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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Extremus: Year 44

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Cloning and self-duplication are not illegal in the stellar neighborhood, which serves Earth at its center. It’s not even technically illegal on Extremus, but it’s effectively so, because some of the technology required to make either of such things happen have indeed been outlawed. Kaiora jumped through a lot of legal loopholes to institute the Clone and Consciousness Transference team within the secret quarantined section of the ship that she’s been working with. It’s all above board, though of course, not public knowledge. She originally authorized it in order to study the impostors that are running around unchecked, but she made sure to have the ability to use it herself should the need arise. Hindsight being what it is, she’s convinced herself that this was probably her plan all along. She always knew she was going to pretend to have an impostor. It’s an incredibly risky plan, as the whole idea behind the secret quarantine in the first place is to keep it...well, secret. She doesn’t want to cause a panic, but this may be the only way. Elodie’s duplicate detection program using the security cameras will only supposedly find two copies of the same person. It won’t help them understand where the impostors are coming from, or who’s responsible. It won’t even work at all if the impostor killed or stashed the original.

The scientists have been hard at work, ensuring that the technology they’re using is sound and safe. Just like everyone else on the secret team, these are not the best that Extremus has to offer. All of those people are busy being rock stars who would look quite appetizing to a group of impostors looking to disrupt the status quo. Still, they’re good enough, and it only took them the rest of the year to be confident enough to let Kaiora create a copy of herself. This copy is not an automaton that’s just going to stand there and take orders. She is the real Kaiora, as the original is also real. They both carry the same memories, the same personality, and the same claim to the captain’s chair. Again, duplicating itself isn’t against the law, but in this case, it might as well be. Even suggesting that they’re both in charge of the ship and crew is basically blasphemy. Can you imagine how dangerous it would be if this got out of hand? Kaiora could copy herself dozens of times, outman the rest of the crew alone, and use their position to take over completely. No, no one will be able to let this stand. She’s about to lose her job, but it will have been worth it if it works. She doesn’t know if Halan would be proud, or disappointed that she followed in his footsteps towards a treasonous act.

It’s March of 2313 now, and the two Kaioras have been successfully running the show in tandem with each other for the last four months. No one has noticed. Elodie’s detection program has caught them perfectly every day, but the public hasn’t spoken up about any discrepancies. They’re not even working that hard to make sure they avoid running into each other. They do, to be sure, because a real impostor would do just that, but she was worried over nothing about how difficult that would turn out to be. She probably could have entrusted the mission to any idiot. The hope is that only another impostor—or someone else involved in the impostor insurrection—will take notice before anyone else, and pull them aside quietly. This is why they can’t force an encounter with each other. They have resigned themselves to the possibility that someone else will realize instead, and make a big stink about it. That might still give an impostor the opportunity to step in, but Kaiora’s career will have been ruined regardless.

The impostor hunting team has no normal way to reach out to Kaiora if they need to speak with her. The entire purpose of the quarantine is to keep them isolated from society. If they can communicate with people on the outside, the integrity of the mission is lost. Still, Kaiora needs to know if there’s an emergency, so she’s decided to trust one person. Mediocre hacker, Elodie Seabrooke has control over all of the ship’s cameras, which she uses to look for duplicates. These cameras do not have speakers, or blinking lights, but they do have apertures.

When this aperture is adjusted, it makes a very faint noise, just as you would expect. Any given camera has no reason to adjust the aperture, because it operates best at a wide angle to close blindspots. They were only designed this way because it was a cheap and easy feature that they would rather have and not need, than need at some point, and not have. By opening and closing the aperture of the nearest cameras to Kaiora, Elodie can signal a return to base. This happening once means nothing, as it could simply be a normal security officer who is bored sitting at the monitors. But if the aperture noise makes a distinct pattern, and keeps happening with other cameras as Kaiora moves, then it means something.

Kaiora cancels her next meeting, which is fortunately not too important, and since it’s with her girlfriend, Ima will understand. Dr. Holmes doesn’t know anything about this. She knows she can’t know everything that the Captain deals with. Kaiora heads for the secret section, and opens the interior door.

Dr. Malone is there, just like he so often is. “Captain, I need to speak with you.”

“Did you summon me here?”

“No. How would I do that?”

“So you’ve just been hanging out by the door, like I’ve asked you a million times not to do.”

“It’s really urgent.”

“What’s really urgent is protocol. You’re making me think that you’re trying to look for a way to escape. There’s a reason I have to unlock two doors to get in here, and there’s a reason there’s nothing of note at the entrance which might excuse one of you ever being too close, and there is a reason we built a special hock in this section. Are you understanding me?”

“Sir.”

“Bye,” she says coarsely.

“Bye,” he echoes bitterly.

Kaiora enters Elodie’s room, and shuts the door behind her this time. It’s cleaner now than it was a year ago; organized and well lit. There’s a pleasant smell. “Please tell me you reached out.”

“I did, thanks for coming so quick,” Elodie replies.

“Did you find a duplicate?”

“More like a single-cate,” she says, knowing it’s a dumb joke. She navigates to the right screen, and turns the monitor so that Kaiora can see better.

Kaiora leans in close to get a good look. It’s an empty hallway at first, in what she knows to be a vacant section. It hasn’t been populated yet, because they don’t need the space yet. Then the door opens, and a figure steps out. His back is turned to the camera at first, but then he spins around. It’s Yitro Moralez. He has been on a mission off-ship for the last thirteen years. “Is this the first time you’re seeing him?”

“It’s the first time that I’m seeing him. I don’t know if the cameras spotted him before. I didn’t program them to flag other unusual activity; just duplicates. Once a week, I run a diagnostic on every single camera the ship has, even the dormant ones. It turns them on for several seconds if they aren’t already on. He happened to step outside, and got flagged by the regular security system which checks for dark section movement.”

“Are those cameras back on now?”

“Yes,” Elodie answers, “the feed is flowing directly through me; not security.”

“But they saw him during the diagnostic. They saw those few seconds.”

Elodie waits a moment. “The system saw him, I don’t know if a human did. People use those sections all the time; teenagers wanting to fool around in private, people on long walks. Especially since you shut off all teleportation, people do have to cross out of an in-use area to get to one of these places, which means each subsequent camera can flip on to follow them. Lieutenant Moralez has to have been there for a very long time if this is the only camera that ever clocked him.”

“He’s a captain now,” Kaiora says. “Or he was, or he will be. We don’t know who that is. He could be a duplicate, or he could be here as a time traveler. We don’t know anything. All we know is that an entity who resembles him was at that very door in that very moment, for a few seconds. He could have his own form of teleportation that I don’t know about. That’s always been a possibility.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“Your system is ready to flag him again if he ever shows up, correct?”

“Correct,” Elodie confirms.

“I’m going to investigate personally.”

“Are you going to tell the other you?”

“No, let her run the ship for now.” Kaiora leaves, and heads back for the exit.

Dr. Malone is waiting in the hallway yet again. “Captain, it’ll only take a second.”

“Guard!” Kaiora calls.

The one security officer she’s quarantined, runs up, wiping crumbs off of his lips.

“Place him in hock.”

“For how long?”

“Until I come back and change my mind.”

“Please, Captain! No!” Dr. Malone struggles, but is no physical match for the largest guard Kaiora could find. He never even trained for the job. His size and strength are the only reasons he’s here. The other subjects are finding this isolated life to be difficult, but he has thrived. It’s pretty easy to keep him happy.

Kaiora leaves the secret section, and heads for the other secret section. It’s been unused for the whole year, since the only purpose of it is to house the time machine, which they never intended to use again. Greenley is already there, like she’s been waiting. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to talk you out of it,” the head temporal engineer replies.

The Captain points an accusing finger at her. “You’re colluding with a seer.”

“I wouldn’t use that word,” Greenley defends. “It’s not nefarious. We’re trying to protect you. This machine is extremely dangerous. We’ve never seen anyone come back out of it. I wish we had never built it in the first place. Don’t..do this.”

Kaiora fumes. She has to go back to earlier today to intercept the supposed Yitro. It’s a necessary sacrifice. “I’m doing it. So turn it on, and do your job. That is an order.”

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Extremus: Year 43

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Finally finished with her regular duties for the day, Kaiora leaves the bridge, and heads for a secret section of the ship that almost no one has access to. It’s not technically part of the Bridger Section, but it’s close, and just as hidden. Temporal engineers, Kumara and Greenley are already there, along with Kumara’s husband, and the current Head of Security, Errol. This is the braintrust at the moment. No one else knows what they’re doing, and no one else has been in here for the last six months. They rebuilt their time machine from scratch, believing that to be the better choice than to try to figure out how the first one was sabotaged. The secondary mission is to investigate the origins of Fake!Rita Suárez, but the primary is to rescue the people who were sent to the reverse time dimension without their consent or foreknowledge. They will starve to death unless someone enters the dimension now, and goes back with supplies. Everyone has their fingers crossed, hoping that nothing goes wrong this time, because if it does, all will probably be lost, and whoever was responsible for the sabotage in the first place will likely destroy everything.

Speaking of which, Kaiora’s been quite busy with other things. The executive civilian government package had to be replaced, but as Captain, she had to decide not to tell anyone exactly what happened. This proved to be a very unpopular decision, but there was nothing she could do. The saboteurs placed her in such an awkward position. Either she was honest, and caused a shipwide panic, or she kept quiet, and risked losing their confidence. There was every chance that her shift would end prematurely because of this, just like Halan before her. Maybe no captain would be destined to serve as long as they were supposed to. Maybe this whole experiment was a failure, and it was only a matter of time before the consequences reached critical mass. It seemed like such an easy concept. Take a generation ship to the other side of the galaxy. Everyone here volunteered to come, even the children. Why have there been so many obstacles? Why have they accumulated so many enemies?

“We’re ready, sir,” Greenley says.

Kaiora sighs, and stares at the new machine. She looks around, in the direction the observation room would be if they were doing this in the same lab as before. There’s nothing there. That doesn’t mean that nothing can go wrong, though, and she’s been fending off her paranoia since August; perhaps even longer. “Are you two ready?”

“Operation Tenet is a go,” Kumara confirms. It wasn’t until after the first attempt at this that someone pointed out that the reverse time dimension is very similar to a plot point in an ancient movie from Earth Apparently, the idea of moving backwards in time isn’t the main point of the story, but rather what would happen if you were shot with a bullet going in the wrong direction. Obviously the real answer is, just like a regular bullet if you happened to be facing the other direction yourself, but whatever.

“Don’t call it that,” Kaiora orders.

“Sir.”

“Proceed when ready,” Kaiora says. “Take your time.”

“We know you have other places to be,” Errol says as he’s checking his inventory one last time, and stepping into the chamber.

“I appreciate that.”

Kumara shuts the door behind them, and returns the a-okay gesture when Greenley queries him with it. Greenley then looks over at the Captain.

“I’m fine,” Kaiora assures her. “If it’s sabotaged a second time, then nothing matters. Just do it.”

Greenley casually salutes her boss, then presses the button. The two rescuers disappear. And they don’t come back.

“Shouldn’t they have returned by now?” Kaiora questions. “I mean, it’s time travel. Nothing should be able to hold them up, except for death.

“That is the most likely explanation,” Greenley agrees.

“So, they are dead?”

“Probably.”

“Corinna, and the rest of them; they’re dead too?”

“Probably,” Greenley repeats.

The Captain sighs again, and pinches her nose. “Congratulations, Greenley Atkinson. You are now Head Temporal Engineer for the failed interstellar mission known as Project Extremus.”

“Thank you, sir,” she answers just as unenthusiastically. “I’ll try to hold it all together for as long as I can before the walls come crumbling down around us.”

Kaiora starts to walk out. “Yeah, unless you find something better to do, in which case, I say go follow your bliss. I have to see if we can detect impostor clones...for all that that’s worth at this point.” She exits, and heads for another secret room.

Dr. Malone has clearly been waiting at the interior entrance impatiently. “Captain, please, I need to talk to you.”

“You’re not why I’m here today,” Kaiora warns him. “Don’t linger by the door either. It’s not protocol.” She keeps walking down the hallway.

“I’m sorry, and I understand that, but it’s really important.”

“Has one of the subjects come to you with some specific issue?”

“Well, no, but that doesn’t mean they’re doing okay.”

“Of course not, but it’s not your job to break them out of here. It’s your job to make them comfortable during their stay on a psycho-emotional level. I have given you more than enough resources to help them. What could you possibly need beyond that?”

“I think if they just got a few minutes on the outside, it—”

Kaiora stops shortly. “No. The point is to keep you inside, and isolated. You take one step out that door, and you’re compromised. I can’t be sure that the person who walks back through is the same one that left. Now. Is this about the other guests, or is this about you?”

“We’re all in this together.”

“No, Dr. Malone. I’m in this alone. You’re all here to help me get through it. Where’s Miss Seabrooke?”

“Where she always is,” Dr. Malone answers. “I still wanna talk,” he adds as she’s leaving him behind.

She ignores him, and enters the Seabrooke Lab. It’s an absolute mess. Meal bar wrappers all over the place, cans of civilian grade soft drinks at varying degrees of crushedness piled in the corner. There’s a smell. “How’s it coming?”

“Slow,” Elodie Seabrooke replies. She doesn’t turn away from her screen.

“That’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. I’m doing my best, it’s just not good enough.”

Kaiora sits down in the other chair, and turns Elodie by the shoulders. She has to wave her gaze forwards to make eye contact too. “I didn’t want to say this before, because I didn’t want to make any of you feel bad, but judging by the looks of this place, it may be time for the last resort.”

“What last resort?” Elodie tries to look back at her computer, but accepts it when her Captain pulls her back into the conversation by the chin.

“Do you know why I selected this team? The researchers, the second level research subjects?”

“No, I’ve been wondering why. None of us isssssssssss...particular good.”

Kaiora lets out an unfortunate sigh, like she always does. She once caught a crew member calling her Captain Sighmaster. “That’s why I chose you. The imposters are taking on the forms of people at high levels. They want to be captain, and first chair, famous scientists, engineers with high clearance. You’re not unimportant, Elodie, but you’re not the best computer engineer this ship has, and that’s what makes you perfect for the job. I don’t know how long it’s going to take you to figure this out, but I’m patient, because if I chose a colleague of yours who graduated top of their class, they may already be compromised. Again, I didn’t want to say this, but look at it this way; there are advantages to living under the radar. If this team solves this problem, your mediocrity will drain away, and no one will ever forget the name Elodie Seabrooke.”

Elodie holds her breath, then spits it all out at once. “Oh, that is such a relief. Oh my God, it’s like the anxiety squeezing me has finally let go. I thought you had just made a terrible, terrible mistake, and I was desperately trying not to disappoint you.”

“I don’t want you to worry.”

Elodie leans the back of her leg against her chair, and stares up at the ceiling. “Now it all makes sense. Have you met Malone? Man, he’s terrible. He never makes us feel at ease. He’s the most maladjusted, neurotic, disquieting therapist I’ve ever met.”

“You’re gonna have to cut him some slack. He has a job to do here too.”

“Yeah, I get it.”

They sit in silence for some time.

“What do you have for me so far?”

“Well, the facial recognition software is fine,” Elodie begins. “I mean, it’s as good as I can get without access to the real cameras. It successfully flags our two sets of twins, even when we dress them up differently. I’m still struggling with matching across time. If it captures one twin at 19:00, and then another at 19:05 on the other side of the section, it thinks that’s all right, because it’s entirely plausible that the same person simply walked over there. I haven’t even begun to think about how we might incorporate teleportation.”

“Don’t factor that in,” Kaiora says. “I’m going to ban teleportation for the next several years.”

Elodie is surprised. “Really?”

“Yeah, for this very reason. It’s just...there’s just too much data.”

“It shouldn’t be the hardest thing in the world. The impostor would probably be wearing the same clothes as the person they’re impersonating.”

“But they might, because they might have that data. We still don’t know who they are, or where they came from. Hell, they could be some kind of pure energy-based alien race who are just trying to study us.”

“Still haven’t captured one yet?” Elodie asks.

“Not a live one, no. The genetics team can’t move forward without them, so our control group has nothing to do. I need to find a way to draw them out.”

“I may have your solution to that problem.” They turn to find Daley McKee in the doorway. He’s a nurse in charge of caring for the genetic subjects in that capacity. Or rather, he would be doing that if they had any impostor subjects to compare to the control group. “I volunteer as tribute.”

“You what?”

“We’re looking for impostors, right? We’re looking for people who are so convincing that the alien contaminant detectors on this ship can’t...detect them. We think they’re clones, using DNA stolen from their victims in various ways. So why don’t we play their game.”

Kaiora finds herself looking back over to Elodie, who says, “don’t let him make you think he came up with this plan on his own. We talk about this over lunch all the time. If we were to create our own impostor, and then fabricate a situation where that impostor is outed, it might draw out one of the evil impostors.”

“Yeah,” Daley continues, “the evil impostor may try to help our plant—a.k.a. me—or they may be like, why the hell are you pretending to be the Captain? We never assigned you that role. Who are you really?”

“You want to impersonate me?” Kaiora questions.

“Or whatever.” Daley shrugs. “Probably not, actually, because then we risk the mob deciding that you might be the impostor instead. We should choose someone important, who you don’t like all that much, so if both the impostor, and the real person, are killed, no big deal.”

“In this scenario, are you still the good impostor?”

“Yes, but don’t you worry none about me. It’s like you were telling her, we’re not important.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Okay...but we’re not.” Daley crosses his arms. “Look, Cap...”

“Don’t call me that.”

Daley goes on without missing a beat, “...I would be honored to die for my ship...for the mission. Then I really would be important. We have to figure out who these people are, and if I don’t survive, at least I’ll know I did everything I could. It’s a good plan.”

“It’s not a plan,” Kaiora contends. “It’s an idea.”

“I’ve heard it both ways.”

Kaiora looks at Elodie again, who widens into a very fake and unconvincing smile.

“All right, I’ll authorize preliminary discussions into this potential plan. I make no further promises, though.”

“Great!” Daley says, legitimately excited. “I’ll go talk to the Clone and Consciousness Transference teams.”

“Preliminary!” Kaiora shouts to him as he’s running away.

“Are you really gonna do this?” Elodie asks.

“I think we both know that it’s gonna happen, and that it’s gonna end up being me, because I can’t risk anyone else’s life.”

“You would still be risking Daley’s,” Elodie points out.

Kaiora shakes her head. “No, I won’t. Nobody’s going to be transferring their mind into a clone of me. I’m going to be duplicating myself.”

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