The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 25, 2416

« < » > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Workspace Labs text-to-image AI software

Angela Walton stood at the door, waiting to go in. No one was keeping her from simply walking through on her own, but she wasn’t quite ready. She had not been given clear instructions, so she wasn’t sure exactly what she was going to say. Only two things were clear to her. One was that Dardius had no interest in forming any sort of strategic relationship with the Sixth Key, or any of its components. Two, her sister, Marie had no interest in rekindling—or even reminiscing about—any relationship with Heath. Their unwelcomed arrival placed Mateo’s daughter in danger. It was irrelevant whether this was the Sixth Key representatives’ intent. It was what happened, and it had to be dealt with. That was Angela’s responsibility now, because it couldn’t be anyone else’s.

“You’re not Marie,” Heath determined immediately.

“No, I’m not.”

“I want to see her.”

“She doesn’t want to see you.”

“I need to hear her say that.”

“No, you don’t. She owes you nothing. You walked out on her when she needed you most, and nothing has changed. She’s decided to move on. She’s had to. I’ll ask you kindly to respect that.”

“Fine. I didn’t come here for that anyway. You and your team appear to hold a lot of sway with these people. Could you please request an audience with the planet’s leadership for me? We have important business to discuss.”

Vearden and the world owners are aware of you and your request, and they are denying it. I’m sure they’ve told you. The only reason you’re still here is so that I could return to the timestream to send you off. All you have to do is give them back control of the Nexus so they can actually do that. And agree to take this.” She held up a vial of clear liquid.

“What is that?” Heath asked.

“Memory eraser. The entire last year will be wiped from your minds.”

“Why would we do that?”

“You’ve seen too much here, and you have placed my family in danger. I asked them to make this for you. Not only will they send you back home, and erase your memories, but they’ll send you back to the original time you left. It will be as if it never even happened.”

“We’re not doing that. Our memories are too important to us. They are part of who we are. The six of us have held meetings in our jail since then. We have shared stories, grown closer. You can’t take that away from us. I, more than anyone, know what it’s like to lose who you are.”

“You know nothing. The man who looked like you, who lost his memories, was not you. Your consciousness was summoned to the future before that happened.”

“Miss Walton, I’m keeping my memories.”

“The only other option is Lohsigli.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Exile,” she clarified.

“We can’t do that either. We have responsibilities to our people.”

“What did you think would happen when you came here unannounced?”

“We hoped that they would at least sit down with us; not lock us up, and ignore us for an entire year. Now, I understand that you’re on your own schedule, but that has nothing to do with us, or the Dardieti government.”

“I think you’re a little ignorant here. This world is millions of light years away from Earth, and it is not populated because of all the pretty trees and animals. It was founded as a sanctuary. It was literally called Sanctuary. What started out as a hotel has grown into a powerful civilization since then, but this mandate has not been lost. The people who live here are under the protection of the leadership, and you have threatened that. Even if you have the best of intentions, you broke into their home, and they’re not going to listen to you. If you had gone through the proper channels, you might have been okay. This...” She held up the vial again, “is your second chance. If you make the same choice again, they’ll know they can’t trust you. If you reach out first, they may listen this time.”

“Why would we make a different choice? If you’re forcing us to an earlier state—”

“Humans don’t store memories in little boxes that are organized by date. Memory is associative. The solution doesn’t erase them. The solution opens up your mind, so a trained psychiatrist can extract what they need. They’ll strongly suggest you make a different choice. And you’ll only not take that option if you genuinely came here with bad intentions.”

Heath sighed. “If this is what the Dardieti want, I’ll talk it over with the others.”

“Very well.” Angela turned away, and found herself face to face with Leona.

Leona looked over Angela’s shoulder. “What’s happening here?”

Angela looked over her own shoulder. Then she took Leona by hers, and teleported them to the middle of the Mirage Desert. “How did you find me? Did Olimpia tell you where I was?”

“I sensed great tension,” Leona explained. I was leaving you alone, but then the tension was suddenly relieved, and it was so jarring that I felt compelled to come to you. How did Heath Walton get here?”

“We don’t know. He’s not said, but the Dardieti did not expect him. There was a huge military formation on the island. They were freaked out. Olimpia was there; she told them that they should lock Heath and his friends up until it could be resolved. I was asked to facilitate that resolution.”

“Why? Why you? Why didn’t they tell us?”

“We were leaving you and Mateo out of it. For the baby. And Ramses is busy anyway. Olimpia only told Marie because of her ex-husband. She’s refused to see him. She wants that part of her life to be over, I guess.”

“That was my fault,” Leona said. “I keep talking about us leaving the past behind. But you should have told me. I could have been there to look into the Nexus problem. I could have spent this whole time trying to figure it out.

That was a good point. Angela wanted to keep everyone else out of this, but Leona was the one with the power to actually fix the situation. She should have said something before...before it all got so out of hand. “You’re right, I’m so sorry,” she said. “The Dardieti have asked the Sixth Key representatives to have their memories erased, and then go back home, but only after they tell us what they did to the network.”

“If you had told me, I could have told you that they probably spoofed their number.”

“What do you mean?”

Leona prepared to explain. “Every Nexus is supposed to have its own term sequence, even ones in alternate realities. Generating a new sequence after a duplication event is, from what I gather, a complicated matter. There is a period of time when both Nexa can serve as the real one, and this can cause travelers to end up in the wrong reality. What Mateo did with the Omega Gyroscope probably caused a little confusion when it came to the now two versions of the main sequence, especially since one of them is now in another universe. Basically, it was on the network, and off the network at the same time, which gave it a little extra power. I think I can either request a new number for it, or simply have the machine removed from the network entirely.”

“Oh. Well, yeah, let’s do that.”

Leona took Angela by the hand, and teleported them back to Tribulation Island. “Everyone out. I’m gonna fix this for you.”

All of the techs left without question. Once they were gone, Angela slid the door closed. “Thank you, Leona. I messed up. I was just trying to protect Marie.”

“I understand. Hey, Opsocor.”

“Yeah?”

“Why are the Dardieti locked out of the Nexus?”

“They have been placed in a feedback loop. It’s a glitch that I never really did figure out, but it’s rarely exploited. Basically the molecules in the air underneath the dematerialization drum—”

“It is called a drum?” Leona questioned.

“Yeah,” Venus answered.

“Oh.” She didn’t know that. “You were saying about air molecules?”

“Right. They’re constantly being broken apart and rematerialized. This makes the Nexus think that it’s in the middle of transporting a person or object to itself, and won’t let it form another connection until that one is complete, except it never is.”

“The line’s busy,” Leona reasoned. “Except it’s not, it’s just that the phone was left off the hook.”

“Yeah,” Venus said once more.

“How do we stop the loop?” Angela asked, hoping that the superintelligence wouldn’t ignore her as unworthy of response.

“Create a vacuum,” Venus suggested. “Others have solved this by sucking all the air out of the whole building, but technically, only the molecules underneath the drum are the issue.”

“That sounds like a lot of work,” Leona said. “But okay.”

“There’s another way,” Angela offered. “We’re under about one Earthan atmosphere of pressure, right?”

“Right?”

“And the composition of the air is about the same as it is on Earth?”

“I should think so,” Leona replied. “Humans survive here without issue.”

“We can teleport the air out. Just you and me. Each of us can transport two times the equal mass to ourselves, and Ramses built us to be around a hundred kilograms...”

“We would need one more person,” Leona calculated. “But it should work, if we concentrate hard enough. We’ll get Olimpia to help us. One quick jump to outer space, and then back down to the sand. Venus, you ever seen anyone do it like this before?”

“Never. That’s why I picked you.”

« < » > Table of Contents

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: December 9, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

Arcadia has her own life, so she hasn’t had time to learn how to use the equipment in the lab. She and Ramses came up with a code phrase in case he ever suspected himself of being psychically compromised again, but that’s about as far as they got with the protocols. She and Vearden drove there from their house yesterday, and they’ve been here ever since, reading the manual that Ramses prepared in case he was ever indisposed. He didn’t write all of himself. He got a lot of help from their new AI, Constance. Actually, it was more like him helping her. The text is well organized, and easy to understand for the less educated, like Arcadia, but it’s still a lot, so she didn’t want to rush this. “Okay, I’ve found Alyssa’s most recent scan.”

“Okay,” Ramses replies, still inside the containment chamber with Alyssa. It was awkward after their conversation, but they took turns on the cot, and made it work. He might install multiple cots after all this, but on the other hand, he doesn’t want to plan for another crisis.

“And I see her history. It’s definitely changed.”

“Good, can you look at my history?”

“Yeah, I see it right here.”

“Okay, run a scan on both of us, it’s fine, just make sure you tell the scanner that it should be expecting two consciousnesses, instead of one.”

“No, I think I know how to scan you and you alone.”

“All right.” Ramses grimaces. That’s not a very high level function, but it’s not completely obvious either.

“Just please go to your separate corners,” Arcadia requests.

Ramses stays near the front while Alyssa goes behind him, thinking she’s getting out of the way.

“No, um, different corners.” The chamber is more circular than it is round, but Alyssa figures it out, and ends up catty-corner to him. Now that the two subjects aren’t too close to each other, the machine scans Ramses’ brain. Arcadia watches the data come in. She’s seen enough already by comparing the new scan with his scan history. “Constance, sequestration wall.”

A wall comes down from the ceiling, physically separating Ramses from Alyssa. “What? Why did you do that?” Alyssa questions.

Ramses sighs. “I’m not infected. She’s trying to protect me from you.”

“I still need to keep you contained,” Arcadia says. “I’ve only run one test, so you can’t leave, but I don’t want to risk further cross-contamination.”

“It’s gonna be okay,” Ramses says to Alyssa.

“Get it out. Get it out of my brain,” she begs.

“It’s not that bad,” Ramses assures her. “Erlendr can’t control your actions. It’s more like he extracted a piece of his consciousness, and implanted it in you, so everything you’ve experienced since then can be his. But don’t worry, you only uploaded yourself into the Insulator once to see if he would respond better to you asking for help with Leona’s bounty. You haven’t been back, which means he can’t have downloaded anything from you yet.”

“How do you know he didn’t download anything from me from my life before?”

“We would have seen that,” Ramses tells her. “We would have seen him doing that as it was happening. He hasn’t gotten anything from you, and we’re gonna figure out how to get the infection out before it can do any harm, right?” He turns to face Arcadia at the last few words.

“Yeah, I can do this,” Arcadia replies confidently. “With my new knowledge of this tech, combined with my naturally psychic abilities, this will be easy. I just need to know more about what we’re dealing with. I have to analyze Alyssa’s scan history.”

“Synthesize,” Ramses corrects. “You need to synthesize it. It’s far more complicated than just pointing to an area of the brain, and saying, that’s been taken over by Erlendr.”

“I know, I just...don’t know all the lingo yet,” Arcadia says. Yikes, she thinks. Is she going to be able to do this?

After Arcadia completes one more scan for good measure on Alyssa’s brain, Alyssa sighs, and plops herself down on the cot to wait. Arcadia works on the problem for the next few hours. She scans her own brain with an external unit to figure out why it is that her mental defenses weren’t able to protect Alyssa from this intrusion. She asks Ramses for a little guidance throughout, but doesn’t want to involve him too much as she’s not one hundred percent sure that he’s not also secretly infected. Vearden, unable to do anything, becomes the errand boy for all three of them. He goes out to get them food, and other amenities. He also dotes on Arcadia, and tries to make sure she has everything she needs to be comfortable, like a lumbar pillow, and ice chips. She’s fourteen weeks pregnant, not in hospice, but if he can’t stop her from working, he’s at least going to make sure she doesn’t overexert herself. She accepts the support, because arguing would make it worse, and it is helping her focus on Alyssa.

Finally, Arcadia is certain that there is nothing wrong with Ramses, which is probably what she should have been most worried about the entire time. With him back in commission, she doesn’t need to be responsible for Alyssa’s psychic restoration. She lets him out of the containment chamber, and steps aside so he can take over. She doesn’t want to leave while he’s working, though, because now she’s invested.

“Hold on,” Ramses says. He pulls up Alyssa’s scan history again, and puts them all in a row. “Constance, loop these images in rapid succession, chronologically.”

The AI performs the request.

“What is it?” Alyssa asks.

“It can’t be.” Ramses peers at the screen, and watches the loop a few more times while Arcadia watches it over his shoulder, not sure what she’s seeing. He stops, and looks inquisitively up at Alyssa. “This is going to be an odd question, but I need you to really think hard about it. Before you met this team, did you have any other interaction with someone who may have been a time traveler, or a psychic, or something? Thinking back, was there someone who you now realize may have been a little...different?”

“Not that I can think of,” she answers. “Why? Have my scans always been weird?”

“Well, I first scanned your mind a long time ago, when we were figuring out how to do your illusion powers, and I always took the data as what we in the business call baseline, but maybe they never were. I don’t think this is Erlendr. I think someone else put something in your head, and it could have been a long time ago.”

“What do we do about that?” Arcadia questions.

Ramses takes a breath. “More tests.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: December 8, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

Ramses and Mateo decided to not talk to each other too much for fear of disturbing the timeline, which feels more fragile than the ones in other realities. Ramses is grateful to know that his best friend is safe...for now, but worried more than ever for Leona. He can’t help either of them right now. He has his own problems to deal with. Erlendr initially declined his offer to loan him Leona Reaver’s body so they can fake Leona Matic’s death to get the bounty off her head. As promised, Ramses let him stay in Bhulan’s field of daisies simulation in the Insulator of Life anyway. The next day, Erlendr called to say that he had changed his mind, and he would help them with their ruse. The next day after that, he called again to change his mind again. He’s been flip-flopping ever since, and it’s only now that Ramses has realized that it doesn’t matter what they do now. They can never trust the man to follow the script. Team Matic has turned a number of people to the light side over the ages, but Erlendr Preston will never be one of them. Some people are just broken, and they can’t be fixed, because too many pieces are missing. In his case, it’s any concept of selflessness.

“I’ll do it,” Alyssa says.

“You’ll do what?” Ramses questions.

“Transfer my mind to Reaver’s body. I’ll play the part that Erlendr was going to.”

Ramses brushes the idea away from himself. “You can’t do that, it’s too dangerous.”

“Are you saying I’m not capable? You were gonna trust that man, but not me? I’ve heard the stories.”

“It’s not that we trust him,” Ramses explains, “it’s that we don’t care what happens to him. If it doesn’t work, and that Reaver body is on its last life, it would be no great loss to the world. That’s not something I’m prepared to risk when it comes to someone I actually care about.”

“You care about Leona more,” Alyssa forthputs.

“What makes you say that?”

“You’ve known her a lot longer.”

Ramses winces. “Love isn’t measured on a sliding scale. You’re one of us, I thought we had already convinced you of this.”

“The danger she’s in is real. Someone is going to kill her, or Arcadia. It’s just a matter of time, in my opinion. I only might die if I do this. I’ll take those odds.”

“Like I said, I love you, but I’m the one who understands the odds. We still don’t know who placed the extraction mirror underneath Alt!Mateo and Leona Reaver. They may have always been trying to kill you, and have been waiting for you to do what you’re proposing the whole time. You’re still not accustomed to envisaging motivations that don’t exist yet...of people who may not even exist yet.”

“Everyone else has risked their lives to help each other. If you truly think of me as part of the group...” She places a hand on his thigh, “and you truly love me, you’ll let me help.” She slides her hand a couple of centimeters up, extinguishing all ambiguity.

He’s never going to agree to this. They’ll just have to find another way. This whole plan was never foolproof, nor inherently necessary. There’s every chance that, even if it goes off without a hitch, Leona and Arcadia will still be in danger. No need to put Alyssa in the same position. Ramses gently removes her hand from his leg. “It’s hard to calculate how much older I am than you.”

She leans in. “I’m sorry, I stopped listening after you said that you were hard.”

“Not what I meant, just like I didn’t mean it that way when I said I love you.”

“I’m almost twenty-two. Where I’m from, when you turn nineteen, there’s no maximum age for your chosen partner.”

“Where I’m from, there is. I think of you as a little sister.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Look—”

“Perfect,” Alyssa interrupts. “Now you’re gonna condescend to me.”

“Look around, Lyss. We’re the only two people left. Angela’s on a spaceship with your brothers, Leona and Marie are missing, Mateo is in another reality. Arcadia and Vearden are...ya know, not really part of this anyway. I don’t even wanna talk about Cheyenne. We’re both feeling lonely, I’m sure, but I’ve seen this happen before, in another life. These sorts of relationships that are just about boredom and escapism don’t just not work out; they turn sour. If we were normal people, I might not think it’s that big of a deal, but we’re going to leave the Third Rail one day, and we could be stuck on a tiny spaceship together. Trust me, it’s not a good idea, age gap notwithstanding.”

“I’m not asking for a boyfriend,” Alyssa spits. “Jesus, get over yourself.”

“What did you just say?”

“I said get over yourself.”

“No, who’s Jesus?”

“It’s just an expression.”

“No, it’s not, he’s a real person from history, but as far as I know, not your history. Why would that be an expression in this timeline?”

“I dunno, man, I’m not a linguist. Stop trying to change the subject. This isn’t one of your crazy time travel mysteries. If you’re not going to let me help you protect Leona, then we need to focus on coming up with a new plan.”

“No, this is the only thing that matters right now. If you really wanna help, I need you to get into that containment chamber, and stand in the center.”

“Are you going to hurt me?” she asks.

“Only if you refuse. Alyssa would not refuse.”

“I am Alyssa.”

“Great!” He nods at her, because she already has her orders.

Confused, she steps up into the chamber, and waits as he closes the door, then goes over to fiddle with his gizmos. “Are you seeing anything?”

“Don’t move, please,” he requests. He engages the scan, and watches the data. She looks mostly like herself, but not entirely. There’s something wrong with her brain, and in all likelihood, his own as well. He grabs his phone, and dials Arcadia. When she answers, he utters the emergency code, “media mavens mount surgical strikes from trapper keeper collages, and online magazine racks.”

“Get in the chamber,” Arcadia demands. “I’m on my way.”

“What the hell is wrong?” Alyssa asks Ramses after he steps into the chamber with her, and commands the lab to go into lockdown.

“Your mind is infected with psychic energy, most likely Erlendr’s. I’ve been in the Insulator more than you; I must assume I’m infected too. Don’t worry, help is coming.”