The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 5, 2518

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Only Mateo was able to try the Daedalus wings during the reception, and that was only because he flew off before Ramses could stop him. They should have been inspected first to make sure that they were safe. Humans with wings were not impossible these days. There was, in fact, a relatively small community of wingèd people on the Core Worlds. The main reason they were impossible prior to genetic engineering and bioengineering was the weight. Wings with enough lift to carry a person would have to be so large that no one was physically capable of flapping them. If they were mechanical, well, that just added to the weight, especially with a powersource, and this all made it totally impractical. Only when humans could build new substrates for themselves did it become a reasonable prospect. Ramses designed the team’s bodies to be lighter than a natural human being’s, but they still weren’t specifically tailored for flight. Daedalus was an android of some kind, and since the mythology stated that the character had fabricated wings, he was almost certainly designed to be perfectly suited for flight. Mateo was not, and that was dangerous.

Fortunately, once Ramses did manage to get his hands on the things, he discovered that they weren’t just well-ordered feathers. Carefully hidden along the underside were tiny little fusion thrusters, which provided the lift, and the forward movement. They were controlled by the adjustment of the wearer’s head. It was essentially a cleverly disguised jetpack. It was unclear whether Daedalus’ own wings operated on the same principles, or if he was just somehow smart enough to build them after being instantiated in this physical simulation. He should have been placed under this dome with the knowledge typical of the time period he supposedly lived in, but who knew what was going on in Hrockas’ head when he conceived of Mythodome? It was one of the few domes that he conceptualized with hardly any help from his AI. He was an expert in Earthan mythology prior to his travels to the Charter Cloud, so this one was near and dear to his heart. He refused to explain it, expecting the art and adventure to speak for themselves.

Now that Ramses was satisfied with the results of his assessment, everyone was trying them. Well, he wasn’t so much as satisfied as he wasn’t allowed to block them anymore. He was hesitant to trust a gift from such a mysterious legendary individual, but he was overruled. Daedalus probably really did have a hidden agenda, but that doubtfully involved killing anybody on Team Matic, or anyone else. He did put his foot down at Romana, though. Her temporary reyoungification had not yet worn off, and she was still walking around in her original substrate. He might consider it later, but he wouldn’t allow anyone else on Castlebourne to use them unless they agreed to let him perform a thorough physical exam, which they didn’t. Leona was the last to give them a go before Ramses took them back, and secured them in his lab. That was okay, because it was about time to get to work.

“Wait, you’re not having a honeymoon?” Angela questioned.

“The average honeymoon these days,” Mateo began to reply, “is one month. That’s thirty years for us. We don’t have time for that.”

“Okay, well, you don’t have to do a full month,” Marie reasoned. “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t choose a dome or two, and relax for a bit.”

Mateo and Leona exchanged a knowing look.

“What? What was that?” Marie asked.

“You should have noticed by now,” Leona said, to her, and the group, “that there is no such thing as a vacation for us. As soon as we try to relax,” she explained with airquotes, “something will come up, and we won’t be as prepared for it as we should be.”

“What are you talking about?” Angela pressed. “We relaxed for, like, three years on Flindekeldan before The Warrior finally found us.”

“The exception that proves the rule,” Mateo contended.

“You’re not using that right,” Leona told him reluctantly.

Mateo was about to ask for clarification when they heard whooping and hollering in the distance. An indistinct dot appeared just under the lowest clouds a few kilometers away. They focused their telescopic eyes, and were able to zoom in enough to make out that it was Young!Romana. She was wearing the wings, having presumably stolen them from Ramses’ lab. She flew towards them, and almost kissed the ground, but arced upwards at the last second, and headed back for the sky. “Hell yeah!” she exclaimed in her little high-pitched voice.

Ramses was noticeably upset. “I give you people too much access to my operations. I will be changing that.”

“She’s just a kid,” Marie reasoned.

“No, she’s not,” Ramses volleyed.

“Shouldn’t she have re-aged by now?” Olimpia asked. “I thought she said it wouldn’t last more than a day.”

“Yeah, that’s why she went down for a nap,” Leona said. “She said she thought it would trigger her transformation back. I’m not sure if she lied about that, or the nap, but she obviously teleported to Treasure Hunting Dome at some point to sneak into Ramses’ lab.”

Ramses was fiddling with his armband. “I’m working on new security protocols now.”

“She just wanted to be part of the group,” Mateo defended his daughter. “She’s been through a lot over the last few years. She needs this.”

“Daedalus didn’t design those things for a child’s body,” Ramses argued.

“They’re adjustable,” Marie reminded them. “That’s why I was able to wear them after Olimpia managed to fit the straps around her ample bosom.”

“Please,” Olimpia said, feigning disgust while holding up the back of her hand. “I’m a married woman.” She lowered all of her fingers but her ring finger, simultaneously showcasing her wedding ring while making it look like she was flipping Marie off.

“For now...” Marie joked.

“I can teleport up and grab her if you want,” Angela volunteered.

“No, that’s too dangerous,” Ramses replied. “She has to come down eventually.”

“Will the fusion thrusters run out of fuel at some point?” Mateo asked.

Ramses shook his head. “The feathers are lined with microscopic ramscoop nodes, which can draw in hydrogen for processing, so...no. She’ll get tired, though. She’s just a baby. Speaking of which, we need to fix that. Who are these twins who did this to her?”

“The Ashvins,” Angela reminded him. “Twin gods, part of the Hindu pantheon. We found them in the Dawnlands. This dome has many sectors, and they can’t all be accessed just by walking through a door. If you don’t have access to the right portal, you can’t go. Of course as teleporters, we can skip over those rules.”

Ramses tapped on his comms. “Romy, you’ve had your fun. I’m worried about your condition. I’ll let you use the wings later, but first, you need to go from Allen to Garner.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Romana responded.

“Just get back down here, please. I’m not mad, but you could be in medical distress, and not know it until it’s too late.”

Romana suddenly appeared a few meters above them. She slowly glided down towards the ground, and landed with grace and poise. The wings collapsed into their little box, which slipped off of her chest.

“You’ll navigate us to the Dawnlands,” Leona said as she was picking up the box.

“No,” Ramses decided. “The Walton twins are right. You need some kind of honeymoon. Get on the catalog, and choose a dome for your vacation. I don’t want to see you at least until 2521. That’s not that long of a honeymoon. Doesn’t it sound fair?”

“Yes, sir,” Mateo said, standing up straight, and saluting. He bent over real low and gave his daughter a kiss on the forehead. “I love you, sweetie. Be good for Uncle Ram-Ram.”

“Okay, I think we do need to go see the Ashvins again.” Them playfully treating her like an actual little girl got old a long time ago.

After a few more goodbyes, the newlyweds ran off for their honeymoon adventures. They weren’t going to confine themselves to only one dome, but a series of them, starting with Mud World: World of Mud. Ramses and Angela then split off to take Romana back to the Dawnlands sector. Marie said that she would be staying behind to do her own thing elsewhere without telling anyone what or where.

The name was absolutely appropriate. It was dawn here. It was bright enough for them to walk around without running into anything, but not clear enough to see the details of the landscape. It was a beautiful and calming place. Even the air seemed ultraclean, like something you would breathe out of an oxygen tank. As they were standing there,  two horses trotted up to them, pulling a golden chariot. Two strong young men stepped out, and approached. One had lighter skin, and the other darker. They moved with grace, symmetry, and synchronization. They were perfectly attuned to each other, perhaps by some kind of centralized hivemind shared between them. When they spoke, they did so in a seamless concerted effort, finishing each other’s sentences in some cases, and saying words simultaneously in others. “Hello, and welcome to the Dawnlands, foothills to Svarga, the celestial plane of light. How may we help you?”

“Could you undo what you did to her?” Ramses requested, gesturing to Romana. “She was told that the de-aging process would be temporary.”

The Ashvins smiled, again in sync. “Youth is temporary for all before they enter the Svarga or Naraka Loka. Aging is a part of life. It may be undone, but as the lotus reliably blooms each year, so too will man grow and change.”

Ramses gently closes his eyes, exasperated. “Are you telling me that she will only return to her normal age because she’s aging normally from here, and will eventually reach it anyway?”

“She will one day be as old as she was, and following, she will be even older. So too will you.”

“That’s not how my species works.”

The Ashvins were confused by this as it was leaning on the fourth wall, and they did not have a response.

“Look, we need this to happen faster than the full twenty years,” Ramses went on. “She clearly misunderstood the rules when she requested this from you.” She looked down at Romana. “Right?”

“Right. I didn’t want this to be permanent, or...so slow,” Romana confirmed.

“Apologies for the confusion,” the Ashvins claimed, “we meant no harm to your body or mind. We may reverse the ravages of changing seasons, but not hasten them. We cannot return you to the state you were in before your bath in the Sindhu River.”

Ramses shook his head again, which he felt like he was doing a lot of today. “Do you know of anyone—in any realm—who might be able to do what we ask?” No one on the team had ever heard of a retroverter who wasn’t also a proverter, but to be fair, they weren’t all too familiar with the concept. They really should have been questioning how such temporal powers ended up on this planet in the first place. They hadn’t recruited anyone with such abilities. Perhaps someone they did bring here, however, had connected Hrockas with other time travelers. These others could have donated their gifts to building Mythodome, or maybe even other domes, in such ways that broke the publicly known laws of physics.

“That is not something that we would know,” the Ashvins answered, a little bit sadly, but still believing that this wasn’t their fault. They did not know that they should clarify how Romana’s situation would work.

“All right. Let’s go do some research,” Ramses said, turning around. “There are a lot of mythological beings here. Maybe one of the other gods has real powers too.”

“Wait,” Romana said, stopping him with a hand on his arm. “I know someone who can do it.”

“Who?”

“You.”

Ramses’ eyes darted over to Angela’s from a brief feeling of panic, because he didn’t know what Romana was talking about. “I can’t do what you ask. I’m not a proverter either.”

“I don’t need a proverter,” Romana clarified. “I need a cloner.”

Ramses sighed. “That is a big decision, and it’s also irreversible. Once your consciousness is digitized, it can’t be undone. You will never be what you once were. A scar you got when you skinned your knee skateboarding in first grade. A missing appendix from surgery. You will lose all of that. The body that you’re in now, at whatever age you happen to be, will be destroyed as biomedical waste. Your consciousness will remain intact, but not everyone appreciates that. There are those who have expressed regret at being uploaded.”

“I know the process, and the rules. It’s about time I become more like you all, particularly Mateo. If I’m gonna be on this team, I wanna feel like a part of it.”

“Ro-ro,” Angela began, placing a hand on her shoulder. “If we’ve ever made you feel excluded, that was not our intention. You are on the team. That’s undeniable.”

“It’s nothing that you’ve done. In the past, I’ve hesitated to digitize, but it’s the practical choice, and it’s inevitable. I don’t wanna die any more than you do. I’m more vulnerable than all of you, and I don’t like it. People have to be more worried about me than they should. This isn’t out of nowhere. I’ve been considering it. I think...maybe, reaching out to the Ashvins was my way of testing the waters, to see how I would feel about my body changing so drastically. I am ready now.”

“Well, it’s complicated,” Ramses started to try to explain. “You were born with your time-skipping power. The rest of us were either made that way from Tamerlane Pryce’s design, or we stole it from those who were. I don’t know if I know how to replicate what you are. You have to remember that we’re not technically on the same pattern. They just technically match up. If you had a hiccup, and got off by one day, we may never sync back up.”

“All the more reason to do this,” Romana contended, like it was obvious. “Don’t worry about understanding my pattern. Just put me on yours.”

“We’ll need to talk to your father first,” Ramses insisted.

“This isn’t his decision,” Romana retorted.

“Absolutely, but he’ll never forgive me if we just do this without even so much as a heads-up. He would feel the same if you got a secret tattoo, or...” He cleared his throat, and chose not to finish that thought.

“Okay. We’ll take our time with this,” Romana agreed, “but it’s happening, one way or another. If not you, then I’ll find some other cloner to do it. You’re not the only member of The Shortlist.”

Ramses nodded. “All right. Now let’s get back to THD. I’m mythed out.”

“Uth too.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 22, 2474

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Mateo and Olimpia actually did lose a little bit of the temporal energy that their bodies would store for regular use, namely for teleportation. The Livewire was also tapped out of whatever reserves it had for itself, if any. They didn’t know how it worked. Having no interest in staying here, the two of them exited the apartment through the door, and walked down to the ground. They spent the rest of the day enjoying the island’s amenities, focusing predominantly on the water jetpacking sector. Neither of them had tried it before, and it appeared that they had no other way out of here. They periodically checked their own energy, and the Livewire’s, but nothing. It wasn’t until the next year when their bodies were replenished by the jump to the future. They now appeared to have the power they needed to activate the Livewire. They still didn’t know what the hell they were doing, but they hoped there was some kind of psychic control connection.

Having no better ideas, they borrowed a boat, and went out to the middle of nowhere. They each held one end of the wire, and stepped back to make it taut. They tried to focus on what they were trying to accomplish, returning to the Vellani Ambassador thousands of years ago, but the opposite happened instead. Their ship appeared over their heads a few meters in the air, and crash landed into the ocean. Fortunately, this was dozens of kilometers off-shore, so probably no one saw it happen. Mateo and Olimpia teleported into the Ambassador to reunite with their people.

“How did we get here?” Leona questioned. She and Ramses were on the bridge, making sure that all systems were still in working order. “Where are we?”

“That was us,” Mateo answered.

She spun around, and exhaled with relief. “Thank God. We were trying to figure out where you two had gone. You had us worried sick!”

“We thought you had gone down to Ex-01, but we couldn’t find you, and Oaksent seemed just as confused as we were,” Ramses added.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,” Olimpia interjected as they were hugging. “This doesn’t make any sense. Mateo, you did teleport down to the planet. You were detoured by the trip to the island, but you were only really gone for one second. You should have returned to that very moment three days ago to close your loop.”

“That’s not what happened,” Angela contended. “Mateo disappeared, and never reappeared. You did too, at the same time. We’ve been looking for you for the last three days. We were pretty mean to Bronach because of it.”

Olimpia and Mateo exchanged a look. “We’re in a different timeline,” she determined. “What changed it? This thing?” She held up the Livewire.

“I don’t think it has the power to shift timelines,” Ramses said, taking it from her, and examining it. “Something else changed history.”

“Did you guys notice that we’re still sinking?” Marie asked, looking at the viewscreens to see bubbles shooting their way upwards towards the surface.

Leona instinctively looked up to see it too. “Yeah, it’s fine,” she brushed off. “We need to make sure the timeline is okay. What are we missing? What didn’t happen that should have?”

“Well, Matt rescued Elder Caverness,” Olimpia replied. “That’s about it, I think. Well, he also punched the Oaksent.”

“We did that,” Angela said. “The Elder rescue, that is.” She reached up to switch the channel on the nearest screen. They were looking at the security feed for the guest room now. Elder was sitting up on the twin bed, leaning against the wall, perpendicular to the head and foot. If they didn’t know any better, they would think he was dead.

“He’ll just make more,” Olimpia explained. “He scanned and stores multiple copies of Elder’s consciousness.”

“I can fix that,” Ramses decided. “Just give me some time to build a consciousness nullifier.”

“That sounds bad...and difficult,” Mateo thought.

“It will just make it so that this Elder here will be the only one in existence,” Ramses clarified. “We’ll have to go back to that time period to use it, though, which means I’ll also have to figure out how to make the navigation systems work properly.”

“Maybe that thing will help,” Leona suggested, gesturing towards the Livewire.

“Yeah, I need to run some tests now that I have better resources than I did when we last saw this thing in the Third Rail.”

They felt a small shudder as the ship landed on the ocean floor when the internal inertial dampeners were briefly insufficient. Leona and Ramses casually looked over to receive the damage report, which was minimal. Escaping the situation was not urgent. Or maybe it was. There was a ping on the sensors. “Someone is headed right for us,” Marie pointed out.

“It’s probably Search and Rescue.”

“Unidentified sunken vessel, this is Search and Rescue. Please respond,” came a voice on the radio. She was right.

“Where are they coming from?” Leona asked.

“Star Island.”

“Turks and Caicos?”

“Closer to Hawaii.”

“Never heard of it,” Leona said. “But either way, we need to figure out how we’re going to get out of this mess. We could teleport, but they would see. We could turn invisible, but we would still be displacing the water.”

“It’s 2474,” Angela said. “Don’t these people have reframe engines by now?”

“They’re certainly aware of them,” Leona answered, “but they’re not commonplace yet, if our projections from The Edge meeting are at all accurate. We basically allowed them to tell the public that it was a thing, but it’s been their job to develop the tech on their own. There may be some prototypes here and there.”

“Then that’s what we are,” Angela decided. “We’re using a prototype reframe engine. We’ll surface, and launch right in front of them. No teleporter, no invisibility, nor any other kind of holographic camouflage.”

“There’s no such thing as a water launch,” Ramses countered. “I mean, it’s technically possible with fusion rockets—which we have, and wouldn’t have to explain away—but it’s not feasible. The question those rescuers will be asking is not can we launch from the surface of the ocean, but why the hell would we bother?”

“Unidentified sunken vessel, please respond. A submarine is en route.”

“I know the cover story,” Mateo jumped in. “We tried to launch from a floating platform, similar to the ones that Aldona constructed in the Third Rail. We tried to launch with our new reframe engine, but something went wrong. The platform sank, and we crashed here.”

“Where’s this imaginary platform now?” Leona questioned. “What we’re the coordinates of our launch position?”

Mateo just shrugged. That was true, they might try to look for the platform next to corroborate this complete fabrication.

“Computer, downshift the radio signal to five by two.” A ping indicated that it had made the change. Leona pressed the comms button. “Search and Rescue, this is unnamed reframe prototype one. We attempted to launch from a floating platform, maybe...uh, thirty kilometers away from here, due southwest. We, uh, ended up flying horizontally pretty early, and managed to crash into the water. We’re presently repairing our buoyancy systems, and should be resurfacing within the next hour with no help. We appreciate the concern.”

“Thank you for your response,” the voice came back. “We’re gonna go ahead and sit tight until the submarine arrives for a more thorough investigation. You have breached Moku Hoku territory, and we need to assess the situation ourselves. We hope that you understand, but your cooperation is not required.”

Leona made sure the outgoing signal was off while she shook her head. “This isn’t going to work. They’re gonna come down here, and they’re gonna look for that platform. Our story does not make any sense. How did we make it all the way here without satellites, or other cameras, seeing our arc across the sky?”

“Rambo,” Olimpia began. “When’s the last time you purged the hot pocket?”

“It’s been a while.” He pulled up the systems. “We’re about three-quarters full. Why? What are you thinking?”

“Leona, get ready to teleport on my mark,” Olimpia went on. “Maximum range, to the other side of the sun.”

“You’re gonna fake an explosion,” Marie realized.

“It won’t stop them from asking questions,” Olimpia believed, “but it’ll stop them from expecting answers.”

Leona considered the plan, weighing it against the risks. She looked over at Ramses. “Do it. Purge the energy upwards to conceal our disappearance. She’s right, we won’t leave any debris behind, here or where this supposed platform sunk, but we’ll be long gone before they realize that. It will just have to be a mystery that these people never solve.”

They carried out the new plan. Ramses purged the excess energy from the heat shunt. It only took a second before the explosion overwhelmed the water above them. At that moment, Leona teleported them away. They didn’t jump to the maximum range of 300 million kilometers, though, because then the L3 research station might see them. They were now relatively close to the sun, which was radiating so much interference that no one would be able to detect their arrival. Now that they were free from scrutiny, they could reenter reframe speeds, and be on their way. But the question was, where were they going to go? Ramses still wasn’t confident in the navigation for his new slingdrive. Then again, it didn’t matter where they went, as long as they didn’t try to stay here. Sol was the most dangerous star system to be in when you were trying to stay hidden. They needed a good place to practice and experiment discreetly.

The group decided to make a list of all the places they could go, in the stellar neighborhood, and beyond. Then they plugged the suggestions into a randomizer, and had the computer pick one out. They were headed for a little world called Castlebourne.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 19, 2377

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“Ramses, dark mode!” Leona ordered.

The ship became a darklurker. All nonessential systems were powered down to make themselves as undetectable as possible. Mateo decided to float up to the upper level, which was the only place with regular viewports. They were the only means of seeing what was going on outside. There was another ship out there. It was much smaller than The Investigator, which had taken them to the stellar engine. At the moment, it wasn’t doing anything. Perhaps it never noticed them, and its presence was a mere coincidence. Probably not, but they could hope.

“Battery level,” Leona whispered. She didn’t need to, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

“Twenty-four percent,” Angela reported.

“Hull integrity.”

“Holding.”

Ramses popped his head up from the lower level.

“Propulsion,” Leona prompted.

“There is nothing out here close enough for us to get to it without the battery, and this maneuver took a lot more out of us than I hoped it would. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Leona promised. “Mateo—where’s Mateo?”

“He went upstairs,” Olimpia said.

“I’m getting a bad feeling,” Leona said, standing up. “Ramses, use a tablet, and run some simulations. I want options for getting us out of this mess.”

“Sir,” Ramses replied.

Meanwhile, Leona went up to see what her husband was doing. He was in the airlock, hatch closed, finishing up fitting himself with one of the vacuum suits. “What are you doing?” she asked through the intercom

“I’m gonna board that thing,” he answered.

“The hell you are.”

“Stop wasting power on the intercom,” Mateo argued.

Leona rapidly pressed the charging button on the console. Something as simple as this did not require much power, and could be recharged quite easily. “There, now it’s back up to four bars. You are not going out there.”

“We need fuel, that thing has fuel,” he contended.

“I’m sure it does. It has antimatter pods, and hydropellets, but the former won’t be compatible with our system, and you don’t know what you’re looking for.”

“I know what I’m looking for,” he said. “I’m not as dumb as you think. I don’t know how antimatter works, but I’ve seen you people replace lots of parts on this thing while I was sitting around with nothing to do. I can retrieve them for you, and the two of you can adapt the alien technology. If nothing else, the deuterium and tritium can be used with the regular fusion drive, correct?”

She sighed. “They can. It’ll be slow, but yes.”

“Slow for us is maybe a few weeks,” Mateo pointed out as he was placing the helmet over his head.

“I’ll go with you,” Leona offered. “There are eleven other suits.”

“But there’s only one jetpack, and I need all the power I can get.”

“Mateo...”

“Let me do this. Let me do something.”

“You promise you know what you’re looking for?”

“I do. You know our code words. If something goes wrong, and I tell you to through the cuff, then you darkburst the hell out of here, and don’t look back.”

“Mateo...” she repeated.

“I’ll be fine, I promise.” He couldn’t promise that, but he had to do something. They needed those power sources. Being stuck in an intergalactic void was just not a sustainable living arrangement. Better him than someone else. Out of everyone on the team, he was the most expendable. He double checked his vacuum suit, then turned around, and jacked himself into the jetpack on the wall. In the olden days, one or two people had to help an astronaut into a suit like this. This was a lot better, especially if Leona had chosen to be less agreeable about the whole thing.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Leona was still so worried.

Mateo separated himself from the wall, and struggled to stay vertical from the weight of the jetpack. “Were I you.”

“Were I you.” She switched off the artificial gravity for him, so he didn’t have to stand. Then she pressed the button to open the outer doors, and watched him go.

According to the heads up display, the mysterious nonresponsive ship was floating about a kilometer away from the AOC. It had yet to make any move against them, or any move at all, for that matter. Ramses was reading heat waste coming off from it, so it didn’t appear to be abandoned, unless it was, and it happened pretty recently. The AOC remained in dark mode, staying in communication with Mateo using a carefully tuned laser. This would stop working once he boarded the vessel, but at that point, he should be able to take off part of the suit, and begin using the highly secure Cassidy cuff.

Using data relayed from Mateo’s sensors, Ramses was able to pinpoint a good place for ingress in what was probably an infrequently used airlock for automated external hull repair. It was too small for his jetpack to fit, so he removed it, and magnetically held it against the hull to retrieve later. He opened the airlock using the manual override they found, and slipped in. Still no response from anyone on the ship, suggesting that they had no idea he was there, or even that the AOC was. This could prove to be the hard part, figuring out how to repressurize the airlock without the team’s help. He reached over, just hoping there wasn’t an authorization code to block him, but before he could touch anything, the room started to make noise. It was repressurizing on its own, theoretically in reaction to his presence. The inner doors opened on their own too. Mateo removed his helmet, set it on the floor, and carefully exited.

He looked one way. Coast was clear. He looked the other way. Not clear. A man was standing there with a weapon of some kind trained on him. “Weapons on the floor.”

“I don’t have any,” Mateo told him honestly. They had never thought to store them on the AOC. It wasn’t a warship, after all.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why did you let me in if you thought I was a threat?” That airlock didn’t pressurize itself. This guy was surely in control.

“I wanted to know who you are, and what you’re doing here.”

“We need fuel,” Mateo answered. “Our own ship, it’s...it’s not gonna get far.”

“You mean that lifeboat down there?”

“You noticed us.”

“I’m not an idiot. Weapons, now.”

Mateo began to take off the rest of his suit, proving that he didn’t have anything up his sleeve.

“What is this thing?” the man questioned, holding Mateo’s wrist up, and indicating the Cassidy cuff.

“Comms and basic sensors.” He didn’t need to know about the sync teleporter, or the temporal pattern link.

He seemed satisfied with this answer. That was exactly what it looked like. More importantly, it didn’t look like a weapon. “That way,” he ordered with a jerk of his gun. He continued to direct Mateo from behind. This was a nice ship; kept clean and well-lit. There didn’t appear to be anyone else here, but it was pretty large. They could have been busy in other sections without Mateo ever knowing. “What fuel do you need, isotopes?”

“That, and antimatter pods. I know it’s a big ask, but if you’ll just speak with my Captain, I’m sure we can work something out. There’s no need for things to get—”

“We’re here.”

They were entering a big storage room. The roar of the engine was louder now, coming from a door on the other side. It did not look like a hock cell.

“How much do you need?” the man asked.

“Um.” That was an interesting question. He was just planning on stealing as much as he could carry. “Whatever you can spare. Our propulsion drive can handle six pods simultaneously, but our engineers will have to transfer what you have to—” He stopped himself to look down at the case the man had just opened. Inside were six pods. They looked nearly identical to the ones the AOC used. “Is that some kind of standard design?”

“I have no idea.” He shut the case, and pulled another one from the shelf. You carry them, I’ll carry the isotopes.

“Not that I’m not appreciative, but...why are you doing this?”

“I want you out of my business,” the man answered, “and I don’t care what it takes. This is my territory now, and I don’t need you hanging around any longer than necessary.”

It kind of sounded like he was doing something illegal. Mateo didn’t really care, though. This wasn’t his reality, and he didn’t know anything about the culture. He couldn’t even say that Salufi, or the others on the matrioshka brain, were bad people. Their reaction to the team’s arrival was not outrageous. They just couldn’t have it, and needed to leave. “I understand.”

“Thanks, let’s go.”

They started to walk back towards the service airlock, this time without the gun. “I’m sure you don’t want questions, but does this have anything to do with the matrioshka brain that was parked somewhere around here last year?”

The man stopped him at the shoulder. “You know it was here. Did you see it?”

“I was on it. We barely escaped.” Again, he couldn’t be sure whose side this guy was on, but against the matrioshka brain was a pretty fair bet at this point.

“Do you know its exact coordinates?” he pressed.

“Uhh, I don’t, I’m just the delivery boy. My Captain probably knows, or will do everything she can to help you find it.”

He set the isotopes down, and took one of the antimatter cases from Mateo. “Contact your ship. I will give you twice as much as this if you can get me to where they were.”

“This was exactly a year ago,” Mateo warned him. “We can probably find where it was then, but if it moved after that...”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I just need its flight path, so I can predict where it will be next.”

“What are you going to do with this information?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Mateo weighed his options in his head. He didn’t have much to go on, but one side imprisoned the team, and the other gave them presents. Dance with the one that brought you, he figured. He tapped on his cuff. “Leona.”

“Finally! Yes—my God—where have you been?”

“In a meeting,” he mused.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Perfectly fine,” he answered. “Jump to these coordinates. I’ve made a business arrangement with a new associate.”

“Powering up now.”

“Hey, I don’t know how long this is gonna take,” Mateo started to say to the man, “but in case we make quick work of this, we should formalize it. My name is Mateo Matic. My wife, Leona is the Captain. We have an engineer, and two other crew members on board.”

“Xerian Oyana.”

Mateo pulled up his own info on his cuff. “This is my personal quantum sequence. If you ever need anything else, call me, and we’ll try to help if we’re in the neighborhood. Time lag might be a factor.”

Xerian pulled out his handheld device, and accepted the data, exchanging it with his own. After Leona teleported to their location, they all three went up to the bridge, stopping briefly at the storage room to double their payment. Once at the controls, Leona retraced the AOC’s steps, and found the region of space where the matrioshka brain was last year. Xerian knew it was somewhere around here, but he needed to be as accurate as possible. He added it to the points he had already plotted on a map, and connected them with a new line. “Ah, they’re tricky, but I see a pattern.”

“Me too,” Leona said.

Mateo didn’t see it. It just looked like a random mess to him.

“Well, I appreciate your help,” Xerian said.

“We appreciate yours. This should last us quite a while.”

“I must be off. I think I can finally get ahead of them.”

“We’ll leave, but do you know where we can go? Is there some kind of haven for people who don’t have identities, and don’t have a great relationship with that matrioshka brain?

“Andromeda is your only hope,” Xerian explained. “But since I imagine you don’t have a lightyear drive, it will take you too long to get there.”

“You don’t have instant transporters?” Leona pressed.

“We do, but that’s what I mean,” Xerian went on. “The closest Nexus that won’t ask questions is nearly 1400 light years away.”

Mateo looked over to Leona, who closed her eyes and nodded. That will be fine. Xerian didn’t know about the reframe engine, or their salmon pattern. “Thanks again,” she said.

Xerian found the coordinates to both the Nexus, and a supposedly safe place in the Andromeda galaxy, and beamed them to her cuff.

After the two of them teleported back to the AOC, Mateo realized there could be another way. “Maybe we should just ask if we can stay with him.”

“That is not our business,” Leona contended. “We just need to get somewhere safe.”

“I think I trust him,” Mateo decided.

“That’s great!” Leona said with false enthusiasm. “We’re still gonna go do our own thing. Ramses.” She held out one of the cases of antimatter, and one of the tritium. “Load these up while I plot our course. We’ll be there in two years.”

“We’ll be where?” Mateo pointed out.

“We’ll see,” she said simply.

They weren’t necessarily headed towards safety. They still didn’t know what the hell was going on in this reality.

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Microstory 1105: Wayne Crawford

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Long before Wayne Crawford was born, the wedding industry was a dying one. It wasn’t that people weren’t getting married, but it had transformed. First of all, same-sex marriage eventually, and finally, became ubiquitous worldwide. What few people who had a problem with it were expected to keep their mouths shut. Group marriages also became common, but they were built on equality, and love, rather than child rape, indoctrination, and coercion, like a certain religion known for polygamy. The biggest change, however, was in the world’s attitude towards the institution itself, and its beginning. Weddings were still performed, though they were lower key than before. They mostly involved partying and dancing, with little emphasis on decorations and traditions. Some even opted to have no wedding at all, and there was much less stigma attached to this decision than in prior decades. Couples and grouples started realizing that the point of a wedding is to get married, and the point of getting married is to be married. Marriage is a dynamic; not an event. Once the majority of people recognized that, ceremony lost its value. Still, the planet had not suffered from mass amnesia. Some liked to do things the old fashioned way, just for their historical and artistic value. A big wedding was no longer obligatory, nor a burden, but something some people did for fun. Since money wasn’t a thing anymore, it didn’t put a strain on resources either. Wayne Crawford, and his husband-to-be, Raphael Neville were two of those people. They decided they wanted to have a real wedding ceremony, with a full audience, an authorized officiant, and all the little frills and arbitrary features. Some aspects of the traditional wedding were removed. Nobody was giving anybody away, like property, and nobody was wearing virginal white. Unfortunately, it would seem that their special day would be ruined regardless of how they chose to handle it. On May 19, 2161, the rogue planet of Durus made an uncomfortably close pass by Earth. This caused a number of earthquakes, fires, and other disasters, the likes of which the planet hadn’t seen since safety and redundancy took a front seat in the car of life. It also had the unfortunate side effect of plucking people off the surface of both worlds, and pulling them up to the other one. People with temporal abilities and patterns, such as choosing ones and salmon, were at particularly high risk of this, but the majority of refugees were standard humans. Which ones were taken, and which ones were left alone, seemed to be largely unpredictable. You would only possibly be safe indoors, though not even that was a guarantee. Raphael was sadly chosen to be thrown up to Durus, but Wayne did not accept that. The idea was, after the end of the ceremony, they would ride off the cliff together on a two person jet platform to start their new lives, so it was all ready to go for them. Wayne didn’t understand what was happening when Raphael started essentially falling up in the air, but he wasn’t going to waste time studying the phenomenon. He jumped onto the platform, and zoomed up to save the love of his life. He was moving at a pretty good clip, but Raphael was moving much faster. Luckily, aircraft were at fairly high risk of being caught up in what would later be called the Deathspring, so just by sending himself so high up in the air, Wayne ended up being taken to Durus as well, whereas he wouldn’t have, had he stayed put. It would take over twenty years, but Wayne finally did manage to rescue Raphael, and return them both to Earth, and they did so...with a daughter.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 13, 2037

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Thank God Leona’s mind processed information at the speed of light. With only seconds to think, she switched on both of their jet packs. Though they were not designed to operate within the atmosphere, they did the job in a pinch. Their descent was slowed enough to keep them from splattering onto the ground below. The problem was that they also weren’t designed to work in tandem like that. Had they had enough time, and had Mateo been born smarter, they could have done it on their own, but since Leona was pulling all the weight, she wasn’t able to exercise full control over their movements. The jets propelled them over and back up and down and all around, like a rebellious firehose. She was finally able to keep them pointed towards the water long enough to stave off their death for one more second. She switched off the jets and they fell, only to begin sinking into the depths.

Feeling the need to contribute something to the effort, Mateo tore off their spacesuits and pulled them back to the surface of the...lake. It was definitely a lake. And that tree looked familiar. Yes. It was Sherwood Lake. They were back in Topeka. As he was crawling up the beach, he saw a pair of legs run past him. A set of arms that belonged with the legs reached down and helped Leona to her feet. Her own legs were shaking, and she was having trouble standing up. He had always seen her as the strong one in the relationship, but this showed that she had been just as traumatized by the event as he had.

“Thanks, dad,” she said.

Mr. Delaney began to help her take more pieces of her suit off while his wife ran down and wrapped a towel around her. “I have her. Check on the boy.”

“No, I’m fine,” Mateo insisted. “Just a little out of breath.”

“I have a towel for you too,” she said.

“My mother? Samsonite?”

“Oh, yeah. We need to call them.” She took out her device and stepped to the side.

“What happened to them?” Leona asked of her father.

“They both lost consciousness in the water,” Mr. Delaney explained. “Don’t worry, they’ve alive, and suffered no brain damage. But the old fisherman who pulled them into his boat couldn’t remember exactly where he had found them, so we separated to look for you.”

“They’re on their way,” Leona’s stepmother said.

“Call Theo too.”

“Oh, right.” She went back to her phone.

“I don’t know how much you know,” Mateo said, accepting a bottle of water. “But there was an android woman who saved us.”

Mr. Delaney nodded, indicating that Mateo didn’t need to continue his question. “Her nanites are in the water, but they apparently lost their...cohesion or something. They tell us that she would be, for all intents and purposes, dead. I’m sorry.”

Mateo nodded understandingly. “Figures.” He looked to Leona. “How did Mirage pretend that she jumped with us?”

“I was thinking about that,” Leona replied. “She wouldn’t have been able to turn invisible, but she could have separated her nanites quick enough to make it look like she was disappearing.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

They engaged in the latest of their long line of reunions. Leona noted how much larger Theo had grown since she last saw him. Normally, that would be a cliché, but it was relevant in this case due to the time difference. He was now 18 years old, and indeed taller than his older sister. Mateo’s mother and Samsonite, on the other hand, had not changed a bit. They were as young as they had been when he first caught back up with her seven years ago. Advances in medicine in cosmetics might have accounted for such a thing, but Samsonite posited a mathematical factor. Because of Mateo’s cousin, Danica, they already knew that the powers that be were capable of immortality. And Aura and Samsonite were on a specific timeslip pattern, broken only to allow them to switch from jumping backwards to jumping forwards. According to that pattern they, along with Theo, were due to remain within the present timestream for another 300 years. They assumed the last two centuries would be finished up by their corpses, but their feelings of vitality now suggested otherwise. Theo called it their gift for following the rules for so long. Samsonite was curious to find out the truth about it. Aura was suspicious.

They drove a car that was registered to a friend of a friend of a friend, so that they were far enough removed from the prying eyes of Reaver. Paper money was still a thing that existed in some circles. It was so rare that it was relatively easy to trace, but only if you knew where you were looking. Mateo’s and Leona’s family had spent the last year turning themselves into ghosts by converting their cash to other currencies, buying innocuous goods at random places, and bartering in rural areas. They moved to the most remote place they could find in the middle of Wyoming.

While Reaver had lost control of his own company and was currently awaiting trial for his latest blunder with the exploding space probe, he was still a threat. As much trouble as he was in, he surely had friends on the inside of the outside, and they were a risk to Mateo and anyone close to him. It made him want to run away again, but this time actually do it right. Leona seemed to sense this and convinced him otherwise. She explained to him in no uncertain terms that every major attempt at his life had occurred while Mateo was isolated from his family, or only with Leona. They were all better off sticking together, even if it meant Leona’s father and stepmother had to destroy their old lives. None of this was their fault, and he should have been more careful about keeping them out of it. It was actually surprising how safe they had been throughout the years. It was only recently that they were really in danger. Though, Leona was right. Reaver wasn’t interested in hurting his family and friends, if only to get to him. Mateo seemed to be Reaver’s one and only purpose.

“But see, that’s the thing,” Leona said of this after finding some privacy in their very own cabin in the woods. “You first encountered Reaver more than a thousand years in the future. He had already been dealing with you, but you hadn’t even met him yet from your perspective.”

“Right,” Mateo said, prompting her to go on.

“In fact, every time we’ve encountered him thus far, he was already pissed off with you.”

“Yeah, I still don’t know why.”

“He hasn’t even bothered to tell you. We’re already pretty sure that you and I and any other salmon are capable of altering the timeline. That’s probably what we’re doing here. Either he’s a complete moron, or there’s some reason why he hasn’t so much as attempted to ask you for help with changing whatever has been done to him.”

“That’s true. I don’t know what I did, and he has to know that. There must be some reason he’s keeping his past-slash-my future from me.”

“And what’s his pattern? Is it random? Does he have control over it? If so, why doesn’t he jump out of jail? Is he a rogue member of the power that be? Or worse,” she started, “is he not rogue?”

“These are all brilliant questions.”

“We have to ask them,” Leona said, straight-faced.

“Yeah,” Mateo chuckled. “Wait, what?”

She drew closer and lowered her voice, even though the nearest people were in a separate cabin. “Maybe you were right about running away.” She weathered a brainstorm in her own head. “He’s not going to stop. He can’t. And we can’t stop him. He might not be convicted of any crime. He may retake his company. He might even be able to teleport out of jail. Hell, he could go back in time and kill your mother before you’re born.”

“What are you saying, Leona?” Mateo asked.

“We have to take the fight to him. We have to get our answers, and barring any sudden conversations with the puppeteers of all this bullshit, we have to get those answers from him.”

“We could contact the Delegator.”

“How?”

“Danica?”

“We’re not allowed in the Constant. Not even Theo can get back in. I think we’ve been put on the naughty list.”

“This sounds reckless.”

She kissed him with both the passion of a new relationship, and the ease of an old marriage. “We’re time travelers. The world could plan for an asteroid heading towards us, but we would be falling down the crater tomorrow. Reckless sounds like a casual stroll in the park to me at this point.”

Mateo yawned. “Let’s talk about it next year. We can’t do anything today. Like you said, we could jump to our death tomorrow, and none of this would even matter.”

To spite their exhaustion, Mateo and Leona finally consummated their twenty-year relationship that night.

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