The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 7, 2489

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The Vellani Ambassador did not return to Castlebourne until the evening of July 6, 2488. Before the new crew could use it outside of training purposes, Ramses had to get into the slingdrive, and find out why the navigation system was still off. There was something he was missing, and he now believed he understood what it was. “It’s us.”

“Us?” Leona questioned.

“We’re a variable that’s not being accounted for. We may never be able to account for it. I think that our temporal energy is mixing with the quintessence, and interfering with its normal operation. Think about it, you jumped forward a year and a day to get to the Goldilocks Corridor, then another year and a day when you came back. It’s based on our pattern. It’s...including that in its calculations, for some reason.”

“You don’t think you can fix it?”

“I don’t know that we need to,” Ramses replied. “Is this our ship anymore?”

“That’s a good point,” Leona said. She looked around at the ol’ girl. She had served them well, but they had been training a replacement team for years now, even though Team Matic only came up with the idea days ago.

The year that the slingdrive was off-limits was not wasted. After three plus years of hard work, Mateo’s daughters were nearing the completion of their studies, and Prince Darko had already decided that they were fully ready for the field. During this past year, even though they weren’t allowed to jump into FTL, Mirage took the time to train the cadets in ship operations. They were delegated responsibilities, and no longer needed the aid of Ramses or Leona. It was time to make good on their mandate, and rescue as many people as they could from the tyranny of the Exin Empire.

“Okay,” Leona said with a sigh. “I’ll tell Mirage that she can upload herself.” Mirage was waiting to do this while Ramses worked, but his job here appeared to be over. Team Matic was once again aimless. They would have to find something new to do.

“Whoa, we still need you here,” Hrockas insisted an hour later at their daily briefing.

“One day at a time?” Ramses questioned.

“You get a lot done in that one day,” Hrockas reminded him.

It was true, Ramses had become exceedingly great at maximizing his presence in the timestream by setting up multiple projects for automation that would continue on while he was gone. Then, when he came back a year later, he would inspect them before moving on to the projects for the next interim year. The sky was positively littered with orbital defense platforms. One of the moons over Castlebourne was being converted into a sort of Death Star-like thing while the other moon continued to serve as a shipyard for a growing fleet. Some of the battleships and battledrones would stay here to defend the homeworld while others would be transdimensionally shrunk, and sent off to the Goldilocks Corridor to aid in the conflict against the Exin Empire. Ramses had done more for this world than anyone besides Hrockas himself, and the former had a hard time acknowledging that. He was too humble.

Azad and Costa were here too, having been fully read into the situation, in regards to time travel and whatnot. They had their own jobs here now. Azad was on defense, and Costa on offense. Hopefully, this star system would never be attacked, and the two of them would have nothing to do, but it was best to be prepared. “I still need to learn from you,” Azad told him. “This technology is way beyond anything we used a century ago, even ignoring the superpowers you all have.”

“Same goes for me,” Costa agreed.

“I always write manuals,” Ramses explained. “Or rather, I have them written by my AI. I don’t type them up myself, like an animal. The point is, you’ll be fine, wherever I end up.”

Hrockas offered Prince Darko a job, overseeing all internal security of the planet, but he had yet to accept it. He wasn’t sure whether there would be any more teaching opportunities, and if there were, he couldn’t do both. He was invited to the meeting anyway. “Let him rest if he wants to. People like us see time differently. Keep in mind, it’s only been a day for him since last year. He probably never gets breaks. Not even, like, an hour. Do you sleep anymore?” he asked Ramses.

“Occasionally,” Ramses answered.

“We have a number of relaxation domes for you to choose from,” Hrockas pitched. “Some of them are opaque with permanent nighttime holography, and we’re equipped with hibernation sedatives for the ultra-sleepbound.”

“I can control my own neurotransmitters and hormones,” Rames explained. “I could fall asleep right here, right now, in seconds.”

“Really?” Azad asked, intrigued. “Do it,” he goaded.

Ramses smiled, considering it. Then he leaned back a few centimeters, shut his eyes, and drifted away.

“Computer, is he asleep?” Hrockas asked.

“Affirmative.”

“That’s wild,” Azad said excitedly.

Leona looked over at her engineer. “To clarify his point, I believe that he is done. He has some...personal projects that he’s been putting off, and you should be able to operate without him at this point. He’s not designing any new ships or satellites. He’s just having them built. There are multiple people in this room qualified to carry on his legacy. That’s what this meeting is really about, actually.” She looked over at Team Kadiar. “Have you settled on a...hierarchy, for lack of a better term?”

Mirage stood up. “I’m the ship. I will become the Vellani Ambassador. While aboard, I serve as captain. Dubravka is my lieutenant, and while on an away mission, she will lead the team. Kivi is the primary negotiator while Romana handles team security. Lastly, Tertius controls everyone’s memories.”

“I’m also security,” Tertius adds. “I’m not a mindreader, per se, but I might be able to detect an infiltrator or mole in the population that we’re visiting. So I will alert the team to that, if it comes up.”

Mirage nodded in agreement. They had been discussing this for months.

“Sounds good to me,” Leona said. “I believe that I’m ready for handoff.”

Jesimula Utkin opened the door from the hallway, and strode right in. “What about me? Could I join you?”

“On the VA?” Mirage asked. “Doing what?”

“It sounds like you need a coordinator on the ground,” Jesi answered. “I’m quite capable of managing large batches of information. I used to hunt for cures all throughout time and space. Did you think I was just guessing?”

“You’ll need to go through proper training,” Dubra said to her. “Even Tertius went through basic.”

Jesi laughed. “I can handle myself in a fight.”

Darko stood up, and tried to look imposing. “Can you? Hit me.”

Most people in the room couldn’t quite tell what happened, but before too long, Darko was on the floor, and Jesi was on top of him, holding him in place. She leaned down, and kissed him on the forehead. “Tap out.”

He tapped twice against his leg. “Who taught you that?” he asked after she graciously let him get back to his feet.

Jesi smirked, and looked over at Leona. “I was trained by the Crucia Heavy of The Highest Order. She taught me everything she knew.”

Leona stood up quickly. “No shit?”

“No shit,” Jesi answered.

“Ever since we met?”

“And then some,” Jesi said.

Leona stared into Jesi’s eyes, perhaps looking for any hint of deception, or maybe even using some kind of psychic connection. “Mirage,” she began, “I am bound by my oath to recommend Jesimula Utkin for this assignment most ardently.

That seemed to be good enough for Mirage. “Very well.”

The meeting continued on for a little while. Hrockas offered Darko the head of security job again, but Mateo had the bright idea to suggest Kallias Bran, who had less experience with hand-to-hand combat, but more experience with police work. He would be better suited to the position, which shouldn’t involve any physical confrontation. That freed Prince Darko to found a training program. Who his students would be, and what their goals would be, were questions that they weren’t going to worry about asking quite yet.

Only after the meeting was over, and everyone else had left, did Mateo wake his friend up. “Did that help?”

Ramses quivered into his stretches, and looked around at the mostly empty room. “Yes, actually. That was a brilliant suggestion. Who was that again?”

“It was Azad who told you to sleep.”

“Remind me to thank him.” He yawned and stood up. “What did I miss?”

“Nothing you care about,” Mateo replied. “Leona said you have personal projects that you’ve delayed in service to others. I’m bored. What can you tell me about them?”

“Two major projects, which are related, but not inherently interdependent. Only one of them is ready. The other may never be. At any rate, they will be limited to the team. I mean it, I don’t even want Romana to have them. I believe that only the six of us are built to withstand the technological upgrades that I’m working on. I have a working prototype of the first one that I’ve been hoping to test, if you’re willing to be my guinea pig once more.”

“I’m in,” Mateo said sincerely.

Ramses offered his hand, then teleported them both to his lab. He looked around to make sure that no one was watching before approaching a wall. He started to make weird gestures in front of it, sometimes reaching out to caress or tap the surface, and stepping back a couple times to give it a strange look. Finally, the sound of a pocket door sliding open came from the perpendicular wall, but nothing changed visually. Still, Ramses pivoted, and walked straight through what was apparently only a hologram.

Mateo followed. They were in a new section of the lab. There wasn’t much here that was different from the main section, but some of the items looked more advanced, while others looked less complete. “We couldn’t have just teleported right inside?”

Ramses shut the door behind them. “Permanent teleporter suppressant. We couldn’t escape here either. It’s completely self-sufficient. All it shares with the main lab is that hidden door, and the regolith between the walls.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about it before? Does anyone else know?”

“Because you didn’t need to know before, and they still don’t.”

“I see.”

Ramses started to walk to the far end. “Take off your IMS; every layer of every module, and lie face down in your birthday suit.”

Mateo removed his suit, and walked over there buck naked. The table was mostly solid, but there were conspicuous and symmetrically placed openings throughout.

“Please read this,” Ramses asked.

A hologram appeared underneath the table’s face hole. It detailed what was going to be done to him in clear, unambiguous language. Even an idiot like him could understand it, and after finishing the brochure, he was now more interested than ever. “Can I see the needles?”

Ramses took a beat. “Probably shouldn’t.”

“Okay.”

“Do you consent?”

“I do.”

“And are you ready?”

“Absolutely.”

“You read the part where it says it’s gonna hurt?”

“Get on with it.”

“Brace yourself. Literally. Hold onto those handles.”

Mateo gripped the metal bars. The robot started swinging its various arms into position, which he could hear, but not see. One of them started lasering into his neck, and worked its way down his spine. Other incisions were made on his wrists, shoulders, ankles, the back of his knees, and even his mons pubis. The cuts hurt, but the implantation of the devices hurt even more. It was over surprisingly quickly, though the spinal implant took the longest. Another round of lasers sealed him back up, and it was all apparently over.

“How do you feel?”

“Ready to throw my IMS away,” Mateo said.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. Only the procedure has been tested. You need to learn how to activate the nanites.”

“I think I have it figured out.” Mateo could still feel the implants underneath his skin. They were too deep to protrude and be noticed by others, but he was acutely aware of them. The one against his brain gave him neural access to the whole network. He could sense them tucked away dormant in their little gel matrices. These were not his first nanites. In one go, he released them. They spread all over his body until he was fully encapsulated in only a few seconds. It was like something out of a scifi movie. Then again, that described their whole lives these days. He was now basically wearing an Integrated Multipurpose suit, except that it was extremely thin, with only one layer needed, reportedly vastly stronger than his last suit, and on him at all times. One thing seemed to be missing, though. “I still need a PRU to breathe, drink, and eat.”

Ramses held up an injector. “Collapse the facial segment so I can inject you with the life support pocket dimension array. It goes in your mouth.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 1, 2483

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After adjusting to the lights of the infirmary, Romana looked over at her father, but seemed to be focusing on her own breath. It started to look like she was trying to speak, but she was home now, and everything was going to be fine, so there was no reason to rush this.

“It’s okay. I’m here, and you’re safe. Only talk if you can,” Mateo encouraged.

She struggled to bring her lips closer together to formulate words. She didn’t look like she was in any pain, though, and the pod didn’t indicate that there was any medical issue to be worried about. She didn’t make a sound until she was ready to produce the word, fully and clearly. “Report.”

They told her what had happened, and asked if she remembered anything.

“Nothing,” Romana answered. “Ramses turned his new machine on, and then I woke up here.”

“That might be for the best,” Olimpia hoped. It didn’t appear that she was ever tortured or abused, but there was no telling how difficult it was to be trapped in Buddy’s particles. They might try to find out more information later, but for now, they were just grateful that she was back.

Romana needed physical help getting out of the pod, and then into the tub to be washed up. Olimpia graciously assisted with that. Mateo didn’t feel comfortable participating, and Romana probably preferred it this way too. While she had no apparent memory of the dark particle prison, she still looked traumatized. Perhaps the ordeal had a nuanced impact on her psyche, or maybe her mind was repressing it to protect itself. This gave Mateo an idea, to find a way to let her use his rendezvous card, so she could speak with Dr. Hammer. That was against the rules, but if it could improve his mental health, the Center might make an exception. And anyway, once he made sure that Romana was better, Mateo probably wouldn’t need the support group anymore.

He gave the two of them space, and went back to the bridge. “What’s the word with this thing? Are we in danger of another tangent?”

“Probably,” Leona replied. “But the risk can be mitigated with some careful planning.”

“Two jumps,” Ramses added. “I can probably only muster two good jumps a day, though it’s best that we spread them out by several hours. And I’m only guessing that due to our past experiences. We’ve obviously pushed the limits before, but it hasn’t always worked out, so for the sake of a successful jump, we should probably consider that the safety margin. That doesn’t mean I know what’s causing it. It could be a design flaw, an inherent limitation from the ship that the slingdrive has been retrofitted to, or it could be because of the quintessence itself. Perhaps it doesn’t like people to mess with it until it’s had time to settle down. I need more time, and more tests...again.”

“Before, when we were testing the navigation function,” Mateo began, “it was to save Romana’s life. Now we’re okay. Now we can afford to take a little time. Do what you need to do, but take the pressure off.”

Ramses nodded with a frown.

“And don’t feel bad about what happened,” Mateo continued, noticing that this was not his friend’s real concern. “Buddy is an antagonist who took advantage of an accident that you even predicted. We all knew the risks, including her. I’m not holding it against you, and I would like to see the day when you don’t hold it against yourself. Romana will be fine. She’s back now, and the tethers are holding. We’ll never lose her again. I love you, man.”

“Love you too,” Ramses replied.

“There’s something else,” Leona said, now that the serious conversation was over. “It’s about the Insulator. While he was getting us back, I was conducting my own research.” She stepped to the side to reveal the glass object sitting on the console. “As you can see, it’s missing the dome that’s supposed to go on top. Glass insulators have no moving parts, yet it’s been removed as if it could be popped off like a snap fastener. We scanned for the dome out in the black while we were at our last pitstop, but it might be lost forever.”

“Cool,” Mateo said. “I don’t care about it, though.”

“You should,” Leona insisted. “I was able to make minimal contact with the inhabitant. I can hear her, but she can’t hear me. Mateo, it’s Dubra.”

“My sister?” Romana was here, totally naked, but not worried about it.

Olimpia rushed up, and wrapped a towel around her body. “Sorry, she suddenly hopped out of the tub, and ran off.”

I could hear their conversation in their minds,” Romana explained. “If Dubra is in there, I can turn that minimal contact into a real conversation.”

“Be my guest,” Leona agreed, moving away even farther.

Romana stepped up to it, took a deep breath, then lifted her arms, apparently to prepare to touch it. Her towel fell right back off of her.

“Maybe you should get dried off and clothed,” Mateo asked.

“I got this.” Olimpia was wearing a splash tunic, which was a hydrophobic garment caregivers used to aid someone in bathing, whether as a family member, friend, or medical professional. She pulled it off of her own body, and dropped it over Romana’s, since the latter didn’t seem to be bothered by the mixed company. Now Olimpia was the one without clothes on, but that was fine.

Romana adjusted the shoulders of the tunic, then refocused on the task at hand. She placed fingers from both hands upon the Insulator. She stood there for a few minutes, occasionally showing mild signs of active listening. She nodded definitively, and separated. “Okay.”

“Okay, what? Is she all right?” Mateo asked.

“Yeah, she’s fine.”

“Is that all she said?” Leona pressed.

“No, she said quite a bit.” Romana was acting like these were perfectly complete responses.

“Such as what?” Ramses asked.

“Oh, uh...sister-sister confidentiality.”

“That’s not a thing,” Mateo argued.

“Yes, it is.” Marie was walking onto the bridge, followed by her own sister.

“I’ll just talk to her myself. How do we get her out?” Mateo questioned.

“I’ll have to build her a new substrate,” Ramses reasoned, “but I don’t have her DNA, so I can’t make her look as she did.” He consulted his watch. “And it will take me a real year.”

“Go on and get on it,” Leona said. “Just give her something temporary, and we’ll transfer her to something else later. She might know how we can acquire a sample of her DNA somewhere in the past.”

“Let Romana ask for consent first, please,” Mateo suggested.

“Yes,” Romana said. She went back to briefly speak with Dubravka. “She’s in. Something temporary is fine. It will take some effort to make her the real thing, and she wants to be involved in that. I’m so glad I won’t have to wait a whole year to meet her for real. I really don’t care for telepathy.”

Romana had to wait an entire year before she even had a chance to meet her half-sister in person. She was sixteen years old when Mateo and the team returned to the timestream. Instead of jumping forward like she was used to, she found herself stuck in realtime. She spent that year trying to stay busy by helping Hrockas to prepare for the Grand Opening. There was nothing else she could do. Ramses and Leona were the only ones with any hope of figuring out what might have gone wrong, and more importantly, how to fix it. She certainly couldn’t understand it herself. She didn’t have a whole lot in the way of a formal education. She knew what little she knew thanks to books that her family was able to procure for her over the years, but her unstable lifestyle was not conducive to studying in a classroom. She didn’t have access to Ramses’ ground lab either, or she might have tried to initiate Dubra’s download process herself.

She was depressed, and feeling left behind, but she had all year to come to terms with missing the bus, and the delay in the big family reunion. She also grew up hearing stories of Team Matic’s fantastical adventures, with their top-notch engineer and captain. Together, they could fix anything. So she was confident that they would solve the problem quickly.

“You noticed these, right?” They were back in the realspace infirmary on the Vellani Ambassador. The patient was sitting on the exam table, legs hanging off the edge. Leona was no doctor, but she had a penlight, and she knew how to point it at someone’s eyes.

“Yeah,” Romana replied. “I’ve tried to flush them out, but they’re not exactly...tangible.”

“What are you talking about?” Mateo was standing off to the side, arms crossed, and thinking about the most painful way to tear Buddy’s limbs off of his body.

“The dark particles,” Leona answered. “There are still some in there, floating around. I can’t tell exactly where; behind the cornea, maybe? Or they’re in another dimension...”

“Then figure it out!” Mateo cried.

“Stop it,” Leona instructed. “We’ve talked about your anger.”

Mateo took a deep breath. “I know it’s not your fault, I’m sorry.” He pulled the rendezvous card out of his sleeve pocket. It was red, just as anyone would expect out of someone this angry.

“What are you thinking?” his wife asked.

“I’m thinking that Dr. Hammer is not just a psychiatrist. She has diagnostic equipment that Ramses wouldn’t be able to develop, or know how to use properly. She may have even seen this before.”

“That’s not what that card is for,” she reminded him.

“My daughter’s back, I don’t need therapy anymore. I need her to be healthy.”

“Maybe it’s a good thing.”

“No,” Romana jumped in. “I know what you’re saying. But Matics are time-skippers. It’s what we do. I don’t wanna lose that.”

“I’m just making sure you understand your options,” Leona told her.

“My options,” Romana began before a pause, “are to find the man who did this to me, and make him fix it.”

Mateo shook his head. “I get the impulse. Believe me, I want to ring his neck. But Rule Number Fifteen is probably the most important one when it comes to us, so if you’re going to be a part of our team in any capacity, you will need to learn to follow it. Buddy is powerful, fragile, and whimsical. In my experience, that combination equates to sudden outbursts of excessive retaliation. His objective is to bring a fruit from the past into the future. He has the power to simply go back to the past, and pick one whenever he feels like it. He’s going to extreme lengths to accomplish something stupid and pointless. You can’t reason with someone like that, and we certainly can’t fight him. We try to handle this on our own. Locating him is a last resort.”

“Okay,” Romana agreed. “Then can someone help me get back down to the planet? I want to be there when Dubra wakes up.”

“Okay, but then we’re talking about Snake Island,” Mateo called to her as she was trying to leave.

“Whatever, just let me get this gown off!

Leona sighed. “We’re not going to Snake Island.”

“Leona...”

“We’re not going to Snake Island. We like Dr. Hammer, but we don’t know her all that well. Your own cousin became an adversary in the Third Rail. We need to be cautious, and follow the rules. Now go get your daughter, and go down to see your other daughter.”

Ramses’ ground lab was a lot bigger and better than the one he had in the pocket dimension attached to the ship. He had been wanting this forever, and finally found a place to build it. Starter nanites constructed it for him while they were gone, with the first room being dedicated to the Insulator of Life, as well as the equipment necessary to produce a new body.

Mateo peered at it, floating there in its amniotic tank. “What DNA did you end up using, since we don’t have hers. I assumed it would just be one of those public-use template things.”

Ramses was running through his tasklist before the download procedure. “Uh...don’t worry about it.”

“I wasn’t too terribly worried before, but now I really am. What did you do?”

“It’s fine, don’t—it’s fine.”

“Ramses Abdulrashid,” Mateo enunciated like a disappointed parent.

“Yours,” Ramses answered. “Yours and Leona’s. I mixed them together, like what would happen if you had your own kid.”

The room grew extremely tense. “Oh,” Romana said quietly and accidentally.

“Ramses. Leona and I did conceive twins. She lost them.”

“This isn’t either of them,” Ramses reasoned. “Couples have multiple kids, they don’t look the same. The DNA always combines differently.”

“Ramses,” Mateo said once more. “You can’t give my daughter that I had with Serif a body created from what might have become the daughter that Leona and I had together. It will remind her of that trauma.”

“Well, I can’t undo it.”

“Make her a new one.”

“What?”

“Make a new body.”

“Well, what am I meant to do with this one?” Ramses questioned.

“Whatever you do with it, don’t tell anyone; least of all my wife. Start over, and just use one of the templates.”

Ramses breathed deeply, and looked over at Romana as if she would somehow be able to alter the outcome of this situation. It didn’t matter how either of them felt about it. This was Mateo’s decision, and nothing was going to change it. Mateo shut his eyes and nodded. “Okay. It will be another year for us. I’ve obviously developed a method of accelerating time to expedite the maturation process, but I still don’t have it down to less than a day.”

“Sorry, kid,” Mateo said to Romana. He then looked back over at Ramses. “Get it going, and automate the process. Then focus on my other daughter. Let her jump with us. She shouldn’t have to wait a whole other year.”

Ramses got to work on the second major project, but couldn’t figure it out. The team jumped forward without her, and came back to a seventeen-year-old. Fortunately, she wasn’t alone. Now with access to the lab, she was able to initiate the download process herself, and meet Dubravka for real. They had grown quite close over the last several months.

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Extremus: Year 81

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Tinaya and Aristotle got Spirit and the rest of the gang up to speed on what happened after they left Verdemus. They made introductions, and integrated themselves into a new society. It’s been four years since their return, and this planet now has a significant population. They actually represent only a small fraction of Verdemusians at this point. Omega made 18,000 drifting clones of himself. The drifting part is important, because while they were all sourced from the same progenitor, their personalities ended up straying at around the same rate as the genetic drift. The 18,000th clone is the least like Omega than the first, and it scales fairly predictably from latter to the former. What would not have been predictable is the responses that they gave when asked whether they wanted to stay on mission for the Ex Wars, or start to live their own lives in peace.

In the end, after giving a choice to all clones 147 at a time, 42% of them chose to reject their mandate entirely, and live the rest of their lives on the surface in peace. But it’s not like it was the back two-fifths, or even the front two-fifths. Their personalities gave rise to sporadic fluctuations, leaving them with a hodge-podge of differing viewpoints. A side effect of this variability was that they didn’t all see it as a binary choice. Only 56% chose to go back into their stasis pods, and await the start of the war. Roughly two percent had other ideas. These were the leaders, and the misfits. Some of them wanted to become part of an elite force, or the executive officers, while others wanted to leave entirely. This was not an easy process. Once Omega and Tinaya started receiving these unforeseen ideas, they realized that they hadn’t asked the right questions for the first several batches. So they were reawakened, and given the new choices. They could stay awake to train at a new Officer’s Academy, or maintain their positions. This resulted in a few hundred of them agreeing to train under the guidance of one Eagan Spurrs. They constructed a campus right on top of the original settlement, allowing the peace-seekers to live separately in the megablock many kilometers away.

But these warriors are not what Tinaya is concerned about at the moment. Precisely 83 drift clones don’t want to be a part of this at all. They don’t want to train as officers, they don’t want to be enlisted hibernators, and they don’t want to live in the megablock. They’re currently staying in the mess hall, because no one knows what to do with them. There is no leaving Verdemus. There are two ships here. The shuttle can make interplanetary trips, and while the Anatol Klugman can travel the stars, it sort of has a different purpose. What they need is something in between, which will allow these independents to escape the star system, and forge their own paths. Omega is not being cooperative. He doesn’t hate them. In fact, that would probably be easier to deal with. The problem is that he has no strong feelings about them, and sees no reason to expend resources to help them. To him, if they don’t want to live in the megablock with the others who don’t want to fight in the war, they can...suck it up, and do it anyway.

“These are your people, Omega,” she argues.

“No, they’ve drifted the most from me, neurologically speaking,” Omega reasons.

“Are you sure about that? Half of them are within a hundred degrees of separation from you. The rest aren’t far behind.” She starts getting sassy. “Why is it your name is Omega? Oh, that’s right, because you were born with a complex that caused you to go AWOL from your own calling, which is what has led us to this in the first place! The independents are probably more like you than any of them.”

Omega doesn’t want to admit that she might be right. “I can...see where you might think that. But I don’t know what you want me to do about it.”

“The Klugman, it has shuttles of its own, right?”

“Yes.”

“And they’re reframe capable?”

“One class of them are. There are only four of that kind.”

“Can twenty-one people fit in each one?” she asks.

“Tinaya, I need those. They’re for advanced recon, resupply missions, and multi-front engagements.”

She sighs, and itches underneath her eye. “Omega, the war is not for a hundred and thirty years. You don’t think you can rebuild them in that amount of time?”

“I see your point.”

“Give them the shuttle stocked with supplies that were grown and manufactured at the megablock, and let them leave.”

“Where the hell are they gonna go?” Omega questions. “There’s nothing out here, except for the Goldilocks Corridor. And I don’t think they want to go there. I sure as hell don’t want them to. What if they alert them to our plans?”

“They don’t know your plans.”

“They know enough. Our only advantage is a surprise attack. It has to be a complete surprise.” He spoke demonstratively with his hands.

She laughs. “You don’t trust...yourself?”

He was ready for this counterpoint. “No, I don’t,” he replies quickly.

Tinaya nods gently, and looks down at the ground. He doesn’t need to trust every single one of them. “I’ll go with them,” she offers. “I’ll make sure they don’t give your plans away, even unintentionally. You can trust me, right?”

“Tinaya, you can’t do that; you have a life,” Omega contends.

“I’ve had many lives. This would be just one more.”

He shakes his head, trying to work through the consequences. “I wanna say that I can’t ask you to do that, but I’m not asking for anything. This is all you. I straight up don’t want you to do it.”

“This planet, it comes with radiation. It does weird things to time powers. It probably made the two explosions worse than they should have been.”

“I heard.”

“Aristotle can’t get us out of here. There is no way back to Extremus. If I can’t see Arqut again, it doesn’t matter where I am. I can do this. I can care for your wayward children. Give us the shuttles.”

Omega looks awkward, like he wants to spill the beans, but he doesn’t want to have to clean them up afterwards.

She can sense his reluctance, but can also tell that it’s important. “What is it?”

They left the Kamala Khan in cislunar space. After rigging up teleporter relays on both the planet, and the moon, they now use the shuttle as a midpoint to allow them to travel freely back and forth. Well, it’s not free, per se. You either have to go to the jump terminal, or have an emergency teleporter on your person, which not everyone does. Not even Tinaya, though that’s more because she doesn’t really need it. Omega places hands around her upper arms, and jumps them to the moon. But they don’t end up in the cloning facility. This place is unfamiliar.

“Where are we?”

“My secret lab,” he answers.

“All of your labs are secret.”

“Yes, but this...is the big one.”

“Bigger than the clone army?” That seems unlikely.

He walks over to the wall, and rests his elbow against it, ready to pull a big switch down, the purpose of which she does not yet know. “The time mirrors. They worked fine while they were active, but you can only fit one person through at a time, and they were an annoying drain of power. People who weren’t supposed to know about this operation would have eventually noticed the discrepancies. We actually had to bribe the independent energy auditor with a lifetime of contribution points.”

“Why are you telling me this? I don’t wanna know this.”

“It was a temporary measure while we worked on a permanent way to travel back and forth. And we certainly needed the time.” Omega drops the big switch down. As lights flip on, a set of blast doors open.

More lights illuminate on the other side, revealing something that Tinaya only ever saw once in her life. “A Nexus.”

“That’s right.”

Nexa are a mysterious interstellar transport machine that were invented by an even more mysterious alien race, and placed on an unknown number of inhabited worlds. It could take you tens of thousands of light years in minutes, but there had to be another one on the other side to receive you. What good would this do them?

“I know what you’re thinking. What good is this to us? The Extremus doesn’t have one of its own. We could go back to the Gatewood Collective, or maybe to Earth. But why would we want to?”

“I can think of a few reasons.”

“My mistake. The point is that you would be wrong either way. Extremus does have a Nexus.”

“Since when?”

He steps a little closer, and admires the thing. “It’s not done yet, but Valencia is working on it on her end. I built this one muhself.”

“How do you know what’s happening on Extremus at all?”

“They’re both complete enough for a phone call.” He offers her a hand.

She hesitates for a moment, but takes it. He escorts her down the stairs, and into the machine. The original design apparently comes with four walls, but two of them were excluded from this one, as they were on Gatewood. Each machine must fulfill a strict set of requirements to function properly, but some components are evidently negotiable. They step down into the cavity. “Hey, Opsocor. Can you connect me to the Extremus?” A dim orange light appears from above. “We’re waiting for her to answer. She may not be there. Our scheduled check-in isn’t for another couple of hours.”

Just then, two holograms render in the cavity in front of them. One of them is Omega’s wife, Valencia Strong. The other is Arqut. Arqy!” Tinaya exclaims.

“Teeny Toon!” he shouts back. They almost hug, but don’t try, because they’re not really in the same room together.

“He figured it out,” Valencia explains to Omega with a shrug.

“She didn’t,” Omega replies. “I just thought she oughta know.”

“Finish this,” Tinaya orders, gazing upon her husband. “Get me back to him.”

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Microstory 2225: All Sectors of All Fields

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Nick wrote the social media post that he just sent out. And I do mean that. He was able to stay in control of his arm movements enough to type it out on the computer, and even click the submit button. I’m so proud of him. He tried to write this one up himself too, but it proved to be too difficult, and we’re low on time. We ended up staying in the hospital far longer than we wanted, and I’m not a happy mama bird. I told them that we had a maximum time of five hours, and the researchers who are studying his condition did not adhere to that. I mean, it’s not like they locked him up in the lab, chained him to the table, and started poking him with needles while they laughed maniacally. They just kept wanting to conduct more tests, and asking him questions. There was always just one more thing to try. There was also a lot of hurrying up and waiting. This happens because people will typically not take that into account when estimating the amount of time they need to finish working on something. This is true for most people in all sectors of all fields. Anyway, I don’t want to complain too much, but I am going to seek legal counsel for Nick. We need to get the agreement in writing, so this sort of thing doesn’t happen again. Until then, he’s not going back to that facility unless it’s a medical emergency, or some other issue that I can’t handle myself. I’m sure we’ll get it all worked out. I know that no one made this happen on purpose. But he’s very tired right now, and I have to get his dinner prepared so he can get some rest. Until next week!

Microstory 2214: With an Autopsy

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There was a bit of a misunderstanding. Due to Nick’s sleep issues, the EEG test needed to be able to measure his brain activity while he was awake, and also while he was asleep. I asked if we should reschedule it for the nighttime, but Nick was confident that he would be able to fall asleep given the right conditions. To make it happen, they packed his hospital room with a number of medical staff who weren’t too busy with other things. For almost thirty minutes, he was the center of attention. They asked him questions, mostly not about his medical issues. He had to talk about the universe where he’s from, and all the adventures he went on after he left it. It didn’t matter whether they believed him or not, or even if they were listening. Being around crowds of people is exhausting for him, and it’s even worse when they’re paying all their attention to him. By the end of it, he had little trouble sleeping. The doctor rechecked the electrodes, shut off the lights, and left the room. I asked to stay by his side, but he insisted that Nick be alone, which admittedly made sense. I don’t want to say that these results were inconclusive, like all the others, but they were. Best guess at the moment is that he’s suffering from some form of dementia. The MRI would seem to support this possibility, but only as a possibility. That is to say, it doesn’t rule it out. Unfortunately, the best way to know for sure that that’s the case is with an autopsy, which is obviously not in the cards at this stage. I suppose it might one day give his survivors some sense of closure, but it doesn’t help Nick now, and I’m still holding out hope for a turnaround. As for the lumbar puncture, we have only received a few preliminary results so far. His cell count and glucose levels are totally fine. The diagnostician said that his protein levels were suspicious, but he couldn’t elaborate on that. My schooling did not go over any of this kind of stuff, and he’s aware of that, so he didn’t bother elaborating. He did seem pretty cryptic about it, though. He said that he needed to send the data off to a special lab, but that it could take up to a week to get more answers. I’m really worried about it, so I’ve decided to not tell Nick about that just yet. It will only cause him more anxiety, and it might also end up being nothing. That’s it for the tests for now. We have nothing planned for tomorrow, but I’ll probably get him back to his physical therapy to help him stay as independent as possible for as long as possible.

Microstory 2213: Calming Environment

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Negative. Negative or inconclusive, that is. All of the blood test results came back, and none of them told us what Nick might have. We woke up to no answers today, just as we have every morning in recent days. He was scheduled to have an MRI in the early afternoon, so we were still hopeful that that would turn up something, but it didn’t tell us anything either. Well, I’m sure it told the doctor something, but it goes over our heads. All we know is that Nick is sick, and there is no apparent treatment for it. While we were waiting for the ultimately unhelpful MRI analysis results, I took him for a walk in the arboretum. This is precisely why they built the hospital at this location, so patients and loved ones can have a calming environment in some of their darkest times. There are trails in there that are somewhat difficult to walk on, or at least which require two legs, but for the less mobile people, there are also paved paths. We stayed on those, but were still able to enjoy a lot of beauty. I think it was really great for him to be out there. If you go deep enough, you stop being able to see the ninety degree angles of the buildings and roads, and hear the sounds of the cars. He told me that he likes either being inside with the conditioned air, or in nature, but not in between. He doesn’t like the urban world, with all its loud artificial noises, and crowds of people. Due to all the jail time he experienced, and the work he did during and after that, he hasn’t been able to spend much time in places like that. He agrees that it did him good, but there was a downside to it. I pushed him in the wheelchair, which is not the same thing as walking it himself. He regrets not going on one more hike, but of course, he had no idea that things would turn out like this. He may never be able to once again walk on his own, but I’ll take him to places like this every day if he wants. Nature has been scientifically proven to be emotionally and mentally beneficial to all, but especially for someone like him, and for someone in his condition. EEG, and maybe a spinal tap, tomorrow. Yikes!

Microstory 2212: All the More Alarming

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We met with a diagnostician today who normally works out of New Jersey, but he flew down here, because he’s an apparent avid reader of this site, and is fascinated by Nick’s case. Nick laughed when he heard where he was from, but he wouldn’t tell us what that’s all about. He promises that his laugh is not a symptom, and that he had genuine reason to find the news humorous. The diagnostician was inclined to believe that, though he does not believe him about much else. He has to operate under the assumption that Nick’s belief that he’s from another universe is a part of this mysterious disease. If that’s true, then he’s had whatever this is for several months now, which would make his decline all the more sudden, and all the more alarming. He’s scheduled a bunch of lab work and scans to perform over the course of the next few days. Today only involved a comprehensive examination. It included everything you get from your periodic physical exam, plus a whole bunch more. He had him hold his arms out to his side, and try to keep them still, which Nick found difficult. He had trouble walking in a straight line, and reciting simple prompted phrases from memory. Now that I write it all out, I realize that it sounds like a sobriety test. But obviously that’s not the cause as Nick doesn’t drink. The diagnostician had him walk on a treadmill, and ride a stationary bike. They weren’t measuring stress, or anything. This all seemed to be about his motor skills. So far, the doctor can’t come to any conclusion, which frustrated Nick, even though he understands that this was never going to be a quick or easy fix. It’s only the first of several tests. The doctors and techs have to start at the beginning, and move forwards from there. Even if one of them doesn’t diagnose the right disease, it will give us more information than we had before. We need to be patient. After a couple of hours of this, Nick was tired, and ready to go home, so it was good that we were done for the day. I drove him back to his apartment, and made him some dinner. His former personal assistant ate with us, and told us how the work has been going at the jail. They have kept the spirit of his vision alive, and are making real progress on their prison reform ideas. It saddened him to hear it, since he expected to be there working on all that himself, but he’s pleased that the project is still very much alive. I think the dinner gave him a boost of positivity, even if he would never admit it. I don’t know Jasmine very well, so after I tucked him into bed, she and I stayed up to get to know each other a little bit. We have more tests to get to tomorrow, so I turned in too before too long.

Expelled: Exploded (Part IV)

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There were two ways to gather temporal energy for time travel, or to accomplish other temporal manipulation goals. One was to find it in a parallel dimension, and the other...was to literally wait for it. In the end, that was really all temporal energy was: the passage of time. The ladies listened to Elder’s explanation silently until they thought he was done. “What if we took multiple trips?” Rita suggested. You go back, reconnect with Extremus, build a larger time machine, and then come back for us.”

“I don’t want to be stuck here without a temporal engineer,” Debra argued.

“You wouldn’t be,” Rita tried to clarify. “It’s time travel. He could return to this moment a second after he left.”

“Unless wherever he goes kills him,” Debra reasoned.

“I’m not even sure if I can gather enough temporal energy for even one trip as far back in time as we need to go,” Elder tried to continue. “I’m just pretty sure that I can’t take anyone with me. It’s the triple mass rule. The average choosing one can transport themselves plus two buddies. The machine itself would be more massive than three people alone, which means that it will require extra temporal energy. Maybe if one of us metabolized the energy naturally, it would be different, but this is all very uncertain.”

The conversation halted when they heard a noise outside. It sounded like something was falling. They were in the garage, which didn’t have any windows. “Was that one of the solar panels?” Rita guessed.

They stepped into the foyer to look out one window, but couldn’t see anything. They spun around to the opposite window when the sound recurred. They still couldn’t see anything, so they peeked over the sill as far as they could. Debra had the best angle. “There’s something sparkly down there.”

“Sparkly, like a diamond?” Rita asked.

“More like water. Or ice.” That was when they saw it. It was ice. It was fallen ice, also known as hail. Whether it was made out of water was a question they couldn’t answer, not yet.

Elder pulled out his handheld device, and commanded the nearest exterior drone to drive over to the ball of ice, and run a quick analysis. “It’s water ice. Ninety percent dihydrogen monoxide, plus five percent air bubbles, and three percent dust. The other two percent is carbon, and a few other trace elements.”

“Guys. Look,” Rita encouraged.

They raised their heads to find that the few pieces of hail were only the vanguard. It was hailing and raining in the distance. The precipitation appeared to be coming out of nowhere from about thirty meters above the ground. “I guess now we know where Oaksent has been living.” Elder gritted his teeth, irritated about what this meant.

“He looks like he has a lot of temporal energy,” Debra pointed out the obvious.

“Yeah, looks like it,” Elder admitted.

“It’s just that...if we wanna get out of here, you two are gonna have to swallow your pride, and let us go over to speak with him.”

“Yes, Debra, thanks, we get it,” Rita snapped back. “Is the rover ready?” she asked Elder.

He first manufactured a rover to test the stability and durability of the metals found on this planet. They could do with a way to travel away from the structure in person anyway, and it came with lower stakes than the time machine will. “It’s finished, but I’ve not tested it.”

“You should do that today,” Debra suggested.

One time, when Elder was looking for a book on the tablet that he hadn’t read yet, he came across a personal document that Debra had written. It was fanfiction that portrayed Bronach Oaksent as the hero, and Debra herself as the damsel in distress. She couldn’t even picture herself as the protagonist of her own novel, which was what saddened Elder the most. He didn’t read much of it, because it wasn’t any of his business, but his speedreading kicked in automatically, so he got the gist of it pretty quickly. She had contrived this whole fantasy about a man she had barely met. They didn’t even have an image of him in the database. Her entire idea of what kind of person he was came from a short biography in the manifest, while her imagination had to fill in the rest. She thought of him as her savior mostly because Elder was the poisoner. The fact that Oaksent was the one who had orchestrated this whole thing was a causal connection that she wasn’t capable of making. This wasn’t surprising considering she also struggled to string two sentences together into a coherent thought. That was probably why she sought out men like Oaksent in the first place, because she relied on others, and always had. Coming aboard Extremus alone was the biggest mistake she had ever made, and this would be true even if none of this had happened to her. “Boy, you’re quite anxious to get to your little boyfriend, aren’t you, Karen?” That was mean.

“Don’t call me that!”

Elder didn’t want to apologize, and Rita didn’t want to give him the chance to try, and screw it up, so she changed the subject. “Do what you need to with the rover, and then we’re leaving.”

“It holds two people,” Elder clarified. “One of us will have to stay here. Or should I say, one of you, because I obviously have to go.”

Rita looked over at Debra apprehensively, who looked back in fear. She had obviously been dreaming of finally meeting her hero for months, but she was not useful. Elder was the genius, and Rita was the leader. So her only option would be to beg. Rita sighed, apparently giving up already. “You go, but I’m trusting you with that. You know how we feel about him. If you make one choice that gets any of us hurt because you can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality, you’ll wish you had chosen to stay.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Debra complained.

Rita gave Elder a look. Perhaps she too had come across the fanfiction. It was just sitting there in one of the main menus. She didn’t even password protect it, like an amateur. “Just follow my instructions before you leave, and while I’m on the radio. And whenever I’m not telling you what to do, listen to Elder. That’s all you have to worry about. You don’t have to make any decisions at all.”

“Fine.” Debra wasn’t happy, and was probably already searching for loopholes in this mandate.

Elder went back to the garage to shift gears from the time machine to the rover. He gave it multiple inspections. Whenever he encountered an issue that needed to be corrected, he would then go all the way back to the beginning, and start the inspection over. His own safety codes demanded that he complete an inspection in full without discovering any problems whatsoever. Measure twice, cut once was a cliché for a reason. Once it was ready, he piloted it remotely from the safety of the structure, but only for twenty minutes. The safest way to do it would be to have it make several unmanned trips, but Rita was anxious for answers, and they didn’t know how much, or how little, temporal energy Oaksent had stored up, or how he was using it. There were different ways to trigger a hyperlocalized low altitude thunderstorm, and some were more efficient than others. There was no purpose to causing the weather event in this situation beyond demonstrating his might, so it was a total waste. Elder might need to get him to stop before they ran out of the energy they needed for the time machine.

He moved the rover back into the garage, and repressurized it. Debra was packed up and ready to go. She had showered, which wasn’t a bad idea, if for bad reasons. Elder decided to take a quick one himself, further delaying departure, and making her even more impatient. After he was out, and ready to go himself, Kivi pulled him aside. “Here.” She handed him a gun.

“Where the hell did you get this?” Elder questioned. They had never had a gun on this planet before.

“I don’t know,” Kivi replied.

“You don’t know?” he echoed. “Don’t you think that’s a little weird?”

“I found it in my personal back the day we arrived on this godforsaken planet,” Kivi explained. “I didn’t say anything, because tensions were so high back then, and I didn’t say anything later, because there was no reason for it. Well, there’s reason now. Oaksent is dangerous, and you need to protect yourself.”

“Kivi, he’s the mastermind. He probably gave you the gun. He slipped it in your bag, knowing that you had been marked for transport.”

“Maybe,” Kivi agreed. “It doesn’t matter. Take it. I don’t advocate for violence, but I would rather it be in your hands than his...or mine, for that matter.”

“Fine.” He carefully stuck it in his own pack, and headed out to the rover where Debra was waiting. He performed one more quick inspection, the kind you were supposed to do every time you went out for a drive, whether it was on an alien planet, or within the safety of a breathable atmosphere. Then he and Debra waved goodbye to Rita and Kivi, and headed out into the minor unknown.

The rain and hail fell upon the rover, causing annoying damage to the frame. It was a new vehicle, but it already required repairs. Great. Fortunately, they found that the storm served only as a border between the two camps. They passed through it quickly, and ended up in Bronach’s domain. Now they realized why Elder’s drones had never managed to find it, because it was located within its own parallel spatial dimension. This wasn’t a pocket dimension, but it was similar. It was sunny here, and grassy on the ground, and the air was thick and breathable. He had come a hell of a lot more prepared than Elder had ever suspected. Oaksent was going to win this battle of minds. Debra would never see him as the enemy now.

“What a dick,” Debra said.

“What?”

“He’s had this the whole time, and never said anything? I’ve been shitting in a hole, and showering with freezing cold water. What. A. Dick!” Wow, that was a dramatic swing in the other direction. It was a little offensive. The toilet that Elder ended up building for them was nothing fancy, and it was made out of metal, since they had no ceramics to work with, but it was pretty nice. “Ugh. Stop the car.”

“We can’t get out yet, Debra. I can’t be sure that this is real.”

“Stop the car!” she repeated.

He came to stop, and let her open the door. A gust of wind rushed in, and didn’t kill them, so the atmosphere appeared to be legit. And anyway, if Oakset had wanted them dead, there were easier ways than tricking them into thinking that this was a hospitable environment.

Oaksent stepped out of his brick house with a huge smile plastered on his face. “You’re finally here! Only two of your survived?”

“The other two are back home,” Elder replied.

“Two?” Oaksent asked. “Rita, and who?”

“Kivi,” Debra answered. “Kivi Bristol.”

Oaksent shook his head rather apathetically. “Never heard of him.” Hm. As much as he knew, maybe he didn’t know everything. He wasn’t God.

“It’s a her,” Debra corrected.

“Whatever.”

“How are you powering your dimension?” Elder asked, only wanting to be here long enough to make some kind of arrangement.

“Initially?” Oaksent began. “Temporal battery. Now, a temporal generator.” He chuckled when Elder looked around for it. “It’s disguised as that mountain.”

Yeah, that rock spire would be about the right size for something like that. A temporal generator would have to be a giant tower. It either collected energy from two dimensions that operated at different temporal speeds, or it processed the flow of normal time over the course of aeons. Neither one should have been possible. For the first method, you can’t get any more energy out than you put into creating and maintaining the parallel dimension, so it would have to be maintained through some other source. For the second method, it would obviously have taken a long time to build up the energy required to be useful. It had only been less than a year. “Hm.”

“You’re confused, I can see that.” Bronach was quite pleased with himself. “Tell me, have you ever seen the Bill and Ted films?”

Elder knew exactly what he was talking about. The Bill and Ted Gambit was a time travel trick where, instead of being prepared for present and near-future obstacles, you make plans to later go back in time to make those preparations. If you’re operating within a single timeline—which you aren’t always, so be careful—then it will appear as if you could see the future. It took the concept of cause and effect, and flipped it in reverse, so the effect essentially caused the cause. It was risky, relying on your future self to accomplish something in the exact same way that you had already experienced, but not impossible given enough time and power. “So. I will one day take you back in time, and in the past, you will have me build a temporal generator on this planet, so your past self can use it in our current present.”

Oaksent acted like he wasn’t smart enough to instantly track the sentence as he carefully considered it for a few seconds. “Yes,” he said, tapping an imaginary nail on the head with his finger. “Except I’m not sure whether you were the one who built the generator for me. All I know is it was waiting for me precisely where I wanted it to be.”

“What do you want in exchange for the temporal energy?”

“A ride, obviously. You want the time machine too. You want it to go back to Extremus, and I want it to go back to before the Extremus even existed.”

“We can’t go back to the Extremus if you prevent it from existing,” Debra reasoned.

“I never said that I was interested in that,” Oaksent insisted, shaking his head. “On the contrary. When I say before the Extremus, I mean way, way before, but that doesn’t mean I want to do anything to it. I don’t care about it anymore. I’m exactly where I would like to be, and the crew and passengers of that ship can go off wherever they want, as long as they stay out of my way.”

“What happens if they don’t?”

Oaksent sighed. “They will. Because you will warn them to leave me alone. This is my domain. Neither Extremus nor the stellar neighborhood wants or needs it, so let me do my thing, and we will all get what we want.”

“I don’t think so.” Debra suddenly pulled a gun out of the back of her pants, and trained it on Oaksent.

“Why the hell does everyone have a gun around here?” Elder exclaimed.

“It’s the same one, Old Man,” Debra explained. “I heard Kivi talking to you, and took it out of your bag while you were focused on the road.”

“Well...” Elder began. “Don’t use it.”

“I thought you would be my biggest fan,” Oaksent said to her, hands up defensively. He didn’t look too scared, but not because he knew what was going to happen in the future, only because she didn’t seem like the violent type.

“Don’t underestimate me!” Debra cried. “I’m sick of everyone thinking that they know who I am. But you people never actually ask me about myself. You just make these unfounded assumptions about me because I maybe complain a little too much, I have trouble taking responsibility for my own actions, I’m insecure about my mistakes, and I find it a lot easier to blame everyone else for my problems! But that doesn’t mean you know me!”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Bronach said in a tone.

She waggled the gun towards him. “You could have made our lives a lot easier with your little time mountain thing, but you chose to keep to yourself! What kind of selfish son of a bitch are you?”

“It was a test,” Oaksent argued.

“Oh, it was a test?” she asked mockingly. “Test these bullets!” She fired the gun, but missed, because she wasn’t exactly an expert marksman.

Oaksent took this opportunity to take out his firearm, and shoot at her instead. He too missed, but not because he didn’t know how to aim. A masked man appeared literally out of thin air, and took it on the chest. He tripped backwards a little, but didn’t fall down.

Elder couldn’t see the time traveler’s face, but he recognized the mask. This was standard issue in the Darning Wars for ground battles that took place on unbreathable worlds. Thousands of people wore it, but there was only one man who would logically be standing before them right now. The stranger removed the mask, and smirked at all of them. It was a young Elder Caverness. Present!Elder didn’t recall ever being here in his own past, but that wasn’t surprising since he already knew he had deliberately erased the memory of several years of his life.

“What the hell?” Debra asked.

Oaksent was shocked too.

“Fire in the hole,” Young!Elder said coolly. He lifted a device in his right hand, and pressed the button on the top of it. The temporal generator disguised as a rock spire exploded, sending temporal energy every which way.

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