of the Terminator franchise, her epidermal nanites rearranged themselves, and in a matter of minutes, she no longer looked like herself. She looked like Mateo. That’s why she wanted to know everything about him, because she was going to initiate contact with the team, and pretend to be him. She was just about to clip him off like a loose end when an alert came in over the tablet. Apparently, the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was back in orbit over Earth. She had to get back to the group quickly, so she could sell a lie about Mateo having never died in the first place. He laughed at her, knowing that his people were not going to fall for her ruse. The little argument they had over the matter was enough of a stall to save his life. By the time she was ready to finish him off, her time really was up, and she had to teleport away immediately. That was the last he heard from her.

Mateo opens his eyes, aware that he’s lying on his back, but unable to gather any other information about his surroundings. His vision is blurry. He feels the mucus attached to his lids. “Hegh,” he says, realizing that it’s just an unintelligible noise.

“He’s awake.” It sounds like Alyssa, but he can’t hear very well either.

“Repo,” he tries. “That’s a little closer to a meaningful utterance, but still wrong.

Another figure approaches the bed. “Report?” Leona guesses. “All you need to do right now is relax.”

He feels a warm washcloth rubbing his eyes clean. “Wada,” he requests.

“Right here.” Alyssa says. She holds the strawn in his mouth.

Mateo smacks his lips, drinks a little more, and then clears his throat. “Does this bed move? Can I sit up, please?”

“I got you,” Ramses says, pushing the button for him.

“That’s good.” Mateo blinks and gets a better look at where he is. It’s a double room. There’s another person in the bed next to him. He can’t see who it is at this angle, especially since his vision isn’t all there yet. But he can tell that Vearden is sitting in the chair between them, and upon closer inspection, Mateo realizes that his roommate is pregnant. “What happened to Arcadia?”

Vearden had been staring at the floor. He looks up to find that everyone else is being silent, so he stands. “Constance!Five showed up, looking like you, claiming to be you. They were suspicious of him, so they asked Arcadia to psychically interrogate her. She’s in a coma now. We don’t know what Constance did to her.

Mateo tries to move his legs and arms over at the same time, but he’s attached to an IV line, and other instruments. “Get me out of this, I wanna see.”

“You can’t move.” Leona puts two hands on his chest, and gently pushes him back into place.

Vearden steps forward, and regards Mateo with a really good poker face. “I don’t blame you for what happened, but I’ve seen the security footage, and looking at your face makes me wanna choke you to death.” He turns away, and hastily pulls the curtain closed behind him.

Mateo stares at it. He’s got his own poker face, but it’s probably just from whatever drugs he’s on. He finally turns to face the ceiling. “Where is she?”

“Trapped in a stasis pod on a freezing oceanic island in the middle of nowhere,” Ramses tells him.

“Now that you know that she wasn’t me, you can destroy her.”

The three of them exchange some looks.

“What?” Mateo asks. “Now you’re suspicious of me? You think I wouldn’t suggest such a thing. I’ve changed, Arcadia’s in a coma. Blow that asshole straight to hell.”

“Even if we wanted to do that,” Ramses begins, “we don’t know how to kill her. Her nanites are sophisticated enough to impersonate someone to the smallest detail. She should be able to survive just about anything.”

“She had enough time to build backups too,” Leona adds.

“I don’t think she did,” Mateo contends. “She was with me the whole time.”

“Are you sure?”

“Stop questioning me.”

“We’re not questioning you, we just—”

“Get out.”

“Mateo...” Leona says.

“Get out of my room. I need some sleep.” They don’t move right away, so he appends, “please.”

They start to walk out. “Were I you,” Leona tells him.

Mateo clears his throat, and turns his head towards the wall without replying. When it looks like she’s left, he turns back. “Vearden,” he whispers.

“Leave us alone,” Vearden spits from the other side of the curtain.

“Vearden, I need your help.”

“I said that I don’t blame you, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to help you with anything.”

“Just come here, goddammit. You’re gonna like this.”

Vearden huffs, but does as asked. “What do you want?”

“Take this from my finger, and put it on yours.”

“Your pulse monitor thingy? Why would I do that?”

“Because I’m going to teleport to Constance!Five, and then toss her into the mouth of a volcano.”

Vearden stares for a moment. “I don’t think that’s going to work. You can’t just throw something into a volcano. There’s not, like, this cliff overlooking the hole.”

“Are you sure?”

“I don’t know, but..I don’t think so. You don’t hear about people just tripping and falling into a pool of lava.”

“I think it’s called magma.”

“Whatever!”

“Shh,” Mateo urges. “I don’t want them to know, for obvious reasons.”

Vearden sighs, and gets out his handheld device to look it up. “Okay, it looks like, to be sure the pod gets to where it’s going, you would have to drag it all the way down into a magma chamber.” He shows Mateo the photos on the search page, some of which are probably artist’s renderings. “But the heat will probably kill you before you get that close. I know you have those fancy new bodies, but still...”

“I can teleport into a chamber.”

“No one really knows what they look like, Mateo. You’re not necessarily going to find a patch of dry, safe land where you can stand and watch it happen. The internet doesn’t say anything about that, because normal people don’t ever seriously contemplate getting rid of bodies in a volcano.”

“I can sit on the pod, and then teleport away just before it finishes sinking.”

“What if it doesn’t sink?” Vearden asks. “What if the magma can’t even breach the pod at all. If she remains alive, there’s a chance she comes back. This is an incredibly foolish and ridiculous plan. It’s never going to work.”

Mateo thinks about it for a few moments. “Okay. I’ll send the Bridgette on a collision course with the sun. That’s even better. I can pilot it with voice commands.”

Vearden shakes his head. “They purged everything of AI. They don’t know what’s been compromised, and what hasn’t been. They’re not even living in the lab anymore.”

“Oh. That makes sense.”

“Mateo, I know you feel bad, and I know you want to fix this, but you and I have to face the fact that neither of us can live this life alone. We rely on smarter, more capable people to get us by. If we tried something like this, we would inevitably screw it up. The Two Stooges, they would call us.”

“Let’s take her to the Constant.” Alyssa has snuck back into the room, and could have been listening for who knows how long.

“Why would we do that?”

“Because it’s Danica’ fault, and therefore Danica’s problem,” she reasons. “It’s become clear that she’s not going to help us, so let’s give her the pod that she loves to use so much back, and rid ourselves of the whole thing.”

That’s not a bad idea, but it’s not a good one either.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 18, 2399

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Ramses purged the version of Constance that he had uploaded to The Bridgette. They don’t know if it’s been compromised, but they can’t take any chances. The AI served them well for a long time without giving them any issues, or giving them any reason to doubt it. It’s only when the one from the Fifth Division showed up that they started having issues. The question is, is it even from the Fifth Division? Was that all a lie? Did Impostor!Mateo give them a partial truth? Could it have been an anti-Alyssa who was just using their illusion powers to pretend to be Mateo, while having a backup plan of prompting the wrong investigation if they were even discovered to be an impostor?

Leona, Ramses, and the McIvers are in an SD6 safehouse right now. It’s not completely devoid of electronics, but there aren’t any microphones that could listen in on their conversation, which they are having in the kitchen while the boys play a card game in the one and only bedroom. “Any ideas?” Leona asks. She waits for a response that never comes. “We were all meant to sleep on it.”

“I doubt anyone slept well under these conditions,” Alyssa notes.

“You’re the one who had the bed,” Ramses points out.

“With two smelly boys in puberty,” she counters.

“We heard that!” Carlin shouts from the room.

“I wasn’t trying to be quiet!” she shouts right back.

“All right,” Leona says. “Are we all in agreement?”

“Agreement of what?” Ramses questions, confused.

“We all agree that we don’t know what the fuck we’re doing, and we don’t have any idea how to proceed?

“Heard that too!” young Moray exclaims.

“First we have to decide whether we think that was Mateo, infected by a psychic, or someone else entirely?” Alyssa says. “If it’s the latter, we need to find the real Mateo.”

“It’s not really something we can decide, but yes. I’m not sure how we go about doing that. It’s not like we can look for a scar underneath his right eye, or something. It’s entirely reasonable that he would get himself into a pristine body. The impostor’s story about Mateo going to the Fifth Division was not unbelievable.”

“You think that really happened, but Constance!Five somehow transformed herself into him, and left him somewhere?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time. Fax!Mateo did it so he could sacrifice himself in Alt!Mateo’s body.”

“This is getting confusing,” Alyssa admits. “Has your life always been like this?”

“It hasn’t,” Leona begins. “Back in the day, when Mateo and I were just jumping forward in time, we met a lot of time travelers, but we never had to wonder whether they were the wrong version of someone we already knew. I mean, there was The Rogue, and then Makarion after that, but it didn’t happen nearly as much as it does now. For a reality that doesn’t allow temporal manipulation, there do seem to be a lot of wibbly wobbly, timey-wimey shit. Sorry,” she adds in reference to the children.

“It’s fine,” Alyssa promises.

Young Moray comes down the hallway, pulling away from every attempt of Carlin’s to keep him back. “What about the error detector?”

“What do you mean?” Leona asks.

“That thing you had in the sky. It told you where all the weird time people were, right? If the real Mr. Matic is somewhere else, that should be able to find him, right?”

Leona looks over at Ramses. “We need to replace that anyway to find the remaining errors, don’t we, since the AOC is gone?”

“Oh my God, the AOC!” Ramses laments. The error detector was on that, and now it’s gone. He feels so stupid. It would have been so easy to deploy a nanosatellite from the AOC, and it’s a lot more difficult now that they have to rely on this antiquated Third Rail technology. Months of living here, and he has still not gotten used to that. He keeps making these mistakes, and it’s really starting to piss him off. “The detector isn’t up there anymore. I’m such an idiot.”

“Now hold on,” Alyssa says. “Maybe we don’t need it. If Mateo isn’t dead—which, I’m guessing the detector wouldn’t detect anyway—and our theory is correct, then Constance!Five is keeping him somewhere relatively safe. He would need food, water, shelter. She hasn’t been here long, so she doesn’t know of a whole lot of places.”

“It would appear that she knows everything that Mateo does,” Leona replies. “He has a lot of places in his head.”

“How many of those places are isolated or hidden, so no one will stumble upon him?” Alyssa asks.

“Where was he last time,” Carlin offers, “the first time this happened?”

“The bunker,” Leona answers. She gets out of her chair, then just stands there.

“What’s happening?” Ramses asks her.

“I can’t jump,” she replies. “This body metabolizes temporal energy too quickly.”

“I don’t have any left either,” Ramses says apologetically. “I’ve had to use a lot recently, and I’m in no position to synthesize more.”

“I can still feel the power in this body. If that’s okay with you?”

“No, go, please.” Leona urges. “No one else will go with you to conserve the power you have left. I’ll show you where it is on the map, then we’ll catch up with you by car.”

Alyssa teleports to the middle of the forest, and can instantly feel that it was her last trip. She either gets her hands on more temporal energy, or she never jumps again. Her mother taught her how to read a map without satnav, so she can also tell that she’s a little off the mark, but not too far away. She carefully climbs down the hill, and finds the secret entrance to the underground bunker. She slides down the ladder to find Mateo on the opposite wall. He’s nearly naked, strapped to what seems to be a wire bed frame. He looks dehydrated and exhausted. “Oh my God! What happened to you!”

“Fuh...” he’s really struggling to speak. “Cons...conste...”

“Constance!Five, yeah, we know. She was impersonating you.”

“No.” He shakes his head while she tries to get the restraints off. He musters what little energy he has left. “Constellation.” He passes out.

“What?”

One more push. “Constellation. Phoenix. We have to go there.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 1, 2398

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Kivi drops her bag on the bench, and opens her locker. She starts to undress. Paula Strand walks in to start doing the same, and gives her a bit of the stink eye. There is a hierarchy within the ranks of a tactical team. When Paula first started, she was at the bottom, and when her direct superior was promoted to the position of Lieutenant, she too moved up to become the Engineer. But even though Kivi is the new guy around here, she now ranks higher, because she officially entered the team as the Spotter. Hurst actually took a demotion when he decided to replace Paula as Technician, but he doesn’t seem to have any problem with that. It’s a special skill set, so it all works differently than what you might find in a military setting, where a rank determines one’s leadership level and pay grade, with specializations being a separate category. Here it’s arbitrary, really, that a Spotter ranks higher than an Engineer. Paula is taking it personally.

“So, you’re back. How long will you be gracing us with your presence this time?”

“I’m here indefinitely,” Kivi answers.

Paula scoffs. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“I’m sure you’ll retire before me, so you won’t be seeing it.”

Paula scowls now. “If we’re still working on the same team as my retirement approaches, promise to shoot me in the head.”

“That’s not my job. All I would be able to do is help Corolla shoot you.”

Paula tries to hold back her laughter, but she can’t help it. She knows that Kivi didn’t join the team to throw her weight around. Beyond the Leader and Lieutenant, no one generally gives commands. It really only happens in an emergency situation, when the two leaders aren’t around, and somebody has to make a decision. It makes it easier and safer to always know who that person will be without any argument. Paula needs to learn how to be an engineer, and Kivi needs to learn how to spot.

“Look, this is all new to me, but I’m committed now. I don’t wanna be anywhere but here. There’s some bad people out there, and some missing people too, and I think our new directive can do some real good in this world. Don’t you agree?”

Paula sighs. “I do. It is nice to know that we have a clear goal in mind. One of the most frustrating things about being on a tack team is you never know why you’re being sent off on missions. Now we know what we’re trying to accomplish, and I hope you know that I do appreciate that you bring that to our table in a way that no one else can.”

Kivi tugs on her shirt, and slams her locker shut. “I appreciate you saying that,” she says with a smile. She turns to head for the stall before the morning briefing, but that smile turns quickly into a frown. She’s struggling with this whole thing—not the decision—but the baggage, and the lack of honesty, she comes into every government room with. This seems right. This feels right. This must be where she belongs. But when she was born a few months ago, this job would not have been on her list of future pursuits, so it feels strange at the same time. She may be experiencing impostor syndrome. Her apparent psychic abilities give her the edge that she will need to be a great Spotter, but her lack of true experience—in anything—might sow doubt in her heart every day, and that could become debilitating.

Tactician Hartwin Seegers comes into the locker room, a hand over his eyes. “The briefing is starting early. There’s been an attack. This is an all-hands-on-deck situation.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 13, 2398

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Mateo, Marie, and Alyssa are sitting on one side of the table, trying not to look up at the overly bright bulb above. The others have yet to arrive. Alyssa is noticeably nervous, bouncing her knee, and cracking her knuckles. They know that she’s under a lot of stress, so they don’t want to say anything, but this isn’t the kind of behavior that she should be displaying when that door opens. “It’s okay,” he assures her.

“What?” She didn’t even notice what she was doing.

“Are you gonna be able to handle this?” Marie asks her.

“Yes, I’m fine, it’s fine. It’s just...this is the government, but kind of not?”

“That’s the best way to describe it,” Marie says. “They’re sanctioned, but...not everyone who expects to know what they’re doing actually knows what they’re doing. It’s a special kind of covert.”

“And you’re one of them, but no one can know.”

“Yes, you can’t tell anyone,” Marie confirms.

“I can do that. I can keep secrets. I basically raised Trina, and the boys, though less so. You learn how to lie when you have kids.”

Mateo places a hand on her shoulder. “She has to see what you can do, that’s the only reason you’re here. We wouldn’t involve you with this side of things if we had a choice. Sometimes I wish I didn’t know anything about these people.”

Winona comes in, followed by two men, one of which appears submissive, and maybe about as nervous as Alyssa. “Sorry we’re late.”

“It’s my fault,” the nervous one says.

“We’re fine,” Marie promises.

“Yes, it’s all right, Tate. You’re not losing my job.” She faces the members of Team Matic that are present. Mateo starts to think about this. They only ever called it that because most of the members used that name, but now they have multiple Waltons, and multiple McIvers. So it just sounds self-serving.

“Snap out of it,” Marie orders him, reaching across Alyssa’s face to literally snap her fingers in front of his.

Winona laughs. “He does do that, doesn’t he?”

“He’s waiting for the narrator to finish talking,” Marie explains cryptically.

Winona doesn’t know what that means. She was never briefed on the whole Superintendent thing. “As I was going to say, this is my assistant, Tate. He’s afraid of his own shadow, so you can speak freely around him, and he won’t tell anyone.”

Mateo leans forward. “If he really is so afraid, then don’t forget to be nice.”

“I am,” Winona says. “He’s not just loyal to me, I’m loyal to him. The way I see it, that’s what separates us from the bad guys. Speaking of which...” She turns to look at the other man. “...this is Timofey Putin.”

Mateo is surprised by this name. He tries to exchange a look with Marie, but she’s not fazed at all. He’s the only one balking at it.

“What is it?” Winona asks, concerned.

“We really can speak freely here?” he asks.

“Yes, Timofey knows. Marie okayed him a month ago, even before all of this.”

“Vladimir Putin is the name of a historical President of Russia where I come from. He’s...well, he’s a bad guy.”

“Interesting,” Winona begins. “I said, speaking of bad guys, because that’s what he used to be. He was a spy, but he’s recently defected. We believe, however, that his people do not yet know, which is why he could be a great asset to you on your mission. I mean, I don’t know why you’re on the mission, or what this has to do with everything that you are, but that’s why we’re here today, right? Anyone want tea?”

“We’re fine,” Marie says. “Please, sit.”

They sit down. Tate pours himself a glass of water, spilling it from the pitcher, from the glass, and out of his mouth, right down his shirt; all three, a turkey. Alyssa can’t help but giggle. For a moment, no one speaks.

“Does this have to do with that fancy hat you’re wearing?” Winona asks, looking at Mateo.

“You don’t know what that is?” Marie asks her.

“I believe it’s called a fumbler?”

Marie laughs. “Alyssa, are you ready to remove it from Mateo’s head, and place it upon yours?”

Alyssa first looks at Marie, then turns her head to look at Mateo, and then turns back. “Any requests?”

“Her,” Marie answers, nodding towards Winona.

“Is this going to hurt?” Winona asks.

“Not if you hold still, and give Tate a raise.”

Winona cracks a smile. “Fine. Three percent.”

Tate is more scared than anyone.

Alyssa takes a deep breath before taking the hat. She immediately transforms into a mirror image of Winona, complete with the same clothing she’s wearing right now. She adjusts her position to match too, which is a trick they didn’t know she had until yesterday.

“You can move again,” Marie says as Winona is doing everything she can to hold back a gasp.

She adjusts herself, and Alyssa continues to match in realtime, like a true mirror. It’s just something that she can feel. When she creates an illusion of someone who is still alive and kicking, she also creates some kind of connection to them. Ramses figures that she could match Winona’s movements from the other side of the planet if she wanted to. It’s not necessarily just an image. It’s...her. This is important, because they need to convince people that she’s someone else, both in how they look superficially, and how they move around. Everyone has their own gait, their own way of itching the back of their head, or pushing their glasses up the bridge of their nose. Even holding up the wrong specific fingers to gesture a quantity could give her away. She has to look and act like her target at all times, or people might get suspicious, even if they could never guess that it has something to do with a time power illusion.

“I do not understand how that works,” Winona laments. “I thought all powers had to do with time in some way.”

“Time and space,” Marie clarifies. “You’re in that space over there, so she is superimposing everything in that space over what is in her space. It’s all about the movement of light.”

“Fascinating,” Timofey finally speaks, and does it in his thick Russian accent. “I have heard the stories, but to actually see it... Is there more you could show us?”

Extremus: Year 45

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The Kaiora Leithe that is still around and running Extremus is technically eighteen months old. She was cloned into existence back in December of 2312. But of course, that’s not how it works; not in this case. As she has all of the original’s memories, she’s actually 41 years old. This is where the problem lies. Cloning is a delicate process. The safest and healthiest way to do it would be to let the body grow at its normal rate. It’s generally accepted that a biological human specimen is at their peak physical condition in their twenties. At least that used to be the standard. With life extension technologies, and other biomedical advances, that number is essentially meaningless, but all things being equal, this is when it happens. Present-day culture tends to favor age 24, so that’s become the sort of default target for most of these such endeavors. Life expectancy runs to about 108 these days, which means if an individual wants to survive by transferring their consciousness to a clone, they should begin the process by the time they’re 83, to account for prenatal development. And some people do do this. In lieu of transhumanistic implants, they choose to stay young by body-hopping, which is perfectly okay if that’s their thing. But again, the best way to do it is by waiting patiently. Kaiora did not have this luxury.

They needed a way to draw at least one of the impostors out, and their means of accomplishing this was to turn Kaiora into one of them. Or a pair, rather, because both of them were legitimately real. Their plan did not work. No one revealed themselves as impostors, either because they knew this was all a trick, or because they didn’t realize there were two Kaioras. Or maybe they just needed more time, which the original Kaiora wasn’t able to give them. Kaiora!Clone wasn’t able to get any decent information out of Elodie or Greenley, but her original disappeared, with the implication being that she was never going to return. So the clone took over all duties, and basically went back to the way things were. Except it hasn’t been that easy. Kaiora!Clone is sick, and it’s because she was produced too quickly, and possibly also because the people who did it do not stand at the top of their fields.

Dr. Ima Holmes stares at the results, baffled and horrified. This is the woman she loves. They’ve been together for the last six years. How could she not know? How could she not have realized? She doesn’t have a normal weapon, because this is an infirmary, but she does have binding gel. It’s a special solution that seals up wounds, and fosters a rapid healing process in patients. It’s perfectly safe to use anywhere on the body...except for the eyes. She picks it up, and trains it on Kaiora!Clone’s face. She has to stand real close, because the delivery instrument wasn’t designed with distance in mind. She’s also not a fighter, so her hands are shaking, and she probably doesn’t have the nerve to do it. After all, this faker looks exactly like her girlfriend. “Who are you?”

“Ima, relax.”

“If you were my Kaiora, you would know that I hate when people tell me that!”

“Please quiet down, someone will hear you,” Kaiora begs.

“And what would be so bad about that?”

“They wouldn’t understand. I’m hoping you will.”

“Who...are you?” Ima repeats.

“I’m a duplicate.”

“No doy.” That’s a funny thing for a doctor to say.

“I mean...I’m a copied consciousness,” she clarifies. “I am Kaiora Leithe.”

Ima loosens her elbows, but doesn’t drop the impromptu weapon. “How do I know that? How can you prove it? Say something only she would know.”

“That test doesn’t actually work,” Kaiora explains. “If you have the ability to map and copy a person’s mind, you necessarily have the technology to read it, and capture any data you need to impersonate the victim. You taught me that.”

Ima loosens up a little more. She did say that to her at one point. “Okay, then why. Why do this?”

“Because there are impostors on this ship, and we’re trying to root them out.”

“You and the other you are doing this?”

“Us, and a secret team of quarantined experts. Though, expert is a strong word.”

“Obviously! Look at you, you’re dying!”

“Shh.”

“Don’t shush me. You’re not Kaiora.”

“I am.”

“Identity means one.”

“I think we both know it’s more complicated than that. Are you the same person you were fifty years ago? Five years? Five seconds? Everyone is always changing—”

“...down the river of uninterrupted experience and atomic transposition. Yes, I taught you that too. I just...feel violated.”

Kaiora takes Ima’s hand in both of hers, but makes no move to take the binding gun. “I remember when we met. I remember when I professed my love to you. I don’t mean I recall the story. It happened to me, and I still feel it. I’m just in a new body, that’s the only difference.”

Ima gently pulls away, and carefully sets the gun down. “Where’s the other one? Where’s the one who’s in the body I’m familiar with?”

Kaiora hesitates to answer.

“Tell me!”

“I don’t know! She disappeared. She went off on some secret mission.”

Ima begins to pace, and itch herself out of stress. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“She didn’t tell me where she was going, or even that she was leaving at all. I only found out because I went back to the secret quarantine section for a periodic check-in, and realized that something was up. She had been gone for a week by then.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Fourteen months.”

“Jesus Christ. My girlfriend’s been dead for over a year, and I didn’t know.”

“We don’t know that she’s dead. And I’m your girlfriend. I’m just as much her.”

“Oh, yeah? You’ve been sleeping next to me for fourteen months, right?”

“I have.”

“And what about before that? Did you two share me?”

Kaiora hesitates to answer again.

“This isn’t gonna work if you’re gonna hold things back. Spit it out.”

“No. I...I didn’t touch you. Our cabin door is a portal. If I punch in a special code, instead of unlocking it, it will open that portal, and transport me to a dark and unused area of the ship. Even someone in the hallway watching me step over the threshold would think I just went inside. But I slept elsewhere, alone.”

“So for however long after you were created, we weren’t together. And then you assumed the responsibility of being the love of my life, only because you happened to be the only one left.”

“Well, yeah, if you wanna twist it up like that, you can make it sound horrific.”

“It is horrific! My girlfriend is dead, and I barely know you.”

“That’s not true. I explained, I’m a copy.”

“But when we had conversations that stemmed from moments we shared months prior, you didn’t know what I was talking about, so you had to guess.”

Kaiora sighs. “Yes, there were times I was a bit lost, and I had to use context clues to fill in the blanks.”

“The first time we met, our relationship started with a lie, because you told me the reason I hadn’t seen you in a week was because you were so busy with confidential stuff in the Bridger section.”

“Again, that’s not when we first met.”

Ima starts to shake her head. “I knew this wouldn’t work out. You’re too much younger than me. You’re too young. And now it’s even truer, because you’re, like...” She looks back at the results real quick. “Eighteen months old. My God, I’m a pedophile.”

“Don’t say that, goddamn. That’s not how it works, I’m not a baby!”

“That’s something a baby would say.”

“No, she wouldn’t!”

Ima takes off her reading glasses, and rubs the bridge of her nose. “I know. This is just...a lot.”

“I know,” Kaiora echoes.

“I feel like I just lost someone. The fact that you’re...it doesn’t mean I didn’t lose her.”

“I know,” she repeats.

“Will we ever see her again?”

“Looking at the future is illegal.”

“So is this.”

“It’s not,” Kaiora assures her. “We covered our asses.”

“No, you didn’t,” Ima counters. “Kaiora Leithe was selected as Captain of this ship, based on that river of uninterrupted experience we were talking about earlier. When she was cloned, her river continued as it normally would, but you’re not on this same river. That moment was a conflux, which branched out into something new. You are not the captain.”

“I would hardly think of it this way.”

“The crew might disagree.”

“Well, then it’s a good thing you’re going to tell anybody about it.”

Ima shakes her head at the tablet. “I have to report this. You’re not fit for duty until we figure out how to repair the cellular damage. Normally, doctor-patient confidentiality would allow me to get by without explaining thoroughly, but what little information I’m obligated to disclose is probably enough for them to figure it out. This level and type of degradation really only has one cause.”

“What exactly is that cause?”

“Kaiora, your body is aging rapidly. Outside, you’re still fine. For some reason, the epidermis is hardier than other organs. But inside, you’re about my age.”

“Perfect, that’s what we always wanted.”

“Don’t joke about this.”

“What’s the prognosis?”

“Kaiora, you need—”

“What’s the prognosis?” Kaiora interrupts. “Clone or no, I’m entitled to bodily self-determination, and I deserve all pertinent data to make informed decisions.”

“With proper treatment, ten years, but you would have to step down in order to undergo such treatment. It’s pretty intense and involved.”

“What kind of treatment can you give me if I don’t step down?”

“Kaiora—” she tries to answer incorrectly again.

“What kind of treatment!”

“With regular injections, you could keep going for half that. You’ll be dead in five years.”

Kaiora slides off the table, and strips off her gown. “I only need three years and seven months.”

Ima tilts her head to consider this number. “No, you’re not going to just stay alive until you can finish your shift. We’re fighting this. I might be able to get more than ten years out of you, especially if we can find your original. She can help. I mean a kidney transplant alone could give you another extra year.”

She stops putting her clothes back on, and wraps Ima in an embrace. “I don’t need eleven years. I need four. That’s all that matters.”

“Kai-kai, I can’t...outlive you?”

“In a couple, someone always outlives the other.”

Ima begins to cry. “But it’s not supposed to be me. I’m more than three decades older, that’s preposterous.”

“You have more than eleven years out of you anyway,” Kaiora reasons.

“I really don’t. Especially not now. You know how many people decline and die of a broken heart? It’s a lot more common than you think. The loss of a significant other reduces life expectancy by an average of five years.”

“Five plus five is barely less than eleven. And let’s face it, we’re not finding my original. So it’s back down to ten, so we would go out at the same time.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Ima argues, “and these are just numbers. You don’t have exactly ten years. I need to run more tests, and you have to not give up. That will kill you faster than anything.”

“I love you too,” Kaiora says.

“I’m not there yet. This is still hard.”

“I understand.”

Kaiora puts her clothes back on and leaves the executive infirmary. That went better than she thought, but it’s not over. No one else can find out. She’ll be fine if she can’t be an admiral, but she can’t lose her seat before her time. She can’t let what happened to Halan happen to her. It would be a political tragedy. She realizes as she’s walking down the hallways that there’s something very important she needs to start thinking about now. Even if she weren’t dying, it’s about time for her to consider who will succeed her. There are surely any number of amazing candidates at the academy, or recently graduated, who would be great for the role. She’s not been paying much attention to them, though, which is just another way she’s not lived up to Halan’s example. It’s okay, she still has time; very little of it after the diagnosis, but enough.

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