The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 21, 2503

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Mateo and Ramses didn’t leave the scene of the crime because they didn’t want to get caught, but because they didn’t want to get caught yet. They still needed to give their friends enough time to conduct their more precise experiments and examinations. As far as the two of them were concerned, though, they had enough proof. Nobody looked over the edge of the ravine to see if they were okay. That was how a lot of video games were, once you passed out of a certain area, you were free, even if any pursuers should still be able to follow you. NPCs were programmed to stay within a particular radius, because it was easier to code them with specific context than as individuals with freedom of movement. Of course, that didn’t make much sense here. The simulation was so incredibly sophisticated that they were all fooled for years before getting the hint that something was off, so why would there be such limitations? They still didn’t understand how any of this worked. It just seemed so inconsistent.

“What did you mean back there?” Ramses asked as they were back up onto the road. “You didn’t think that this was a simulation?”

“No, I said that I didn’t think that we were in a computer,” Mateo corrected.

“Okay, and why’s that?”

“I dunno.”

“You don’t?”

“My memory has been erased, remember? I think I remembered something just before we hit the wall, but now it’s gone again.”

They continued to walk a ways in silence. They ended up in a sort of downtown area, situated on the opposite side of where they lived from where they worked. Mateo had never been here before, but a new memory was coming in. This wasn’t mission hills, or the area surrounding it. In the real world, it was very suburban. It wasn’t located between two urban centers like this. This was wrong. Everything was wrong. More evidence, which they managed to ignore all this time until they had no choice. Someone left their skateboard on the sidewalk. Mateo picked it up, and sent it through the window of a clothing shop. No one was hurt, it just landed in the display case. The shopkeeper came out, and started waving his hands, just like the construction workers. He didn’t say anything, though, probably because there was no reason to program these particular NPCs to speak.

Ramses kicked the sideview mirror off of a car as they were passing by. The driver got out, and said, “hey!” but that was it. He didn’t try to stop them, or anything. It did look like he was calling the cops, though, so that was a minor improvement. They jaywalked across the street, blocking traffic, and forcing drivers to honk their horns. There was a small restaurant here with outdoor seating. Mateo grabbed a burger off of someone’s plate while Ramses took a drink right out of their hands. “Ugh,” he said. “I hate this flavor.” He just dropped the glass on the ground. They were becoming a real nuisance, but still, no one tried to do anything to stop them. It was getting dark now, perhaps a little earlier than it should for May? Or was it September? It was impossible to know, since none of this was real.

They turned into an alley, and opened a random door. It took them through a kitchen, and into what appeared to be a dance hall. They could see a woman in a white dress, and a man in a tuxedo. Classic wedding reception. Mateo grabbed the microphone from the DJ, who wasn’t even playing anything. He was just bouncing to an imaginary beat, and pretending to scratch at the records. “I’m really happy for you, Imma let you finish, but Kanye had one of the worst videos of all time!”

“Who?” one of the bridesmaids asked.

“I dunno,” Mateo said. The rapper didn’t seem to exist in this reality, though he was rattling around in Mateo’s brain somewhere. “Love is a joke, and none of you are real, I mean it!”

Ramses grabbed the mic, and put it up to his own lips. “Is real.”

Mateo took it back. “What? What does Israel have to do with anything?”

“No, none of you is real,” Ramses tried to explain.

“That’s what I said.”

“You said are real. That’s wrong.”

“No, it’s not wrong, they’re not real. Look at ‘em!” Mateo pointed to the crowd. They were watching and listening intently, smiley as ever, like this was a usual reception, and nothing strange was going on. They weren’t engaging at all. He could say anything, and they would still just stare up at him like he was making sense. “Whatever. I’m outtie...five thousand!” He reached down, and tipped the DJ’s table over. The DJ just kept bouncing to the music that wasn’t playing, and pantomiming his job.

On their way out through the front, both of them grabbed a handful of wedding cake, and started stuffing their mouths. That was when Mateo’s phone rang. “What up?”

“It’s Boyd. You crashed my car. Now the cops are talking to me at the station.”

“How’d it go with the grass?” Mateo asked him.

“They’re all unique,” Boyd answered. “The grass is real. Everything is real.”

“All right. We’ll be there when we can, but as you said, we crashed the car, so we’re movin’ a little slow.” He barely got the word out before they opened the door to find themselves surrounded by cops themselves, all pointing guns at them, like they were criminal masterminds, or something.

They just stood there for a moment, frozen, not out of fear, but apathy. These cops weren’t real either. They may have thought they were, but it was a lie. The world was a total lie. Ramses reached out towards them to offer them, “cake?”

“Gun!” one of the cops cried. They all started shooting.

It was comical how they unloaded their bullets into Mateo and Ramses’ bodies. They were shaking uncontrollably with each shot, but never did fall down. They didn’t have to. The bullets weren’t real! Finally, someone managed to shout, “hold your fire!”

They all stopped, except for one guy. He just kept firing, slowly but steadily. He wasn’t even hitting either of his targets. They were good shots, though. Mateo and Ramses looked over to the wall a meter away from them. Dust blew out of the bullet hole each time, and it really was just the one bullet hole. He managed to hit the exact same point every single time. Definitely a computer program. Definitely.

Once one of his mates managed to stop him, it was he who placed the handcuffs on the suspects, and drove them off towards the station. Some of the other cruisers followed with their lights blaring, and their sirens going off. The others dispersed, and continued to police a world that didn’t need their help, since everyone could simply be programmed to follow the law at all times.

“I stole his car, let him go,” Mateo demanded. They were sitting in the interrogation room now; all three of them. A piece of plastic from Boyd’s car was sitting in a baggie on the table, presumably to intimidate them into confessing.

“You don’t make the demands here,” the detective argued.

“You don’t make the demand here!” Mateo yelled back.

“Yes, I do!”

“Yes, I do!”

“Stop copying me!”

“Stop copying me!”

“Detective Sanchez, he won’t stop copying me!”

“Detective Sanchez, he won’t stop copying me!”

“All right, all right,” Sanchez interrupted. “Why did you steal his car?”

“Seemed like fun,” Mateo replied.

“All right, all right. Why did you steal his car?”

“You got them both in a loop,” Ramses said with a laugh.

“All right, all right. Why did you steal his car?”

“Why didn’t you?” Mateo asked her accusatorily.

“What?”

“Oh, give it up, Sanchez,” Mateo began. “They know you’re dirty, and working with us. They’re trying to catch you in a lie.”

“I’m not dirty, I take a shower every night!” she contended, slamming her hand on the table. She darted her eyes only to one side, thinking about her own comment.

“Prove it!” Ramses shouted.

“Maybe I will,” she returned

“All right, all right,” the dude detective interrupted. “Why did you steal his car?”

“I didn’t steal anything,” Mateo defended. “You’re the one who stole it.”

“Is this true?” the detective’s eyes teared up as he was looking over at his partner.

“No, they’re joking,” she insisted. She looked back over at Mateo. “You are, aren’t you?” She sighed, and went over to sit in a chair against the back wall.

“Where were you last night?” the guy went on to ask.

Sanchez came back over, and pointed at Mateo. “You know where I was!”

“Don’t you lie to me!” the other guy urged.

She mouthed his words as he was saying them, then grabbed the evidence bag from the table to take it back over to her little wall chair. Meanwhile, the man nodded with a smirk on his face. “We got you. Your partner confessed. He’s in the other room right now, giving you up.”

“My partner,” Mateo asked, “who’s sitting right next to me?”

“That’s the one,” the detective corroborated, still smug.

“Well, I’m giving him up,” Mateo decided. “He stole my pencil in first grade.”

Both of the detectives’ eyes widened. “He is?” they asked, perfectly in sync. They scowled at Ramses. “We’ve been looking for you for years, you..son of a bitch!”

Mateo just remembered something else, from a movie that didn’t exist in this reality, but did in the real one. “I think there’s been some kind of mistake. We’re actually supposed to be getting out of jail today, not going into it.” Could this even work?

“Ugh,” Sanchez said. “You idiots.” She started to undo their handcuffs. “Come on.” She led them out of the room, and to the exit without any further issue.

“Need a ride?” a voice asked from the wall as they were passing by. It was Pacey. “My company specializes in that. I’m kind of a big deal.”

“Your computer simulation is breaking down,” Ramses gloated at him.

Pacey chuckled once. “It’s not a computer simulation, and it’s breaking because I let go of the wheel.”

“So it was you,” Mateo accused, “this whole time.”

“Depends on what you mean by it,” Pacey reasoned. “Some things were real, some things were scripted.”

“Who am I?” Mateo asked. “Who are we? What did you take from us?”

“I didn’t take who you were,” Pacey started to explain. “You’re in love with Leona, and Olimpia. Romana is your daughter, and Ramses is your friend, as are the Waltons...though, they’re not exactly twins; it’s more complicated than that.”

“Marie is four years older than Angela,” Mateo recalled.

“Heh. Yeah. Time, right?”

“What did you do?” Boyd pressed.

“I held them accountable for their actions,” Pacey said. “And you? You’re just a dick. I consider bringing you in here to be a public service. A bonus.”

“Let us out,” Mateo ordered.

“Yeah, I will,” Pacey agreed. “This dome was broken as soon as you went on your joyride. If I had let the scenario play out, you would have ended up in jail, and that’s not really what I want. I could have reset the premise, but it’s clear that Underburg just isn’t working. I’ll be moving you somewhere else, however, I’m not sure where yet.”

“The dome,” Mateo said out loud. That triggered something in his mind. His memories weren’t flooding back in, but a few of them were squeezing through the barrier. Dome. Dome, dome, dome, dome, dome. “Castlebourne. We never left.”

Pacey was surprised, but not shocked. “Oh. I need to tweak my memory suppressing machine yet again. Your brains; I can’t figure them out. Your stronger than you should be. But to clarify, you’re not technically on Castlebourne, so don’t expect Hrockas or Bran to swoop in and save the day. Ain’t nobody here but us chickens. And the androids,” he added.

“So, it really isn’t a virtual construct,” Ramses determined. “We were wrong. This is base reality.”

“It’s a reality,” Pacey corrected. “There’s no such thing as base reality. It’s all about your perspective. Are you but ones and zeros on a chip? No. Never were. Never crossed my mind to do it like that. Probably wouldn’t work very well because of your patterns.”

“So our patterns are intact?” Mateo was remembering more about their real lives.

Pacey nodded. “You jump forward in time every day. But I mess with your memories on an as-needed basis. Sometimes you think it’s been a day, and sometimes a few weeks. It just depends on what I need, and how much I’m willing to fill in to account for the extra time that never really happened.”

“Why are you doing this?” Boyd asked, basically the same question as before, just worded a little differently.

“Half-punishment, half-reward. You’ve all done enough. Buddy, you’ve done enough bad. I took you out of the timeline in my own way, because while the rest of you have done some good, you’ve also been meddlesome. Just stay here, and no harm will come to you. Just accept your new reality, and live your life.”

Mateo listened to Pacey’s words carefully, all the while also remembering where they knew him from in the first place. But if this guy knew the first thing about them, he wouldn’t be asking such a dumb thing of them. None of them was the type to roll over, and let someone dictate their lives. “No.”

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Extremus: Year 85

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This is it. Tinaya and Lataran are going to tell the general public of Extremus that they have maintained a permanent connection to Verdemus. Having a Nexus on the ship was always an option, but the people who first developed the idea of the mission ultimately decided against it for obvious reasons. There was never any law that said they couldn’t build one, probably because doing so takes the intelligence of a lesser god, and the patience of a saint. It was sort of against the spirit of what they’re trying to do here, but since the two they have access to were built for a rescue operation, it’s okay. Things might change in the future, but for now the council says that it’s fine. They have already been briefed on the subject. The braintrust lied to them too, though. They ended up making the claim that, since the two Nexa weren’t constructed by the original designers, they couldn’t be on the network. They could only connect to each other. So people will be able to travel from one to the other, but nowhere else.

With the council’s input, it has been decided that travel will not be a free-for-all. For a period of exactly one year, anyone who wants to visit Verdemus will have to apply to do so. The application that they submit will either be for a temporary stay, or permanent residency. They will have the chance to upgrade or downgrade later, should they change their minds. Some will be excited for the chance to live out their lives on a real planet, only to realize that they don’t really like it there, with all the bugs and everything. Others will go just to see what it’s like, and ultimately fall in love with it. Nothing has to be decided today, but it does have to be decided in 396 days. At that point, the connection will be completely severed. The Verdemusians, both new and old, will have to fend for themselves from then on, and the Extremusians the same. They’re dropping people off, like a bus, and this proverbial bus will not be turning around again. But buses do turn around. They do it all the time, it’s a specific route. So this is not really a good analogy, which is what Tinaya struggled the most with when she was writing her speech. The final draft has her just explaining the situation in no uncertain terms.

They’re going to tell the general population that the Nexa will be destroyed on both ends. What the council believes is that the Nexus will simply be disabled, and can be turned on again for emergencies. What only the small group of the original non-clone, non-secret explosion survivors knows is that the connection will just stay up the whole time, and they’ll be free to move back and forth however they please. They probably won’t do it much, but they’ll at least be able to communicate with each other. Lilac, Aristotle, and Niobe are staying on Verdemus. The latter two feel that it is their home, and the former wants to be with her son. Vaska will be staying too, not only because she isn’t on the Extremus manifest, but also because she wants to keep studying it. Omega and Valencia will be working on Jaunemus for now, but if anyone’s going to be using the Nexa after the one year grace period, it’ll be them. They have important jobs to complete, and they need the leeway to complete them. Tinaya will be staying on Extremus with Arqut, and of course, the Captain will too. Spirit and Belahkay have not yet made a decision, but they’ll surely stay together.

This is a joint presentation, but Lataran will only be responsible for answering questions at the end, since this is just for the crew for now. Tinaya is the one who will be explaining everything. She’s pacing on stage, nervous but using her breathing techniques. The curtain that separates her from the audience is soundproof. She could scream as loud as she pleased, and no one would notice. She almost wants to do this, just to recenter herself. She’s not dealt with the crew much as of late, since her leadership experience has been mostly relegated to the civilian side, and she’s been away for so many years anyway. Very few currently on rotation were there back in the day, so he doesn’t know many of these people.

Tinaya checks her watch, not wanting to be late. The seconds are ticking by, but she still has about twenty of them left, which is more than enough time for her to get over her nerves, and figure this out. Right? Why is she so anxious about it? She’s been around people. Well, in a different way, sure, but not like this. Extremus is a hollow chunk of metal hurtling through space. It has to be a structured well-oiled machine, or everything falls apart, and everyone dies. They had so much more freedom on the planet, and life was a lot more forgiving. Holy shit, how did ten seconds pass so quickly? Okay, get ready. There’s the button to open the curtains. Why isn’t Lataran here with her? Oh yeah, she’s greeting people by the door. That’s stupid, and annoying. The only thing worse than speaking in front of a huge crowd of people is being alone. She needs support. She needs Lataran. “Lataran.”

The Captain’s hand pushes Tinaya’s out of the way just before she can open the curtain. “Don’t push the button. Button is bad.”

“What are you talking about?” Tinaya questions.

“We’re not doing this. Trust me, it’s a bad idea. I’ll explain everything, but we need to get you out of here right now.”

“What about the crew?”

“I’ve sent them back to their assignments,” Lataran replied.

“You have?” A completely different Lataran asks. “That’s news to me.”

“What the hell are you doing back here?” The first Lataran shoves Tinaya behind her as if trying to be a human target.

“Well, one of the new Forest Rangers was running a little late for the presentation when he saw me sneak backstage, and then immediately saw me again at the entrance. I could have teleported, yes, but it didn’t look like that’s where I was headed.”

“Well, shit.” The first Lataran lets go of Tinaya, and holds up her hands defensively. “Now, I know you have to place me in hock, but you should know that I’m not here to hurt anyone. I’m not an impostor. I’m a time traveler.”

“I’m not taking you anywhere,” the second Lataran corrects. “Tinaya is taking both of us, because neither of us can be trusted.”

Tinaya doesn’t move.

“Tiny, that is protocol. You have to assume that we’re both bad guys.”

“She’s right,” the first Lataran says. “I never meant for the two of us to be in a room together. I wanted to get us away from here before I explained why I came back.”

“That’s a great idea,” the second Lataran says. “So stop talking!”

Tinaya removes the magcuff from her belt loop, which is standard issue for all crewmembers, and some key civilians. It’s so thin, she forgets that one is in every pair of pants that she owns. She only has the one, so the two of them will have to share. They look like twin sisters holding hands, but not for long. Tinaya teleports into the hock entrance, and checks them in with the Hock Watcher. He’s totally indifferent to the situation. He quietly locks them up in two separate interrogation rooms, and alerts the council, as well as First and Second Lieutenants. While he’s doing that, Tinaya reaches out to the current crew consul. She’s actually never met Icarus Faulkner, but he’s said to be just the nicest guy in the world.

In these uncertain situations, both copies of the same person will be treated equally until the authority can determine which one of them belongs, and which one doesn’t. But one version of Lataran is claiming to be real, and from this time period, while the other is admitting to being an interloper. So they’re starting with the assumption that both of them are telling the truth, and focusing their efforts on the latter version. Consul Faulker pulls Tinaya’s seat out for her, but doesn’t sit down next to her right away. “Can I get you two anything? Water? Tea?”

Tinaya reaches her hand towards him. “That’s not your job anymore, Consul.”

When he was still young, before he began his apprenticeship, he really did serve as an assistant to an earlier consul. That was so many years ago; he should not be experiencing a conditioned response like this. “It’s quite all right, I’m still standing.”

“We’re both fine,” Tinaya insists.

“She’s right,” Lataran is forced to say when Icarus looks over at her so she can answer for herself.

He finally relents, and takes his own seat. Poor eyesight is virtually a thing of the past. It really just depends on what you define as normal. Almost no one needs to wear lenses. Those who do almost always want some sort of enhanced vision, like telescopic, microscopic, or otherwise augmented. Icarus, however, is legitimately farsighted, and has not elected for corrective surgery, apparently because he doesn’t want to put the surgeon out. Yeah. There is such a thing as being too nice. He puts his reading glasses on, and inspects his tablet. As he goes through his spiel, he skims through the early report, and doesn’t look up at anyone. “This is Consul Icarus Faulkner of the VMS Extremus, sitting with former First Chair, Tinaya Leithe. We are interviewing a purported time traveler who has appeared in the form of current VMS Extremus Captain, Lataran Keen. The interviewee has been magnetically bound to the table, and is being treated respectfully and humanely. She has been offered refreshments, and...” Now he looks up. He quickly taps on the screen. “Do you need to use the restroom?”

“No.”

Tap. “...an opportunity to use the facilities, which she has so far declined.” He leans back in his chair, and carefully adjusts the microexpression detector attached to the one-way mirror behind them. “Okay, here we go.”

Tinaya instinctively holds to the back of his chair in case he tips all the way back.

“Thank you kindly.” He goes back into the formal questioning. “Please state your full name for analysis.”

“Lataran Keen.”

“Middle name included.”

“Don’t have one.”

Icarus looks back at the detector over his reading glasses, which doesn’t really tell him anything, of course, so he looks down at the results on his tablet. “Very well. Are you a time traveler?”

“Indeed.”

“What was your date and time of egress?”

“October 12, 2355 at 15:52.”

“What was the purpose of your journey back in time?”

“To stop the announcement of the true nature of our relationship to Verdemus.”

“Why should this announcement not be made?” he presses.

“It becomes disastrous for both the ship, and the planet. Four months into allowing passengers to visit Verdemus, attacks begin. It starts with individual killings, and quickly escalates into full-on bombings. We believe that a message was recently sent to the Exin Empire, alerting them to the survival of the planet, and its inhabitants.”

“You believe that a spy infiltrated the visitors in order to sabotage whatever harmonious society has, and will have, been established there.”

“That’s correct,” Lataran confirms.

“Do you know for sure that it was one of the visitors?”

“Who else would it be?” Lataran asks, very confused.

“Well, when I was briefed, I was told that there are already thousands of people living there. Clones of Mister Omega Parker?”

“Omega Strong,” Tinaya corrects.

“Apologies. Let the record reflect that I misnamed Omega Strong.”

This sounds like the stupidest thing that Lataran has ever heard. “It wasn’t the clones. They were there for years before the passengers began to show up.”

“I am afraid that you have proven a correlative connection, but not a causal one. That two things occurred in sequence—”

“I understand how logic and causality work,” Lataran interrupts. “Thank you, but I did pass second grade.”

“You will show respect to the Consul,” Tinaya warns.

“I’m sorry,” Lataran says. “I understand that I have not given you enough information. Tinaya, you confiscated a flashdrive from me when I checked in?”

“Is that what that is?” Tinaya asks. “It looks ancient.”

“Intentional obsolescence,” Lataran explains. “For security purposes. Reach out to the Technology Historians Club. They’ll know what to do. It will have all the evidence you need to cancel the announcement. We were wrong. No one can know that Verdemus still stands. We don’t know who we can trust, but someone is not on our side.”

“We’ll review the data you submitted,” Icarus goes on, “and the claims you have made. In the meantime, the other Lataran Keen will remain in hock on the ship, and you will be transported through the Nexus for indefinite detainment on world.” He switches off the recording, and stands up.

“That’s it?” Tinaya asks him. “No more questions?”

“Until the data can be verified,” Icarus begins, “I would not like to contaminate my investigation with more, possibly corrupt, information. I’m sure that we’ll have more to ask once we learn more from that...flashdrive thing.” He begins to leave the room. “I’ll arrange for covert transport. I’ll let you two have a moment for a private goodbye, but Miss Leithe, you are not leaving the ship, and you are not speaking with the other Captain.” He exits the room with a polite nod to the both of them.

Tinaya and the visiting Lataran do say their goodbyes, because it really feels like they’re never going to see each other again. It could be that Lataran’s image has been forever tarnished, and that the real one will be relieved of her position as well.

After a thorough investigation—with the help of time travel experts Omega and Valencia, and the current temporal engineers—it’s determined that the time traveler was telling the truth. The announcement is postponed until further notice. Five months later, though no passengers are ever allowed to visit Verdemus, the murders begin, and the planet falls under attack.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 5, 2457

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Leona and Marie were in hock, and had been for the last five days. They managed to return to their past, in the middle of the kasma, where they hoped to be, but they were immediately scooped up by the Angry Fifth Divisioner’s ship. As he was the one who deployed the technology needed to seal up the membranes of the two sister universes, he could pass through them freely using some kind of temporal skeleton key. They needed that key, as well as the technology itself. They just had to escape first. In the meantime, he was looking for their co-conspirators. He was convinced that the rest of the team members were floating around here somewhere, and had been on the search this whole time. It was only five days for them, but five years for him. He would not listen to reason. Well, to be fair, he had every reason to believe that the others were here too, but after all this time, how could they still be alive?

“Maybe you two had to bail out in your suits, but your friends had personal pods, or an evac shuttle.” He didn’t know that they had come back in time from the future. He assumed that the Transit had managed to escape, but left the team behind for whatever reason. There was no point in correcting him. At best, he wouldn’t believe them, and at worst, it would make things harder for them.

“Well, I think that you would have found them by now,” Leona told him. “They would be emanating heat, and you could detect that heat, right? There’s not much heat in the kasma naturally, is there?” She kept having to baby him, and it was exhausting.

“No, it’s even colder than the vacuum.” He was right about that. Ramses measured the mean temperature to be at 2.16 Kelvin. “So, where are they?”

“We don’t know!” Marie said for the upteenth time. “We got separated.” This was technically true, even though her wording implied that it was not done intentionally.

“So, what do you want me to do, let you out?”

“That would be a start,” Leona replied.

“You realize what you’ve done, right?” A.F. asked. “The only thing that was keeping you alive was the prospect of being able to kill you all at the same time. If no one else is here, I’m just going to cut my losses, and kill the two of you alone. I’ll worry about the others later, I suppose. Your execution will be scheduled for tomorrow morning.” A.F. said with confidence.

“Problem with that,” Marie started to point out.

“We won’t exist tomorrow,” Leona added.

“Right.” A.F. tried to figure a way out of this glaring mistake. “Tomorrow, Greenwich Mean Time. It’ll be later tonight local time.”

That was a dumb answer, but they didn’t push it. “Of course, sir.”

“I’ll go make the preparations. Say your final prayers to your god.”

“Yes, sir!” Marie saluted him sarcastically, but he took it genuinely. She watched him leave. “Okay, your plan hasn’t worked so far, so can we just go with mine now?”

“Yeah,” Leona answered her with a sigh. The original idea that Leona had for their escape plan was to hack into the keypad on the cell door. They heard the beeps when they were first locked in here, so they knew that they were dealing with an eight-digit combination. She was able to covertly stick a brute force strip underneath the pad, but in all this time, it had yet to find the right answer. It was probably something absurd, like 99999999. The strip was programmed to try them in order, so that would be its last guess. Unfortunately, it might take up to another year or more for it to get to that point, and they no longer had the time for that.

Obviously, when A.F.’s people captured them, they removed the outer layers of their integrated multipurpose suits, leaving them only with the biometric base. They stashed the response and armor layers elsewhere on the ship. Ramses upgraded their suits in various ways, but they appeared normal, so anyone here wouldn’t have felt any need to take any special precautions with them. They just stuffed them in a drawer, and forgot about them for the last five years. One special feature was the suit’s ability to become mobile on its own. This was possible to some degree in all standard models, but it would still need a user to be wearing it in order to provide physical support. It was meant to allow the suit to carry its user back to safety if they fell unconscious, or to their gravesite if they were dead. The original engineers didn’t think that the suit would have any need to move around completely on its own, but Ramses being Ramses, he did. It could indeed move while totally empty, like something out of a cartoon. It was less inconspicuous than a hacking strip, but it would work.

Marie placed her sleeve up against her temple to activate the remote neural interface, and began to command the outer layers to climb out of their drawer, and walk down the corridors towards them. The helmet was fully attached as well, so it looked like a real person, but that didn’t mean it had the authorization to go where it was going. If someone decided to stop and ask for its ID badge, or something, the jig would be up. Fortunately, that didn’t happen, but making it to them was the easy part. Dealing with the hock watcher was the real challenge, and it was about to begin.

“Wait,” Leona ordered just before the empty suit could enter the hock section. “This isn’t going to work.”

“It’s all we have, LeeLee.”

“Just give me a second.” Leona tried to concentrate, but she didn’t have the power to see remotely. “Here, let me join.” She grabbed Marie’s free hand, and placed the sleeve against her own temple. She closed her eyes to see through the suit’s point of view. “I can do this. Throw your voice into the helmet, but put a delay on it. For everything you say, make it come out of the speaker ten seconds later.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m changing your plan so it actually works. Throw your voice.”

“It’s not my voice. It’s going to sound like A.F.’s.”

“Even better. Ten second delay,” Leona insisted.

The hock watcher opened the little window in the door when the suit knocked on it. “Can I help you?”

“I need to interrogate the prisoners again,” Marie said through the speaker, modulating her voice to impersonate the leader.

“Sir? You’re back so soon?”

“Yes. Open the door.”

“Why are you wearing one of their suits?”

“Because it makes me feel sexy, now open the goddamn door.”

The hock watcher was unconvinced, but that was okay. That was why Leona was here. “I’m sorry, sir, but this could be fake. I’m going to need you to raise your visor.”

Marie looked to Leona for guidance. Leona nodded confidently. She was ready for it. “I appreciate your dedication to the job,” A.F.’s voice said to the hock watcher. Marie raised the visor. Inside the helmet was A.F.’s face, in holographic form, of course. This was why Leona needed the delay. Every time Marie said something, Leona would need to match the hologram’s lips to it.

“Thank you, sir. I just want to be cautious.”

Of course, they didn’t want to make this any harder on themselves than they had to, so from this point on, short answers only. “I’ll remember that for your next evaluation.” Could’ve been shorter. Leona really struggled with that, but it seemed to work. The hock watcher opened the door, and let the deepfake A.F. in. “Go ahead and open it up.”

“Sir? That’s not protocol. You’re the only one who knows the code.” Shit. Really?

“Uhh...use the master code.” A decent guess?

“Master code?” The hock watcher questioned. “Who are you?” He shook his head. “This is a trick. I’m calling security.”

The suit reached up, and slammed the hock watcher’s head against the cell wall. He was knocked out cold, which would delay the security team’s response time, but someone would find him eventually, or he would wake up on his own, and call them then. The fact was they were still locked in this cell, and didn’t know the code. They were going to have to extend this mission even further, and go find A.F. himself.

“Stuff the body in that cabinet,” Leona ordered.

“He’s not dead.”

“He still has a body. Put it in there, please.”

“You do it...Captain.”

“This is your plan!”

“You’re supposed to be the smart one. You should have come up with both Plan A and Plan B. Now you’re going to have to impersonate someone else for A.F., and he’s going to be a lot less accommodating since he’s apparently the guy in charge.”

“Well, we may have had more options if you hadn’t knocked him unconscious,” Leona reasoned.

“I didn’t do that. You did.”

Leona was taken aback. She decidedly had not. Before they could argue any further, though, the door clicked, and swung halfway open. The stared at it for a moment. “Hm. The strip found the code.” She stepped out, and looked at the keypad. Her guess was close. It was 88888888.

Marie saw it too. “All ones would have been easier on us.”

While Marie was putting her suit on, Leona dragged the hock watcher into the cell, and locked it back up. She removed the hacking strip, and tucked it back into her base layer, in case they ever needed it again. They also didn’t want to let anyone know how they managed to get out of here. Hopefully, they would just blame the hock watcher for the whole thing, and not investigate any deeper. “I still can’t teleport. I think the power blocker works all over the ship.”

“Well, you can obviously make yourself look like anyone, so I’ll continue to be A.F., and you be the hock watcher. We’ll go down to get your suit, and then get to work.”

“No, I don’t want to run into anyone else again. Let’s become invisible instead.”

“That’s Olimpia’s forte.”

“We can all do it. There’s a mirror over there for us to practice with. I’m sure no one will be back too soon.”

The door opened, and A.F. walked back in.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 2, 2454

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Ramses’ new bulk portal detection device was not ready by the time the team’s day ran out. He was able to program his AI to do some things during their interim year, but there was still some work left when they returned in 2454. While he was focused on that, the Primus asked Leona to exercise her diplomacy muscles for them.

“I don’t have any significant diplomacy experience,” Leona tried to explain.

“Is that not what your ship is for? It’s called the Ambassador,” Primus Mihajlović pointed out.

“That was how it was designed,” Leona went on, “and that’s how it was used recently, but my team and I aren’t on it because that’s our job. We just sort of lucked into possession of it. Whoever you’ve been using for your diplomacy with the Ochivari prisoners of war are better equipped than I.”

“We would be grateful,” Kineret began, “if you would at least try. We’re getting nowhere with the prisoners. We’ve passed laws in recent years that forbid us from detaining extraterrestrial POWs for longer than four months. We actually watched a lot of Ochivari die after we placed them in a communal area of the facility to let them attempt to return home on their own. Fortunately, Carlin has been here to prevent the bloodshed, but we’re running out of time. We’ve not been able to capture anyone recently, so this could be our last chance to get answers for  a while.”

Leona nodded respectfully. “I’ll have Angela or Marie see what they can do.” She turned around to look for the Walton sisters when she saw her husband. “What is it?”

“Nothing, I’m just standing here,” he replied.

“I know all your faces, Matt. You’re yearning for something. Do you think you should run this interrogation instead?”

“Absolutely not. It has nothing to do with that. We’ll talk later, in private.”

“If there’s something I need to know...” the Primus said.

“It really has nothing to do with it,” he assured her. “It’s personal. My mind is distracted. Go do your thing,” he said to Leona. “I’ll see ya tonight.”

They shared a couple pecks on the cheek, then went their separate ways. Leona and Angela teleported a few thousand kilometers away to a particularly cold region of the planet, which they would have referred to as the Northwest Territories. There was no name for it here. It was just the Subarctic North. This was where all of the Ochivari prisoners were being held, as far from civilization as possible, to protect the humans from them. They also discovered that Ochivari didn’t like the cold. They didn’t wither and die from it like a movie monster, but they were very uncomfortable anywhere outside of their climate controlled cells, so there was less danger of them trying to escape. Of course, they had to keep each prisoner separately, or they would be able to transport each other to a different universe. This would always result in some fraction of the travelers dying, but this was a risk that they were used to taking, so the humans had to take measures to stop it. Unless the time limit was reached. They had passed similar laws when it was just themselves on this Earth over the centuries, and as angry as they were about the alien invasion, the populace felt obligated to maintain some sense of their own integrity, and to treat their prisoners of war with care and dignity. The Ochivari still had rights, even if they would not extend the same courtesy to the humans.

Primus Mihajlović, who asked the team to call her Naraschone in person, but her title in the company of others, called ahead to let the prison know that two consultants would be arriving to speak with the prisoners. The guards let them in, and directed them to the underground cells. This place was powered by a thermonuclear generator, so it was self-sustainable, and mostly cut off from the rest of the world, for security purposes. The people who worked here lived in a nearby once-abandoned, but now revitalized, formerly indigenous village. For the most part, the only travel that occurred to this location was to drop off new prisoners, or to fly away from having just dropped off prisoners. They even grew their own food in aquaponic towers, further cementing themselves as a stable isolate. So they were very excited to see the new faces. Some of them were a little too excited, but Angela and Leona didn’t let it bother them, because it was understandable given their circumstances.

“I’ll just be right outside,” the guard said, closing the door behind them.

A polycarbonate window was installed in the middle of the room. On the other side was an Ochivar who was already sitting at his table up against the window, ready to talk. He was reportedly just as closed off about their motivations, and other details regarding their culture, but he was less nasty to the humans than his compatriots were. “Who the hell are you?”

“You don’t already know who we are?” Leona asked, pulling Angela’s seat out, and then sitting down next to her.

“No. Should I?”

They were famous in some circles, but not his, unless he was just playing it close to the vest. “We are not from this world. We hail from Salmonverse.”

Ochivari looked different, so their microexpressions would be hard to read without more exposure, yet it was apparent that he recognized the name. He tried not to let this on. “Okay.”

Angela met Leona’s eyes, and nodded. She would begin to lead the conversation. “What’s your name?”

“Nilstedd,” he answered courteously.

“What was the name of the man you killed when crossing over into this world?”

He hesitated with this one, likely surprised that she would show interest in such information. “Kuhsakego.”

“Were you two close?”

He hesitated here too, but less so, wanting to maintain what little power he had left here. “We trained up together. We always knew that we would be wing-locked one day. They discouraged us from becoming friendly for this reason.”

“Were you in love?” Angela asked.

“It wasn’t like that,” Nilstedd answered.

She believed him. “But you did care for him, and you regret his passing.”

“It is our way.” He averted his gaze, suggesting that he did not agree with his own statement. “It is the only way.”

That wasn’t true, but Angela wasn’t there yet. “We’ve noticed something. Well, others have noticed it, and relayed it to us. We have not met enough Ochivari to have any impression in this regard, but it’s become known that you are all men. Are you a single sex species?”

“Of course not. Our mating rituals are more complex than you could ever understand.”

“Where are all the women?”

He scoffed.

“They must be weak,” Angela said dismissively, trying to get a rise out of him.

“They are not weak. They are just too important!” he argued.

“So it’s just about propagating the species,” Angela guessed. “They stay out of the fight, so they can make more fighters.”

“I shall say nothing more of it.” He turned away even more.

“Have you heard of the Krekel?” she asked him.

He appeared determined to stop revealing information to them, but he couldn’t help but react to this. He spit on the far end of his table, as close to Angela’s as he could without phase-shifting it through the barrier.

“They’re like the Tok’ra, who are technically also Goa’uld, but not evil. That’s all they are; those who made different choices.” She shrugged. “You’re Krekel.”

“No, I am not.”

“You can be,” she reasoned. “You can escape your cell whenever you want. Krekel can travel alone.”

Nilstedd crossed his arms defiantly. “They’re lying.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did you ever see them do it?” he questioned.

“My father was a slaveowner,” Angela suddenly said. “I grew up with massive trust issues. I had to work really hard to get over them. The Krekel told me that they can wingsing their way through portals. It’s not a trick, it’s not a lie. It’s true. I’ve been sent here to tease information from you, but if you escaped right here, right now, I wouldn’t stop you. I encourage it.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Music. Music is a language of love. For you to do what you do, and survive, you have to develop contempt from your partner, not because of its inherent value, but because of what you were saying. To lose someone you love; for him to die by your hands—or wings, as it were—would be a burden that you could not bear if you let yourself care about him. So you suppress all love, to protect yourself from disappointment, loss, and loneliness. Music brings us together. The way the Krekel I met described it, you can open a portal by focusing your energy on breaking free from the world that you’re on, while they open one by focusing on where they want to go. They seek connection, while you seek escape. That’s why it kills you.”

“I would sure like to read the scientific paper where you’re getting all this brilliant insight,” he volleyed.

She smiled. “I can’t. I briefly looked over the laws relevant to this war. The locals aren’t allowed to study how you operate. It’s illegal, because it’s unethical. They can’t encourage you to kill each other. So no, I don’t know that much about how your wing battle thing works, but I know that it’s not pleasant. If it were, Kuhsakego would be in the cell next to you.”

“What are you trying to do here,” Nilstedd demanded to know, “get me to turn on my own people?”

“No,” Angela answered sincerely. “I’m just trying to get you to tell me why you’re here at all. What’s so special about this world? It’s just another Earth. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want you to sterilize everyone, but why haven’t you yet? Why are you fighting in the first place?”

He appeared to laugh. “Look around, human. Do you know what the global temperature is? Do you see how much pollution there is in the air? The oceans? Do you know how many unevolved species have gone extinct? Does it have a stable ozone layer? Are these people barreling down a path towards their own self-destruction?”

“No,” Leona answered in Angela’s stead. “They’re fine. The environment is fine. So why are you here?”

Nilstedd was watching Angela during Leona’s response, but he turned his head now. “We’re not here to end the human race in this universe. We’re here to train.”

“To train for what?”

“For you,” he answered simply.

“Me specifically, errr...?”

“People like you, who travel the bulk, causing trouble for us. You can’t combat sterilization in kind. You fight us with guns, and other weapons. We need to know how to fight back, to protect our interests. So we found a universe that’s just advanced enough to give us a real challenge while being primitive enough to not absolutely decimate our forces.”

“These are field tests?” Leona questioned, horrified. “You don’t actually have anything against these people? By your own definition, they’re innocent, and you’re killing them anyway?”

He shrugged. “Orders are orders. Some were sent in ships, others were sent to test out various infiltration and subterfuge techniques. That’s why some of the people we dispatched are human.”

Leona had to actively hold Angela in place when she stood up to teleport away. “No. We can’t tell anyone what he just said.”

“Why not?”

“Come with me,” Leona ordered. She took Angela by the hand, and transported them both to the Gobi Desert.

“They have a right to know that some of the people they’re looking for will look human, and not Ochivari,” Angela argued.

“The right people have a right to know, but we have to be careful about this. Think about it, Ange. Right now, their enemy is obvious; unmistakable. If they have to be on the lookout for enemies who look just like them, they’ll find ‘em, whether they’re real or not. Neighbors will turn on neighbors. People will become suspicious of their children’s teachers. Constituents will lose trust in their leadership, and the entire civilization will crumble to dust. In my day, some conspiracy theorists believed that the government was run by lizard people. They once tried to attack a military base, convinced that aliens were being housed there. Imagine how bad it would get if this kind of stuff were true!”

Angela sighed. “You’re right. This situation requires finesse and tact. I don’t know if we’re up for the job. It puts us in an awkward situation too. We’re invaders, from another universe. What makes our team different? Why should they trust us?”

“There’s another option, but it will be neither safe nor easy. I got the idea just as Olimpia was rescuing us from the kasma. Perhaps the only way to protect this Earth is to seal it up tight. Now more than ever, we would have to return to where we came from.” If the answer was in Salmonverse or Fort Underhill, then they needed to get back to find it, not only because that was their home. Their enemy would want something in return—probably their deaths—but there was no reason to fret over it now. Priorities.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 5, 2426

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Sheriff Kamiński’s posse, and some of the former slaves that they had recently freed, constructed a hock in the building that they took over to live in until Team Matic could return, and teleport them all to the other side of the world. The natives stayed away from Fort Welrios, and the Welriosians stayed away from everyone else, unless they were conducting their searches and investigations. The people they interrogated cooperated as much as they were able, scared to death that the team would do to them what Leona did to their previous monarchy, or worse. No one knew where Maqsud Al-Amin’s son, Aristotle was, but the family he was staying with was missing as well. Child slaves were treated differently than the adults. Their duties were limited to performing household chores, and never anything outside until they reached double digits. Even then, the work was light, which the slavedrivers probably figured was a really nice thing to do for them. When there was no more work left each day, the masters of the house homeschooled them. The curriculum included indoctrinating the young ones into believing that this was what was best for them. Cool.

“He won’t talk,” Sheriff Kamiński explained. “He’s the only one left that we’re not sure about, which leads me to believe that he knows something.”

“He’ll talk to me,” Leona said, determined to find that boy.

“He’ll talk to me,” Mateo argued. “You’re too angry right now.”

“I’m not too angry!” she shouted.

“Is that what I said?” Mateo asked. “I misspoke. I meant, you’re needed on the other continent. I’m sure there’s an invention or something that the Welriosians could do with, and I certainly can’t help with that.”

“You’re on thin ice, Matic. Get me a lead.” She disappeared.

“Were I you,” he said to her through comms. He cleared his throat, and walked down the hall to the makeshift interrogation room. “What’s your name?”

“It’s—” the prisoner began.

“Don’t care. Do you know what space is made out of?”

The prisoner was confused. “Umm...nothing?”

“That’s exactly right. Or it isn’t. Maybe there’s dark matter up there, or giant spacewhales, I don’t know. What you say you and me go up and find out?” He offered his hand to him.

The prisoner slunk back as much as he could against his chair.

“Not interested?”

“I don’t care to be threatened.”

“I don’t care to not know where my friend is. Now I promised his parents that I would take care of him. You don’t want me to disappoint his mother, do you? I mean his real mother, not the one who literally abducted him, and forced him to do her work.”

“I don’t know where they are!”

“But you know something, don’t you?” Mateo guessed.

The prisoner shook his head, all but confirming that he was holding onto at least one small bit of vital information.

“I don’t need you to consent to the spacewalk,” Mateo said, standing up, and starting to make his way to the other side of the table.

“No!” he cried. “Fine. I really don’t know where they are, but I saw them leave.”

“Leave where? I mean, what direction?”

“No direction. They just disappeared.”

“What did it look like?” he teleported to the other side of the room. “Like that?”

“No.”

“Did you see anyone else?”

“The mother, the daughter, the neighbor, and the boy. That’s all I saw.”

“The neighbor? No one said anything about the neighbor. What neighbor?”

“The neighbor next door. They were in his apartment. I don’t know why they went over there. He’s just this old man who lives alone. He didn’t have any slaves. He was alive back when we had them before, but he never did. He doesn’t even hire labor. I don’t know where he gets his money.”

“The family where Aristotle was staying, they were rich?”

“Poor people aren’t allowed to take the children in. They don’t know what to teach them. I’m the gardener for the old man’s neighbor on the other side, and I didn’t take any slaves either. I want to be clear about that. I just don’t want to lose my job.”

“Describe it.”

“Describe what.”

“I assume you saw something through the window? Four people disappeared before your eyes. Describe what it looked like.”

“There was a glow, and then his skylight shattered. The glow escaped from it, but it was so quick, I couldn’t see if the people were in it, or whatever. I looked back down, and the parlor was empty.”

“What color was the glow?”

“Gray, I guess.”

Mateo studied the young man’s face to see if he was lying, or holding back more information. He clearly had no idea how Maqsud’s power worked, but was describing what Mateo imagined it looked like from the outside. It was reasonable to guess that Aristotle inherited the same gift, though it was unknown if he used it accidentally, or on purpose. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was trying to escape this life, and the people he was with were just swept up in the energy field. Unfortunately, there was probably no way of knowing where they went.

“Someone patched up the roof the next day, long before the Welriosians started asking about it. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything before, I just didn’t want to stand out. Workers who stand out get the worse jobs. Please don’t take me up to space.”

“Relax, I’m not going to kill you. I’ll go get someone to get you out of those chains, and escort you back to wherever you live.” Mateo stood up to leave.

“Wait.” He looked scared.

“What is it?”

“Take me to New Welrios, or whatever it is they’re calling it.”

“I don’t know how they’ll treat you there. I don’t know them very well at all. Most of our interactions have been us trying to rescue them.”

“Anywhere is better than here. I can work. I won’t expect them to do anything for them, I just can’t go back. My boss is...”

“You don’t have to explain. I’ll take you to a spot nearby. If you promise to stay put until I return, I’ll figure out whether you can join them. But if you’re requesting asylum, I’ll grant it immediately.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Mateo transported the witness to a backup location that Ramses and Angela found when there were looking for a place to relocate the Welriosians. Then he reconvened with his friends who had been listening through the comms the whole time. “Did I make the right call?”

“I think so, as long as he’s not lying, and he really didn’t own slaves.”

“Most people here never have,” Sheriff Kamiński explained. “There are hundreds of millions of them, yet only 11,000 of us.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” Leona says, watching her husband’s face. “We can’t save them all. Even if we could confirm who else never had slaves, we could not relocate them all here, nor anywhere else, for that matter.”

“We have to do something,” Mateo urged. “This world is so bleak. Everything sucks here for everyone, except for the one percent. Even most of the poor people with slaves don’t just sit around all day. They use the slave to double their productivity. They’re miserable.”

“I don’t feel bad for them,” Leona said.

“Neither do I, there’s no excuse. I’m just saying that there must be something we can do to improve conditions here, so no one feels desperate enough to enslave anyone, or pay with pennies.”

Leona sighed, and considered it. “Ramses, go to the old man’s house, and try to figure out if you can determine Aristotle’s vector. Mateo, bring that kid to us. I have some questions of my own. No anger, I promise.”

Mateo retrieved the witness, and brought him to the alpha site. He then started to help transport more supplies from the main continent, to the Welriosians. They had survived just fine over the last year, but there were a few things the natives had access to that they still did not. They were all still living in the cave, but had constructed a number of buildings within it, so the residents could have places to live in separately. It somewhat resembled the lava tubes that people lived inside of on Luna and Mars. The expanse was there to protect them from the outside—in that case, the vacuum; and in this case, the elements—but people still wanted and needed privacy. They cut down trees for these structures, and also figured out how to make mud bricks from scratch. It was an impressive accomplishment, finding a way to thrive here in so little time. They were not doing this without experience, of course. They had done something similar on their sanctuary planet before it was discovered, and ultimately destroyed. Perhaps one day this community will have the technology to rival what they had before, and then even the cities on the other side of the world.

The team reconvened once more an hour later, Leona with a vague plan, and Ramses with the answers they would need to solidify it. “It’s not like I can trace their ion trail, or photon trail, or any other trail that science fiction stories like to claim will make anyone findable in space. I do believe I have a decent idea of where they might have gone, though. The Monarchy gave me a list of inhabited star systems in this part of the galaxy. Once I figured out what the data meant, I converted them to standard galactic coordinates, and only found two possible planets where they might have gone. It’s a light year away. They all are. No one in the Goldilocks Corridor is ever more than a light year away from anyone else. I’m sure that’s why they call it that.”

“How many systems are there?” Marie asked.

“A hundred and twenty, though there could be more by now. The list I have is dated thirty-four local years ago, which is about thirty-five standard years.”

Leona shook her head. “All these people, and we had no idea they existed.”

“We know now,” Mateo reminded her. “Our current problem is that we don’t have a ship anymore. We can’t get to Aristotle, even if we go the right way, and even if he still happens to be there. I don’t know how long it takes for him to recharge, but I doubt that’s what’s keeping him in one place by this point.”

“Guys?” Olimpia jumped in. “Shouldn’t Lilac be included in this conversation?”

“I’ll go get her,” Angela volunteered. It was reportedly difficult to convince her to leave Fort Welrios, and come to New Welrios. She couldn’t leave the place where she had last seen her son. But they were certain that he had left the planet over a year ago, and she trusted their judgment on that. They started the meeting up again once everyone was there.

“I can build us a ship.” Ramses kicked at the dirt underneath his feet. “It won’t have a fancy-schmancy reframe engine, but it will get us to where we’re going. Eventually.”

“Forgive us, the uneducated,” Olimpia began, “but why no reframe engine?”

“I don’t have any concentrated temporal energy, and I don’t have any way of manufacturing antimatter, which would be good enough to power it,” Ramses answered. “The natives here don’t even know what I’m talking about. The ships that come to pick up goods use fusion, and in fact, one of the things they process here is tritium. I’m sure we can steal some of that, given our...influence over these people. I also happen to have a mini-reactor in the basement of our lab, so...”

“The lab has a basement?” Mateo asked.

Ramses shrugged. “Yeah, it’s for storage. Anyway, I could build a reframe engine, but it would use a lot of fuel, and I still probably couldn’t get it to maximum speeds. We also have that time-jumping thing tonight, so faster doesn’t really help us.”

“It would help me,” Lilac contended.

“We wouldn’t leave you alone on a strange new world to find your son. You could be on the wrong side of the planet with no hope of getting anywhere near where he might be. And you would also have no one there to protect you.”

“I could protect her,” Sheriff Kamiński jumped in. “I also know that you have teleportation tech that anyone can use.”

Ramses sighed. “We have emergency teleporters, which store temporal energy for, of course, emergency use. You can’t just jump however much you want, unless your body metabolizes temporal energy on its own, like ours do. When I was a normal human, I couldn’t have used anything like that on a regular basis.”

Leona frowned. “I’m sorry, Lilac. We want to find him too, but waiting two more years is the only way.”

“Two years?” Lilac questioned. “Why two?”

“I need time to build the ship,” Ramses said apologetically. “One year to build it while we’re gone, and another to make the journey to the destination.”

“Put me in stasis,” Lilac demanded.

“Well, it’s a relativistic trip, so what will take a year will only feel like five—”

“No,” Lilac interrupted. “Put me in stasis now. My heart aches for my son, so put me to sleep, and don’t wake me up until it’s time to find him.”

The team exchanged looks for a few moments, reading each other’s feelings. “Okay. I’ll prep a pod for you.”

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