Microstory 2502: Father of the Cure

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I’m going to be totally honest here, Landis and I have not always agreed. His mother always believed that he was gonna move on to do great things, but the kid was approaching his thirties, and he had nothing to show for it. Don’t get me wrong, I love him to death, and nothing he could have done would have been able to change my mind. I just remember wishing that he would have some kind of ambition. I wasn’t one of those fathers who had a plan for their kid, and they were going to follow it no matter what. I only had a few requirements. Number one, he had to learn a second language. Most of the world understands English, and I feel like the least we can do is meet them halfway. You can’t learn them all, but you can at least learn one. Well, he didn’t do it. He didn’t even try. He did the bare minimum in school, in his language classes, and everything else. He wasn’t an idiot, but he was a poor student, because he lacked motivation. I only got him into sports to teach him discipline, and perseverance. I didn’t care if he became obsessed with it, or even if he liked it. He could have switched to theatre or A/V Club, if that’s what struck his fancy. I chose baseball, because that’s what I was familiar with, but I made it clear that he had a choice. What he didn’t have a choice in was doing nothing. He couldn’t just coast through school, and work minimum wage for the rest of his life. I know, that might seem unrealistic. Someone is working minimum wage, that’s why it exists. I just wanted him to want more out of his life. Again, he didn’t have to do anything that I specifically chose for him, but he had to have at least some passion about it, even if that passion was for the money itself. He had to contribute positively to society, and if that meant sticking with that minimum wage job, well, I figured I could get over that. At least he was doing something. But he kept losing them, and having to find something new. Secretly, I think that he preferred it this way. He gets tired of things, you see. He doesn’t quit because he’s no good at it, but because he just doesn’t wanna do it anymore. It becomes tedious. I’m actually kind of surprised he came up with his foundation, because it’s the same thing; day-in, day-out. I can’t believe that he can take it, but I’m proud of him, and I’m happy for him. I never expected him to cure the entire world. I would have just been happy with him holding down a job for longer than six months. But he went for it. He really went for it. He exceeded all of my expectations, and I regret every doubt I ever had for him. That’s my kid, and I’m grateful for him.

Microstory 2462: Aztec Empire

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My girlfriend dragged me to this place. She’s all in on this historical BS, and I couldn’t be less interested. I’m writing this anonymously because she won’t let us leave, and I cannot even with this guy. He keeps talking about their traditions and customs, but I just don’t care. I’m telling her that I’m looking up extra information about the Aztecs, so you’re my excuse. Just be cool, okay? Be cool. I will say that it is nice here. Like, they did a good job making it feel like you traveled through time to ancient Aztecia, or whatever you’re supposed to call it. I’m sorry, I’m not listening to him. There are a few weird things. The androids who are programmed to believe that they’re Aztecs mostly ignore you. They just go about their day like you’re invisible. Something the guide will say will sometimes trigger them to respond in some way that is relevant. For instance, the guide mentioned how a man would court a woman, and then we would see that play out off to the side. I didn’t notice they were doing that right away, but I guess that’s a nice touch. It’s like they’re a part of this elaborate show, but they don’t realize it, because everything is so well-timed. Anyway, a few of the androids seemed to be breaking character, or they were just straight up broken, because they did seem to notice us. One kid just kept staring at me. I looked over my shoulder to see if there was anyone or anything else, but nothing. I moved over to the side to see if his eyeballs would follow me, and they did. At one point, he pointed right at me, and mumbled something in whatever language they spoke. I had kind of fallen behind the tour at that point, so no one else saw. My girlfriend didn’t even completely believe me about it. It was creepy, but honestly, it made the trip that much more interesting. Well, no. It made it slightly more tolerable. That’s a better way to put it. Come here, don’t come here, I don’t care. Just don’t stray from the pack, lest you be cursed by some evil shaman child. Beware.

Microstory 2188: Trust in Other People

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Thank you for being patient with me yesterday. How easy it is for us to forget the lessons of our youth. I’ve been trying to take on too much work for one person, and it’s had a negative impact on my well-being so I need to learn to lean on others. Or rather, I need to relearn it, because I already figured it out during college. I was taking a class in the linguistics department called Semantics, but I wasn’t working very hard at it. I didn’t go to class unless a classmate was presenting—because I wanted to show them respect—or if there was a test. I was at a high risk of failing when I discovered that some of my classmates were regularly meeting for a study group. I’ve joked that the TV series Community was probably based on them. Lol, you don’t know what I’m talking about, but that would be really funny if it were true. I wouldn’t know, because I never attended the meetings. I wasn’t invited. They did let me use the study guide that they had curated for the open note exam at the end of the semester. I aced that test, and passed the class with a C. I didn’t learn much about semantics, but I did learn everything I needed to know about humanity. I learned to trust in other people’s expertise, and their efforts. People are basically good, and they’re just trying to do the right thing, so don’t assume the worst in them, or try to take advantage. Share knowledge, and help when you can. You never know when a friend will come in handy. I won’t ever forget that again.

Microstory 2180: Secretary is a Dirty Word

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My neighbor and new assistant has agreed to let me tell you her name, and a little bit about her. I didn’t ask her if I could do this; she volunteered, thinking that it didn’t make much sense for me to keep referring to her by her relationship to me. I try to keep the specifics about other people out of my posts, and not reveal too many details about them, in order to protect their privacy, but I can also see how it may feel impersonal and detached. I hope that no one else is experiencing any such issues. Anyway, Jasmine Soun is 29 years old. She’s from St. Louis, Missouri. After she graduated from St. Louis University, she decided to leave all of her belongings behind, and just start driving. She stayed on the road for four hours, and the only reason she stopped is because she ran out of gas. She had made it to Kansas City by then, but wasn’t too near a gas station. She had to get out, and walk the rest of the way to buy a gas can, and fill it up before making her way back to her car. It was there that she met her future boyfriend when he offered to give her a ride. He also offered her a job at the gas station, and she didn’t have any other prospects, so she accepted it. That’s the kind of person she is, a real go-with-the-flow type. He would later convert her to vegetarianism, which was what made her have to quit her job before too long. She didn’t like selling the types of foods to which she had a moral objection. I can very understand that. Fast-forward about six years, and she’s no longer with that guy, but they keep in touch. She’s had a number of jobs since then, but just before I hired her, she was a secretary for the Vice President of Manufacturing at a computer hardware company that specialized in memory modules, so she has decent experience, which means that it’s not a cronyistic hire. Back in my home universe, secretary is a dirty word, filled with a historical context of misogyny, and an imbalance of power through a gendered dynamic. People in this world apparently never had that problem, so the word doesn’t have the same negative connotations. Sure, it’s not like it’s a coveted position, admired like astronauts, but it’s not shameful either, and it hasn’t been traditionally dominated by women either. No job really has been; I find that interesting. And on that note, we better get back to work. Say goodbye, Jasmine. She says hello.

Microstory 2149: A Million of Anything

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As you might have deduced from the title, I’ve reached one million readers. Is that right? Is it deduce, or is it induce? I’ve heard that deduction comes from removing all wrong answers, but that’s probably wrong, and I really don’t know what induction is. Here’s the thing, I have a pretty decent vocabulary, but there are still some concepts that I struggle with. I’m also very logical, but I’ve also always particularly struggled with explaining my logic through accepted standardized terms, like straw man or if and then. I can tell you my logic, but I’m not going to sound very smart while I do it, and I’ll stumble over all of my words on my way there. In seventh grade, I was failing English class. We were on a topic called Greek and Latin Roots and Stems. I was paying so little attention that I didn’t even know what that meant. I’m sure I was daydreaming a lot. I didn’t crack open my workbook once, and in fact, would just leave it in my locker. We had a test the next day so I actually had to call a classmate, who gave me hers to photocopy. It was kind of late at night, and really weird, and humiliating, and my dad was angry with me for it, because like I said, it was twelve or thirteen, so he had to help me with everything. So anyway, I got the workbook, and started looking through it, and I’m like, “this? This is what my teacher has been talking about? I know all this. It says that -ing means continuous action, because of course it does. This is why my teacher called my parents, and got me in trouble?” Needless to say, now that I understood what I was missing, I aced the test, and ended up with one of the highest grades of all classes combined. So I’m pretty good at language.

Still, it’s still not clear to me how you induce something, at least not in any practical sense, and my definition of deduction may come from my strong sense of linguistic morphology, not from how the word is actually used in this subject. I remember intuiting that the word division meant separating objects in half when I was a toddler, which misses the fact that it’s not always by half specifically. Why am I talking about this? Oh yeah, a million readers. A million people read my stories now. Well, a million unique IP addresses access my website on a regular basis. I think it goes by the month, but it’s the middle of May now, so is that based on April’s metrics, or is it just from thirty days ago to now? I’m not entirely sure how to read this section of the blog service. Whatever, I’ll take it, I trust the analytics. For years, this is what I wanted, for people to read my stuff, and to keep coming back for more. I’ve never been great at non-fiction, so I didn’t think it would turn out like this, but I guess I didn’t think I would travel to a different world either. Or different worlds, as it were. I wonder how many readers I would be able to get if people in all of the universes that I’ve been to could navigate to the site as well. That would be a lofty goal, and I should really just be focusing on what’s here and now. Thank you. Thank you for reading. I’m sure my alternate self on my homeworld is super envious of me right now. Oh yeah, he’s pissed. I can feel it. His readership still sits at approximately zero. He would take a million of anything if it also meant a million readers, even slaps in the face. I’m not going to celebrate this milestone, because I have a binge eating disorder, which is triggered by the mentality that positive events should be marked with food, but I’m glad anyway. Let’s see how long it takes to get to two million, and then after that, I think the next one should be five billion?

Microstory 2144: Thursday

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Oh, Thursday. Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday. What more can I say about Thursday, and how many times am I going to say Thursday? A Thursday by any other name would smell just like crap, because I think roses smell like crap, and Thursdays don’t smell like anything at all, but perhaps that’s only because I have an underdeveloped olfactory system. What was I talking about again? That’s right, Thursdays. Again? Yes. I don’t remember you talking much about Thursdays before. I mentioned it once in the post I posted three weeks and three days ago, called Called it Hustling, but it wasn’t on a Thursday when I said it. How do you remember that? By the power of Thursday, and Thur’s hammer. Okay. I also mentioned Tuesday. Now are you gonna go on and on about Tuesday? I would only do that if it were Saturday. Wat?! Here’s the thing. I finished all of my work for the day, which I can’t tell you about, because it’s all still confidential, and I can’t tell you about really anything else. The smoll borbs don’t care if I talk about them, but there’s nothing going on with them. My therapist had to skip our session yesterday for personal reasons, so I can’t get real candid about my mental health either. Or maybe I can, and I am, because I keep talking about Thursdays. Why am I doing that? Why am I spiraling? Because I learned something interesting today...at least interesting by your world’s standards.

Where I’m from, we have seven days of the week, and most of them are named after gods. Monday is named after the moon, and obviously Sunday the sun. I won’t get into details, because I don’t remember it well enough, but I do remember Thursdays, because it’s named after Thor, and Thor is not only a Norse god, but also characters from two of my favorite franchises. These aren’t coincidences either, they too are named after the original mythological figure. Why is this important? Well, because in order to tell you about any of these characters, I would indeed have to recite them from memory, because they do not exist in your world. Your history did not have a Norse religion, and never came up with Thor Odinson. So let me ask you this...why the hell did you name this day Thursday!? Huh?!? HUH!?! Why do you call it Thursday!?!?!?!/1 Where exactly do you think that word comes from? I tried to research it, but I can’t get an answer. All of the days of your week match mine, but with absolutely none of the historical value. I went deeper down this rabbit hole too, and it only got worse. January is named after Janus, March after Mars. July and August are named after famous historical figures who were never born here either. What about the planets? Samesies, young Padawan. The people who devised these systems were polytheistic, so that’s what was important to them. Language isn’t something that some dude just randomly came up with one day. It’s a constant evolution of phonemes, graphemes, and morphemes; smashed together and mixed up after coming into contact with other languages, and being updated with slang, or altered by ignorance or illiteracy. If you never had a Thor, how come you gave him a day? Thursday, Thursday, THURSDAY, THURSDAY, TTHHUURRSSDDAAYY!! I can’t explain it, not if I know my bulkverse rules, which I do. You see, there are different kinds of universes. Some are stable, some are unstable. Some are small, some are big. They’re all real, but they are not equal, and you, my good friends...are not built to last. I need to get out of here if I want to survive. It could happen any day now.

Microstory 2142: Least of All Performer

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This is weird, I just got an email from a company that wants to sponsor one of my videos. It’s from a reputable organization, but someone there must have gotten their wires crossed, because I don’t do videos. I don’t like the way I look, and I have no interest in creating that kind of media. According to a personality test that you don’t have on your world, individuals can be sorted into sixteen baseline types, and I exhibit traits from all of them, but most of all Protector, and least of all Performer. I like to write, because I’m all right at it, and my brain processes written language better than any other skill, not because I’m particularly artistic. Anyway, I forwarded the email to my lawyer, who thought it was funny, because he confirmed that it was a legit business inquiry. He says that I can write back if I want, or just let it go. I’m leaning towards sending something, explaining who it is I am, and what I truly do. I think what happened is that word has been spreading about my blog, and someone at this company just wasn’t given all of the pertinent information. You’ll notice that I’ve not said what company we’re talking about. Even though I’ve not signed anything with them, it’s quite obviously not to be advertised until a deal has been made. It will probably be months before anything comes to fruition, assuming that we end up coming to the table to begin with. They may decide that there’s nothing for me to do if I don’t make video content. That would be fine. The blog makes significant money now. It’s not enough to quit my job, not that I have any intention of doing that either way—boss, if you’re reading this—but I don’t mind the extra income. I’m concerned that it will all come crumbling down at some point. Eventually, you’re gonna get sick of hearing about my adventures in jail if they don’t change week to week, and there’s only so much I can tell you about my mental health. When I start to do volunteer work, I’m sure a lot of that will be private, just like my paid job, though maybe not necessarily so much in the legal sense, so I won’t be able to tell you much about that either. For now, I’m just going to keep writing, and keep welcoming new readers, and if it doesn’t last, then that’s okay too.

Microstory 2057: Precision of Language

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The interview went about as well as it could. He didn’t seem to have a problem with the fact that I didn’t have a résumé. I spent so much time traveling the bulk, and dealing with all sorts of wildly different people, I almost forgot how unusual I am. I’m neurodivergent, which doesn’t mean much in the extreme diversity of the multiverse, but it matters here. The reason I’ve been saying this planet is boring is not just because the headlines are pussycat tame compared to the kind I’m used to, but people seem to be mostly humorless too. At least when people back home would make absolutely dreadful approximations of jokes, I knew that they were trying. They wanted to be funny, they just weren’t very good at it. Metaphor, simile, analogy, hyperbole; these all go over these people’s heads. By that I mean, you failed to comprehend it, not that an object moved over your physical head. I told the interviewer that I’ve been to a thousand parks in my day, and he wanted to see my log of them, which he assumed I would need in order to come to such a precise figure. He didn’t understand that I didn’t mean it literally. I’ve just been to a lot, but probably still under a hundred, I don’t know. When I explained as much, he understood, so these people are not like Drax in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise. They don’t have to take things literally, but it’s not intuitive for them to pick up on things like sarcasm and emotional nuance, and they have to think about it for a moment once you clarify. Fortunately, they also don’t seem perturbed about it, like the society in The Giver, which emphasizes something called precision of language. Listen to me, making pop culture references that you don’t get, because these stories don’t exist here. I guess that’s what I’ll do with my time. You do have fiction here, but it’s got to be different than the kind in other worlds if they’re more about just telling the story, and less about the poetry. Hopefully I hear back from the garden soon. I’m ready to get my hands dirty. Just so you understand, getting one’s hands dirty is an idiomatic expression that usually means being able to put in the work to accomplish something, rather than just sitting by and letting others do it. It can sometimes mean doing something bad, but it doesn’t have to. In my case, it’s to be taken seriously, though, so don’t worry. Gardening is dirty work.

Microstory 2013: Maine

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I’ve been telling you stories about my papa going all over the country, but that’s not all he did. He also went to other countries. After he graduated from high school, he and his parents didn’t think that he was ready for college. He wasn’t stupid or too young. They just thought that he should do something else first. A lot of people do something called a gap year, which is when you wait to go to college. This often means traveling to other places. What my papa decided to do was to go on a big ship all the way from the United States to Europe. Specifically, he went from Maine to Portugal. Portugal is a country in Europe where they may sound like they speak Spanish, but it’s actually its own special language called Portuguese. They speak it in Brazil too. Papa did a lot of driving, but he flew in planes sometimes too. This time, he flew to Maine, and stayed for a couple of nights before the ship left. It left from a city called Portland. You’ve probably heard of the Portland in Oregon, but there’s also one in Maine. The ship was this really big thing called a freighter. They carry a whole bunch of cargo across the ocean. Even though it was really big, there weren’t that many people on it. Papa didn’t work for the ship company, but they let him ride for very little money as long as he helped clean. It took three weeks. When he got to Portugal, which the capital of is Lisbon, he spent another couple of nights there, and then he started to backpack all over Europe. The whole trip took him about four months. Dad thinks that papa went through a storm in the middle of the ocean, but he’s not sure, and he obviously made it home safe and sound.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 26, 2398

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Ever since the incident that sent Leona Delaney, Leona Reaver, Andile Mhlangu, Alt!Mateo Matic, and presumably Trina McIver to the main sequence, Leona Reaver’s body has been kept alive in the SD6 black site. The team asked the agency to  hook her up to life support, because they don’t know for sure what happens to a body whose consciousness has vacated it. Back in the main sequence, it’s legal to transfer a consciousness to another substrate, and then just leave the old body lying there. Bills were passed before it was possible, dictating the responsibility of whatever licensed individual or organization conducted the transfer. The old body must either be destroyed, or kept alive artificially. No legal experiments have been done to observe the consequences of leaving such an empty body as is. The assumption is that it would just die, even though certain involuntary bodily processes, including breathing and pumping blood can continue without true consciousness. To let that body die on its own is considered just as unethical as letting a real person die.

Alyssa insisted that Erlendr not be placed in chains. She doesn’t want to see her sister like that. She doesn’t want the memory of that to sit in her brain forever. It should be okay, Erlendr wants to make this transfer. He doesn’t want to look like a little girl any longer than he has to. Still, two guards walk at his flank while Alyssa holds him by the hand. It’s weird and uncomfortable, but necessary. They lead him into the room where Ramses is waiting next to Reaver’s bed. He has wrapped the Livewire around the Insulator of life. One end is attached to a helmet of his own invention, which he has placed around Reaver’s head. The helmet on the other end is sitting on the nightstand. A regular wire, which will provide power, is leading to the wall, but it has not been plugged in yet. He could probably attach a switch to the apparatus for easier control, but it’s safer just to keep electricity out of the equation until the last possible second.

“Okay,” Ramses says. “Everything’s ready, so everyone needs to leave the room.”

“We can’t do that, sir,” one of the SD6 guards replies.

“These helmets have never been tested,” Ramses explains. “Energy is going to be passing through the Livewire, which is not insulated. I’m not sure that it can be, and still function properly. There’s a chance that energy gets loose, and I don’t want to be responsible for what happens to anyone nearby. It’s better if I only put myself at risk.”

The guards exchange a look, and then leave the room.

“Go on,” Ramses says to Alyssa.

“Promise me that this will work,” she demands.

“I can’t do that. This is new territory. I had never even heard of the Livewire until recently. I can tell you that your sister is safe. Nothing’s going to happen to her body. Honestly, Erlendr is at the most risk here.”

“Gee, thanks,” Erlendr says.

Ramses ignores him. “Go on. You can watch from the observation window.”

Alyssa leaves, and closes the door behind her.

Unlike the cells down below, the observation room isn’t directly connected, so Ramses waits a minute to make sure that she has time to get there. Meanwhile, he has Erlendr sit in the chair next to Reaver’s bed. He sets the helmet upon Trina’s head, and makes sure that it’s secure. He didn’t include a chinstrap, but as long as Erlendr doesn’t move during the process, it should be fine. “Are you ready?”

“Absolutely,” Erlendr answers. “Get me out of here.”

“Okay.” Ramses gets on his knees, and picks up the power cable. He reaches for the socket, and just as he gets to it, he feels something on his head. He doesn’t manage to stop himself in time before power begins to run through the wires, and once it does, he can’t move at all. In a flash, the world goes dark.

Ramses is lying on his back when he comes to. “What happened?”

“Erlendr corrupted the procedure,” Alyssa explains. “I’m sorry. He’s in your body now. You’re in Leona’s.”

Groggy, Ramses flutters his eyes open, and looks down at himself. He can see the hospital gown that she was wearing. He looks over to the floor, where his own body is slumped against the wall. One of the guards is placing him in handcuffs, and pulling him into a more comfortable position. “How long has it been?”

“Not even a minute,” Alyssa responds. “You woke up a lot faster than the others did before.”

“I figured it would happen like that.” Ramses clear’s Reaver’s throat. “There’s no temporal factor.” He looks back down at Erlendr once he comes to. “What did you think you were going to accomplish? Now that we know it works, we’ll just switch.”

Erlendr puffs Ramses’ chest out, testing the tautness of the cuffs. “If there’s one thing I know about you, Rambo, it’s that you always have an exit strategy.” He pulls the cuffs under himself, and around his feet. The guard is back on him quickly, but it doesn’t really matter, because he doesn’t understand what to expect. Erlendr reaches up to the emergency teleporter strapped to his chest, and disappears.

“Call the building!” Ramses shouts to Alyssa. “He’s in my lab!”

“They took our phones!” Alyssa shouts back. “I don’t know the number by heart!” she cries when the guard tries to hand her his.

“Give it to me,” Ramses orders. He takes the phone, and dials Angela, hoping that she can make it upstairs in time to stop Erlendr before he does something crazy. “Angie, this is Ramses, trapped in Reaver’s body. Erlendr is in mine, and he’s there.”

He can hear her breathing heavily as she skips steps up the stairs. She opens the door, and starts to rush around, looking in every corner, and under every desk. “He’s gone. If he was ever here, he’s gone now. He probably took the fire escape.”

“Is anything missing?” Ramses asks her.

“I don’t know. I’m not familiar enough with all the stuff you have up—wait.”

“Wait, what?” Ramses asks.

“What did you have in the gray case where we found the LIR Map?”

“The LIR Map,” Ramses answers. There was no reason to keep it anywhere but where it came from.

“Oh. Then he took the LIR Map.”

“Crap. Okay. I’ll get there when I can. Thanks.” Ramses hangs up, and starts to get out of bed. It’s a little difficult, learning how to maneuver this new body, so he’s going to take it slow. “Clean the sheets, replace the life support systems, and put Trina in them,” he orders one of the men. “No one else comes in without my say-so.”

“Yes, sir.”

He looks to the other. “And you, I need to find someone in the city.”

“This site is designed to contain suspects, persons of interest, and prisoners. Such tools cannot be here. I’ll initiate transport to the field office.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 25, 2398

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By the time Mateo, Winona, Tarboda, and the cartographer, Oreata Kask, arrived at Stonehenge, it was full of people. In the main sequence, there could be billions of tourists who never had the pleasure of visiting the place, but most people on the islands in what is apparently the Fourth Quadrant have seen it by now. It’s often used for music festivals, food festivals, and all kinds of other festivals. For Sunday and Monday, and into this morning, it was booked for an exhibition dance party. Most of the fun took place a ways away from the stones, but party-goers were close enough that Mateo didn’t want to try anything there. He doesn’t want witnesses. While they were waiting, they helped Oreata in her office, organizing maps, and performing simple clerical duties. It was weird, seeing the world as almost all water. They had dinner both nights with the first friendly stranger they met, but slept in Oreata’s guest room.

Now that it’s midafternoon, they’re walking back to the prehistoric monument that spans realities. On the way, Mateo starts to think about what that means. Maybe they’re truly the same stones, which exist in multiple realities at once. Then again, much of Kansas City is the same here for no logical reason. This was all probably done on purpose by choosing ones. They seem to be responsible for everything.

“What are you thinking about?” Winona asks him.

“It’s hard to articulate,” Mateo replies. “My mind is a jumble of thoughts. I try to come up with explanations for the world around me, basing my presumptions on my exposure to more intelligent people, such as my wife. I fail a lot at that, and it takes me longer than a normal person to purge my system of all the nonsense.”

“That is a shockingly thoughtful answer, coming from someone who obviously understands himself well.”

“It’s harder for smart people to admit their faults. I’m more used to them.”

The conversation ends once they realize that they’ve made it to the henge. No one else is in sight, so this is a good time for them to conduct their experiments, whatever those may be. They don’t have immortality water full of temporal energy—and wouldn’t be able to find any without the planet’s normal geographical boundaries for reference—so there is only so much they can do. They can try to walk through a portal, and see if something happens. If nothing does, then that’s probably the end of the story.

The closer they get to the stones, the more the other three fall behind. They listened to Mateo’s stories, and it has them worried. Time travel sounds quite dangerous, and a portal can just as easily trap you on one side as the other. Sure, it might work, but if they don’t like what’s over there, what if they can’t cross back? Mateo nods softheartedly. “I’ll go on my own, assuming there is anywhere to go at all.”

Winona composes herself. “I’ll go with you. My training didn’t prepare me for this specifically, but I know how to survive.”

“Someone should stay behind either way,” Tarboda suggests. “If you never come back, we’re the only two people here who know what happened.”

“Unless you can get through to Kansas City,” Mateo begins. “If we don’t come back, tell whoever needs to hear that I have an idea. The people in the bubble might not be able to see through the barrier, but sunlight gets through somehow, so blot it out. If you can, tell them that Mateo Matic sent you. They all know me there.” He turns to Oreata. “Pick a number between one and eleven.”

Oreata shrugs. “Eleven.”

In his head, Mateo decided that the lone archway on one side of the circle is number one, and the rest go clockwise. “Number eleven it is. Follow me, Winnie.” He approaches the opening, and begins to feel different. The air is a little warmer around it. The differences only feel stronger the more he steps over the threshold. This is definitely something. It may not be what they want, but these are not just stones on stones on stones. There’s more resistance as he continues. It’s not impossible to walk through. It’s not even like something is trying to stop him. It feels like a protective membrane that needs a little bit more effort to breach. Breach he does. The pillars on either side of him start to move farther from each other, and change shape. He steps all the way through, and in a blink, he’s somewhere else, standing under a beautifully designed wooden archway. He only has to look around a little to know that this is Japan, or at least somewhere in Asia. It’s probably Kure, like Tarboda explained.

Winona comes in right behind him. “Whoa, you weren’t kidding.”

No one noticed their arrival, but there are plenty of people bustling about. He reaches out towards a man who looks less in a hurry than most. “Excuse me. English? You speak English?”

The man shakes his head.

Kind of a dumb question, but, “Japan?” He indicates the world around them.

“Japan,” he echoes. “Hai.” He’s confused, but humoring him.

“Kure?”

“Kure.”

“Uhh...China?” he asks, as he’s scanning the environment with his hand over his eyes, like he’s searching for it. “China?”

“China?” The man shakes his head like he’s never heard of it. He probably hasn’t.

“Arigato,” Mateo butchers the only word he knows, thanks to a certain pop song.

They walk back through the Japanese archway, and return to Stonehenge. As much time has passed for Tarboda and Oreata as for them, so no apparent time travel has occurred. They take turns, and try to walk through the other portals. Confident now in the dependability of the process, Tarboda accompanies him to Panama and El-Sheikh Zayed, and Oreata goes with to Easter Island and Muskoka District. Tarboda and Winona try to cross over to Machu Picchu on their own, but nothing happens. Upon trying it himself, Mateo learns that he has to be there, presumably because he’s time traveled so much more than all of them combined. One of the archways is blocked by a wall of glass, and some of them don’t go anywhere, even for Mateo. This is great, but they don’t really need to get to the rest of the Fourth Quadrant. They need to get back to the Third Rail, or ideally, the main sequence. Four of the openings feel like they should work, but do not, plus the one that’s probably KC.

“This changes everything,” Oreata says, awe-inspired, and hopeful for the future. “Thank you so much for helping us make these connections.”

“It may be a start, but I’m afraid I can’t spend the rest of my life ferrying people back and forth. What we need is a permanent solution from someone smarter.”

That was a cue to the universe. A shimmering portal opens in the sky, over the grassy area on the other side of the trees, where they first woke up in this reality. A helicopter descends from it, and lands before them. The door opens, and Leona hops out to meet the other four halfway. “Guys...where are we?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 10, 2398

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Mateo knocks on the door, but can’t hear the muffled response from the other side, so he knocks again. The response is still muffled, but it sounds angrier this time, so either Alyssa wants him to just come on in, or she very much wants him to leave. He decides to open it carefully, and prepare an exit strategy. “Hey, sorry, I couldn’t hear you out there.”

She’s rushing from one side of the apartment to the other. She’s wearing a towel around her body, and one on top of her head. She’s trying to put away some dishes in the kitchenette, and haphazardly fold the clothes on the couch at the same time. “I said to come in. I can’t talk, though. I just came back to shower, because my brothers complained about the smell, but I’m going right back to the blacksite.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Look, Matty, I know you all say that Trina isn’t in there, but what if she is? What if this Erlendr asshole is just suppressing her consciousness, and she’s been trying to escape this whole time? She may be watching through his eyes, I have to control for that. When we get her back, what should I say to her, that I just stayed home, and left her there in the prison?”

“No, I suggest you tell her that you did everything you could to get her back, and sitting in that room doesn’t accomplish that,” Mateo replies. They’ve been to a number of places on Mateo’s list already, usually for other reasons, and now it’s time to start considering making a point of finishing off that list with a real world tour. He does not yet know, however, who will be accompanying him. A good start could be to ask for help for something very specific.

She unwraps the towel from her head, and furiously dries her hair as much as possible. “What else can I do? I’m not a physicist, like Ramses.”

“He’s not a physicist, he’s an engineer.”

“Whatever.”

“Speaking of Ramses, he needs something from somewhere, I need help getting it for him. Marie is considering going with, but whether she does or not, I could do with a translator.”

“You’re going back to Russia?” They learned that Alyssa’s mother’s family originates from Russia, and that her grandmother taught Alyssa the language before her death. The younger children don’t know it, and of course, wouldn’t be suitable for this mission anyway.

“Technically, I wouldn’t say that we were ever in Russia before since we never got off the boat. I’ve never been at all, even in my home reality.”

“What do you need in Russia, and how will it help Trina?” When he takes a little too long to answer, she winces. “Is it dangerous? Spit it out.”

“It’s politically very dangerous, they could brand us traitors by asking to excavate in the area, because we would have to give the Russians the mineral rights, but I don’t see that we have any choice given what else is down there.”

“What else is down there?” Alyssa questions, annoyed. “What is down where? You’re explaining this all out of order, you realize that, right?”

Mateo takes a breath. “You’re right. There’s a mine in Russia that contains a ton of diamonds, worth hundreds of billions of dollars—maybe even over a trillion—but the thing is that this mine was never discovered in the Third Rail. We know exactly where it is, and we don’t care about the diamonds. According to lore, there’s a gemstone down there that’s worth more than everything else combined.”

“Lore?” Alyssa asks skeptically.

“Marie’s friend from Australia who collected stuff like this, and things that Leona Delaney read in her book about time travel; they corroborated each other’s stories regarding the thing.”

“What is it?”

“It’s called timonite, and it’s rumored to grant the user control over all of time and space.”

“That sounds like a fantasy,” Alyssa reasons. She steps behind her bedroom door so she can finish changing. She starts to raise her voice a little to compensate, but it makes her seem irritable. “I don’t much care for fantasy. Talk to Moray about that stuff, he’ll go on, and on, and on.”

“It might not be real, but isn’t it worth the risk?”

“If it starts a war with Russia, which Russia will win because of their sudden influx in capital, then no. Trina is a child, so she doesn’t understand the politics, but if she did, I know she wouldn’t want that. She hates violence. She doesn’t even like to watch cartoon characters fighting each other, even though they’re all immortal.”

“You’re right. Again.”

“There has to be a way to dig where we need to dig without starting an international incident,” Alyssa figures. “You’re time traveling teleporters, for God’s sake; get creative.”

A lightbulb comes on over Mateo’s head. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. We need you more than ever.”

“I could interpret for you, but you’ll have to figure out who you want to talk to. It can’t lead to violence, that’s my one rule.”

“We require the most powerful person in Russia. He’s the only man who can get us what we need.”

“Well, yeah, but you’ll still be branded as a traitor.”

“Not if we have help from the U.S. government, because we don’t need to talk to the actual Russian President. We just need someone who looks like him, and we need him to talk to other Russians on our behalf.”

She stares at him. “Am I supposed to know where you’re going with this?”

Has anyone ever told you why we were immediately comfortable being around you? Didn’t it seem like we recognized your name, or something?”

“It seemed a little weird, but I had other things on my mind, and later I thought we knew too much anyway, so you either had to bring us in, or kill us.”

“It is we who knew too much,” Mateo corrects. “We already knew you. Or we knew of you. Vearden knows you personally, he met you centuries from now, or something.”

“You mean that I’m going to go with you to your alternate reality, and meet people I’ve already met before?”

“Yes.”

“Hm. What does that have to do with the Russian President?”

He smirks. “What are your thoughts on hats?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 14, 2398

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The clock strikes midnight by the time Leona makes it to the lab. She takes her phone out, and checks on the location of her friends. They’re either still at the condo, as she asked them to be, or their phones are, but they’re elsewhere. She gets out of the car, and enters the lab. She and Marie checked here after they returned to the Ponce de Leon in case Mateo, Ramses, and Angela were holed up, or left clues. The place was exactly as they left it, and the security measures they put in place proved that no one else had come into the building either. Even so, she needs to check secondary security to ensure that no one opened the vault.

Once she’s sure that everything’s okay, she opens the door herself, which she and Ramses promised not to do unless they both agreed, or if it was an emergency. She can’t achieve the first one, but the second one certainly applies. They don’t have very much of this stuff left, and what she’s about to do hasn’t been tested, let alone perfected, but she’s desperate. She doesn’t know where her people are, or what sort of state they’re in. If communication was compromised, she can’t trust anything Mateo said to her over the phone. She has to assume the worst and act accordingly. She has to go to them, even if it means placing herself in the same predicament. Leona draws the Existence water into the syringe, and injects it into her arm. Reckless, but it works. She can sense Mateo, quite distantly, but they’re out there somewhere, and she should have just enough power to make it there. She grabs the satellite phone, and teleports away.

“Leona?” Mateo asks.

They’re standing in the main cabin of The Olimpia. Nothing looks out of place. “Oh, thank God. Report.”

“No. You report. How did you get here?”

“I know how,” Ramses says, stepping up the stairs. “You injected yourself with samples from the Bermuda Triangle.”

“I had to,” Leona defends. “I had to get back to you.”

“It wasn’t ready,” Ramses counters. “It may never have been.”

“But it was ready, I’m here,” she insists.

“You couldn’t have known that,” Ramses continues. “Besides, we don’t know what kind of side effects there might be. That is not what the immortality waters were designed for.”

“They weren’t designed for anything,” Leona argues. “They’re natural.”

“Are you sure about that?” Ramses asks, kind of rhetorically.

Leona looks over at Mateo, who is looking down at the floor disappointingly. He shakes his head. He can’t believe she did that. It was so stupid and dangerous, and she should know better. He made contact. He used the proper language to let her know that they were fine. She should have trusted that. She should have trusted him.

Leona frowns at them. She hears a noise behind her, just now noticing that Angela has been sitting in the cubby. “I’m sorry, everyone. I didn’t think it through.”

“It’s okay. We’re gonna be okay now,” Angela tells her. “Let’s all go back home.”

“Where are we?” Leona asks, flipping on the nearest viewscreen to see nothing but the cold dark ocean.

“Enemy territory,” Mateo answers. “Russia.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 16, 2398

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Mateo is finally getting out of the hospital today. The detective asked him all sorts of questions about who stabbed him on the street, but Mateo was prepared for this. He came up with a lie about how he didn’t know who she was, or what she wanted. She seemed pleasant enough at first, but when he tried to explain that he didn’t speak German, she grew irritated and impatient. Her anger with him continued until she just took out a knife, and shoved it in his stomach. She must have been wearing gloves, which would explain why only his fingerprints are on the weapon. It was a ridiculous story, but nothing that the authorities could disprove. He obviously wasn’t at fault here. Bystanders they managed to reach out to didn’t say anything that might corroborate his statement, but they didn’t say anything damning either. After all, he’s the one who got injured here, they’re all on his side.

He did make one mistake, though. Most victims of violent attack are known to seek justice after what happened to them. Mateo failed to hound the detective with calls regarding the progress of his investigation, probably because actually finding the forger from Kansas City would make this worse for him. He wanted to get away from her, and get out of whatever mission she had planned for him. He doesn’t want her in jail. She clearly has friends in high places, and they would not take kindly to that development. The self-stabbing wasn’t great for them either, but hardly enough to trigger some kind of retaliation. Even so, it’s not like the detective can arrest him for being too patient.

As it turns out, Ramses screwed everything up. They weren’t able to communicate with each other too much, and only had the opportunity to exchange a few ASL signs. Mateo wanted Ramses to keep an eye on the forger using the tracking device he planted on her, in case she tried to come to the hospital. He didn’t mean for Ramses to go off and infiltrate her little gang of mercenaries, or whatever they are. When Ramses asked the question of stay?, Mateo thought he was offering to stay nearby. Ramses apparently meant to ask whether Mateo wanted to stay. Which, of course he did, he was stabbed! Due to this misunderstanding, Ramses has been missing for the last few days, though according to a recent interaction Leona had with a higher up at her company, he’s not really being held against his will. He’s just Mateo’s substitute, which defeats the whole purpose of the stabbing, but hopefully it will all work out in the end. Time will tell.

For now, Mateo just has to leave before someone else finds out that there’s something unusual about him. He healed from the wound incredibly quickly. It wasn’t superhero before-your-eyes rapid healing, but it was much faster than a normal person should take to recover. He’s only waited this long to skidaddle so that people don’t ask questions. He had an ally in this endeavor. The nurse who was responsible for him most of the time saw how quickly he healed, and protected him so that no one else would see that there was something different about him. Something different indeed, though still not quite up to standards, and perhaps they’ll soon have to do some self testing to expand on what they know so far. So Ramses’ bodies are still working for them, but in a limited capacity. He was so fortunate to have gotten her as a nurse, because someone else probably would have alerted the hierarchy. It’s also a good thing doctors are just as hands-off as anywhere. She wheels him out to the back of the building, where Marie is waiting with a less flashy rental car. But they don’t part ways before sharing contact info.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 15, 2398

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Leona is about to leave after a long day at work when the internal investigator from a couple weeks ago steps into her office. He exhales, lowers her head, and pinches the bridge of her nose, wishing that she had just made her way to the elevator when she had the chance.

“I’m not here to take up your time,” he claims. “In fact, I’m here because I want to give you a heads-up about something that will be happening in the future.”

“What is your authority here again?” Leona asks, not expecting a direct answer.

“Authority Zero.”

“That is a band where I come from.”

“Where I’m from, it’s the freedom to do whatever I want,” he replies.

“Yeah. What do you want?”

“I have a team in Munich as we speak, who have been charged with acquiring a certain object under...shall we say, special circumstances.”

“They’re stealing it.”

“Well, yes...”

“They’re stealing it violently.”

“I can neither confirm, nor deny, the nature of the operation.”

She clears her throat, not wanting to give away the fact that three members of her team are presently in Munich, and they may or may not be involved in all that.”

“There are no more secrets between us,” the Authority Zero Internal Investigator lies. “We know your husband is there. We tapped him for this assignment, but he declined...also violently. We had to come up with an alternative.”

That’s why Ramses isn’t answering his phone. Mateo doesn’t know where he is, but he expressed his theories. “If they get hurt...”

“I take care of my team. I can’t guarantee their safety. We would have to put them in a padded room for that, and even then, nothing is perfect. The point is, Mister Abdulrashid—”

“Abdulrashid.”

“Abdulrashid.”

“Abdulrashid.”

“Abdulrashid.”

“Why can no one in the world pronounce that man’s name?”

“It’s because people in this country are...less enthusiastic about Arabs—”

She interrupts again, “he’s not an Arab, he’s from Egypt.”

“The point is that people around here do not generally associate with people from that part of the world. Pronouncing their words is just not something we find necessary to learn.”

“Ramses hasn’t experienced any racism in this country,” Leona notes.

“There’s a political reason for that. It’s a lot to explain, but people most likely assume he was relocated from the slums as a child. There was a huge push for that a few decades ago. Tens of thousands of children—mostly infants—were rescued from their parents, brought to civilized regions, and assimilated into the culture. Your friend is the right age to have been part of that. It’s interesting he seems to have kept his name, though. That’s not common. Or did he adopt it later out of reallocated loyalty?”

“I knew there were religious issues, but I guess I didn’t realize how widespread the racism was.”

“It’s not racism,” he defends. “It had nothing to do with race. Now, I’m not saying what they did was right, per se, but those kids were living in utter squalor. Their lives are better now. They’re better here. Our culture—across all religions—teaches scientifically proven idealistic life values, which they were lacking in their home country. Again, I didn’t participate in that, but you can’t argue with the results.”

Leona blinks. Racism. What he just described is racism, and he can’t see it. It’s xenophobia too. Because of Marie and Heath, the team was mostly prepared to just live here forever, but every day comes with at least one more reason to get the hell out. “Oh, I certainly can. You give me enough information, I’ll argue until the cows come home.”

“What cows?”

“It’s obviously just an expression. Is that all?”

“Ah, right,” he says. “The object that Mister—uh...what your friend will be securing for us will need to be reverse engineered when it gets here. That’s what you’ll be doing, probably at the start of next week.”

“What is it?”

“You don’t need to know that just yet.”

“Does it pertain to my work, or will it just be a distraction?”

“We hope it will help, actually,” he decides.

He has her by the balls, as Mateo once said. He knows about the team, and he knows about their connection to timey-wimey stuff. Or at least, he knows that they have a connection to something weird. The forger is aware of all this too, and God knows who else. Their only option now is to play ball. It’s the only way to protect Marie. She just has to hope they don’t know about that aspect of their lives. “What’s your name, if not Shady Corporate Authority Zero Interrogator?”

“Honeycutt. Senator Melville Honeycutt.”

Crap, that can’t be good. “It’s nice to formally meet you.” Now she really is going to have to fake being polite to him.

“I assume Leona Matic isn’t your real name?”

She adds more belongings to her bag. “No, it is. We didn’t think there would be anyone we would need to hide from.”

“Why did you need forged papers, then?”

“We required identities, not names.”

“I see.”

“What’s her name, the forger?” she presses, even though she really just wants to leave. “The one who is endangering my friends overseas?”

“Winona. Winona Honeycutt. I call her Winnie.”

Double crap. What is the wife or daughter of a senator doing as a forger in the seedy part of Kansas City? And what is a senator doing interrogating a suspect in what’s meant to be a semi-academic, semi-private laboratory? And how did they find out anything about them in the first place? “If you’re related, then you must know that I’m now pretending to work for SD6, and also that I’m apparently in charge of investigating her forging den?”

He dismisses this with a wave of his hand. “We set it up so that you would become the de facto lead investigator. They won’t find anything at the alleged crime scene, and you won’t implicate my daughter at any rate, will you?”

“No, sir. She’s safe. I just don’t know what to tell the agent and detective. I reached out once to tell them that my lead evaporated, and they have been calling me ever since.”

“I’m sure you’ll think of somethin’. Try to keep them out of it. They’re not part of the inner circle; you are.”

“Very well, sir.” She’s becoming more respectful by the minute. But of course, she still doesn’t trust them, so when she finally makes it home that night, after updating the group chat, she asks Angela to begin running some countermeasures.