Microstory 2510: Foundation Director

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Yeah, I think I should take a little bit of credit. I didn’t come up with the idea of the Foundation, but I definitely pointed Landis in the right direction. I suppose that’s why they call me The Director now. I was the first person he told when it happened. He actually gave me the whole story, and I’ve been sworn to secrecy for a lot of it. So let me start at the beginning of this journey. We were goofing off in our apartment, as we did all the time. He moved in after his girlfriend dumped him, and neither of us could afford something big or fancy. I slept on the pullout couch that didn’t pull out, because it was totally broken. Anyway, he was always so irresponsible, and on this day, he had left, like, a big knife on the counter, hanging over the sink. I tripped, instinctually tried to reach out for something to keep from falling, and ended up grabbing that knife on the wrong end. Had it been sitting right on the counter, I think I would have been okay, but the fact that it was hanging over the edge meant that I gripped it, so the blade dug deep into my palm. Well, he was freaking out, hyperventilating, and wishing that it would heal. Of course, you know how this story ends. It worked! I was healed. I won’t go into the gory details, but we spent the rest of the day testing it out, and pushing the boundaries. We made some mistakes. Like, we didn’t know right away that it was his breath where the magic was coming from. But as you can see, I’m okay now. We have all the answers. As I said, I didn’t come up with the idea of making this whole organization, but I did say that he could make money. I knew there would be people who would pay their entire life savings for a cure, and for some people in this world, that meant a lot of money. I’m the one who did the research, and found his first real guinea pig, who ended up paying a buttload of cash for it. That’s how Landis and I were able to buy the hotel, and get this whole thing officially started. That’s right, I’m part owner of the hotel. I don’t really do anything to keep it running, so my title is a bit of a misnomer. We hired a lot of great people to do all the work for us, but the staff asks me for approval to make changes and stuff, because Landis obviously doesn’t have time for any of that. I’m not this big, smart businessman, but I do speak for Landis in this regard. You might never have heard of me, and it might not be much, but that’s how I contribute to the cause.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 28, 2398

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There’s a knock at the door. No one has the chance to even go over to answer it before it opens. A large and looming man comes down the hallway. His facial expression keeps changing from happy to irritated, like he can’t decide which one he feels. Vearden jumps up, and places himself between the man and his friends. Seeing this, the man forces himself to hold a smile. “I’m glad that my daughter found someone like you.”

Arcadia reaches behind the couch cushion and pulls out the emergency knife. Without any warning, she flings it at the body that her father is now wearing. It lands right in his heart, where it belongs.

Erlendr looks down at it. “This body will die soon, but we will find another.” He reaches both arms out like a stereotypical Frankenstein monster.

Arcadia feels a pulsing energy in her head. He’s trying to break into her brain, which would normally be fine, because she can hold the door closed, but her friends are not like her. She’s particularly worried about her beau, Vearden. She’s always struggled with empathizing with other people. She’s always had her own feelings—she’s not a sociopath—but she’s only recently figured out how to care about others. Well, she’s learned how to truly care about them, instead of just convincing herself that she does. If she doesn’t help combat the psychic intrusion for the other people in this room, though, it will prove that she didn’t learn anything. She really is trying to be a better person. Vearden is helping her with it. He’s not directly teaching her what it takes; she’s smart enough to understand academically. She just needs to be reminded everyday that it is possible for someone to love her. But that love is not what’s going to save them now. It’s her love for them that will. She concentrates on putting up barriers to protect them.

Erlendr smirks. “You may protect one or two, but you can’t keep me out of all of their minds.” He tips backwards, and falls over. He’s not dead yet, just unable to withstand his own weight.

She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t protect all of them, like he said. Vearden appears to be safe, she created a psychic barrier to keep Erlendr—as well as Meredarchos, most likely, judging by the fact that he used the word we to describe himself—out of him. Bridgette and Heath, on the other hand, are not necessarily safe. What did they do to them, though? The stranger’s body is dying anyway, which means that the psychic stowaways can’t maintain control over them, so did they just want information, or what?

Heath suddenly breaks out of a stupor, and gathers his bearings. He looks around, quickly settling on the dying man on the floor. “Master, no!” He runs over, and dives down to inspect the wound. “No, it’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. Just hold on. He takes off his own shirt to wrap around the knife, and keep pressure on the wound.”

“What are you doing?” Vearden questions.

“Somebody help!” Heath cries. “We can’t let him die!”

“Not only can we let him die,” Bridgette contends, “but we have to make sure it happens. Every possible vessel for his twisted soul is a threat.” She runs over too, but not to help. She jerks the knife out of the man’s chest, and then drives it into his chin, all the way through to his brain.

“No!” Heath elbows her in the face, knocking her to her back.

Vearden runs over and tries to break them apart, but they just keep fighting each other. They’re relentless. “Stop! Just stop!” It’s useless. Bridgette is as dedicated to destroying all of Meredarchos’ followers as Heath is to protecting his master. “Little help here?” Vearden asks Arcadia.

“I’m trying to help,” Arcadia explains. “I’m trying to clean their minds of whatever he infected them with.” It’s not working. He created his own barrier to prevent that very thing. He’s a strong psychic, that’s for sure...leagues beyond better than Erlendr. Combined, they’re the greatest threat she’s ever encountered. They have to be stopped, and saving these two people isn’t going to help. They can’t be saved anyway, and if it’s between preserving their lives, or killing the infection before it can spread, that’s what she’s going to do. They can at least die with a little dignity, though. The knife is too messy and slow. One shot to the head is the only good option.

“Is it working?” Vearden asks, doing his damned best to hold the fighters apart.

“No,” Arcadia replies plainly. She goes to retrieve the gun from the safe.

“Arcadia!” Vearden shouts at her. “Arcadia! What are you doing! No, no, no, no no! Ow! NO! Arcadia, come back! They just stabbed each other!”

Arcadia runs back into the common area to find both Heath and Bridgette on the floor, bleeding. “What happened?”

“Heath remembered the knife. He took it out, and sliced my arm. Then he stabbed Bridgette in the heart, so she took it out and tried to do the same. He dodged, so it landed in his stomach. I think he’s still alive.”

Arcadia checks them both for pulses. “They’re both alive, but barely.”

“We have to help them,” Vearden pleads.

“If we do, they’ll just go back to killing each other, and anyone else who gets in their way.”

“So we just let them die?”

“They’re like zombies, V; They can’t be cured.”

Vearden seethes. “I refuse to accept that.” He takes out his phone, and calls Mateo. “Matt? I need a doctor at the condo right now. They’re gonna die.”

Fifteen seconds later, Mateo appears in the room, holding onto a woman that Arcadia presumes to be a doctor. “What just happened?” she asks, confused.

“It doesn’t matter,” Vearden tells her. “Just save them.”

She kneels down to get to work. “We’re going to have to triage,” she says after seeing how far gone Bridgette is.

“Matt?” Vearden asks.

Mateo disappears and returns with a second doctor so he can focus on Heath. While they’re doing that, Mateo feels like the right thing to do is to bring Marie here. They’re struggling, but they’re still married, and still in love. She’s seen a lot of death in her day, so she’s crying and pleading, but she doesn’t interfere with the medical professionals’ work.

The doctor who was trying to save Bridgette sighs. “I’m sorry, she’s gone. Time of death thirteen-oh-nine.”

Marie can see that Heath is on his way out too. He’s not going to last much longer unless they take drastic measures. She starts thinking about her options. Arcadia can’t quite read her thoughts, but she can sense what’s happening in there. Finally, she thinks she has it. “Mateo, where is your knife?”

“What knife?” Mateo asks.

“The one that can duplicate things,” Marie clarifies.

“If the doctor needs any more equipment, I’ll be happy to retrieve it for them.”

“I’m not talking about equipment,” Marie says. “I’m talking about Heath. Duplicate him.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Vearden questions.

“It doesn’t work on people, Marie,” Mateo claims.

“Have you ever tried?”

“Have I ever stabbed someone to see if they die while a duplicate of them appears next to them? No, I guess I haven’t, but that’s crazy!”

“Doctor, what are the chances that he lives?” Marie asks him.

The doctor looks up. “They’re very low.”’

“There.” Marie starts talking with her hands. “You can stab him, a second one will appear next to him, and the first one will die anyway. The second one, however, will be good as new, right; that’s how it works? Now we have nothing to lose.”

“I’ll direct you to my earlier comment about that being crazy.”

“I would do it myself,” Marie argues, “but evidently you’re the only one with the literal magic touch, so would you please just try?”

“There’s a low chance of him surviving,” Vearden reasons, having basically caught up with what they’re talking about. “That’s not zero. But if you’re method of saving him requires stabbing him again, those chances drop much lower, I’m sure.”

Marie ignores him. “Please,” she begs Mateo.

“I don’t know what you’re going on about,” the doctor begins, “but if you plan on stabbing our patient, then we’re out.” They both clearly work for the government, but they haven’t been told everything.

Mateo frowns. “I can’t be blamed for the consequences.” He disappears and returns thirty seconds later, holding the knife.

“Maybe you should test it on her first,” Vearden suggests.

“Or maybe he shouldn’t do it at all,” Arcadia warns. “They’re both infected. They pose a risk to us all, especially anyone here without the slightest psychic ability.”

“Noted,” Mateo says, but it’s hard to tell how genuine he’s being. He pauses to think about it, but has to make a decision quickly, because if it doesn’t work for Bridgette, it definitely won’t work for Heath if he waits too long. He closes his eyes, and stabs her. Nothing happens. “I really don’t think this is gonna work, Marie.”

Marie grabs the television remote, and hands it to him. “Let’s see if it’s you or the knife, or just because she’s too far gone.”

Mateo sets the remote on the floor and stabs it with no hesitation. It breaks apart, but a second one pops out of the aether, and lands right next to it. “She’s either too dead, or too a human being.”

“If you stab him,” the other doctor warns, “we’re gone.”

“The door is that way.” Once they’ve left, Mateo crosses his fingers, and stabs Heath as well. Heath lurches and gasps, and his muscles relax more than they already were. For a few seconds, nothing else happens. Then a light appears out of nowhere and grows until it’s in the vague shape of a person. It recedes quickly, leaving a naked Heath lying next to his former self.

“Oh my God, it actually worked,” Vearden muses. Physically, yes, it did. Mentally, it didn’t work at all.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 12, 2398

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Kivi enters the lab to find Ramses at his desk, listlessly scraping the blade of a pocket knife back and forth along the back of his hand as if trying to sharpen it. He doesn’t stop when she approaches, he’s just staring at the screensaver on his computer. Half a container of fruit is teetering on the edge. “You’re gonna hurt yourself.”

“What? How?” He doesn’t look at her. He’s following the pattern on the screen.

She uses her eyes to indicate the knife, but has to say it out loud, “the blade.”

“Oh, it’s incredibly dull. It’s just self-soothing behavior.”

“Mateo and Leona are gonna be fine. They checked in with us, they’ll be back through the portal later.”

“I know, but it’s my fault they’re there.”

“We didn’t get much information,” Kivi begins, “but it sounds like they would not have been able to get through the bubble without going on that detour first. Sounds to me like it was fate.”

“I don’t believe in fate. You can’t once you’ve been through what we have. We’ve seen the people in charge of reality. They’re just men. Some are even children.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that they’re going to be okay. They’re even bringing back Erlendr, a.k.a. your real body. You’re gonna be back to your old self.”

Ramses just nods.

“Talk to me, Ram.”

“What are we doing here? What are we trying to accomplish?”

“I dunno, what were you working on?”

“Before we found out where Mateo and Leona had gone off to? I was trying to track their location.”

“Is there anything else that needs to be done?”

“That’s my point. We’ve been so focused on getting ourselves back to the main sequence, and reuniting with temporal energy, that we haven’t asked ourselves why. Why bother? Trina was born in this reality. Then she went to another, and had a full life. She lived, she died, and by all accounts, she was happy. The Matics have gotten themselves away from the powers that be. Now that that’s all over, any mess we get ourselves into is our own fault. The harder we push, the harder time pushes back. So let’s give up. Let’s just...be. Sounds easier.”

Kivi sighs. “You can’t do that, Ramses. You have to get out of this reality.”

“Why? What does it matter?”

She sighs again, harder this time. She’s wondered whether she should say anything about this since she first came into existence, and now she may have no choice. Like he said, they were focused on escaping, maybe they would never have to know, but if he’s doubting that objective... “I am the Third Rail Kivi. I can exist in this reality, and this reality alone. I can feel the day that I die, because it is the same day that this reality collapses. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but I know that it’s coming up. And I’m afraid that if you’re still here when that happens, you’ll die too.”

Only now does Ramses look away from his computer, and into Kivi’s eyes, which he studies. He’s not trying to see if she’s lying, but gauging how sure she is, in case she may be wrong about her assumptions. “Okay, then. I better get back to work.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 16, 2398

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Finland. That’s where they want to go. Mateo doesn’t remember a whole lot from school, but he does recall a classmate of his once getting into an argument with their math teacher. The teacher claimed that the shortest distance between two points is a line, and she illustrated this using a geographical map. The student argued that it didn’t matter if the line was the shortest, because it wasn’t the fastest. Going that direction meant trudging through thick brush, and over a lake or two. It meant crossing straight through streets, and climbing over buildings. The fastest route was to get on the freeway, pass the destination just a little until the next exit, and cut through the city. The teacher insisted that this wasn’t what she was trying to teach, and he contended that she should be. Mateo recalls one quote quite clearly when his classmate said, “if what you teach us can’t be applied to the real world, then why are you trying to teach us anything at all?” He failed the assignment, and came this close to flunking out of the class.

To get back home, their shortest route would take them pretty much directly southward until hitting mainland Norway. There they could resupply, repair The Olimpia to its former glory, and contact their friends back in Kansas City with reliable cell service. They can’t do that, though, because in addition to it being the most direct route for them, it simultaneously creates the shortest distance between the island of Svalbard and the United States government, who they know they can’t trust. To protect Amir, and all the locals of Vertegen, they have to take the scenic route. Fortunately, they have a way to create a distraction in the form of Russia.

The Republican Federation of Russia bears an even more tumultuous history here than its counterpart in the main sequence. It has been on the sidelines of nearly every major world war since the first one. Funny enough, it doesn’t seem to experience much direct conflict with other states. It’s just been known to wait until the hostilities between two or more parties begin, and then choose a side. Some xenophobes might chalk this up to them making their choice randomly. A number of political cartoons, comedy sketches, and modern memes feature a blindfolded Russian leader throwing darts towards a map, or some variation therein. The reality is that Russia always chooses to back the belligerents whose victory would spell some kind of success for Russia. Russia chooses Russia is a slogan from a certain social awareness organization that is always trying to help people understand this.

The Russian government holds no convictions, and has no strong feelings about any specific faction. They are probably the least religious nation in the world—or maybe just when accounting for its sheer mass. The presidents have run their nation like a business, accepting benefits to their economy wherever they can find it, be it with a neighbor, a former enemy, or even a terrorist sect. At the moment, the United States is its biggest competitor, because while citizens of the U.S. would deny, deny, deny, their social practices are not without their similarities. They would never work with terrorists, but freedom fighters are just fine, and the difference between the two can often be found only in the nuance of personal perspective. So while Mateo labeled Russia the enemy, they are in fact more like a rival, and the Olimpia’s presence within their territory is no more dangerous than meeting an industry colleague for coffee in the cafeteria on the first floor of their office building.

Still, as stated, this is a distraction. If the team is spotted making their way through the White Sea, this will be all that Senator Honeycutt—and anyone else involved in all this—will focus on. They won’t even consider the possibility that they were once on Svalbard, or make any attempts to retrace their steps at all. It’s been a long journey, but thanks to Mateo’s new knife, not as long as it could have been. They’ve not had to stay on the surface of the water for the whole trip. Short bursts. They can stay in the air for a limited amount of time, which is what has allowed them to cross the distance as fast as they have so far, but they’re running out of power, and they need a new tactic. Leona may have come with the solution. “Well, if you have this thing, why can’t you just replace the solar panels altogether?” Solar power has been providing them enough energy to fly for a little bit, but they use that energy faster than it can come in, which is why they always have to drop back down to the water.

“I don’t know how to work this knife,” Mateo explains. I can’t get it to replace the entire panel. I can either replace part of the framing, or an individual...what did you call them?”

“Tiles,” Ramses helps. “Each time he stabs a panel, it only destroys that specific tile, and spits out a new one. I can’t figure out why efficiency is so low. It could be one or more of the tiles, but which ones?”

Leona takes the knife from Mateo, and examines it. Before anyone can stop her, she downs the rest of her water, sets the cub back on the counter, and tries to stab it. Nothing happens. “What did I do wrong?”

“You accidentally aren’t your husband, Mateo,” Angela says.

“What?”

“Only he can use it. We’ve both tried.”

“Well, I suppose I had to try too, given our connection, and the fact that some of that Existence water is still swimming through my veins.”

“Well, that was my favorite cup,” Angela laments.

“Then you shouldn’t have let me use it.”

Mateo chuckles once. He takes the knife back, and stabs the mangled cup himself, which generates a pristine replacement.

“That doesn’t make any sense!” Leona shouts. “Okay, it makes a new one; it’s quantum duplication, whatever. But why does it make an unbroken one? It goes back in time to before it was damaged? How far back in time? How much damage does it correct? What if there was a dent in it that had been there for twenty years?”

“These are all questions that none of us can answer,” Ramses tells her.

“Did you try asking the Rakripa where they got it, and what they thought of it?”

“Yes,” Angela says, looking suddenly tired. “I asked them a lot of questions. Communication was difficult, and I eventually learned that it wasn’t only because our languages aren’t mutually intelligible. They were cagey. They were nice...but they didn’t want us to stick around. So we didn’t.”

Leona sighs. “Where is that lantern thing you were talking about?”

Ramses goes back down to engineering to retrieve it. “I’ve been all over this thing. I don’t think anything else needs to be replaced. What we need is power.”

“And I’m going to get it for you,” Leona says. She sets the lantern on the counter, and arranges her husband in front of it. She adjusts his arms and hands like a sexy golf instructor, or a pottery ghost. “Okay. Go for it.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 12, 2398

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Apparently, the radio tower they were hoping could put them in contact with someone who might be able to help them is more of a decorative piece. It worked at one point, but the locals never used it, and didn’t maintain it through storm after storm. Now it’s so damaged that Ramses probably couldn’t cobble together a fix, even with parts from The Olimpia, or the other way around. He didn’t really even want to try. The more they thought about it, the riskier the idea felt. They don’t have any allies out there, except in the penal colony. In order to protect Amir, and his whereabouts, they have to get out of the region themselves, and they pretty much have to do it in secret.

Ramses decided to keep trying to fix the Olimpia to get them closer to home, or at least so far away from Amir that no one thinks to look for him in the village. He takes this as an opportunity to try out his new lantern as a source of light when looking into an access panel, and that’s when he makes a startling discovery. The lantern illuminates everything around it uniformly, but there are also points of light in various places. One wire here, a circuit there. When he checks these places, he notices an issue that’s contributing to all the problems that they’re facing with the full operation of the vehicle. As he works through it, the points of light adjust in a pattern that he’s had to learn to understand, which guides him to a solution.

The lantern is obviously special, but he doesn’t know exactly how. He’s tried to come up with a temporal explanation, but there isn’t one. Nothing about time and space would lend itself to such a function, and nothing about the advancement of more traditional technology would either, except maybe some very fancy augmented reality. That has to be it, even though he’s never encountered such tech before. The locals of this little bit of land on this island obviously know more than they have conveyed, though it’s unclear if they’re intentionally keeping secrets, or if the language barrier between the two parties is simply too hard to see over.

Marie has kept trying to communicate with them, using body language drawings in the dirt, and demonstrations. From what she can gather, a boat comes around from the cities on the other side of the island once a month to deliver supplies, and occasionally transport people. They could get on it, and from there, make their way to anywhere in the world. This would be a great option—despite the sadness that would come from having to abandon the Olimpia—but the problem is that it’s not due for another two weeks, and sometimes, when the weather is bad, it ends up having to skip a month. Unfortunately, that may be their only hope if Ramses can’t get the Olimpia back in full working order. Even with the lantern, he might not have the tools he needs to accomplish this. There are a lot of missing parts here, strewn all over the North Pole.

Mateo climbs down to the engineering section with a certain smile.

“What?” Ramses asks, knowing that look.

“Nothing. Just. What are you missing? Like, what’s a part that needs to be replaced? A cable maybe, or a bolt?”

Ramses picks up a small, clear object. “This is called a crystalatis. It’s supposed to be glowing blue—”

“Yeah, I don’t care,” Mateo sets the crystal-thingy on a step, and stabs it with his new knife. A blue-glowing duplicate of it pops out of the handle. “Ta-da!”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 11, 2398

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It wasn’t easy, but they were able to get The Olimpia moving. They weren’t traveling at normal cruising speed, but they were making decent time. Three days later, they can finally see land again. It’s exactly where Ramses said it would be. They have to get pretty close to see any sign of civilization, but it is there, just without any skyscrapers or roads. The people who live in Vertegen reportedly like the quiet life, far from the hustle and bustle of everywhere else, but they’re not completely cut off. There’s a radio tower. The team hasn’t been able to learn too much about them, only as much as the blurb on the map can tell them. Ramses is missing some key parts that were lost to the deep in the crash, and the communications system was damaged the most. It’s unclear who they would call, though, considering that their friends are all locked away in a penal colony, and Amir Hussain is hiding from the U.S. government. They would rather meet someone who can help get the Olimpia back in the air, but it’s not going to happen. That’s okay. They weren’t holding out hope for a mechanic who can work on a vehicle that quadruples as a car, boat, submarine, and airplane. They just need to contact someone who may be able to help, and as remote as this settlement is, they have that. But who can they trust?

The people of Vertegen are trying to speak to them in a language that they don’t recognize, let alone understand. They seem to be able to tell that the four of them are speaking English, but none of them understands that. Ever the counselor, Angela takes over the responsibility of fostering communication. She points to themselves—particularly their lips—and says, “English.” Then points to the local, and raises her eyebrows to suggest a question.

The local points to himself, and the crowd behind him, and says, “Rakripa.”

She nods. “Rakripa.” Now they’re getting somewhere.

They learn a few more things as their ambassador is showing them around. He picks up a cup, and says “pani.”

At first they think he’s just trying to teach them a few words, but then he keeps trying to give it to her, so she accepts, and drinks.

“What is it?” Mateo asks.

“It’s just water,” she answers. “It’s nice and cold, though.”

The man smiles, and hands her another cup. “Panijiben.”

“Panijiben,” Angela echoes. She accepts the drink as well.

He gives her one more cup or just plain water, which they all think is a little strange, but who are they to judge these people’s rituals?

He says, “momma” and hands Ramses a small lantern. It’s then that they realize these aren’t lessons, but gifts. This becomes clearer when he presents Mateo with a beautiful knife, and calls it a “kjuro” but much less clear when he smiles at Amir, opens his arms wide, and says, “keri.”

“Keri?” Angela tries to decipher the code.

“Keri, keri,” the man repeats enthusiastically, gesturing to Amir. He points at one of the tents, and says it again. He indicates the whole settlement one more time. “Keri.”

“Home,” Amir realizes. “He wants me to stay.” He turns to face the group. “I think I’m meant to be here.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 13, 2398

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As far as anyone knows, there are no special temporal locations in or around Munich, Germany in any reality. This is just one more step towards their goal of Croatia. They don’t want to be spotted in this area at all. It would defeat the purpose of having Angela pretend to be Marie, safe and sound stateside. This is just part of a contingency plan. Yes, maybe Marie Walton was in Europe, but it’s not because she was having an abortion. She was just enjoying some time off, and maybe she and her husband are having some marital problems, and this was just a little break from each other. Again, hopefully no one finds out, which is why she’s walking around in a sort of casual disguise, but there may come a point where fessing up to one lie is the only way to protect the true lie.

The trio checks into the hotel, where they’re given a three-room suite this time. They agree to do their own thing for the rest of the day. None of the landmarks interest any of them. Actually, Marie already had a vacation here two years ago, and saw just about everything she wanted to. She’s remaining in her room, meditating on what she’s about to do. Ramses is buried in his work, analyzing the data from the Bermuda Triangle water, and whatever else he has up his sleeve. That leaves Mateo to wander the city, hoping to get lost for a few hours. That’s precisely what happens, but just because he’s lost, doesn’t mean he can’t be found. Across the street, he spots a familiar face, staring back at him with serious eyes. For half a second, as a bus passes between them, threatening to spirit the vision away, he questions his own sanity. Then the vehicle moves on, and the light turns green.

She maintains eye contact as she crosses, and approaches. “How was your flight?” she asks him in a suddenly British accent. “Or did you stay on the water?”

“What happened to your voice, forger?”

“This is my real voice,” she responds. “Not many hear it. I never needed anyone being able to narrow the search for me using superficial characteristics, like my place of origin, or natural hair color.”

“Why would you let me hear it?” he questions.

“Because it’s time you learn the truth about who I am, and why you’re here.”

“Why I’m here has nothing to do with you,” Mateo insists. “Please leave.”

“No, you chose the location, and I respect that. We were hoping you would end up in Türkiye, but we can work with this. There’s an important enough mission in this area too. I would like more prep time to pull it off, but based on your experiences with the traffickers, I believe you can get up to speed quite quickly.”

He rolls his eyes. “You’re intelligence.”

“Not exactly. You’re intelligence, and so is your wife. I’m just adjacent, which is why I was able to place the two of you in your respective positions of authority. I have my own background, though, which prevents me from making certain moves—”

“Blah, blah, blah, you needed an outsider. Blah, blah, expendable. Something, something, something dark side.”

She smirks. “That’s a reference, isn’t it?” She sticks her tongue under her upper lip. “You’re from the future.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s why you don’t have an identity. That’s why you struggle with pop culture, but seem to have a set of your own. You and your friends are from the future.”

Mateo drops into a paranoid demeanor. “Clever girl, not many have found out. Timey-wimey, wibbly wobbly. But if you know, then you’re now in more danger than you can imagine. I’m one of the good ones, but we’re not all like that. If they find you, they will kill you, or worse...erase you from existence.” Okay, this is all actually somewhat plausible. Such forces are real, but it’s just that they don’t seem to live in this world. “I can get you to safety, but you have to do exactly as I say. Do you have any aluminum foil?”

She looks down her cheek at him. “Oh, you had me for a second, you sly dog. You sexy, sly dog, you.”

“Sexy?”

“What? Did you think my attraction to you was just part of the act?”

“One can always hope,” he replies.

“It is you who should come with me and learn the secrets. We have a job for you to do, and there is no time to waste. You will meet the team.”

“Yeah, you seem to be pretty convinced that what you say I should do is just what I’m going to do, as if choice has nothing to do with it.”

“It really doesn’t,” she says.

He stands there a moment, considering his options.

“We really must go,” she urges.

“You have a man on the inside.”

“Inside what?”

“That merc team who had the plan to free the refugees. Either they’re all your people or at least one of them is.”

“Yes, that’s how we know what happened to you. You didn’t think that a bunch of ex-soldiers randomly approached you, and forced you to help, did you?”

He shakes it off, “fine. My point is that you read a report. You know what we did.”

“Okay, yeah...” she trails off.

“But you don’t know how.”

“No, we were hoping to debrief you, perhaps after this next mission.”

“Oh, I can just tell you right now.”

She’s intrigued. She’s very intrigued.

He tips his forehead towards her, and beckons her to do the same with one finger. When she leans in, he looks around to make sure they’re not being watched, and drops into a whisper. “We’re willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done, even if it’s unsavory...”

“Yeah,” she presses.

“Even if it hurts.” With that, he slides his pocket knife into his gut where his left kidney used to be before he gave it to an alternate version of Leona. He gasps, but doesn’t scream. He leaves the blade in, and applies pressure. He turns around, arches his back a little, and stumbles away from her. It’s not long before passersby begin to notice that something is wrong, and then they see what is wrong. Good samaritans try to help, a couple of them catching him by the shoulders as he collapses to the ground. The crowd grows and grows. Somebody calls emergency services. He can’t see it, but he assumes that the mysterious forger-but-not-really is executing an exit strategy.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 3, 2398

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Leona did a double take as she was driving last night on her way back from date night. She and Mateo were meant to have dinner downtown, but they got in a fight on the ride out there, and ended up just skipping it. He got out of the car to walk alone, so she decided to drive around a little bit to clear her head. It’s not everyday that he has the upper hand in an argument, so she wasn’t exactly excited to get back home and face her friends. She wasn’t too far away when she spotted one of them walking along the path in the park across from their building. “Hey!” she called out to him. He looked around for the source of the voice, and smiled when he found it. Before they could exchange one more word with each other, a dark van pulled up between them, and stopped for a few seconds. When it drove away, Ramses was gone.

She held for a second to go over the possibilities. He could have been taken against his will, sure. It wouldn’t be the first time for any of them. She didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but he clearly saw her on the other side of the road. He wouldn’t have smiled if he didn’t realize in time that it was her. Given that, he would have made an effort to say something to her if he was intending to get into that van. He wouldn’t have just shrugged off the awkward timing, and went about his secret business. No, even though she didn’t know why he would be taken, it was the only logical hypothesis. So she moved over to the right lane, put on her hazard lights, and impatiently waited for the traffic to clear. Then she made an illegal u-turn, and begin to pursue the van.

She called his phone, just in case there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this. After three rings, the driver of the van tossed something relatively small out the window. She was pretty sure she knew what it was, but she stopped anyway, and quickly opened her door to pick the phone off the road, and bring it in. Hopefully they didn’t just see her do that, because they might become suspicious. Fortunately, the car behind her still had a ways to go before catching up, so nobody honked their horn. Now it was pretty obvious that something nefarious was going on here, and she needed help. She tried to call Marie, and then Angela, but neither of them answered their phone. She called Mateo, even though he was surely still on foot, but his phone rang inside the car. Damn, he left it here when he hopped out in a huff. She was going to have to fix this on her own.

Twenty-five minutes later, they were into the rural outskirts of the metropolitan area, and the van was showing no signs of slowing. That was when the route started to become all kinds of crazy. They turned down one road, and then down another, and then another, until they were all the way back to where they started from. They winded around, and occasionally spent a little too long at a stop sign. Oh no, they must have realized that she was following them, and were just testing her. She tried to call her friends again, but this time couldn’t even get through to voicemail. She couldn’t find a signal at all. What were these people doing? And what were they going to do to Ramses once they confirmed that Leona was behind them. It was dark, though, and despite the fact that they were out in the country, there were still quite a few other cars around. She just hung back a little farther, and prayed that they couldn’t prove any suspicions. 

They played this game for hours, and now it’s after midnight. There’s still no cell service, and Heath’s car is running out of gas. The van probably is too, but she has no choice but to keep trying. All she can do is continue to follow, three cars back, and hope that they stop soon. They don’t, though. In fact, they turn off on a single lane road; that’s one lane, full stop. It would look mighty suspicious if she happened to be going that way too. But it doesn’t matter, because Ramses needs rescuing, and she’s the rescuer. They keep going until they reach this isolated little farmhouse.

Leona switches off her lights, and turns into the driveway, because if they haven’t noticed her by now, they probably never will. They go all the way up to the porch, but she stops near the road to watch. She sees them drag a Ramses-sized burlap sack, up the steps, and into the house. If he’s dead, she’s going to kill them. One of them leans against the van and lights up a cigarette while the others are starting to do whatever it is they plan on doing. That’s when she gets out of her car, and approaches without caution.

“Hey, you’re not supposed to be here! Who are you?” he cries.

“This your van?” she asks, nodding to it like a gangsta.

“What of it?”

“How did you not detect my pursuit?”

“Hell you talkin’ ‘bout?”

She pops him in the nose with her forearm, spilling blood out like a beer can at a college party. As he’s crying like a baby, and trying to shove the blood back into his body, she slams the back of his head against the passenger window, cracking it slightly. Lastly, she situates the inside of her ankle against his, and pulls the back of his neck away from the car. He trips on her leg, and crashes to the ground. She stomps on his back before casually walking up the steps, where she finds the other two men trying to get Ramses into a chair. They stop and stare at her of course, not sure what the hell is going on.

“Hey, wait, I know you. You’re just a floor worker.”

“No,” Leona contends. “I’m the lead floor worker.” She fights them both. They have knives, which is adorable, and they’re rolling on the floor in a matter of seconds. Those three years she spent training with the Crucia Heavy really paid off. These electronic repair idiots are no match for her, but it’s better to be overqualified than underqualified.

Once it’s all over, Ramses finally comes to. He takes a moment to assess the situation. “Thanks for coming after me.”

Leona starts to untie him. “What do these guys what?”

He chuckles. “Honor. You see, I quit, which apparently didn’t mean that the number two worker was promoted to supervisor, or as a thought, repromoted. They had to be tested again, and evidently, Bruno over there cheated the first time, so they fired him. And the other guy, Stockboy, just sort of does whatever Bruno says.

“We were driving for, like, four hours, but we’re probably less than an hour away,” she tells him, questioning the rationale.

“Yeah, they were worried about being followed or traced, so they thought going around in circles would prevent that. I guess they figured that would be good enough, and they wouldn’t have to actually look out for someone like you. True morons, if you ask me.”

“I would have asked,” Leona begins, “if I didn’t surmise that myself.” She tenses up when the front door opens, but relaxes when she sees that it’s the rest of the team. They’re in no hurry either, presumably after seeing the driver writhing on the ground.

“Okay,” Heath says, “next time you go into the Great Dead Zone, drop a message. We barely found you.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 6, 2398

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Marie is sitting with her alternate self at a late lunch, who she should probably think of as her twin sister now, since that’s what everyone beyond the team is meant to assume about them. They’ve been working on their relationship since Angela first appeared in this reality back in early April. It’s still a little weird, knowing that there’s this other person around with identical memories, but it helps now that Marie has four additional years’ worth of experiences. The more they diverge from each other, the less awkward it will become. But they will never lose the benefit they have of also knowing that there’s this other person around who knows how they feel about the world. Their personalities will not ever become unrecognizably different. She takes another bite.

“It’s not working.”

“What’s not working?” Angela asks.

“No bleeding, no cramps, no vomiting. These foods, they’re not working, and I’m getting sick of them.”

“Let me respond to you backwards. Remember what mother always said when we refused to eat our cucumbers.”

“Ugh, I hate cucumbers. And peppers. Now I really am gonna retch.”

“She said to treat them like medicine. You have to eat it, so just do it, and be done with it. Without cucumbers, we might have starved, and neither of us would exist right now.”

“Well, that’s a bit overdramatic, but okay.”

“Secondly, the foods might still be working. You just need more time. It’s barely been a week, and a miscarriage may not present itself for a couple more, which means you need to give it over a month.”

“The longer I wait, the fewer alternatives I have.”

“I understand that,” Angela agrees, “but you need to let this first attempt play out. You can’t keep going to the doctor to find out if it’s working, because then you’ll get in trouble, so all you can do is keep going, and....hope.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Marie accuses.

“You’re right, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

“What’s the next thing you wanted to tell me?”

“The cramps and the vomiting.”

“Yeah, that’s how I would know that I’m having a miscarriage.”

“They’re also symptoms of pregnancy,” Angela points out.

“And they’re sometimes symptoms of regular menstruation, what’s your point?”

“My point is, you’re not experiencing those at all?”

“No.”

“Did you...experience them while you were menstruating?”

“No.”

“Have you...ever been sick...since you came here?”

Marie pulls her head back, and stares into empty space to think on that question for a moment and a half. “No. Never.”

“According to Ramses, something is blocking our powers and patterns, but...our durable new bodies aren’t all just about powers. I don’t remember if he specifically said we could no longer get sick, but it was sort of implied. I mean, if you’re gonna give someone an upgrade, don’t include Huntington’s disease, or cancer. You would take those things out, along with other medical problems like the occasional low blood sugar, seasonal allergies, and stress-related hives.”

“We still can’t get sick,” Marie realizes, “even here. What does that mean?”

Angela shuts her eyes. “The food that you’re eating, which is tailored for you to place the fetus at risk, is dependent upon your reaction to certain chemicals that those foods possess. They throw off hormone imbalance, and they send bad neural signals. If your body was designed to work around that kind of thing—to combat it—then...”

“Then I may be medically incapable of having a miscarriage.”

Ramses sits down before he collapses. “It’s possible. I don’t understand how this reality works. If there is something out there that protects linear time, then our immortality shouldn’t be affected. But we know that it is, because we get tired, and we don’t absorb solar power, and we—” He stops short. Then he stands up, goes over to the kitchen, and takes out a knife. He drags it across his arm, going in far deeper than he needs to in order to illustrate his point.

“Goddamnit, Ramses!” Marie exclaims.

“Yeah, we can still get hurt...a lot easier than we should. But maybe...” He gets lost in his thoughts, and the other two don’t try to force him to continue. He starts rubbing his blood up and down his arm like he has an unhealthy fascination with it. “Maybe...” he repeats.

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe it’s external. Maybe it’s literally external. Your body doesn’t get sick, because most illnesses are internal, which might be protected against the...magical...power-dampening whatever?”

“I open my mouth all the time,” Marie counters. “I’ve cut myself before; with the knife you’re holding right now, in fact.”

Ramses shakes his head. “It’s not a constant thing. It’s not an invisible gas in the air. When we jumped from the main sequence to the Third Rail, we passed through something that stripped us of part of who we were. It took away everything special about our skin. It didn’t take away anything inside.”

“Then why can’t we teleport?” Angela questions.

“It’s a separate thing,” Ramses decides. “They’re two different things: the linear time protector, and the skin changer.”

“Why would someone do that?” Angela presses. “It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, it sort of does, but who’s going to all that trouble, and to what end?”

“Maybe it’s not on purpose. Maybe it’s just that whatever barrier is between realities does this to us.”

“It didn’t happen when you went to all those other realities, did it?” Angela asks.

She’s right, it didn’t. Or did it? Mateo and Ramses thought they were converting solar energy in the Parallel, but even though he personally engineered these upgraded bodies, he hasn’t spent much time in his own. Maybe he was mistaken this whole time. “I need to talk to Leona.”

“Wait.” Marie stops him from going down one of his absent-minded genius professor rabbit holes. “What can I do? How do I fix this?”

He shakes his head at her. “I don’t know. Let me think on that too.”

Microstory 1884: Transience

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Transient Retrograde Amnesia is what they call it. I can’t remember how long I’ve had it, or what caused it. And that’s not an amnesia joke. I can’t remember, because I’ve been suffering from it for a long time, and I just happen to not recall that far back in the past. Lots of people have that kind of poor memory without it being a symptom of some larger issue. Most of the time, I’m normal. I know who I am, and what I’ve done. I can form new memories, and I know whether I left the proverbial stove on. Of course, I don’t own a stove, on account of those periods of time when I don’t remember a thing. Sometimes I wake up, and I have no memory at all. It doesn’t always occur when I literally wake up, but that’s what it feels like; like everything that happened to me before was a dream that disappeared from my mind in a flash. I know stuff did indeed happen, but mostly probably because it must have happened, since I know that adults don’t just suddenly come into being. I know this, because my memory condition doesn’t affect semantic memory, which is the kind that tells me what an adult is, and what a baby is, and what words to use to describe them. My problem is all about events, plus the most basic information about myself. I can’t tell you my name, or what kind of upbringing I had, for instance. Even the most recent of things are gone. I don’t know where I am, or how I got there. When the attack is over, it all comes flooding back to me, including the time I spent in that state. So I remember how fearful and anxious I become each time. I’m talking about this like it’s in the present, but I’m happy to say that I’ve not had an attack in over a year, whereas before, it would happen nearly every day.

Like I said, I don’t own a stove. It’s not worth the risk to be out in the world when I could lose it all without warning. Medical professionals of all sorts have tried to figure out what prompts an attack. Is it stress? Fear? Reminder of a past trauma? There seems to be no link between them. There’s no temporal connection either; it happens at all times of the day. As far as anyone has been able to discern after studying me for decades, it’s completely random and unpredictable. So I live in a facility, where others take care of me, even while I don’t need it. That’s the most humiliating part. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself, but they won’t let me do anything. I can’t blame them. I once had an attack while I was holding a knife. It was quite obvious that I was cutting vegetables with it, but my father was in the room, and I thought he could have been a threat. So over the years, little by little, my privileges have been taken away. It’s for my safety as much as anyone else’s. Again, I’m not going to forget what a knife is, or how it works, or which end is the hazardous one, but I obviously can’t be trusted with it anyway. In a way, I’m relieved that my body has been failing me recently. When you’re bedridden, and it’s difficult to move, people have to wait on you anyway. It feels natural now, expecting the nurse or orderly to come in and feed me, or take my vitals. That’s what they’re supposed to do, and they do it for everyone who lives long enough to die like this. It’s almost over now anyway. My spirit has pulled itself away from my body. I’m hovering over it, looking down at myself like it’s not me anymore, because it’s not. The man left on the bed is looking around, confused and lost. He doesn’t remember a thing. I can’t believe I’m witnessing my last attack as a ghost. I keep watching, knowing the other me can’t hurt himself, and that it won’t be long before he’s dead too.

Microstory 1836: Sleepkiller

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Sleep and I have always had a very volatile relationship. It’s constantly hiding from me, even though I try to be nice, and always treat it well. I’ve tried everything to connect with it, from not watching TV within a few hours of bedtime, to meditation, to of course pills. Nothing seemed to do me any good. The doctors I talked to said it was insomnia. No der, what do I do about it? Nothing I haven’t tried, just keep trying those things. But stay away from the pills, because they can really mess you up. So I did, and I kept failing. I was miserable, and insufferable. I was fired from my job, not just because they caught me sleeping a time or two, but because I was agitated and ill-mannered to my co-workers. I had had enough. Something had to be done, and I didn’t care any more what the consequences were. So I went back to the pills, but I’m not talking about melatonin, or a tiny little sedative. I went for the big stuff. I was going to fall unconscious every night, whether my body wanted to or not. And if that shaved time off my lifespan, then so be it. It wasn’t like I had much to live for anyway, especially if I couldn’t even function during the day. I knew it was going to be rough, particularly at the start, so I carefully prepared for it. I set three different alarms. My regular alarm clock was set to the highest volume. A friend of mine tinkered with it so it would play the noise and the radio at the same time. My smartwatch vibrated simultaneously, which I always found jarring and annoying. Five minutes later, the television in the living room was programmed to flip on, again at the highest volume. I knew this would piss off my neighbors, which would motivate me to actually get the hell out of bed to unplug it quickly before then. I thought it was a foolproof plan, but I was wrong.

A new personality sometimes took over at night. At first, I didn’t know what was going on. Things were moved around, the refrigerator was open, the floor mat was upside down. I realized that I was sleepwalking. I had heard of that being a side effect, but never thought it would happen to me. Okay, that was okay, I could deal with it. Place a lock on the bedroom door, and line the floor against the walls with pillows. I could still hurt myself, but at least I would land softly if I fell. It didn’t work, as you might imagine. I still found weird things the next morning. Nothing truly bad had happened, though. I didn’t have any stairs, and I never once got in my car, or left the house. I would wake up feeling a little weird and dizzy, but I was otherwise better rested than ever in my life. So I kept taking the drugs, careful not to overdose, and kept just cleaning up my place when I came home from work. I did go through a lot of knives, though. My sleepwalking self had a habit of throwing them away, and always on trash pick-up day, like he periodically felt that it was time to refresh the collection. Again, fortunately, I never hurt myself with them. Then it happened. After all this goofiness, I did something truly terrible, and I still can’t explain it. I did get in my car, and I did leave the house, and I drove onto the highway. Evidently, I came across a horrible car accident, a victim of which I managed to pull from the wreckage. For whatever reason, I scooped her up, drove her to an industrial park, and threw her off the roof of a two-story building. I read about it in the paper the next day, and used my GPS history to put the pieces together. She didn’t die, but she was seriously hurt, and it was all my fault. I can’t live with myself anymore. So I’m back on that roof, but by myself this time, and completely awake. Goodbye forever.