The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 18, 2531

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It took a few minutes, but that was all they needed. A.F. shut them down almost entirely, but he left a few key essential systems running. He let them keep breathing, and stay warm, and to keep a relative sense of down. That last one was key. He either did this so his own people could be comfortable when they were ready to board, or when he was ordering his people to shut all other systems down, he simply ignored that one as irrelevant. Under normal circumstances, it was true. Internal artificial gravity alone could not save or protect them. But all these systems were integrated with each other, and rerouting them wasn’t all that difficult. Séarlas, Leona, and Ramses worked together to change the internal gravity to external. It was messy and ridiculous, but it allowed them to move the station, and it allowed them to do it without propulsion. This wouldn’t be useful if they wanted to fly on a particular vector. A.F.’s fleet could always match it, so relative to each other, their velocity would be at zero. But that wasn’t the only dimension to maneuver in. Instead they spun themselves around. The station was basically spherical, so they became a chaotic ball, rolling around space randomly and unpredictably. If the bad guys wanted to board them, they were gonna have a hell of a time getting a foothold.

They were at an impasse, because while A.F. couldn’t reach them, Team Matic and the twins still had nowhere to escape to. Little had changed during the interim year between August 17, 2530 and August 18, 2531. The only thing was that, while the spin was random, the roll that it caused was fairly consistent. The station had spent the entire time in a decaying orbit around the host star, and it was pretty close to it now.

“Oh my God, I forgot to ask,” Marie began. “Why can’t they teleport in here? Whoops.” She lost her grip on the corner of the table. In order to maximize power from the internal-for-external gravity drive, they had to lose it for themselves. This placed them in freefall, just like the ancient astronauts had to suffer when humanity was first dipping its toes into outer space centuries ago. “I’m gonna hold onto you instead, Matt.” She grabbed his thigh with both hands. She could have just magnetized herself to a surface most everyone else, but whatever.

“I have a teleportation-suppression field,” Séarlas explained. “It’s decoupled from the main systems, and even has its own powersource, so A.F. can’t control it.”

“Can we exploit that?” Olimpia asked. “Can we decouple other systems?”

“We did, with the gravity,” Séarlas confirmed. “Unfortunately, we can’t do it for anything that he already has control over, like the quintessence drive, or communications. I gave him too much tech, and too much power.”

“We need a distraction,” Angela suggested. “We can’t gain an advantage over them,\ because they can just stay on us indefinitely. We need something that they can chase just long enough for us to get out of range of their equipment.”

Ramses was looking at the viewscreen. They were tumbling around aimlessly, so trying to look through a viewport, or even a static image, would just make them nauseated. Instead, the exterior sensors were programmed to operate in tandem, and generate an artificial stabilized image, which would be what they would see if they weren’t moving so quickly. “The sun. You get me to the sun, I’ll get us out of here. They won’t be able to block our slingdrive array with all that cosmic interference.”

“We can’t move fast enough,” Séarlas reasoned. We’re in a decaying orbit, but it’s still gonna take us years to get close enough to break free from their grasp.”

“Hence, the distraction,” Angela said, looking over at Leona. “Maybe make it look like there’s a giant hammer out there that’s about to smash them to bits?”

“Or my hubby could make a solid hammer that actually could smash them to bits,” Olimpia offered.

“I don’t know that I have the strength for solid holograms,” Mateo countered, “especially not at scale. I’m still trying to recover. It takes a lot of energy to regather the dark particles, and I can’t turn that off, even if I didn’t care about it. Which I do, because they may be our only hope.”

“We don’t wanna kill them,” Leona argued. “Olimpia, maybe you could replicate us? Confuse them about which space station is real?”

“I could try,” Olimpia volunteered.

Franka shook her head. “It wouldn’t matter. They have anti-holographic technology. It uses augmented reality to delete any falsified light source. The image might still be out there, but they won’t see it, because their AI knows that it’s fake, and shows them what’s behind it. They probably already have it on. They know that you’re illusionists.”

They continued to discuss options, sometimes talking over one another, trying to come up  with a workaround. Marie thought that maybe she could teleport over to one of the other ships in the fleet, and impersonate A.F. to give them false orders. Franka said that the anti-holographics can be miniaturized into other forms. The crewmembers could be wearing glasses which broke the illusions for them on an individual level. Mateo then suggested that Olimpia, instead of creating a remote image, turn the whole station invisible, but that wouldn’t work either, since they were still generating waste heat. Séarlas had not thought to install a hot pocket, since they were 28,000 light years from the stellar neighborhood, and he didn’t expect anyone to get anywhere near them. A.F. must have had some great intel to have gotten close enough for even the longest of long-range sensors to be meaningful. The Dardieti were a hundred times farther away, and even the reframe generation ship, Extremus was farther from the stellar neighborhood at this point, but those were outliers. He found this station because it was the only artificial structure out here. It reportedly could have taken them up to forty decades, which was an insane commitment choice. Either way, now that they had already been found, none of their illusions could counteract it.

“I can help,” Romana spoke up. She said it very quietly, but that was why her voice stood out amidst the cacophony of discussion, because until this moment, she had been completely silent.

“You can?” her father questioned.

“I can use my own holographic specialty. It’s different than yours.” She looked very anxious about it, perhaps even ashamed?

“I guess I hadn’t thought to ask you about it, or try to foster your ability,” Mateo realized. He looked over at Ramses. “Actually, I’m not sure I realized you even had that since you would have gotten your upgrade much later than us.”

Ramses shrugged. “I gave her what I gave everyone else. She’s part of the family.”

Franka winced.

“What can you do, dear, and when did you have time to practice?” Leona asked.

Before she could stop herself, Romana’s gaze flickered over to Olimpia. That was enough.

“Pia?” Mateo asked simply.

“I wanted her to think of me as another mother. I wanted her to know that she could trust me with her secrets. She can.” Olimpia took a deliberate step towards Romana. “You can.”

“We’re not mad,” Leona promised. “Romy, what are you so afraid of?”

“My illusions, they’re...tiny. I don’t generate images that anyone in the room can see. I project them directly onto people’s eyes.”

“We’ve watched movies together in secret,” Olimpia admitted. “You all were sitting right there in the room with us, and you had no idea.”

Romana sighed, relieved to be unburdened of yet another thing that she had been keeping from the group, but not yet clear on the consequences. “You’ve all seen my personalized illusions. I would place a knick-knack on a table that wasn’t really there, or move the edge of the doorframe over a few centimeters. I was testing my own limits.”

Marie massaged her shoulder. “I remember that doorframe.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Marie said with a sincere smile.

“I can bypass any normal anti-illusory tech and make them see what I want,” Romana went on, shaking her head, “including bad things...scary things. I can’t get in their heads, but I can freak them out, and certainly distract them. I could show them only darkness, and make them think they’ve gone blind. Unless they’re using cybernetic eyes, or something, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

“I don’t want to be negative,” Mateo began, “but there are only six of us. There could be hundreds of crewmembers out there. That’s a tall order. I don’t know how much practice could prepare you for that.”

“She wouldn’t need to do all of them,” Franka decided, “just enough to cause some chaos. Ramses needs the sun. If we can regain control of the base teleporter for only a couple of seconds, that would be enough to get us there. It might even be enough to break us free permanently, and we won’t need to abandon ship. Our quintessence drive needs time to spool up after a power disruption like this, but is otherwise just as capable of traversing the universe as yours or the Vellani Ambassador’s.”

“I can’t do it blindly,” Romana said apologetically. “I need to know who and where, so I would need to get on the ships.”

“If I shut off the teleportation suppression field to let you jump out there, it will allow anyone over there to jump here,” Séarlas explained. “All or nothin’.”

“It’s a risk we’ll have to take,” Leona determined. “Olimpia, you go with her. Make you both invisible. The rest of us will hold off any boarders.”

There were boarders, and a lot of them. They were probably trying to teleport this entire time, waiting for the team to give them an opening, if only via a brief power fluctuation. Leona fought them off physically, as did Franka, who probably hadn’t trained with the Crucia Heavy on Flindekeldan, but had apparently undergone some level of combat training. Mateo used his solid holograms a little, having been reminded that they were a thing. He really was pretty weak, though, and this was draining him further. If he didn’t use it sparingly, he would collapse and pass out, which would do them no good. Angela and Marie held their own too, but mostly relied on the protection of their EmergentSuits, rather than offensive blows. There was not really anywhere to hide as this station wasn’t all that large. The twins hadn’t built it with the thought of housing any more people than were living here now. They just kept holding them off while they waited for Romana and Olimpia to do their things.

Romana was making her tiny retinal illusions, and besides protecting them both with invisibility, Olimpia was trying to figure out how to sabotage the ships themselves. She didn’t have the technical know-how to do that, though, so Séarlas volunteered to jump over there to help. Unavoidably, when Angela took him over, it created a second teleportation window for the bad guys, which caused an influx in attackers that also needed to be fought off. A.F. was still nowhere to be seen, no doubt cowering in his luxurious stateroom. Before too long, the fleet’s hold on the station’s systems was gone, and they were free to straighten back out, and start to move away.

They had to scream through the ruckus. “They’re integrated!” Séarlas shouted through Angela’s comms. “The fleet’s quintessence drives! They’re all connected, so they can jump to the same place together, even if navigation goes wonky!”

“How does that help us?” Mateo asked. He was just using his bare fists now, punching faceless stormtroopers left and right. They had their armor too, but it wasn’t nearly as strong, probably because their commander didn’t really care about them. “Just get back here! Franka says your quintessence drive is spooled up!”

“I can rig them to blow up! We can be rid of this nuisance once and for all, the both of us!” Séarlas clarified. “We’ll be able to stay here if we want, or take the time to plot a course! This is a future-proofing act!”

“No killing!” Leona insisted.

“You’re not really my mother!”

“It’s more complicated than that, and you know it. Besides, it wouldn’t matter! You could be a stranger, and I would still urge you not to kill!”

“You’ve done enough, Olimpia and Romana. Go back to our station where it’s safe,” Séarlas suggested strongly.

“I won’t let you do this!” Leona contended.

“Now that I’m over here, I can deactivate their teleporters en masse! You won’t have to worry about any more coming over when the girls go back, but you’ll still need to deal with the ones who are already there! I suggest you float them! Wake Miracle up from stasis. She doesn’t mind the dirty work!”

“No killing!” Leona repeated.

“Good on ya,” Séarlas joked. “I wish you could have taught me your values!”

A moment passed. Angela, Olimpia, and Romana reappeared on the station.

Having lost his means of interfacing with their comms network, Séarlas got on the normal ship-to-ship radio, which meant that everyone could now hear what he was saying. “I’m sorry you didn’t raise us! I’m sorry we couldn’t be a family! I’m sorry I didn’t find a way to make it happen!”

“Don’t do—” Mateo started to yell back.

“Wait!” Franka interrupted. She pressed a console button, then pointed at him.

“Don’t do this!” Mateo implored his once-son. “All we needed was to break free, and we’ve done that now! We’re miles and miles away! You don’t have to massacre everyone, and get yourself killed in the process!”

“I don’t have to, but I should!”

A.F. suddenly appeared before the team. “Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!”

They didn’t have time to respond or react. Despite having managed to fly a significant distance from the fleet, they could see the ships explode into technicolors, mostly all at once, but not quite. And they could feel the blast wave as it rippled into the station, and dispatched the team to somewhere else in the universe.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 16, 2529

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The team stayed on Jaunemus the rest of the day, eating the local cuisine, and recharging their photovoltaics by the star that they were orbiting right now. This moon was a gargantuan spaceship, which could move through space at will. The Jaunemusians couldn’t travel all the way back home to Verdemus to eat lunch with their friends every day, but they didn’t have to stay in one place either. They bounced around the nearest stars in this area, and spent a lot of time in interstellar space to avoid detection.

There was nothing for Team Matic here, so they decided to bug out. “We have to get back to Proxima Doma,” Angela suggested. “We have to find out what happened there, if anything.”

“I thought we were going after Miracle,” Ramses countered.

“That trail has gone cold,” Marie figured. “She has had a whole year to get those cuffs off.”

Leona chuckled. “She has not been able to get them off. They’re held together by a distributive bond. Breaking them would cause her to explode, and I’m the only one with a key.”

They all looked to Ramses for confirmation. He nodded. That was how their EmergentSuits worked. It was how they could be so thin, yet so durable, and protective against harsh environments, like the vacuum of outer space.

“There’s still the question of where she is,” Olimpia tried to remind them. “She could have gone anywhere. I’m guessing the quantum connection doesn’t extend this far.”

“Even I have my limits,” Ramses admitted. “But your husband doesn’t.”

“Me?” Mateo questioned. “If I can find her, why didn’t we do that yesterday?”

“We all needed a break,” Leona explained, “especially you. As I was saying, those cuffs aren’t going anywhere. There was no need to rush off, and besides, I don’t like traveling with low slingdrives. Mateo, your dark particles are the backup, not the other way around.”

“All right,” Mateo agreed. “I’ll use my black magic for a locator spell.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Romana said. No, it wasn’t Romana, but Miracle. She was holding her arms in front of her chest, like a beggar. “Get them off of me, and I’ll agree to transfer to a new substrate. It doesn’t matter anymore. I stole this body because that’s what Pacey asked of me. But I never wanted this.” She sighed, and looked off into a random direction. “I just wan—I just wanted to end him...and his reign of terror.”

The real Romana stepped forward, and placed a comforting hand on Miracle’s shoulder. “You’re not doing this for Pacey, you’re doing it for yourself. You’re from the Goldilocks Corridor.”

Miracle sighed again. “My name isn’t really Miracle. It’s just Mirinda. Mirinda...Oaksent.” They didn’t know exactly what that meant. In modern times, you couldn’t guess someone’s relationship to someone else based on their appearance. They could look 50 years older, but be 200 years younger. She giggled. “You’re all waiting for the clarification before judgment. That’s quite magnanimous of you. I’m his daughter. I’ve been that way for millennia. You see, all those people out here in the Corridor, they are his subjects...his toys. He built them to serve, and to adore him. But the problem with that is they were indoctrinated into belief from birth. Ignorance is the killer. I mean, you showed one person the truth about Earth, and an entire opposing faction spread out from it, which is what he’s always been afraid of. Sycophants who don’t know any better aren’t very satisfying either way. He wanted a group of people who loved him because that’s what they were supposed to do. He wanted a family. He made us just like he made the others, but he made us immortal, just like him. He didn’t really raise us, but we got more face time with him than most, so I suppose he figured that was enough.

“I grew to resent him, of course, which is how we ended up here. In defiance of his plan to curate a family of superhumans, I started fighting back violently. I killed all of my clones, as well as my brothers and sisters’ clones. I didn’t kill them too, but they eventually died, and there was nowhere for their consciousnesses to go. Oaksent doesn’t like virtual simulations, I don’t know why, so there’s no uploading to a central server. There’s just backup bodies. I was just about to kill my own final clone when Pacey found me. He made me realize that Bronach never cared about any of us, which was why he made almost no attempt to stop me. His plans didn’t work. He’s not a likeable guy, and if he didn’t force adoration through ignorance, it wasn’t going to happen. All of his children loathed him. I’m just the only one who wanted to do anything about it. Pacey promised that he could kill my father. He promised to find a way. You were supposed to be that way, but what he didn’t tell me was that you always look for the peaceful resolution. Your ship was literally called the Vellani Ambassador. I’ve been trying to get you to change, but if I thought that anyone could do that, I would never have let my siblings die. I would have tried to call them to action. I believe that I’ve just been trying to replace them...with you.”

Leona stepped forward, and gently held Miracle’s wrists in her hands. It looked like she was about to remove the cuffs from her. “Obligation.”

“Yeah,” Miracle said with a nod. “Wait, what?”

“It’s a movie, about a sibling rivalry that goes too far. The motif throughout is Nazca boobies, which are known for killing their siblings.”

“Oh, I guess that’s kind of similar,” Miracle agreed.

“No, it’s almost the exact same premise. What you just described here, killing off your siblings to drain the parents’ of their power, and their legacy...that is the plot of Obligation. That never happened to you.”

“Well, I hardly think that’s a unique situation. I mean, I’m sure—wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!” she screamed when Leona started to lift her arms up. “You don’t have to do this! Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay! I’ll help you! I’ll switch sides! Just don’t make me transfer out of this body.”

This was such a weird freak out. What was she so afraid of? Why did she not want to transfer to a new substrate? It wasn’t like the processes hurt, or anything. It just felt like going to sleep, and waking up in a different room after surgery. It could be disorienting, but that went away, and relatively quickly. Why did she even ever want Romana’s body if not to parade around as Romana, and give her a bad reputation? They should have asked this as soon as Miracle agreed to keep it. They shouldn’t have been so trusting of her. They won’t make that mistake again.

“Please don’t, please don’t! Miracle continued to beg.

Leona suddenly broke the cuffs apart, and let the nanites recede into her implants. “There you go.”

“You’re setting me free?” Miracle asked, shocked.

“I don’t want us to be enemies anymore. It doesn’t come for free, though. I want you to take us to Pacey. We need to have a talk with him. I’m sick of going through his little minions. It’s inefficient at best.”

Yeah, sure,” Miracle said, stepping away and rubbing her wrists. Déjà vu, this was basically what she looked like yesterday, just before escaping through a black hole portal. “I just need to, uh...speak with him first. I’ll be right back!” Still reminiscent of just yesterday, she fell through a portal, which closed up behind her immediately. And it wasn’t going to reopen.

“Why did you do that?” Olimpia asked her wife.

“She ruined our plans,” Ramses answered for Leona. “Miracle was supposed to lead us to Pacey, not come back here. Matty?”

“Okay,” Mateo said. Gather ‘round.” They huddled in a group, and let Mateo generate a swarm of dark particles to overwhelm them. It was a pretty weak showing, though. There weren’t very many of them. “I think we’re trying too soon! I can’t pull enough out,” he warned. “It took too much to get us to the Fifth Division!”

“That’s okay,” Ramses shouted back. “Just build a bridge! The slingdrives will take us the rest of the way!”

Mateo didn’t exactly know what he meant by that, but his intuition told him to spread the dark particles thin, so they reached far enough out to their destination without being wide enough for a group of seven people to cross over with them. They then activated their slingdrives, and used the signal to navigate them to the right destination. The technicolors came and went, and they found themselves in a familiar place. This was the room they went to before they were knocked unconscious, and inserted into the Underburg simulation with false memories. The place was empty back then, but not this time. Miracle was there, as were Octavia, Pacey, and some other woman. He seemed to like the ladies. He wasn’t happy right now, though.

Miracle’s eyes widened in fear as she stared at the team. She looked over at her boss. “I’m sorry. They took the cuffs off! You said I could come back if they took the cuffs off!”

“We never needed the cuffs, you idiot,” Ramses argued. “He can find anyone in the universe.” He jerked his head towards Mateo.”

“Not with my shielding,” Pacey contended. “There must be something else.”

“Nanites are very smol,” Leona said to him. “They could be on you, without you even knowing it. We never needed the cuffs,” she echoed Ramses.

“You tracked me, like an animal,” Miracle spat.

“You’re a murderer. Which one is worse?”

“Who said I murdered anybody?”

“So you were lying.”

“Enough,” Pacey interrupted. “You obviously came here to talk, so let’s talk. Leave my girls out of it.”

“Mr. Henricksen, again, I’m so—” Miracle tried to apologize.

He held up a commanding hand. “We’ll talk about it later. You both can go now.”

Miracle left, as did Octavia, having never said a word. Miracle was annoying, but an opposing force. Octavia still felt like a betrayal. They wanted to talk to her again too, but on a personal level. Today was about business. The mysterious other woman stayed. She didn’t lurch or hesitate. She knew from the start that he wasn’t ordering her to do anything. If this were an action movie, she would be the one in charge here, and all of their previous dealings were with her henchman or lieutenant, who was only pretending to be in charge. But this wasn’t a movie, was it? Was it? It was a movie before, under the dome. It could certainly be that again, or worse...still.

“I understand that you have reservations about fulfilling the mission,” Pacey began, getting himself comfortable in an arm chair while the woman sat next to him in a hardback.

“That’s an understatement,” Leona said. “We’re not doing it. We don’t need higher compensation, or incentive. We don’t need you to explain why you think we should do it. It’s just not happening. We don’t care if you agree or not. We don’t care what you want or know at all. It’s. Not. Happening. If you have some kind of Plan B, which doesn’t involve us, then I suggest you move forward with it. We’re not interested, and we never were. Why don’t you make like a snowflake, and let it go?”

“I don’t know what that means, but I want you to know that I’m listening, and I hear you. I won’t make you do anything that you don’t wanna do.” He seemed proud of himself for the response, which meant that it was a trick. It probably had something to do with the woman next to him.

They all realized that this wasn’t actually going their way, and it felt exhausting. Mateo stopped forward and placed his hand upon Leona’s chest. He gently nudged her backwards in the direction of the team. “It’s all right. I got this.” He took another step forward, but more towards the stranger. “Who are you? What is your stake in this?”

The woman looked over to Pacey, not for guidance, but more like they were having an unspoken conversation with each other. She lifted her eyebrows to ask a question. He shrugged like the answer was maybe. She pointed at him, and lifted her brows again. He shrugged again, but this time, more as if to say, yeah, fine. They made a couple of other gestures towards each other, all basically implying that they were relenting to the team’s demands, but really, it was impossible to know for sure what they were saying. In fact, they could have been in the middle of an actual psychic conversation. Finally, after Pacey said, “okay” out loud, the woman took a breath, and leaned back in her chair. “I was admittedly hurt when I first heard the term Team Kadiar.”

“No,” Mateo said.

“I felt left out,” the woman went on.

“No,” Mateo said louder. It couldn’t be.

“Yes, it’s true, father. I’m your fourth daughter. Or should I say...your first. His name isn’t Pacey. It’s Séarlas. And I am Franka.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 15, 2528

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The tree light receded. They were now standing outside. The ground beneath them was yellowish, there was no apparent atmosphere, and they felt very light. It was probably an uninhabitable moon. There was a massive structure before them, maybe four or five kilometers away. Leona checked her watch interface. “August 15, 2528.”

Ramses knelt down, and scanned the surface with his sensor suite. “Sulfur and sulfur dioxide, also silica. We got some pyroxene and feldspar. That explains the yellow.” He stood back up. “I believe that we are on the rogue moon of Jaunemus.”

They didn’t know much about this world. It once orbited the planet of Verdemus, but was transported to the Goldilocks Corridor, and used as a staging ground for the Verdemusian Corps. They lived and trained here when they weren’t on the Anatol Klugman warship. The team looked around, and couldn’t find Miracle Brighton anywhere, nor Adult!Dilara. They were dispatched, not ferried, or perhaps the other two had just moved on, since it had been a full two years since the team was last in the present day.

The Jaunemusians seemed like all right people. They were warmongers, sure, but not Klingons. They didn’t want to fight simply for the sake of it. They felt a duty to protect their home planet from the Exin Empire, and decided to take an offensive strategy, instead of a defensive one, since Verdemus was still in hiding, much like Castlebourne now. According to their military mandate, the fighters on this moon didn’t have much interest in fixing the Goldilocks Corridor. They just calculated that the only way to prevent the Exins from spreading beyond it were to put an end to it altogether. It was unclear how they felt about Earth, the rest of the closer regions, or Team Matic. According to Core World conventions, this whole part of the galaxy belonged to what they called the Borderworlds. It was technically too specific of a term to use for it, however. It was only called that because it covered all systems between 14,000 and 28,000 light years from Earth. On the other side of the Milky Way, that referred to systems that were literally on the edge. In this direction, though, they were still in the middle.

“Drive check!” Olimpia announced as she looked down at her wrist band. “Whew, I’m in the red. Anyone else have a better gauge?”

They all shook their heads. It took an enormous amount of power for them to send the entire Oblivion tower to another reality in the past. That wasn’t even that long ago for them. It would be a while until their slingdrives recharged. They might as well pop in to see how the Jaunemusians were doing lately. They teleported to an airlock that appeared welcoming enough, and knocked on the door. There was a doorbell, but it looked like it was only meant for emergencies. Hopefully the sound would travel through the structure well enough for someone to hear. They stood there for a few minutes before a face appeared in the viewport. Hm. No cameras? Or were there, and he just wanted to get a look for himself? They waved at him with smiles.

The man went away, and then the airlock door opened. They let their suits collapse before the airlock was fully pressurized again. The man was still watching them, from the observation chamber now. Another man entered the room behind him with an air of authority, so the first one opened the next door for him. “Greetings, Team Matic. My name is Anatol Klugman.”

“No, it isn’t,” Mateo said, being unable to stop himself.

The man winced. “I may not have been born with the name, but I earned it.”

“Forgive him,” Leona mediated. “It’s just that we know the man who serves as the namesake for your warship. You’re obviously not him, it’s just a little jarring to hear.”

“Ah, yes.” Fake!Anatol nodded. “It’s easy to forget that the ship was named after a man. I am named after the ship. And when I retire, a new Anatol will be selected to take my place. There are others like me even now.”

“Are you connected to your vessel?” Ramses asked him, fascinated. “Do you control it with your mind?”

Fake!Anatol considered the words. “It’s more like I instruct it with my mind. The crew has to carry out the orders, and could theoretically refuse them. Right now, my second has the reins. The human brain cannot handle the interface for too long, so the link changes hands regularly.” His gaze shifted to Romana. “I’m guessing that you’re here in search of your sister? I can take you to her.”

“That is not my sister,” Romana said, her blood boiling. “She is an impostor.”

“Oh. She said her name was Miracle Brighton.”

“Oh, well that’s her name,” Mateo explained, “but she stole my daughter’s body. Well, she stole one of them. The extra one.”

Fake!Anatol lifted his chin as he absorbed the information. “I see. We might be able to help with that. We are...pretty good at cloning here.” That was how this army began. Omega Strong cloned himself thousands of times, but he didn’t use the exact same code. Each clone was slightly different than the one before it. Despite ultimately being born of a single source, the population was almost as diverse as any other of comparable magnitude, thanks to this intentional genetic drift. That was a long time ago. This man would be a descendant of the original generation, now many generations removed.

“It wasn’t technically theft,” Romana explained, “but more of a con. She has legal claim to that substrate. If we were to move her to a different one, she would have to consent.”

“If she does, we can arrange that,” Fake!Anatol offered. “Do you still want me to take you to her?”

“Yes, please,” Mateo confirmed.

They followed him down the corridors until they reached a common area of couches, tables, and other basic amenities, like you would find in a hipster apartment complex. Fake!Anatol stopped when he noticed Miracle sitting in a comfy chair with a good book, and a cup of tea. She, of course, knew when they would be returning to the timestream, so she was not surprised to see them. She dogeared the page she was on, and snapped it shut. “Thank you all for coming. And thank you, Mister Klugman, for bringing them to me. You can go now.”

Fake!Anatol looked awkwardly at the team, not sure if he should do what she said, or accept their guidance, or do whatever the hell he wanted.

“Please, sir, could you show me your neural interface?” Ramses requested. “I would much like to learn about it, if at all possible. This conversation is going to become uncomfortable, and I don’t need to be here.”

Romana stepped forward, between the team and the antagonist after Ramses and Fake!Anatol departed. “Thank you for not using my name,” she said to her doppelgänger

“I prefer mine.”

“I wouldn’t,” Romana mumbled.

“What was that?”

“I am as appreciative as my daughter,” Mateo said, also now stepping forward. “We would like to ask you, what is your plan here? What do you think we’re going to do for you?”

“You’re going to find a way to kill the unkillable,” Miracle answered plainly.

“If you want him dead, why don’t you just do it? You, Pacey, and Octavia seem intelligent enough. Why are you trying to make us do your dirty work?”

Miracle bit her lip.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Olimpia posed. “She thinks we’re untouchable. If his sycophants come after us for it, not only will it keep their hands clean, but she thinks we’ll survive it anyway...because we always do.”

“Or she’s counting on us not surviving this time,” Marie countered. “Because if the Exin loyalists interrogate us, we’ll be able to link her to it.”

“Lots of people know I’m here,” Miracle argued. “Word will get out that I’m involved, I don’t care.”

Mateo shook his head. “Word might get out that a woman who looks like Romana, and goes by the ridiculously made-up name of Miracle, is involved. Not very strong evidence that it has anything to do with Pacey. I’m not even sure if anyone besides us, and his sycophants, knows that he exists. We’re the only ones who have interacted with him, to our knowledge. He’s Snuffleupagus.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Miracle said.

Their armbands beeped at the same time, alerting them that their slingdrives had charged up to Orange. “We won’t do what you ask,” she contended. “We won’t kill him, and we will no longer interfere with these people’s lives unless we decide that it’s necessary, and we will also decide when that is, and what that means.”

“Those things can’t save you,” Miracle claimed. “We’re like Arcadia Preston. We can just keep bringing you back here. You have to remember that Pacey is the one who invented the—what do you call it—slingdrive technology, not your precious little Gyppo.”

Mateo tensed up, and leaned in closer. “Do not..ever say that.”

“Sorry, that was too far, I’m just trying to remind you that you took quintessence from Pacey. He has every right to dictate what you do with it.”

She wasn’t getting it. It was irrelevant how long they had to wait to sling again. This was a perfect example of you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. If she kept dropping them here, they would keep escaping, or just doing nothing. Even if their slingdrives weren’t ready to go again, they didn’t have to do anything they didn’t want to. She only had the power to move them places, not control their actions. If she could do that, why would she need them at all? “It doesn’t matter, we’re not doing it,” Angela reiterated.

Miracle finally stood. She sighed. “Miss Nieman is the youngest in your group, and for that reason, she will be spared. The Oaksent doesn’t see her as a threat, and I think he may have a little thing for her. He has instructed his minions to spare her, should they encounter Team Matic, and find a way to end the rest of you without hurting her. If you don’t kill him, Romana will be the one to do it, if you get my meaning. She won’t be safe anymore. She will be the primary target.”

Leona smiled.

Miracle was confused. “What? What just happened? Why are you so excited?”

The others weren’t excited, it was just Leona. She reached out, and took hold of both of Miracle’s wrists. She instructed her nanites to construct handcuffs around them. “You just gave me permission to remove you from that substrate.”

“How’s that now?” Miracle questioned.

“You just admitted to making plans to commit a crime using a substrate that will implicate a different individual of said crime. That gives me everything I need to get you out of it, and reclaim the substrate to protect the world from you who would abuse her power in it.”

“I was just speaking in hypotheticals, I didn’t say anything,” Miracle insisted. “Plus, I was so vague.”

“We all heard what we heard, and I’m sure that camera caught it too.” Leona pointed up at the security cam. “Besides, at worst, it places us in a stalemate. You can’t actually commit the crime any more than you can admit to the conspiracy of it. If you go through with the plan, we’ll show that footage to the Exins. They have similar cloning laws internally. Harsher ones, in fact. Your safest course of action is to leave that body, and move on with your life without it. Romana is damaged goods.”

Miracle was flustered. She backed up a little, and tried to pull the cuffs apart through brute force. “I have an exit strategy. These can’t keep me here.”

“We can track you wherever you go. Their friends can, anyway,” Leona added, referring to the nanites that she was still using herself.

Their armbands beeped. They were now in the Yellow.

“Not if I figure out how to get them off first!” Miracle shouted. A black hole appeared underneath her feet, and she fell right through it.

“What if she does it?” Angela asked. “What if she just goes off to kill Bronach before we have the chance to find her, and remove her from that substrate?”

“She doesn’t know how,” Leona believed. “She was bluffing entirely. She called him unkillable, because they also need us to find the killswitch that will prevent him from coming back to life, however exactly he does it. We’re known for finding loopholes, and Team Pacey is betting on us finding this one too. There’s more than one reason they chose us.”

“What do we do?” Mateo asked her.

“Today, we rest. I don’t think we’re gonna be able to sling again until next year.”

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Microstory 2496: Spydome Network

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This is one of those long-term domes, where you can’t quite get the full experience unless you immerse yourself in the setting, and really forget about your old life. You have to shed your past, and become your character, or you’re playing someone else’s game. The premise is that you are a member of a spy agency in one of eleven nations. Your task is to complete missions for your agency, according to whatever your superiors demand of you. Like I said, this is long-term, so you won’t just instantly become a spy. You will start as a trainee, and work your way up. Or you won’t. There’s every chance that you’ll fail. You have to pass the physical and written exams. I’m pretty sure that they’re easier to take than the real ones on Earth, but I’ve never been a real spy before, so I don’t really know. How well you do is entirely up to your own, natural skills. There is no way to know how far any other player gets, because we’re not technically meant to out ourselves to each other, but my boss may be another visitor. I really don’t know. It really doesn’t matter. What you do is up to you as well. Even though you have superiors, you are not a robot, and you are capable of making your own decisions. If you just wanna lounge about your apartment all day everyday, you’ll probably get fired for that, but you won’t get killed. Unless you’ve done enough spying to put you in danger. You’ll probably only get killed if you go out in the field, or as I was saying, if you’re attacked at home by an enemy. Each nation exists under its own dome, and its backstory is as rich and complex as they are in real life. The relationships between these fictional countries are complicated, and ever-changing. If you were to leave and come back 100 years from now, I’m sure alliances will have shifted. One of them might have been blown up in a nuclear war; I dunno. I couldn’t tell you exactly how far the program will let you take this, but it seems like a pretty decent free-for-all. Each might be one of the eleven most heavily populated domes on the planet, as most don’t need to feel quite as lived in as somewhere in the network. But here, you can go anywhere within your bounds, and if you secure a passport to another country, you can go there too. It’s a really interesting experience, and I’ve only been doing it for about a year and a half at this point. Obviously, I’m writing this anonymously, because there’s no reason a competing agency couldn’t use this information against my own. The android intelligences might not understand where a visitor spy got their intel if it came from an out-of-universe source, but they might act on it anyway. There’s a lot you can learn about the countries, and international affairs, from the comfort of your tablet using the prospectus, but to really grasp what it’s like to live here, you’ll have to sign up, and integrate yourself into this new society. You choose your own adventure. I don’t know the psychological ramifications of starting a new life that could potentially be as long as a standard lifetime, but perhaps that’s part of what they’re studying here. I’m sure the results will be fascinating.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 23, 2505

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Mateo’s nanites were just about done healing him. They prioritized the most life-threatening injuries first before moving on to the less serious damage. So a few cuts and bruises remained, and they hadn’t done anything for the pain yet. Even so, he could now stand up, and get a look around. Octavia still didn’t look concerned, so maybe this was some kind of refuge.

“We need to get moving,” she warned. “I let you recover, but it’s not safe here.”

“Is it safe anywhere?” he asked as he was following her along the stream.

“No,” she conceded. “The horde that was chasing after us can’t follow. Free from oversight, they’ve formed alliances, and divided the land into territories. We’re kind of on a border, so that offers us a little protection, but someone will eventually grow brave enough to cross the line—or hungry enough.”

What did you mean, no oversight?”

“This isn’t the real Castlebourne,” Octavia began to explain. “I don’t know exactly what it is, like an alternate reality, or something, but none of the staff is here. I don’t know who runs it—if it’s Pacey on his own, or if he’s working with someone else—but they don’t keep watch over the safeguards. These monsters are more vicious than they’re supposed to be.”

“How long have you been here?”

“The Vellani Ambassador rescued me and a bunch of others from Ex-486 in 2498. I wasn’t there long before I started hearing how worried the crew was about your whereabouts. I don’t know what they thought was wrong, but they were afraid that something had happened to you. So I agreed to investigate while they continued on with their missions.”

“Well, you found it. You found us.”

“Now, I have,” she agreed. “I found Pacey first, though, and he stuffed me in here so I wouldn’t interfere with his business. I’ve been running for my life ever since.”

“What happens if you die here?” he pressed.

“Nothing good,” she answered simply. “My body isn’t like yours, so I’ve been avoiding everyone. There are some buildings; particularly houses. They’re mostly haunted, but the ghosts have rules, and if you learn them, you can stay safe for a while.” She sighed. “But I think you can help end the madness forever.”

“How’s that?”

She looked around with a face full of paranoia and fatigue. “We’re pretty close to one side of this dome, and I can navigate us there. Unfortunately, once we get there, we’re going to have to walk halfway around the perimeter to reach the exit.”

“There should be more exits than that.”

“Like I said, it’s not the real Castlebourne. Pacey made modifications. There is a way out, but I can’t get through it with you.”

“It takes two to open the door, or something?”

“No, it takes an elite.”

“I’m an elite?”

“Yeah, of course you are. You were in Hrockas’ inner circle, and he hardwired contingencies into the software that should grant you access to any area at any time. The way he sees it, the planet is as much yours as it is his because of how much you contributed to its development. I don’t think that Pacey could have erased all those privileges without breaking the systems entirely. He would have had to reprogram everything from scratch. I’m sure he’s technically capable of doing that, but he’s kind of old school, so doesn’t like AI all that much. He likes to be hands-on, so he deliberately limits the tools in his toolbox.”

“So I can unlock the door, and we can both walk through?”

“That’s the idea.”

“Does he not know that?”

“I don’t know how much he knows about what I know.”

“It could be a trial,” Mateo put forth. “He may want us to escape. Some antagonists want us to stay out of their way, but others want us to stop them, like Thanos is with the Avengers.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“And you can’t teleport, right? Because I can’t. I tried while I was running once I remembered that I should be able to.”

Octavia shook her head. “I don’t have any powers at all. I lost that when I went back in time as September, and created a new timeline. I don’t like to talk about it, but it sets me apart from the other Paiges.”

“You don’t have to,” he assured her. “How dangerous is the border?”

She bobbled her head. “It has its advantages, and disadvantages. The monsters don’t know that they’re in a dome. If you showed one of them the wall, and they were the kind who could talk, they would probably just say, it doesn’t look like anything to me. They’re programmed to stop several meters before it, but they patrol that border, because they can still feel that there’s something weird about it. You’re safe beyond their reach, but there aren’t any resources there. No freshwater, no edible plants. You can take breaks, but you can’t stay.”

“Then let’s grab some supplies along the way. Now you can carry twice as much as before, and I don’t eat much.”

“Some of your powers and abilities are available to you, as you discovered when you jumped off the cliff and survived, but not all of them. If you aren’t hungry already, you will be soon. We need to get to that exit.”

“You seem to know a lot about it; about me.”

“You were part of my investigation,” she clarified. “I had to know who I was looking for. A lot has changed since I last saw you, many iterations of Paige ago.”

“Yeah.”

After nightfall, they finally managed to reach the border. She was right, there was a narrow open space that seemed to circle around the border. The problem was that this meant walking an additional 130 kilometers. Mateo didn’t know how his pattern worked in here. Even if he woke up right at midnight central, there would not be enough time for them to cross that distance before the end of the day. Paige would have to wait a whole year for him to come back, and then they still wouldn’t be able to make it in under 24 hours. Perhaps this plan wasn’t so perfect. There had to be a closer exit, perhaps hidden behind a false wall, or a hologram. As they were sliding their hands along what felt like glass or metal, they started hearing a commotion behind them. They turned around to find a new horde of monsters, about the same size as the one from before. But then more began to appear on the ends, and it eventually felt more like ten times that size. They were just standing there, staring at the two of them menacingly.

Paige’s watch beeped. “Oh, no.”

“What does that mean? Don’t tell me the worst monster comes out at a certain time.”

“No. It’s an hour until midnight central. You’re about to disappear for a year. This was stupid, we should have run straight through the center to the door. Now we’re screwed.”

“Don’t be so sure. Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Mateo asked her. “In that clearing over there.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“If I recall correctly, it’s pretty maneuverable.”

“It’s pretty deadly.”

In the 1980s, a horror movie came out that would become a cult classic decades later. It was simply called Seatbelt Killer. Mateo couldn’t remember the exact backstory, but the villain’s origins involved his seatbelt getting stuck while his wife was being violated outside in front of him. He ended up turning the car on, and running over one of the rapists, but when the husband turned to get the other one, the second rapist threw his wife in front of the car, leading him to hitting her instead. The rapist then ran off, eventually getting trapped between the car and a cliff. With nothing left to live for, the husband drove right into him, and over the edge, where they both died. Then he and the car came back to life as a ghost, and started killing the protagonists over the course of the movie. The premise was that he literally couldn’t get out of his car anymore, but you couldn’t escape by going inside, because as a ghost car, it could fit through doorways, down hallways, and even up the stairs. You would think that he would kill rapists, but because he accidentally killed his own wife, the ghost could now only kill rape survivors. There was an implication that he didn’t want to do this, but was...driven to, so to speak. Due to the sensitive nature of the film, they never gave the car a name, but it was entirely fictional. The propmasters apparently manufactured the models from scratch so they wouldn’t have any sort of legal or reputational issues to contend with. But whatever it was, it was here, and Mateo wanted to steal it.

“Mateo...” Octavia began uncomfortably. “I can’t go near that thing.”

He knew what she meant right away, and if she was willing to talk to him about it, this wasn’t the time. “Have you seen the movie?”

“No, but I know the premise, which means I know that I qualify as a target.”

“The Final Girl survives by getting in through the passenger side window, and taking the steering wheel. She didn’t just take control of it, she literally removed it.”

“I’m guessing it wasn’t easy.”

“It’ll be easier for us. She was alone. You have me.”

“But if we take off the steering wheel, we won’t be able to drive either.”

“His weapon is the car itself, his hands are only his means of controlling that. If we get inside, I can control where the car goes, and he can’t hurt you while you’re in the back. We’re not gonna remove the wheel, because unlike the girl in the movie, we need to use it.”

“It sounds risky.”

“It always is. It’s your decision, though. I understand that I don’t understand. But I can tell you that I will protect you, and I’m a damn good driver.”

“Okay. We better come up with a plan fast, because we’re running out of time. Even if you drive as fast as possible, it will take nearly the full hour to get there.”

Mateo nodded, then started to shake his head. “We’re not going around the perimeter. We’re going straight through.”

They hatched their plan, though it wasn’t all that complicated. Octavia came up with the idea to use herself as bait for the Seatbelt Killer, but Mateo wasn’t getting off easy. He was bait as well. While most of the monsters in this dome wanted to kill both or either of them, only a few of them were exclusively attracted to Octavia, based on her profile. They would use this to their advantage. Mateo would lure all of the others away, so Octavia was only contending with one of them. Once it was just her and the car, she would hop over the boundary, back to the safety of the perimeter. This would give her a respite that the characters in the original movie never had. From there, with the driver essentially frozen in place, she could simply climb onto the hood, and slip through the open window. Mateo never saw her accomplish this, but it evidently worked. She drove up next to him while the horde was chasing him through the woods. He dove in the back, and she sped up so fast that no one else was able to keep up.

“We need to get you up front so you can do the steering!” she shouted. She was navigating the terrain pretty well, but still struggling against the driver. He was bound to his seat, but not entirely helpless there. He was still trying to peel her arms away, just as he had the girl in the film. With a bit of ingenuity, this heroine had managed to pry the wheel off of its place, which stole his power from him, and allowed her to escape back through the window. A mid-credits scene suggested that he was about to be successful in finding a workaround by rigging a tire pressure gauge as an ad hoc steering wheel, which may have played out in a sequel, but it was never made. Mateo was a driver, so he watched movies about drivers, even bad ones, and sometimes he read about them too. There was a theory that made the rounds on the message boards that this sequel would have ended with the Final Girl also managing to get in the car, but solving the problem by finally freeing the killer from his eternal seatbelt. Could it be true? The creator never responded to these rumors, but an unverified snippet of the sequel’s script appeared to support the lore. Whether that was how it would have worked in the movies was not the question, though. The question was...was the android who was programmed to believe he was the Seatbelt Killer coded with this solution, or would it only make things worse?

“Do you have a knife?” Mateo asked her. Now that he was inside, he could hold the killer’s arms back, but the guy was really strong. They might not be able to keep him at bay for the duration of the drive.

“What?”

“A pocket knife. Scissors. Anything!”

“No, I don’t have anything like that!” Octavia yelled back. “I didn’t know I was gonna be trapped in the woods for seven years!”

“I need something sharp,” he muttered. Just then, a glow started to form in his right hand. He let go of the killer’s arm to look at it in wonder. The glow consolidated, and began to take shape. Before too long, it was in the form of a knife. And he could feel it in his palm. Somehow, despite Pacey’s restrictions, Mateo’s weird telekinetic hologram powers were back, at least in this one instance. Not taking any chances that it wouldn’t last, Mateo slipped the blade underneath the belt, and with one slice, ripped it right open.

The killer stopped struggling. For a moment, he just sat there in awe. Then he pulled the strap through the loop, opened the door, and tumbled out. Octavia sat there in shock, not even paying attention to where they were going, which was all right, because they were in an open area now, and slowing down quickly.

“Okay. I’ll take it from here.” Mateo climbed over the headrest, and situated himself in the driver’s seat. Then he took off again, free from resistance or distractions.

Now that they were clear of the monsters, their primary struggle was against the clock. In the movie, the car could phase through objects, or even squeeze itself through like a bus out of Harry Potter. That wasn’t possible in the real world, so Mateo just had to negotiate the trees and other obstacles. He kept going though, relying on his great skills, which had only been enhanced during his stint in the Underburg dome. The clock was ticking as they were approaching the part of the wall where Octavia said there was a door. He barreled through the treeline, and onto the perimeter again, almost all the way on the other side of the dome. New monsters were upon them now, but were still bound by that imaginary line.

“How do I open this?” Mateo asked. Before Octavia could answer, he placed a hand on the handle, and heard a buzzing sound. “Hm. Was that it?” He opened it.

Octavia breathed a sigh of relief as her watch was counting down. “Finally.” Four, three, two, one.

Mateo blinked, and it was 2506.

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