Microstory 2430: Advanced Research Dome (ARD)

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In the early days of interstellar colonization, they largely expected you to start from scratch, though the definition of this term is a little loose. I mean, they had domes too, because almost none of them had an atmosphere that was breathable by organic Earthans. So there was some technology right from the start, and they were making scientific advances on their own, but Earth remained front and center in the industry. You just can’t beat that kind of established infrastructure and strong, lasting institutions. I’m not sure that’s true anymore. While Teagarden took over the majority of the military needs of the Core Worlds, that was mostly for political reasons. They wanted to erase any sense that it favored the nations of Old Earth. Physics research didn’t have to switch homes, but it has. These new reframe engines people are using to travel at faster-than-light speeds? Those were apparently invented here. Developments in anti-gravity; induced stasis; transhumanistic enhancement, including bioforming; terraforming; power generation and distribution...it’s all here. Dare I say, we’re now more advanced than Earth is, even with all of its advantages? I’m sorry to tell you that that is my conclusion. If you’re interested in furthering our understanding of physics, biology, chemistry, or any other scientific field, your best bet is to come here. Earth’s programs are nothing to scoff at, and I don’t think they’re doing anything wrong, but at some point, the brightest minds in the galaxy evidently decided to move, and before anyone realized what was happening, the power shifted here. Good or bad, that’s what happened. This power may shift once more, back to Earth, or perhaps some third star system, but for now, this is the nexus of scientific exploration. The silver lining is that they’re not hoarding it any more than Earth did. They’re sharing what they’ve learned with others, so we’re at least safe from the privatization threats that we’ve faced in days past. Word of warning: this dome is not for visitors, really. You can come, and they’ll let you walk around, but we’re dealing with a lot of dangerous things here, so the majority of the sectors are off-limits without proper authorization. People keep randomly showing up, believing that we have something to show off, but that’s not what we’re doing here. This is just for us. If you want to join, fill out the right application. If you don’t yet qualify, find a learning platform, and catch up. There are no limits to who can help humanity and its offshoots achieve everything we ever dreamed of.

Microstory 2410: Mildome

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This dome is for flowers. It’s a self-sustaining ecosystem, and it’s growing. Here’s the thing, at the moment, it’s mostly just grass in the center of a vast desert. There are pockets of flower gardens here and there, but they are going to spread over the course of the next several decades. This was done intentionally, not because the builders were lazy, or something. It’s all about the pollinators. You got your bees, you got your butterflies and moths, you got your flies. Not houseflies, that’s not what we’re talking about, nor blackflies. Those are gross and annoying. Don’t ask me the exact species of any of these things, I’m not that big of an expert. I just really like flowers. Continuing on, you got your hummingbirds, you got your honeyeaters and sunbirds, you got your bats. I looked it up, there are other animals that are good at pollinating on Earth, but they either don’t have them on this planet, or it’s taking time to engineer them. I doubt that they transported live specimens clear across the interstellar void. I don’t think you can do that legally, unless they qualify as a pet. You know what I learned while I was here? Humans are pollinators too. I don’t just mean that we plant plants. Obviously we do that, but we also have a history of lifting pollen, and carrying it to other places. Isn’t that cool? Well, you can do that under Mildome, if it strikes your fancy. The creators want this space to be the culmination of the hard work of millions of living organisms, including people like you can me. One day, the whole surface will be one giant garden, like a little microcosm of the world. I will be coming back regularly to see how it progresses, but I can’t wait for the “end” result. Of course, it won’t be finished at that point. The pollinators will continue to do what they do best, and this dome will thrive. Without any negative environmental factors, like climate breakdown, there’s nothing standing in its way. That’s something you have to see if you’re here on the planet anyway. Plus, there’s tons of honey, because of the bees. In addition to taking care of them, and learning about them, you can also eat however much honey that you want. If that doesn’t convince you, I suppose nothing will.

Microstory 2401: The Terminal

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You know what? This place is big. They call it the Terminal because everyone who quantum casts their consciousness to this planet runs through here. It’s mind-boggling how large it is. I think I heard someone say that every cast-capable individual could upload their mind to a new substrate here at pretty much the same time, and there would be enough room for everyone. I don’t know about that, but I saw this thing from the outside, and I think I believe it. But in the end, the principle remains the same. You get in an egress pod wherever you’re coming from, hook yourself up to the machine, and zip across the interstellar void. You wake up about an hour later, and start moving around in your new body. You’re a little shaky at first, because I admit, it was a new experience. The technology they use to transfer your consciousness is a little different. They have to worry more about things like interference and signal degradation. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t afraid, and I don’t regret it. I just mean, the end result may be a bit different than what you’re used to. It’s just a little harder to acclimate, even if you’re a seasoned caster. Fortunately, they were prepared. They have nearby acclimation rooms that are designed to help you figure things out. They have bars to hold onto and treadmills; basically everything you would find in a physical therapy gym. I was told that they do offer mech subs, if you want that instead of an organic. I’ve never personally used one of those kinds of bodies, so I can’t speak to that experience, but if you choose that route, you may be able to move around just fine right away. Anyway, I didn’t need to use any of the equipment. It was helpful just to have a place to sit and relax. They also had an orientation theatre. Some of it was in person, surely from an android of some kind, while other parts were on the holo-screen. There are way too many domes for them to go through them all, but they do teach you how to search through the catalog, so you can find the exact experience that you’re looking for. But I won’t get into specifics here. I’m sure once I start going to the domes, I’ll review those too. This is just about The Terminal. You should know, they do have medical facilities here, and hygiene stations. I didn’t use any of those, but they’re there if you need them, and they looked nice. I set my trip up ahead of time, so I pretty much received my orientation packet, and bounced. It looked like some people were hanging out there for a little while, though there are plenty of domes that offer relaxation options.

Microstory 1649: Birth of a Brane

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This will be the last new universe that I tell you about. The next fifty little stories will give you some more information about the previously discussed universes, in the same order. They may just contain more details that I didn’t mention before, or specific stories that, in some way, encapsulate what it’s like to live in these places. I’ve talked about the Maramon before, and told you that they come from a universe called Ansutah, but I’ve yet to describe that universe for you. It’s one of the smaller ones, and I mean that literally. Natural branes are infinitely large, meaning that they keep expanding as time within the membrane persists. Where one ends is synonymous with when it ends, because the size is a function of time more than it is space. C-branes operate differently, however. They’re only as large as they need to be in order to fit the story within, and to satisfy its characters. If said characters have no need to travel to the next star over, then that star will not exist. They may think that it exists. They may even be able to observe it. But it will not really be there. It will be a hologram, and only when something changes about their future will that universe expand in order to allow them to go there. Until that happens, this hologram is being projected on the inside of the membrane. It’s like a big wall that would kill you if you crashed into it, but as I said, that doesn’t matter, because it’s impossible to reach that wall. The universe will grow at least as fast as you can fly through space. Unless you’re in Ansutah. This is because Ansutah is not entirely a c-brane. It’s not entirely natural either, but it is complicated, and its limitations provide for a terrible little exception, which forced the residents to reassess their values.

Salmonverse is both a natural brane, and a c-brane, because of The Superintendent’s access to it, and his uses for it. At one point, a spaceship left a rogue planet called Durus, bound for a return trip to Earth. This ship was only designed to accommodate a small crew, and maybe a few passengers. It just wasn’t that big, because it didn’t originally need to be. Due to some socio-political issues, the crew decided to adapt the ship, so that it could fit dozens more people. They couldn’t build extensions, because the engines wouldn’t be able to handle more mass. They installed pocket dimension generators, which gave them extra space, without making the ship proper any larger. Something went wrong in one of these pockets. A girl was born with the power to make the pocket grow, and a boy was born who could conjure entire beings. Now, even a pocket dimension generator has limits, so the only solution—if they couldn’t simply put a stop to the growth—was to separate the pocket from the ship, and indeed, Salmonverse itself. This was how Ansutah was born. It should have continued expanding from there, but the girl was taken from the world just before the connection was destroyed. This started causing problems for the ship, and also stunted the growth of Ansutah, limiting them to a very tiny solar system, and a wall that actually could be reached. The boy, meanwhile, continued to breathe life into the world, and these Maramon started to procreate on their own, and over the millennia, the population rose to the billions. They didn’t know that their universe was limited, or that they would collide with the membrane in an attempt to explore the stars. Once they learned this, they grew angry, but it didn’t stop them from propagating the species. As they were hunting for a workaround, the population continued to climb, making their efforts all the more vital.

Microstory 1492: Death of an Immortal

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Life on Durus only got worse after the realization that no more paramounts were being born. People’s time powers started becoming less intense, and less reliable. By 2224, they were in the middle of their second orbital pattern in the 70 Ophiuchi system, and people were beginning to feel like they ought to be setting off for a new home. Perhaps another star system would be kinder to them, or maybe it was best to just not be orbiting a host star at all, and survive on what temporal manipulation abilities they still had left. Unfortunately, this was proving to be nearly, if not completely, impossible. Even collectively, the Durune were not strong enough to alter the planet’s pattern. It was one thing to stay as they were, but to try to move off in some other direction just wasn’t in the cards for them anymore. They tried to contact someone from the past to help, but their powers weren’t strong enough for that either. Something had to be done to drastically change everything about their lives, and they would vote for these contingencies during the 2225 round of elections. The experts writing up these proposals needed time to work on them anyway. Until then, a worldwide mandate went out, limiting people’s ability to manipulate time and space. Teleportation would be used only in emergencies, spatial locks were replaced with regular physical locks, speed school and other time bubbles were outright banned. All temporal energy had to be conserved, in order to have enough to maintain their world’s homeostasis. If they flew back off into interstellar space now, they wouldn’t be able to protect themselves against cosmic radiation, and the vacuum. For some, that didn’t matter anymore, because there was one essential time power that stopped working, even without the government dictating it. Based on one case, it would seem that they were no longer ageless.

Agelessness was a right that every citizen of Durus enjoyed, whether they were rich, poor, smart, or not so smart. It didn’t matter whether they contributed positively to society, or not. If they were alive, they deserved to stay alive forever. By whatever interference the Ophiuchi stars were giving off, people started aging again, and this all came to its inevitable conclusion when one of their older immortals passed away from age-related diseases. Of course, no time power was capable of eradicating a disease—congenital, or otherwise—but their youth made it a lot easier to treat just about anything without worrying about old age making them more susceptible. Now that that was gone, nothing was stopping the Durune from being wiped out. Almost literally everyone attended the first funeral in decades. The only people not there had to maintain everyone’s survival in some way. It was a frightening day more than a sad one. This wasn’t to say that no one cared about this individual, or that no one was in mourning, but it was becoming clear that everyone was doomed. If death was back on the table, their whole society could collapse. If they wanted to survive, physically as well as socially, they were going to have to change a lot more about themselves than they ever thought they would, and they would have to do it very soon. While the right people were working on a way out of this mess, others were making laws and policies to adapt to the ever-changing present, and to prepare for every eventuality conceivable. Through this, things continued to get worse, but the Durune continued to endure at pace. It was going to take a lot more than a little wrinkly skin to get them down. Unfortunately, fate did indeed have more in store for them, and their success was not assured.

Microstory 1489: Solar Democracy

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Here was the end of the second Democratic Republic, and the beginning of the Solar Democratic Republic. What was the difference? Well, while a lot of things were different than before, and a lot more was deliberately changed to fit the theme, it wasn’t any more or less democratic than it was before. Of course, laws and policies were constantly changing, so it could not technically be said that the government was the same today as it was four decades ago, but that could be said for any organized region. In 2204, the rogue world of Durus finally stopped being rogue, after the however many hundreds of millions of years it likely spent wandering the interstellar void. It was now orbiting the 70 Ophiuchi binary star system, and though its orbit was artificially generated using powers and technology, they finally had a home. The Durune felt safe, independent, and empowered. They no longer relied on unwitting aid from Earth, but were taking care of themselves using all the resources they had at their disposal. No one could be sure who came up with the idea first, but it sparked at some point before arrival day, and the people voted on it during the 2205 elections. Changing the name of their government was more of a symbolic gesture than anything, but that didn’t mean it was stupid, or pointless. There was no doubt that this was the dawn of a new era; just as dramatic as the shift from the Adhocracy to the Mage Protectorate, or phallocratic Republic to the Provisional Government. They had to acknowledge that things were a lot different now, not simply because they believed they were, but because society was adapting to its new environment. Laws had to be passed to account for their new star system. These were not controversial, or even more progressive, but they did need to decide on them if they were going to survive the first full orbit, which would take years to complete. They changed other things about their government too, like renaming the head of state Luminator Prime, and having officials dress up in special clothing that apported photons of light from the center of their new suns. It was symbolic, but still important. Some were worried that it was doomed to be short-lived. They read a lot more into the symbolism, but suggesting the phrase itself was as if bookending their journey. Solocracy, they argued, could be considered a combination of the words Solar and Democracy. Obviously that had nothing to do with it, and it was merely a linguistic coincidence. Unfortunately, those people turned out to be right, in a way. The Solar Democracy did not last forever, or at least its defining characteristic didn’t. The people of Durus did not know this, however, as laws had been passed overtime which regulated what secrets seers were allowed to reveal, and which they were not. For now, they celebrated, because it took a lot of work, but they came together to get this done, and nothing would have happened without this sense of unity.

Microstory 1482: President From Earth

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Things were pretty bad after the Deathspring sent a bunch of people from Earth to Durus. The Durune didn’t want them there, and the Earthans didn’t want to be there. Two seemingly contradictory things were happening at the same time, which sort of fed into each other. Durus was trying to get rid of all the misogynistic laws of the past, and become a more just society, but they were struggling to accomplish that with all these refugees here. So they treated those refugees poorly, and didn’t really give them that much thought. They tucked them away in isolated camps, and got to work on rebuilding their government from the ground up. It was years before they started listening to the people who were trying to explain to them that the Earthans would be able to help them do that. After all, they had just come from a world of equality and fairness, so maybe they had a few pointers? Well, it took some time, and a military state, but society eventually figured it out. Some of the Earthans went back home with the Elizabeth Warren interstellar ship, along with a few Durune who wanted to start new lives, but for everyone left, there didn’t appear to be much chance of further rescue, so the best thing to do for the Earthans was to dig in, and get used to the here and now, instead of dwelling on what might have been. That got easier over the course of the next two decades as policy adapted to the diverse population. One major thing to further this philosophy came in 2185, when the first person to have been born on Earth was elected as president of the Democratic Republic of Durus. They were long past the elitism and bigotry that formed in 2161, but it was still a huge step for the original Durune. On the other side, the Earthans had mostly accepted this as their new home, and that was impressive as well. Everyone was a native now. As for the new president himself, things were a little rough. Earth had moved so far beyond a standard representative democracy by then that he had some trouble understanding that Durus was not technologically advanced enough for a comparable system. He had to make a lot of mistakes, and reach some compromises, and he only lasted one term, but it was a decent start.

Microstory 1480: The Serpent and the Bear

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Ever since Durus avoided a collision with Earth by a hair, scientists had been trying to figure out where they were going. There wasn’t any particular reason for this. They could alter their speed using time powers, but altering direction was an entirely different matter, and could lead to disastrous results. Calculating the exact vector of the planet’s journey through interstellar space was quite difficult, what with its random accelerations and decelerations, and the lack of proper equipment. It wasn’t until 2183 when they were sure they knew where they were headed. If they continued on their present course—which they expected to—they would eventually encounter a binary star system that the Earthans called 70 Ophiuchi. While the speed they were traveling was constantly going up and down, the average was pretty steady, so barring any dramatic change, it would take them over a hundred years to arrive. Now, there was nothing wrong with waiting this long. Not only did they still have the connection with Earth that kept them alive, but the close encounter seemed to have made it stronger. The borrowed sun was shining, there was now more than one source of water, plantlife was spreading at an alarming rate. Perhaps all of this was exactly what drove the people of Durus to want to break free from their mother world’s protection and support. They wanted to go off on their own, orbit their own sun, and provide for themselves. It was what they were supposed to do. This was going to be the largest endeavor they had ever tried, and if they wanted to do it faster, it was going to be even more difficult. Not only did it give them far less time to prepare, but they were going to push the speed of the planet faster than it had ever gone before. They were already traveling at relativistic speeds, so time was passing faster for anyone outside of the planet, but the disparity was going to grow so large. If they went through with this, they would reach their destination by 2200.

Of course, the first thing they needed to do was to make sure the majority of Durus was on board with this. There was no election coming up, but they wanted to decide on it quickly, because the longer they waited, the faster they would have to accelerate the planet in order to make their timetable. Well, things didn’t go according to plan. People were not happy about being forced to respond to the question quickly, without any real discussion, or time to gather all of the evidence. Plenty of people were against the idea, and if the proponents wanted to convince them, it was going to take time. They still had two years left until the next election, so they were just going to have to be patient with this, and get it right. Like always, the people weren’t going to simply say yes, and leave it at that. There were questions about how they were going to accomplish their goals, and whether they needed to rethink those goals in the first place. After careful consideration, they realized that the 2200 deadline was not a viable option. As powerful as the paramounts were, and as durable as the rogue world had proven itself to be, they just could not handle such high speeds. The speed itself wasn’t a problem, but acceleration was a tricky thing. Any change in velocity would seriously throw off any normal planet’s stability. If the Earth were to start spinning or revolving just a tiny bit faster, or slower, it would cause mass destruction all over the world. It’s not the speed that kills you, but the changes in speed. The only thing allowing Durus to fluctuate this much was its unique relationship with time. Still, there were limits for how far this time magic could go, and by the time the vote went through, if it passed, and everything was set up, 2204 was a far more realistic goal. They did vote, and it did pass—with the necessary conditions and precautions—and Durus did reach 70 Ophiuchi in 2204.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, May 2, 2056

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While still in 2053, the group took the AOC to Australia, where they encountered another person from an old timeline. Allen Tupper worked for a dark version of Horace Reaver, and did not enjoy a very happy life. It would seem Jupiter intended for him to stay in The Parallel, because he did not provide a transition window back to the main sequence. They decided to let him live on the ship while they jumped to the future, but this was a miscalculation, because the ship jumped right with them, bringing Allen along. Someone was waiting for them just outside which illuminated Jupiter’s logic, and gave further evidence that he was not as bad as he wanted others to believe.

Mateo hopped over, and gave Richard a bear hug. They didn’t know each other for too terribly long, but they weren’t simple passing acquaintances either. This was the Richard Parker, of the Life of Pi and Gulliver’s Travels tribulations.

“How did I get here?” Richard asked.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Mateo asked him.

“We were pushing the Rogue into the magic mirror. Reaver was helping us. But I got pulled through too. Then I saw a bright light, thought I was gonna die, but opened my eyes here. Well, it wasn’t exactly here. I was still on Easter Island, but it’s very different now. Some cops showed up, and brought me here to Australia.”

Mateo smiled, and stepped to the side. “I believe you’re here for him.” He gestured towards his soulmate. “Richard Parker, this is Allen Tupper. You’re meant to be together in every timeline.”

They approached each other cautiously, and shook hands. While Mateo knew these two were destined for each other, that didn’t mean something magical would spark between them, and form an unbreakable bond instantaneously. Developing a relationship would take time, assuming they even chose to try. This was not how normal people met each other, and that might be enough to prevent things from progressing. That was sad, but at least Richard survived the fateful day that Gilbert pulled him to his death. The question now was what they were going to do with their second chance.

Leona stepped forward, and looked at her cuff. “A transition window is coming from Bend, Oregon. I don’t know if it’s ingress, or egress, or if they’re two-way, or what. If you want to try to get back to the main sequence, that’s your first chance. There may be a second. I don’t know. I don’t even know which timeline you’ll end up in. We just don’t have enough information.”

Richard nodded, and politely asked, “what information do you have? The people here haven’t told me much, like it was all a big secret. This looks like my world, but it’s clearly not.”

“Yes, it does,” J.B. agreed. “If it’s as God-Ramses said, and the whole galaxy has been conquered, why does this look so much like the mid-twenty-first century in a regular timeline?”

“Oh, that’s right,” Leona said, “you weren’t there for that conversation. Holly Blue and I did manage to get someone here to talk. They have technology in this reality that’s more advanced than we’ve ever seen, but Earth is different. It’s like a sanctuary for people who want to live semi-normally. They’re still immortal, but they don’t teleport, and they don’t extract all of their energy from the sun with a Dyson swarm. They run on basic fusion reactors, and lead relatively simple lives. They don’t hate technology; they just don’t need it. This is not the only world like that, but it’s the world we’re gonna stay on for awhile, because the transitions will be letting out here until people in the main sequence start their own interstellar colonization process.”

“The point is,” Holly Blue jumped in, “Richard and Allen, you can either stay in this reality, or risk trying to go back. Based on what we know of your personal histories, there should be no reason you have to go back. You have both already done everything we know you do there. It just depends on what you want.”

“Is Horace Reaver in this reality?” Allen questioned.

“He may come through a later transition,” Leona answered, “but it will have to be a nice version of him. The one you know—the one who caused so much grief—died last year in an old timeline. There is no version of him living in the Parallel, however. There are no duplicates here. History is too wildly different to let anyone you know be born again.”

Sanaa wanted to put in her two cents, “you will have to start brand new lives. All of your financial debt has been wiped clean, and you won’t have to help your proverbial neighbor move, but you’ll also never find out how your favorite TV series ends, or see your families again.”

Richard and Allen looked at each other with the same unfamiliarity.

“To add more,” Sanaa continued, “it’s like Holly Blue said. History in the main sequence timelines thinks you’re done. Richard, you died, and Allen, you just sort...faded away into obscurity. I’m thinking now that’s not because you weren’t important, but because you came here. I can’t tell you what to do, but I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to stay here.”

“I don’t have any more family,” Allen said.

“I’m dead,” Richard gave his own answer in the same tone.

“You people are going to the future, though?” Allen asked.

“We have to,” Mateo replied. “You don’t. Just don’t be on this ship when midnight central hits, and you’ll be left behind.”

“If we do that,” Richard began, “if we stay here, when would our next chance to change our minds be. Theoretically.”

Mateo looked to Leona, who responded with, “twenty-two years. It’s our biggest jump yet, and I believe our maximum. I have not yet done all the math.”

Richard and Allen both nodded.

“I might as well stay.”

“Yeah, same.”

“All right.” Holly Blue clapped her hands. “We have to get to Bend. Do you want to come with, or stay in Australia, or go somewhere else. Literally anywhere in the galaxy is accessible.”

“Here’s fine for me,” Allen decided.

“Same,” Richard agreed.

“Good luck, boys,” Leona said.

Mateo gave his friend one last hug, and then boarded the AOC, never to see him again. Hopefully things would be better here.

“Has anyone ever been here before?” J.B. asked. “Who might be coming through the window?”

“I don’t know who would be doing it in 2056,” Holly Blue started to say, “but this was where my son trained with Darko.”

“Why did he come to Bend from Kansas City?” Mateo asked. “My once-brother was a time traveler, who could have met you anywhere.”

“Yes,” Holly blue concurred, “but Darko felt his students would be better off learning together, rather than one-on-one, and it saved him time. Bozhena and her family didn’t know anything about time travel back then, so we jumped here for his classes. Again, that was back at the start of the 21st century. That’s the only connection I know of. Perhaps some random Horvatinčic descendant we don’t know is coming, or someone else entirely.”

Images from the main sequence began to flicker around them. Mateo lifted his cuff to get a better look at it through the augmented reality feature. “Somehow I doubt that’s the case. Nothing is random when it comes to Jupiter Fury.”

The flickering stopped, leaving a young girl standing before them, holding a boomerang. How Australian of her. She was frightened of them, but not crying.

“Hey,” Sanaa said, approaching the girl slowly. “It’s okay. We’re not gonna hurt you.”

“Where am I?” the girl asked.

“Have you ever heard of time travel before?”

“Like Minutemen?”

Mateo perked up. “That’s a kids movie. I think I saw it, even though I was kind of old. Yes, like that. What year is it?”

“It should be 2008.

“That’s weird,” Leona said. “She should have come from 2056. What’s the last thing you remember?”

“I followed my teacher, even though he told me not to. I can never find him when he’s not training us. I can’t ever find Declan either. I just wanted to know where they went every day. They separated, so I chose to follow Mr. Matic. I saw him pick up this boomerang, and then he disappeared.”

“Hmm.” This was obviously Young!Bozhena, but where was Darko? “You saw him disappear in front of you, but you weren’t touching him?” Holly Blue asked her.

“No,” Bozhena said. “He was, like, a swimming pool away.”

What the hell? “Then you picked up the boomerang, and it brought you here?” Leona continued the interview.

“Yeah.” Bozhena turned it over in her hands. “It’s some sort of time device.” That was not how it worked. The object itself could not control time. Darko just used it to slide up and down its history. This should not have worked. At all.

“Where was your teacher when you jumped to the future?”

Bozhena shrugged. “I dunno. I looked around for a few minutes. Then I ended up here. How do I go back home?”

Mateo shook his head. “If Darko’s gone, there’s no telling where he went. The other side of the window could be his home, or just a waypoint. He may never return. How do we get her back to the main sequence in 2008?”

“Aren’t these people time travelers?” J.B. offered.

“Backwards travel is illegal,” Sanaa reminded him.

“They should be able to make an exception for us,” J.B. figured.

“That would be nice,” Sanaa agreed. “Can your ship do it?”

“No,” Leona replied. “It’s not built for that either. It can’t even jump to the stars as fast as these people can. It still takes days to get anywhere.”

Mateo looked at his cuff. “I don’t see a window coming up.”

“There has to be a way to get her back,” Holly Blue pointed out. “Bozhena Horvatinčic goes on to have a very adventurous life. She is extremely vital to the timeline; more than most people could hope to achieve. And we have to make sure she gets back to where she belongs. We can’t just throw her in a window, and hope someone on the other side finds her.”

“Nobody’s throwing me through a window,” Bozhena said precociously.

“It’s just a metaphor,” Holly Blue clarified. “It’s what we call the portals we use to travel through time.” That wasn’t entirely the truth, but it wasn’t totally wrong either, and it was good enough as an explanation.

“I may have a solution,” Leona said, “but you’re not gonna like it.”

“Tell me,” Holly Blue demanded.

“Sanaa, could you please stay out here with Bozhena?”

“Gladly,” Sanaa said. She smiled at Bozhena. “What do kids your age like to do, Bo? Do you still play peek-a-boo?”

“How do you people know my name?”

The rest of the group climbed back into the AOC. Leona was adamant that they close the outer hatch behind them, as well as the airlock, and then climb all the way down to the engineering level, closing all hatches between them and the outside.

“I think I know what this is,” Holly Blue determined because of all those hatches. “You’re gonna try to get someone’s Cassidy cuffs off, but you don’t want them flying off and attaching themselves to poor Young!Slipstream’s wrists.”

“Not just anyone,” Leona revealed. “She needs a time traveler, and only one of us here is capable of that.”

“I would have to invent something,” Holly Blue argued. “It doesn’t matter a whole lot that I’ve already done it before. I kind of have to start from scratch every time. Recall that I’m not a real scientist.”

“Again, you’re the only one who can do it. When you removed your son’s cuffs, we discovered that they just wrapped themselves around someone new in response.” Leona lifted both her arms, and shook them around. “If I’m the one who tries to remove them, then it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

“Maybe they’ll just reattach themselves to me,” Holly Blue guessed. “I would be the only choice, and perhaps Jupiter programmed them to never be without a host.”

“That’s not what happened when Ramses lost his,” Mateo reminded her. Sanaa had to pick them up on purpose. I think they can just be paperweights.”

Holly Blue wasn’t going to stop arguing. “How do we even know there’s going to be a transition window in 2008?”

“We don’t,” Leona said as she was reaching into her bag. “It’s irrelevant if you’re a time traveler, though.” She lifted the HG Goggles out of her bag. “This can help you find one. I have some ideas where you could look; ones that we didn’t use.”

Holly Blue didn’t want to agree to this plan, but she never wanted to be part of this pattern either, so they finally convinced her to stay behind, and get little Bozhena back to where she should be. She even thought she could erase her memories of the day, because she wasn’t destined to learn about this stuff until she was older. They said their goodbyes, and went their separate ways. The group would never know how well it went, or even if the plan worked at all. They would just have to have faith.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, April 29, 2053

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Before anyone could so much as begin to guess what the hell was going on, a pod appeared a few meters away from them, and opened up to reveal what Mateo could only describe as a future-cop. He smiled at the group apprehensively. “Hello. Reports indicate that some unusual temporal activity has been occurring in this area. Where, and/or when are you from?”

Hmm. He seemed to be a deveiled human, who used time technology on the regular. Mateo checked his wrist. Yes, it was honest hour, so he resolved to take the lead on this one, and not worry about whether anyone disagreed. “We apologize if we have broken any laws.” He showed the cop his Cassidy cuff. “We are not in control of our temporal movements. We do the bidding of someone who is very powerful. He’s trapped us here in your reality, though to be fair, all we’ve done so far is help people, so he may not be as bad as he wants us to believe.”

The time cop looked to the rest of the group, not because he didn’t believe Mateo’s story, but to see if anyone else had anything to add. “You’re from the main sequence.” It was a half-question.

“If that is what you call it,” Leona confirmed. “We just call it the main timeline, and we call this The Parallel.”

“Indeed,” the cop agreed. “You have been foretold.” He looked at his own watch, but literally. “No point in transporting you into the heart of the city, and alerting anyone else to your presence. I’ll be right here to pick you up in three years, two days.” He climbed back into his pod, and teleported away. Ninety minutes later, midnight central was quickly approaching.

Sanaa knelt down, and picked up what were formerly Ramses’ cuffs.

“Don’t touch those!” Leona warned.

“Why not?” Sanaa asked. “Will they magically wrap themselves around my wrists, and trap me on your hyphenated pattern?”

“Yeah, they might,” Leona warned further.

Sanaa smiled, and gracefully strapped them onto her wrists. “Well, what the hell else am I gonna do?” The damage was done now, and could not be undone, unless they forced someone else to take her place, or Kalea returned to explain how she removed Ramses from them in the first place.

Just as the man said, he was waiting for them three years later, but this time with a larger transport vehicle. He ushered them into it. “We’ve requested an audience with the Tanadama.”

“The whatnow?”

“The gods who created our galaxy. They’re very busy, but I’m optimistic that they will come here to speak with you.”

“They created the galaxy?” Leona asked.

“Well, not literally. The stars form naturally, of course. They saved our species, so that we almost never die. We only experience the occasional suicide from someone who’s just over it, or an AI malfunction that cannot be repaired.”

“You never die,” Leona continued the questioning. “How long have you been like that?”

“About twelve thousand years,” the cop answered. “I’m Officer Tynosey, by the way, but everyone just calls me Tyno.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Tyno.” Now Leona was just going to take over the conversation. “I assume that you are an interstellar civilization.”

“We’re an intergalactic civilization, but the majority of our population still lives in the Milky Way. We’re at K3.”

“My God,” she said. “How many people is that?”

“A couple undecillion,” Tyno said, like it was nothing. Mateo had never heard that particular prefix attached to -illion, which meant that it was probably pretty damn big. “Each host star houses around five septillion people. We could go higher than that obviously, but we like to spread out.

“That’s insane.”

“Yeah,” Holly Blue concurred. “Do you have faster-than-light travel?”

“We do,” Tyno replied. His watch beeped. “Oh. That’s confirmation. I’ve been authorized to return you to Earth, where your friends are waiting for you.” He closed the hatch behind him, synced his watch with a panel on the wall, and transported them to Earth.

The hatch opened from the outside as soon as they arrived. Ramses was there with his big fat smile. They were on the side of a mountain, overlooking a valley. “Man, we had always planned on being there, waiting for you when you arrived, but the timeline is complicated. We weren’t sure which timeline you would remember, so we just decided to let the locals handle it until this year.” He gestured towards Tyno.

Tyno hopped out of the transport, and closed his eyes. He placed three fingers loosely on his forehead, and then moved them down to his lips. He kept switching back and forth between these two positions, occasionally spending several seconds in one stop, and changing speed erratically. It reminded Mateo of how the Catholics did the sign of the cross. Catholicism probably didn’t exist in this reality.

“That’s enough, my child,” Ramses said to him.

“It is such a deep honor, Father. I am so humbled in your presence. I’m not worthy to breathe from the same atmosphere as you—”

“All right,” Ramses stopped him. “What does it say in the Book of Ramses, Chapter Eleven, Section Twenty-Four, Paragraph Forty-Two, Line Fifty-Six?”

“When the Mother or Father appear to you, they will be human, and they will be accessible, and you will respect them, but you will not worship them,” Tyno recited. “Sorry, sir.”

“It’s all right. Just don’t forget that I’m only a person.”

The group looked at him in disapproval.

“It got away from us,” Ramses tried to explain to them. “We didn’t write the books, but we did edit them, adding lines like that so they wouldn’t kill themselves out of reverence every time we showed up.”

Leona rejected this response. “You formed a religion. That’s time travel one-oh-one. In fact, I better make it Rule Number Fourteen, do not form, or inspire, a religion.”

“It’s a lot more complicated than that,” Ramses argued.

“Clarify,” Mateo said. “Report.”

So Ramses began to explain where he and Kalea had gone, and what they had done. “This isn’t the first new timeline that we created. At first, we followed the plan. We got everyone off of Durus, and back to Earth. We continued on the pattern, and things were okay when it came to us. It wasn’t okay with the rest of the world, though. Earth was still devoid of nearly all human life. There was us, and the people that Jupiter transitioned. Kalea didn’t like that. Her whole purpose as a source mage on Durus in the main sequence was to protect people using time powers. So the lot of us went back to the cataclysm that destroyed the species, and fixed it. Now things were even finer, but not great. Technology was incredibly slow. They were building castles when they should have been working on the first rockets. So we went back again, and saved more lives. Every time we went back, we made the timeline a little better; a little safer. Kalea was never happy, though. She needed to fix everything, and to do that, we needed help. We created more mages, and used them like the powers that be use salmon in the other timeline.

“I don’t even remember how it happened, but the last thing we did was go back thousands of years, and turn everyone immortal. I tried to explain to her the repercussions of such a thing, but she wouldn’t hear it. She would not listen to the math. I told her that over a hundred billion people had ever lived on Earth, and also that Earth could indeed support that many people, but I also told her that in a timeline with virtually no death, you can’t just go by that number, because those people are going to have children. Over time, the number has grown so large that we are now a Kardashev 3 civilization, occupying every star system in the entire galaxy.”

“Yes.” Leona nodded. “Tyno did tell us that. You made a galaxy of time travelers. I can’t imagine how problematic that has become.”

“No,” Ramses contended. “Time travel is against the law, galaxy-wide. It’s not technically necessary, since the only way to have time powers is to get them from me or Kalea, but it’s a redundant system. People don’t die, and they can move across the galaxy at superluminal speeds. That’s all we gave them. They developed the rest of the technology they have.”

Leona shook her head continuously. “Two undecillion people,” she said quietly. “I don’t even know what that means.” She wasn’t the only one wondering this. Leona and Holly Blue were two of the smartest people Mateo knew. If even they had trouble fathoming the vast number of people presently alive in a galaxy with a millennia-long history of nearly no death, then he would have no hope of understanding it. “You couldn’t maintain a homogeneous system with that, even with ubiquitous FTL. That’s just too many people.”

“Each solar swarm has its own governmental body, yes,” Ramses said. Saying we’re K3 is a bit of a misnomer. We’re more like a bunch of separate K2s. But there’s a lot of collaboration, and we don’t allow war. Half the Book of Kalea is about living in harmony.”

“People keep talking about these K-numbers,” J.B. complained. “What does that mean?”

Sanaa chose to explain this one, “a K1 civilization can harness all the power on its planet. K2 can use its whole sun. K3 can use the whole galaxy. What Ramses is saying that, since the galaxy is so big, they’re not really K3, because they’re not all one civilization anymore.”

“What are you?” Mateo asked Ramses, not bothering to ask Sanaa why she understood this scale the scientists were talking about.

“I’m a source mage now,” Ramses answered. “Most of the time, the source mages in the main sequence only create lesser mages. There was a theory, however, that they could effectively make more, just by giving someone the power to give other people powers.”

J.B. giggled. “It’s like using one of your three wishes to wish for more wishes.”

“Kind of,” Ramses admitted. “She only did it once, though. She made me, and we’re it.”

“The Dadamama, that is,” Mateo put forth.

“Tanadama,” Ramses corrected, but you were on the right track. Ta, da, ma, and na are all used in various languages to mean father and mother, respectively. We put it together, because parents didn’t seem to do our role justice. It was Alt!Jeremy’s idea.”

“Sounds like me,” J.B. decided.

“So, it’s over,” Holly Blue presumed.

“What’s over?” Ramses questioned.

“The Matic-Bearimy pattern. The only reason we were on it was because Jupiter was too powerful to go against. That can’t possibly be the case anymore.”

Ramses deafened them with his silence.

“Ramses?” Mateo began. “Can’t you just put a stop to this...or make somebody who can?”

“It’s complicated,” Ramses told them, but did not elaborate.

“Keep going,” Leona urged.

“The Book of Ramses clearly states, To maintain temporal integrity, no native of The Parallel may interfere with the actions of those from the main sequence.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Sanaa argued. “You’re from the main sequence, and Jupiter is interfering with the Parallel. It doesn’t go both ways? Seems irrational.”

“The line I recited is taken a bit out of context. If you read more of it, you would understand that I can’t help you. I’m not really from the main timeline anymore. I’ve been here for tens of thousands of years. I couldn’t be The Father if I didn’t integrate myself fully into this reality.”

“Leona,” Mateo interrupted her before she could argue again. “This is not the friend who left us yesterday. He is an entirely different person, who has been through more than we will ever understand. You won’t be able to convince him to help. We just have to accept the fact that this is how it is. I tried arguing with The Superintendent, and it got me nowhere.” He turned to the man who looked like his best friend. “Thank you for rescuing us from Durus, and thank you for your time. We will let you get back to your galaxy, as we return to the mission. We would be grateful, however, if you could find us a ride to Australia.”

“He’s right,” J.B. said, looking at his own cuff. “Now that we have a satellite feed, we can see exactly where we need to go.”

“I’m sorry,” Ramses told him.

“I firmly believe that we’re saving lives,” Mateo said. “I don’t know why Jupiter wants us to think he’s evil, or why he thinks the only way to save these people’s lives is to temporarily pull them into another reality, but I’m going to keep going until we run out of people to help.”

Ramses nodded in understanding. “I’ll get you to that transport. It’s not far from here; right where you left it in the underground hangar. I don’t know when it transitioned.” He was talking about the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which was the closest thing they had to a home these days.

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Microstory 1219: Maqsud Al-Amin

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Also known as The Trotter—as in globetrotter—Maqsud Al-Amin was the most impressive teleporter in histories. Most people with the ability could move across a planet, or into orbit, at best. Maqsud, however, was capable of traveling the expanse of the universe, or at least, the observable universe. He could also travel through time, but only under very particular conditions. As counterintuitive as it may be, the farther he was trying to jump, the easier it was for him. Shorter jumps required greater concentration, and higher accuracy, and often wore him out. Think of it this way. When an aircraft pilot takes off, they have to fly up as steep as is reasonable, and then level off. If they were to try to take off and land within only a few miles, but still reach their standard altitude, they would have an incredibly steep climb to make it in time. It’s much easier when they’re going thousands of miles, because then they have some time to reach this altitude. You just wouldn’t take a plane to go down the block, or even to the other side of the city. This same principle was why Maqsud could fairly easily jump to another star system, but it was practically impossible for him to go interplanetary. He would be hopeless to reach the moon, or any other satellite of the planet he was already on. Aiming in general was difficult for him, and limited what he was able to see when he arrived at his destination. Fate would sort of pick the exact landing site, and if there was something interesting on the other side of the world, he wouldn’t get to see it unless he found some other—more normal—form of transport. Despite his restrictions, there were those who believed that there were no limits to his strength. It was once theorized that he could transport an entire planet’s worth of people to an entirely different planet. This belief would be tested when a distant colony was threatened by an unstoppable cataclysm, and only his power could save them. Unfortunately, it did not go well.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 2, 2240

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The Christmas Colonists, as they would come to be called, arrived on Varkas Reflex on December 25. This was just under the wire for the 2239 projection date. They were meant to land months earlier, but had some technical difficulties on the trip across interstellar space. This turned out to be a bit of a good thing, as Eight Point Seven and Hokusai hadn’t quite finished their habitats. The special oxygen-rich liquid they were suspended in wasn’t the easiest or fastest substance to manufacture. They weren’t extremely happy with the name, but would eventually surrender to its humor. Christians became an endangered species many decades ago, and by now, they were largely considered extinct. Those religions which hadn’t already fallen out of favor were on their way out as well, giving way to a civilization based on equality and rationality.

Before Leona disappeared from the timestream last year, Hokusai managed to figure out how to alter her personal gravity using her legs. Back on planet Legolas a century and a half ago, Leona was forced to cut both of her legs off to save herself from an infection. She was rescued by humans of the day, who were able to basically regrow her limbs. They could have made them a hundred percent organic, but she chose to incorporate a little bit of technology into them, so she would have greater strength. She went through hell living alone on that planet, so she considered them to sort of be cosmic reparations for that. These upgrades were evidently not enough to remove her from Mateo’s salmon pattern, so she had mixed feelings about them now. Still, they were making it a lot easier for her to walk on this heavy world. Time-delayed gravity regulator drugs were installed in her legs as well, which provided support for the rest of her organs.

“You can’t do that for me?” Sanaa asked after this was all explained to her.

Hokusai stepped closer to the glass.

“It’s not glass,” Sanaa argued. “It’s a polycarbonate.”

“What?” Hokusai questioned. “I know that.”

Sanaa sneered. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

Hokusai looked behind her. Only Leona was there.

“I know that too.”

Sanaa rolled her eyes. “I was talking to The Superintendent.”

I know that as well. I was using the word more generically. The glass of your tank is what separates you from dry land, but allows you to see through it...like glass.

“Okay, but that doesn’t make it glass. There are lots of clear things that aren’t glass.”

Leona stepped forward as well. “Sanaa, are you really communicating with him? He’s in another universe.”
“So?”

“So, you’re communicating to other universes. No one can do that.”

“The Emissary can,” Sanaa contended.

Leona tilted her head. She hadn’t spent much time thinking about how the Emissary was able to be the intermediary between salmon and the powers that be. She now knew they lived in the Superintendent’s universe, so he would have to be quite powerful. “Still, it must be rare.”

Sanaa shrugged. “You were saying...about getting me out of this water?”

“Okay, we will circle back to this,” Hokusai said, drawing a couple circles in the air. “Do you like having powers?”

Sanaa shrugged again. “People are always talking to me, and I don’t love that. I would much rather be a teleporter, so I can leave when people start pissing me off. Can you turn me into a teleporter?”

“Uh, no. I can’t give you powers, but I can take them away. I would probably have to if you wanted to walk on land. You’re so tall and thin.”

“Body shame much?”

Now Hokusai rolled her eyes. “It’s not conducive to high gravity.”

“Oh, so you’re calling her fat.” She pointed at Leona.

Leona wasn’t offended, because that wasn’t what Hokusai was saying.

“Christ, you just can’t listen to what people are saying to you. You just have to be an unmannerly contrarian. The time gods screwed up when they gave you the ability to communicate with others.”

“They sure did,” Sanaa agreed.

Leona looked away. She met those people. None of the characters the so-called time gods came up with were well thought out, because those characters’ lives didn’t matter to them.

“I’ve spoken at great length about this, with lots of people. Paige Turner, Brooke Prieto, Mallory Hammer. It would seem that the more powerful you are, the less likely you are to keep those powers when you receive transhumanistic upgrades.”

“Leona’s been upgraded,” Sanaa argued.

“Leona is spawn, linked with a salmon. She’s unique, and it’s unclear what it would take for her to fall off her pattern, if anything. Besides, what we did for her is a temporary solution, but it will only need to last a few days. You, on the other hand, are an extremely powerful choosing one. One of her days is a year for you. If it’s true that you can reach other universes, then you’re even more powerful than we knew. It’s a miracle you can even receive a flu shot.”

“I’ve never had the flu shot.”

“I can give you nanites,” Hokusai promised, “so you can walk around here, but is that what you really want?”

“Yes,” Sanaa said excitedly. It looked weird, because Leona didn’t think she was capable of experiencing enthusiasm. “I hate it in these tanks.”

“You will quite likely lose your powers permanently, even if we try to remove the upgrades later. But what would be the point? Are you planning on staying here? I was to understand you were trying to get back to Earth.”

“That doesn’t seem possible,” Sanaa lamented. “Truthfully, I’m a little afraid to step foot in another ship. Where might it take me next?” She spoke with a degree of sincerity that Leona, again, didn’t think she possessed.

Hokusai placed her hand on the...polycarbonate.

“Thank you,” Sanaa said to the Superintendent.

Hokusai went on, “I’ve been working hard on my reframe engine.” She glanced over at Leona. “Yeah, that name has grown on me.” She turned to face Sanaa. “I’m quite confident that it will work. Now, it will take me some time to gather the right materials, build a prototype, test it, and incorporate it into Leona’s ship, but you could go with her.”

“But she’s not—” Sanaa started to say.

“She might not be going straight to Earth, that’s true. The beauty of this thing is that takes days to get anywhere within twenty-seven light years. Beyond that, we’re still only talking weeks. You would have to be sixty light years away for the trip to last longer than a month. You understanding my point here? Leona Delaney doesn’t always get to choose where she goes, but the powers want her alive, so she’s virtually invincible. She’s the safest person for you to be around.”

“We call that plot armor.” Sanaa appeared to be rather genre savvy. As a film scholar, this was something Leona liked about her.

Hokusai didn’t care about it. “Yeah, fine.”

“Leona’s ship is only designed for one person,” Sanaa complained.

“You are only one person,” Leona reminded her. “You would only have to suffer my presence one day a year. Not that it matters, because like she said, you’ll arrive in days. I’ll return just under a year later, so you’ll be long gone by then. It will be like I was never there.”

Sanaa looked between them, and thought this over. “If I’m long gone, then the plot armor argument doesn’t hold much...” She stopped herself, and cringed.

“It doesn’t what?” Leona asked. “Hold water?”

“Too soon,” Sanaa said sadly.

The conversation paused. Honest hour, Leona was feeling the urge to be submerged. Sanaa seemed to detest living in the tanks, but the human Christmas Colonists seemed to be genuinely happy in them. Were they that bad, or was Sanaa just a joyless person?

Sanaa continued after the reverent silence. “How long will it take for you to invent this new engine? To be done with it entirely?”

Hokusai didn’t want to answer. “Honest hour? Years. Up to a decade. These things take time. Believe me, you don’t want me rushing something that can explode if it’s not engineered properly.”

“I understand,” Sanaa said. She didn’t want to get exploded, of course. Her own life was important to her, if nothing else.

“You think you can stomach this place that long?”

Sanaa looked at the hatch behind her. Each habitat was designed about the same way. Individual, couple, or family tanks lined the perimeter, while communal tanks sat in the middle. Landwalkers, which were mostly inorganic, could visit water-dwellers in the dry area of their private residence, like the indoor section of a zoo aquarium. They could also socialize on the beaches and piers above the public tanks. Water-dwellers were still capable of surviving outside the water for hours at a time with little problem. In the eleven months that other people were living on this planet, besides Hokusai, Loa, and Eight Point Seven, Sanaa had reportedly never ventured beyond her own personal tank. “I guess I’ll have to find some level of happiness here until then.”

Leona removed all her clothes, and started up the stairs that would allow her to access the surface of Sanaa’s tank. “I’ll join you. I know you and I aren’t friends, but at least you know me. You don’t know any of those weirdos at all.

If Leona didn’t know any better, she would think Sanaa cracked a slight smile.

“Okay, Mateo, the smile is a bit creepy,” Cassidy pointed out.

“I’m just trying to be more positive,” Mateo explained.

“Why are we, uhh...sitting around like this?” It’s not mealtime, and this is kind of freaking me out.”

“I think he just called a reverse intervention.”

“That’s good, Weaver. That’s a good term for it. That’s kind of what’s happening.” He surely still had the uncomfortable smile painted on his face, and he was probably nodding too much. “I gathered you here to apologize. I understand that my behavior as of late has been..less than pleasant.”

“You were a [sic] asshole,” Thor remarked.

“Thompson,” Goswin scolded.

“No, no,” Mateo assured them. “That’s okay. This is a safe space. I was a asshole. I hear you. I recognize that. I appreciate your candor. I was under a lot of pressure when I was Patronus of Dardius, and I missed Leona deeply, but honest hour? I legit miss that too. I was in charge, of like, billions of people. Gos, you know what I’m talking about.”

Not really, Goswin said with his facial expression, like he didn’t want people thinking he and Mateo were anything alike.

I admit that things have been rough since I got back. I’m just a few light years away from my wife, but I still can’t reach her. The ship is going off to God knows where, and I’m kind of freaking out here. That is not your problem, and I am sorry for any stress that I added to your lives.”

“It’s okay, Mateo” Weaver consoled. “That was weeks ago.”

“Speak for yourself,” Thor said to her. “I ain’t over jack. People have been talking to me like him my whole goddamn life. They did it on Earth. They did it on Mars. And they did it everywhere else I went. I’ve been underestimated and dismissed so much that I put it on my résumé. But I keep my shit together, because people are counting on me. Do they count on you?”

“I hope so,” Mateo said, losing a bit of his smile.

“Then keep it together, bro.”

Mateo breathed in. “I can do that. Thank you for your truth.”

“And stop sayin’ stuff like that. It’s like a white person saying namaste. You don’t know what that means.”

“Thor, you are not the most pleasant person to live with either,” Cassidy asserted.

Thor stood up quickly. “I know. Why you think Saxon wanted to get rid of me?” He started to walk away. “I’m going back to bed. When I wake up, we better—” Then he continued with his mocking tone, but his words devolved into unintelligibility, like an adult on Peanuts.

“Well,” Goswin said. “Progress takes time.”

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