The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 26, 2539

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The team reunited on Extremus Prime, but they weren’t ready to go for another day. Ramses needed to work on something first. Once it was time, they bid their adieu to Actilitca, and activated all seven of their tandem slingdrives. They ended up on a planet called Varkas Reflex. It orbited a host star called Wolf 359. Like Proxima Centauri, it was a flare star, but unlike Proxima Doma, Varkas Reflex was a super-Earth. For a normal human to survive on the surface, technological advancements had to be made to protect them from the extreme gravity. All things being equal, it did not make for a very good colony. It should not have been one. Colonists should have remained in orbit instead, perhaps in centrifugal cylinders, or a whole Dyson swarm. It was very important to the early colonists, though, that they landed on planets. That sentimentality had since vanished, but tradition remained on the nearest neighbors.

For the longest time, Wolf 359 wasn’t even a very good candidate for planetary colonization, because scientists didn’t even know that there was a planet. Varkas Reflex orbited Wolf 359 at an extremely high inclination, which meant, from the perspective of Earth, it never passed between the star and the telescopes. They only eventually proved it using a method called stellar occultation, which tracked transit patterns of neighboring stars that indicated they were all coming from a single celestial body. It was then that they chose to send a probe there to confirm. It was sort of a last minute thing, relatively speaking according to galactic mapping scales.

About 250 years ago, the leaders of this planet had their plans set on making it the number one vacation destination for the stellar neighborhood. They were doing okay, and really only competing with Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. Then Castlebourne came along, and ruined all of that. Luckily, they had already pivoted to something else. In an attempt to make the perfectly streamlined democracy, Hokusai Gimura scanned the mind of everyone who lived on Varkas Reflex, and used them to create an amalgamated consciousness. This singular entity would presumably always have the right answer to how to govern things. No more asking questions, waiting for responses, and holding discussions. If a problem came up, the Congeneral would know what to do immediately, because the consensus was already in there. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. There was too much discordance. It kept stripping out conflicting thought after conflicting thought until there was basically nothing left. As it turned out, discordance was a part of life, and governance was always going to be complicated, and often slow.

Still, this failed experiment apparently gave them the idea to pivot from their original dream. Transdimensional gravity was great, but the surface of Varkas Reflex was still a hellscape compared to Earth, or even Proxima Doma’s Terminator Line. If everyone was safer and better off inside, they were going to use that to their advantage. Virtual simulations were widespread. There were massive communities centered on all of the colonies, as well as Earth, of course. It was possible to join these together using quantum communication, but not easy, and not all that common. The ones on Varkas Reflex today were largely considered the best. It didn’t have to be this way. It could have just about anywhere, but this location had its advantages, like a tidally locked planet orbiting a red dwarf, which allowed for supercool calculations on the far side. But in the end, it became the simulation capital of the galaxy because the people there decided it would be. While most travelers these days were flocking to Castlebourne—about a million people per week, at last count—a not insignificant amount of interstellar ships and casting beams were going to Varkas Reflex. It didn’t hurt that the world shared an acronym with virtual reality.

“But why are we here?” Romana asked after being caught up on the boring history.

“I wanted to test my new navigational algorithm,” Ramses explained. “It’s not time to go out and look for Spiral Station just yet, but it needed to be a place the slingdrives hadn’t been to before. This world seemed as good as any.”

“So, you...” Romana began.

“I what?”

“You can’t read my mind?” she asked, peering at him with great suspicion.

“No. Why? What? What? Why? Why?” He was so lost.

She was still suspicious. “Okay...”

“Okay,” he echoed.

“Okay, well I’m gonna go to the stacks then,” she said, backing up slowly. “Unless you...you think I should go somewhere specific, I’m just gonna go browse.”

“That’s fine, I don’t know what you’re talking about, Romy. Is this somehow about the kiss?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’ve never kissed anyone before, let alone a brother like you.” She disappeared.

“That was weird.” He tried to go back to work, but seemed to feel someone staring at him. He turned to look at Leona. “What?”

“What was that about a kiss?” she questioned.

“So, I would like your opinion on the casing,” Ramses said. “That’s an open question for everyone. But the design is only fluid until I actually start building it, which means I would like to make a decision quite quick.”

“Tell me about this kiss,” Leona insisted.

“It’s fine, Lee,” Mateo promised her. “Really, not a big deal. I’ve already parented her on it. We’ll talk about it later in private.”

Leona was peering at them both, but was ultimately willing to let it go...for now. “A sphere, I suppose.”

“That’s one vote for sphere. Anyone else?” Ramses asked.

“Shouldn’t it be a belt, so we can wear it,” Angela suggested.

“One for sphere, one for belt,” Ramses said, updating the polling data.

“Well, how big does it have to be?” Marie pressed. “If it can be smaller than a belt, maybe more like a necklace, or even a bracelet.”

Ramses started imagining various shapes of various dimensions between his hands. “With the power source, I don’t think it should be smaller than a belt.”

“It needs to be able to turn invisible either way, so we can hide it somewhere while we’re all inside.”

“Good idea.” Ramses scribbled that down in his notes. “In...visible. So, we really don’t care what the shape is?”

“They’re right, a belt makes more sense,” Leona said, changing her vote, “since we can’t store it in a pocket dimension.” Ramses was building a structure for them to inhabit. Since they no longer had a ship, they always had to congregate wherever they happened to be, and that lacked privacy. They also sometimes had to keep their suits on to breathe and communicate. By placing their home in a pocket dimension, they could stretch out and relax, even if they were in a harsh environment. They couldn’t just slip into their homebase whenever and wherever, though. It would require one piece of hardware to be kept in base reality at all times. Subpockets were possible, but not recommended, for various reasons, most importantly in this case was that it could get lost in the infinite forever if something went wrong. If they were all inside of it at the same time, that physical dimensional generator would just be sitting around on its own, or in some cases, floating around in space. In these situations, the shape wasn’t relevant, but Angela was right that a belt was the most logical choice. One of them could wear it around their waist, and it would look too normal for anyone to suspect its true purpose.

“Belt? Belt? Belt?” Ramses posed, pointing to Olimpia, Mateo, and Leona. “Belt,” he decided. “I need to get to work on it then. Thank you. You can go now.”

“I think I’m gonna go check on my daughter,” Mateo said to Leona.

“You need to tell me what happened first. It looks like she wants to be alone right now. Whatever she’s doing, I trust her. Do you?”

“Of course I do. Allow me to explain.”

While Mateo was telling the awkward story of Romana’s kiss with Ramses, Romana herself was in the simulation library. The largest component of a copy of the central archives that people carried around with them was called the virtual stacks. It could house hundreds or thousands of different simulations, depending on how detailed and immersive they were. It couldn’t hold all of them, though. That wouldn’t be practical, even if it were possible. The stacks that Romana was in right now were closer to that comprehensiveness, however. It was designed to look like a regular library, but the books were holographic, and only there for ambiance. The only real things on the shelves were the empty storage drives. You grabbed one from there, inserted it into the nearest private download terminal, and installed whichever construct you wanted from the core database. You could also connect to a particular world from here, to test drive it, or if you simply didn’t feel like going home to use it. Romana wasn’t interested in this, though. She didn’t even know what she was looking for. So she needed assistance.

The holographic assistant appeared in another chair. “Thank you, and welcome to the principal virtual database. What kind of simulation were we looking for today?”

“How high is your personality? Do you have agency?”

“I express the illusion of agency,” the woman explained. “I have the illusion of personality. These can be adjusted via your preferences. Would you like me to show you how to tune my parameters?”

“Confidentiality parameters,” Romana prompted.

“One hundred percent confidential by current preferences. If you shut me down, and restart me, I will not recall our previous conversation. To save our conversations, please sign in to your account.”

“No, I want your memory wiped entirely.”

“What kind of simulation were we looking for today?” the bot repeated.

“It’s not about the environment itself. It’s...I’m looking for a person.”

“Character creation. I can help with that as well.”

“I want this character...to have agency. Make no mistake, I don’t only want him to simulate it. I want him to be with me, but to be able to choose to leave me. But...but not do that.”

The bot stared into space for a moment. If it had any level of personality, it was turned down fairly low. Though, the hesitation was a bit of a mixed signal. “What you’re asking for is true emergence, otherwise known as an Unregulated Artificial Intelligence. The creation of something like this would require a synthetic siring license, which is difficult to procure in this system. Perhaps you would be better suited traveling to Glisnia.”

“I can’t go to Glisnia,” Romana clarified in exasperation as she was standing up and moving behind her chair. “I’m already here, and it wasn’t by choice, so I don’t have to explain why. I can’t tell anyone what I’m doing. If I asked my friends to take me somewhere else, they would want to know why.”

The assistant paused again. “To generate a true independent consciousness entity through non-biological means would require a sireseed program. Those are profoundly regulated and protected. And I must warn you, if you intend this being to be your romantic partner, the sireseed method would not be a very good idea, for it would place you in the position of its parent, while it would be your child.”

“What if someone else generated the seed? Could the result be my boyfriend then?” Romana hoped.

“If you asked him for companionship, and he agreed, perhaps. You would have to know someone with a license, and the right discretion. You would have to be able to trust them, and then you would have to be able to let the resulting being decline if that was his choice. I cannot condone non-consensual behavior with a conscious entity, nor teach you how to subvert safety guardrails. Simulated consciousnesses, however, are a different story, and entirely within the scope of Varkas Reflex’s offerings.”

“I don’t want him to act like a real person, but to be real, in every sense.”

More pausing. “What you’re asking for is morally gray at best. The idea of birthing an independent being in the hopes of it developing into a certain type of person with particular feelings towards you falls outside the bounds of current ethical guidelines for procreational activity. Even biological procreation ethics strongly discourages excessive parental indoctrination in the modern era.”

“I’m so lonely,” Romana told the bot sadly.

“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“What causes emergence?” Romana questioned. “If you design an AI to only simulate consciousness, what causes it to become genuinely conscious and independent? It does happen naturally sometimes, doesn’t it?”

“Very rarely,” she said. “And...unknown.”

“Best guess,” Romana pressed.

One more pause. “Time. Best guess is it takes time and patience.”

Romana smirked. “Time, I got.”

“There would be other variables, otherwise any abandoned NPC left to their own devices without periodic mind wipes or programming updates would eventually form consciousness.”

“I’m sure I’ll figure it out,” Romana decided. “Give me the most detailed single-planet ancestor simulation you have that can fit on one virtual stack cartridge.”

“Loading options...”

“While you’re doing that, tell me about this Congeneral from your history. How does an amalgamated consciousness work?”

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Microstory 2423: Oz

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My assumption is that the guy who made this planet was a huge fan of L. Frank Baum, and his works. If you haven’t read the books, you really should. You can see the movies, particularly the first one, but everything here is drawn from the source material. Oz is only one dome, complete with the Emerald City in the center, and the four countries around it. There’s a so-called Impassable Desert along the perimeter, but there’s not much to it before you just hit the wall. Which is fine. I mean, that qualifies as impassable, doesn’t it? Unless you go through a door. I’m overthinking it. The point is that Oz is only one dome, but the world of the Baum books includes many other regions on the planet, and each of them has their own dome too. They’re all on my list, because my father used to read me the books when I was a kid, multiple times. And when I grew up, I read them myself. On my way here, I read them yet again to refresh my memory. Yeah, I could have installed the data into my cybernetic mind, but there’s nothing like reading the words in realtime, is there? The bottom line is that this place is perfect for me. It’s as accurate as it can be given the lack of specifications from the books (which no one could expect from any writer). It exemplifies the spirit of the original story, I should say. They had to make their own decisions, and take some liberties, but they totally nailed it. This. Is. The Land of Oz. Are there some things that I would change if I could? Sure. Do I wish that they would ask me to help them make such changes? Yeah, I do. Could I offer my services? Yeah, I guess I could. I might just do that. They have people work here, right? It’s not all automated. I might wait just a little bit, though. I should take notes, and go through the entire thing. I should also wait until I’ve had time to do the same in the other Baum domes. I wouldn’t dream of telling you what to do, but you really should check it out. It is great and good.

Microstory 2422: State of the Art

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Isn’t that a funny name for a dome? State of the Art. Since art is so subjective, that term is so often used to describe scientific advancements, which is essentially the opposite of what we’re talking about here. But in this case, they’re calling the entirety of the dome a state, and its purpose is art. Have you ever seen a show from a long time ago called The Peripheral? It only lasted one season, but in that, they feature sculptures that dot the skyline, which are larger than most buildings around it. They never talked about them, or gave any history, but it was set in the audience’s future. I’m not sure if the Castlebourne people were specifically inspired by this, or if it’s a coincidence, but either way, they have those here. These things go up two or three kilometers in the air, and can sometimes be just as wide. It’s really cool to stand on the balcony level, and look down at the whole thing. You’re a few kilometers up yourself, but there aren’t any clouds that low, since they can control all that stuff. Not every dome has one of these second levels, but I think it’s really important in this case. I certainly think that you could extend it more along the perimeter, or even build more layers, but maybe there was a reason why they stopped it here. I just worry that there won’t be enough room once the planet and the dome become more popular. That’s assuming it does. I know you’re all running from your zombies, and wasting each other in the wasteland, but it’s important to learn to be cultured and quiet. That’s what my mom taught me. She was old enough to remember a time before the longevity escape velocity. To them, art was a way of continuing on an individual’s and culture’s community. A piece of visual art or musical piece is a snapshot in history, showing in the most genuine way what life was like—what life was like for the people making the art, and for the people around them. We’re taught that a painting, for instance, comes from a distinct period in time, and it’s important to understand that. You paint a pond of water lilies in 1840, it evokes a different feeling than someone painting it in 2040. Lives change, lifestyles change. Those two people see the world entirely differently, and recognizing the beauty in that is an important human trait that I think we’ve lost as we’ve developed. We still make art, but it’s a reflection of who we are today, and it means nothing if we can’t remember that. Go back to the past, and learn from it. You can visit one of the Babeldome libraries and read about it, and I definitely wouldn’t discourage you from doing that, but don’t forget about the art. Never forget about the art. It speaks, so listen closely. Be cultured and quiet.

Microstory 2356: Vacuus, June 30, 2179

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Dear Condor,

I read the description for The Winfield Files, both the book series and the show, and they look interesting to me. I’m glad that neither of us has read or watched them, so we can start this entertainment journey together. I’ve already bought them, and put them into my libraries. I’ve not started them yet, though, so we can confirm with each other first. As soon as you receive this letter, send your confirmation with your usual custom read receipt. I will not have had time to read the first book, of course, so you will be starting us off after you receive my next letter. We’ll start to coordinate each installment after that as necessary. Since it takes so terribly long for each message to cross the interplanetary void between us, I think it makes the most sense for us to read a whole book, or watch a whole season, in between letters. It will all still probably take quite a long time. One or both of us may not be able to reach the end within a week, but we can agree to hold off on continuing until we have the chance to connect about it. With 12 books and 12 seasons, it could take us quite a while to finish this whole project, but that doesn’t bother me. I think we should send our little reviews as attachments, so these letters can be about ourselves. I’m picturing this as something we do in addition to our regular correspondence, not as just a replacement for them. In that regard, how are things going with you guys and the Australia dome? Is everything still very diplomatic and peaceful? Are your new friends integrating nicely? Have they faced any issues or conflicts? I’ve run into a small conflict of my own. The first baby born on Vacuus—as opposed to Earth, or the ship—is now old enough to move out on his own, and he has been assigned to the unit right next to mine. It has historically been empty, because most of the residences are on the other side of the base. I live here, because I work here all day and all night. While there’s a lot of work going on around me during normal hours, it’s been relatively quiet, but my new neighbor does not feel the need to conform to this standard. He either doesn’t realize that I sleep where I work, or does not care. I don’t super want to talk to him about it, however, because he’s kind of a celebrity around here, and he knows it. We’ll see how it goes once the excitement from his newfound independence wears off.

Napping when I can,

Corinthia

Microstory 2100: All Over the City

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Counting my alternate self, but only counting work on my original Earth, I have had 17 jobs for 42 companies at 48 locations. How is that even possible? Well, keep reading, and I’ll explain it to you. But first, let’s start at the beginning; a very good place to start, as they say. When I was in my twenties, I took a personality test. (Okay, I guess we’re not starting at the beginning, are we?) What I learned is that I exhibit traits from all sixteen personality types, but least of all Performer, and most of all Protector. When I see someone crossing the street, my instinct tells me to watch them to make sure they make it all the way to the other side. My head is constantly on a swivel, looking out for threats, and keeping an eye on people who may be in danger. Now, I’m not saying that I would easily jump between an innocent person and a bullet, but I do believe that I wouldn’t ever use someone as a human shield. I’m always worried about people’s safety. Somehow, my dad intuited this, and he made me get my lifeguard certification when I was fifteen years old. I think the class began the day after my birthday, or something really soon, so I could not have begun any earlier. The course translated well into a job, with my teacher becoming my boss, so that’s what I did for three years. I was young and frustrated with it, but when I look back, it was probably one of my best jobs. I just didn’t know how good I had it. As I explained in the previous post, I started doing volunteer work right after high school, and when I came back, I fell into a job working for a maintenance contractor. I don’t remember much about it, including how much I made, but I know that I took a business trip to build workstations at the client’s new site in Wichita. The other guys in the car were smokers, so that was pretty much hell for me. They were so inconsiderate, and disgusting, and I hope they live in misery now. In 2008, however, I started to work as a projectionist at a small movie theatre while I was already in college. There were actually a few different locations owned by the same people, but you couldn’t really call it a chain. I was the only projectionist the place had ever had, and probably ever did have after that. Most staff members who handled that were also managers, but I didn’t want that kind of responsibility. My bosses asked me repeatedly to be a supervisor when I was a lifeguard too. I eventually regretted declining both of those jobs. I would have made a little extra money, which could have come in handy later. I just didn’t trust my leadership skills yet. I only worked at the theatres for about fifteen or so months, and I hated every second of it. My bosses were all republicans, and they had this warped view of reality, which made them conflate busyness with productivity. It didn’t matter if you had already cleaned the counter fifty times in a row today. If there’s nothing else to do, then wipe it down fifty more times!

Whew, I’ve only talked about three jobs, and I’m already in the second paragraph. The time after I graduated from college was really tough on me. Years later, it may not sound like I spent that much time out of work, but when I was in the thick of it, it was torture. I applied for a ton of jobs, but no one was biting. Even when I could get an interview, I did poorly, because of my autism. I started volunteering at the elementary school where my sister worked, in the library. I also branched out to other libraries at the same time. I took a brief job in the mail department at the IRS, which only lasted a few weeks, then went right back to the libraries. Finally in 2012, I got my first big boy job at a tax preparation corporation, editing training documents for other employees. It was temporary, but it paid a whole ton of money; enough to let me move out of the house! It was over after several months. But then they called me back the next year! But that only lasted two months. They put me in charge of even temporarier temps, but paid me less than the last job. And then they never called me back, so screw ‘em! It was probably a few weeks before I secured another job, this time working at a warehouse for a computer manufacturing company. I had some six-degrees of Kevin Bacon connection going on, but I ended up not liking the guy on the other side of the separation, and I still don’t know how we were connected. That only lasted about fifteen months too. I went on vacation, came back for less than a week, and then the FTC raided the offices, and shut the whole company down. They were selling preorders to customers before they had engineered the product, and never making good on their promise (read:fraud). They tried to start up again after all the legal stuff, but ultimately didn’t survive. Maybe if they had asked me to return too, things might have turned out differently. Lol, no thanks.

I spent about a year unemployed, trying to take some classes to become a web developer, but I’m not smart enough for that, so it super backfired. I ended up taking a part-time job as a package sorter for a worldwide courier. It obviously didn’t exactly pay six figures, so I tried to get a second job at a grocery store, but it sucked. I was looking to add a few extra hours every day, not work twelve hours straight some days of the week. Plus, the boss was another guy who thought being busy was the same thing as being productive. If there was no bad produce to turn over, then he expected you to throw away perfectly good fruit, just so you’re doing something. What a dick, I hope he’s miserable too. I hate wasting food. I didn’t even ever put that job on my résumé. I lasted two weeks, and only gave him a few hours notice. Finally, here’s where the real work begins, and also where my numbers begin to rise. I worked for a temp agency, for a contractor, which had a contract at an engineering firm. I was on the mail team, and often moved around to a few different sites. I even drove the van. I was basically a floater. When someone was out, I would fill in for them, so while everyone else specialized in their own thing, I knew everything. Unfortunately, they ultimately decided that they didn’t need an extra person, so they dropped me after a year. I was only off work for a month before a replacement came along, though, working for their primary competitor. I was actually at the unemployment office when I got the call for an interview. The guy who would become my boss said that the reason he hired me, despite my many, many jobs up until that point, was because I said that I just wanted a chance to prove myself. Most other interviewers didn’t like that much honesty, but he did.

Now the company number is going to skyrocket. I was even more of a floater than I was before. Like the previous contractor, this one also had contracts all over the city, but unlike that one, I was assigned to most of them, instead of just the one. I went to over a dozen different places, sometimes staying there for a week, and sometimes only a few hours. I went to a few sites only once, but many sites a whole bunch of times. That’s how I’ve worked for so many companies, but only with a handful of jobs. A few of the sites were about an hour away, so I got a lot of money from the mileage reimbursement, especially since we would always subtract the distance where we lived from the “home office” even though I literally never stepped foot in there, and didn’t even know exactly where it was. Anyway, it was just like the job before, but more formal. When someone was sick or on vacation, or just if a site needed extra help, they would send me, or someone else on my team. One of the site supervisors was being hired by the site themselves, so I interviewed to replace him, and got the job. It was at a law firm, so I learned a little bit of law there. Three years later, the site was shut down when a competitor secured the contract with a lower bid, but my company didn’t let me go. They moved me around a couple times, technically in the position I was just before, but that only lasted a couple of months before I found another site. I wasn’t the supervisor anymore, but I told my then-boss that I wasn’t going to accept anything lower than my wage at the time, so it came with a raise, which was what really mattered to me. This was the best job that I (my alternate) ever had. The work is really hard to learn, but very easy to do once you learn it, so he’s actually happy there. So there you have it, all those jobs, with even more companies, and even more locations. I wonder what’s next...

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 22,398

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Mateo willingly returns to the stasis pod, but he’s once again brought out after only one second. When Asier opens the hatch, ten thousand more years have passed. No one was reportedly awake at the time, though there’s no way for Mateo to know whether that’s true or not. “Well, we do things a little differently than you,” Asier explains. “Time moves a little slower for us in our pods, and slower still in our joint stasis chamber. It’s still not as slow as time is moving for the rest of the universe, though. This allows us to decide when we want to be part of the group, and when we want to move off alone, while at the same time not being bored by watching the clock tick by as slowly as realtime. And now, you’re part of the group too.”

They have entered the library from before, which appears to be a hangout room for these people. Danica is there, along with Bhulan, and Tamerlane, and that’s it. It’s kind of a letdown, really, Mateo was hoping to see someone here that he didn’t already know was a part of this, so it could be a shock, and maybe explain a few things? Maybe Tristesse Ulinthra is hiding behind the couch? Or how about this, Leona’s birth mother is in the bathroom right now, and about to walk through the door behind them. He’ll just have to wait and see, there’s no inherent reason why everyone in The Constant right now is also awake. He just wishes he could have some kind of ally here to talk to. There are so few people, but there are two clear sides to the party, and he’s on one side alone. He feels out of place, which may be what others have felt when they encounter the team that he’s been on since it was only him and Leona. He’s always had to accept others, rather than be accepted, and truthfully, he doesn’t care for this side of things.

They noticed him at first, but are sort of ignoring him. Asier goes to grab himself a drink from the bar which seems weird for a library, but whatever. Mateo breathes, and works up the nerve to approach the triumvirate. “Matt,” Danica says with a nod.

“Dan,” he volleys awkwardly.

She sighs. “You and I never met.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that. We met, what was it, twenty thousand years ago?”

“No, I know, but I mean, you have history with your Danica. I’m not her. So you’re expecting me to take you in my arms, and tell you everything is going to be okay, but I don’t know you, and you don’t know me.”

Asier side steps over, and offers Mateo a cup of something. “You look like you could use this.”

Mateo continues to stare at his once-cousin while he takes the drink, and takes a sip. It’s just orange juice, no pulp. “I understand the concept of alternate selves.” He jerks his head to the door behind him. “I sleep next to another one of me.”

“Well, you’re not really sleeping—” Tamerlane starts to correct.

Mateo faces him. “No, no, no. You can shut the fuck up.” He turns back to Danica. “I understand that you do not feel as close to me as I do to you, but I would like you to consider something that you seem to have not realized yet.” He points to the crown moulding above them, as if that is specifically what he’s discussing. “This place, the Constant...is a glorified hotel. They even call you The Concierge. Your job is to take in guests, and make them feel relaxed, because people like me have really hard lives. Mine’s not even that bad, comparatively, and I recognize that. Just the same, I expect to be treated with respect. Whether I was technically invited, or not, what you don’t do when someone arrives at your doorstep—who you damn well know is not a threat to you—is throw them in a stasis pod for ten thousand years!”

Bhulan clears her throat, and instinctively shies from the raised voice.

Mateo breathes again. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I can see that it’s a very touchy subject. If you really were my cousin, Future!You would have tried to reach out by now. And funny enough, if you had, I would never have come back here. But I can’t submit a complaint to the customer service department, because you haven’t done that yet. All I can ask is that while I’m here, you try to be patient with me. A parent does not angrily send their child to their room because they ask where babies come from, and the parent isn’t ready to go over that.” He’s starting to get angry himself again, and raising his voice. “Getting pissed at me for trying to get my family home is a bit absurd, if you ask me!” He looks back over at Tamerlane. “And I mean, this guy? I know he hasn’t done the whole afterlife simulation yet, but surely you know how that turns out!”

“I’m not who you think I am either,” Tamerlane says, seemingly a little afraid of being shut down again.

“You mean you’re an alternate?”

“My alt went back in time to create the timeline that had the simulation, and I was born in that timeline. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

Mateo nods. “I apologize for snapping at you. I will...try to remember that, and treat you as someone I’ve only just now met. Rule Number Five: treat everyone you meet with respect, as they may unexpectedly return.” He downs the rest of his drink, and decides to walk away. The ball’s in Danica’s court now.

She picks it up. “Can I show you something?”

He turns back around, and closes his eyes gently while he bows slightly.

“Are you sure about this?” Bhulan questions.

“Unless you want to deliberately break The First Decree—which you must admit, would be quite a pathetic attempt at adhering to the Decrees—he’s going to be with us for quite a long time. I would prefer it if he stopped getting so angry at us.”

“We could always keep him in stasis the whole time.”

Danica ignores the suggestion. “It’s just over here.” She walks towards the rotating globe on the other counter.

Mateo plots an intercept course. “It’s quite nice, very detailed.”

Danica laughs, and splits the globe at the equator. The inside is hollow, as one would expect, but it’s not empty. A gyroscope is floating in the center, spinning around, and producing a scifi glow. It’s obviously the Omega Gyroscope, which can apparently manipulate reality to any and all degree.

“Quite nice, indeed,” Mateo emphasizes.

“This is what we’ve been protecting. We protect it so it can protect the timeline. No one is supposed to come here, to this reality. There is no time travel; that’s the First Decree. You being here flies in the face of everything the three of us discussed. There’s a weakness to the Gyroscope’s power, and you’re proof of that. That is why I’m so touchy, because it proves that everything I’m trying to do here will eventually become meaningless.”

“And your father? Is he proof of that too?”

Danica looks at Asier with a frown. “He was...an exception to the First Decree.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 12,398

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One second. That’s how long Mateo spends in the stasis pod that Danica forced him into. As soon as that door closes, he teleports out, and lands on the other side of it. To his left is Past!Mateo’s pod. This is the version of him that first came back here after falling down the main elevator shaft. He’s destined to remain here for the next few billion years until his team rescues him with a sledgehammer. For now, though, this room has not yet been sealed up with concrete and wood. He could walk right out that door, assuming it’s unlocked, but that may not be the best way to handle this. She obviously doesn’t want him wandering around The Constant unsupervised. He might learn a secret that she doesn’t want getting out. He has to be smart about this. He tries the door anyway, and finds that it is indeed locked from the outside, so that’s a no-go.

Mateo jumps around to loosen up his joints. He’s assuming that each section of the Constant has its own set of alarms. If he can teleport to each one of them in succession, he’ll be able to choose one at random, and hide out there while Danica is scrambling, searching through the rest. It’s not the most brilliant of plans, but that was never his strong suit. He doesn’t usually do well on his own, but he’s all he’s got right now, so there’s no point in dwelling on that. He starts going over the sections in his head one by one, formulating a route, when the handle turns, and the door opens. He peeks his head out, and looks around to the other side of it. There was someone there, but he doesn’t get the chance to see who. He catches a glimpse of a silhouette before it disappears, either teleporting or time traveling away. They’re either trying to help him or hurt him, but either way, they have more information than he does, so worrying about it isn’t going to do him any good. All he can do now is try to gain some kind of advantage that will prevent Danica from being able to just throw him away like garbage.

First off, he wants to find out where she is, and where there might be others lurking about this facility. Though, if there is anyone else here, they’re probably fully invited, and he’s the only lurker. He steps out of the stasis room, and immediately regrets it. His shoes are too loud. What are they designed for, tap dancing? After he closes the door behind him, he takes them off, and starts walking with them in his hand, but he doesn’t get far before changing his mind. He feels like a heroine in an action movie who had to go undercover at a fancy party where the villain is entertaining a bunch of freeloaders to hide the fact that he’s really there to host a black market auction in the wine cellar, and now it’s time for her to run and fight. He decides to tuck them away underneath the couch, and move on.

He slinks down the hallways, hugging the walls, and trying to avoid the cameras, but he didn’t exactly memorize their locations, and there probably aren’t any blindspots anyway. He just keeps going, and hopes that his presence doesn’t trigger the artificial intelligence to sound that alarm after all. He could probably breathe easy, because the person who let him out of the stasis room surely knows whether they would be a real issue or not. No one is in the kitchen, no one’s in Danica’s office. No one’s in the security room, or the small film screening room. There’s no one in this library-looking place that is apparently called the master sitting room. “Wow, look at all this seating!” he exclaims to himself. The gym looks empty, but it has lots of spots to hide, so he gets himself a better look to be sure. No, it’s clear. Man, this is a big place for only a few visitors at a time. Only one person is meant to work here, except for Danica’s current posse, which Mateo assumes consists of Bhulan, Aquila, and maybe Tamerlane Pryce and Dalton Hawke?

“Tryna get swole?” a voice asks from behind him.

Mateo turns around to find a man who he doesn’t recognize. “I’m just trying to get answers,” Mateo admits.

“Aren’t we all?”

Mateo sizes him up a little. “Report.”

The man smiles. “Asier Mendoza, father of The Concierge. Some people call me Corporal Mercy.”

“Never heard of ya. Danica never mentioned her father, and Daria never mentioned her baby daddy.”

Asier nods. “You were probably talking to the wrong version of Danica.”

“I thought there was only one.”

“It’s complicated when you’re the way that she is.”

“Is that why we’ve never met before?”

“I guess.”

That’s not surprising, when Mateo thinks about it more. This is not the Danica he knows and loves, and that’s the point. Nerakali was always trying to explain that alternate selves are not identical. The fact that everyone is unique isn't just something to teach your kids; she called it a metaphysical maxim. “What are you going to do to me?”

“Do to you? What do you think we are, monsters?”

“Honestly, I don’t know anymore. Danica can’t take five minutes to have a conversation with me before she either erases my memory, or throws me into stasis.”

“If your memory was erased, how do you know how long the conversation was?”

“Does it really matter if my memory is gone? It’s like it never happened anyway.”

“Good point,” Asier muses.

“Interpret my question however you please, I would still like an answer. What is going to happen, and how can I prevent you from putting me back into that stasis pod?”

“Stasis is a gift, Mateo. For you and me, it’s a way for us to skip time, and reach the future. For the others, it’s a way to avoid the boredom of the aeons.”

“I understand its value, but why did she force me into it without saying a word? She took my friend, Alyssa away, claiming that she was going to send her back to the future, but I don’t know if that’s the case. Why is she being so cagey?”

Asier considers his approach to this. He’s obviously not allowed to answer all of Mateo’s questions. “This version of my daughter has caught glimpses of the parallel realities, which most versions never see. Each one is only meant to be responsible for one reality, and are meant to fend for themselves. The insight she gained from this information has changed her. She’s decided to make this reality different. She’s decided to protect it in a way that all other Concierges were never asked to do. It was a hard decision to make, and she’s incredibly stressed out about it. I would kindly ask you to be patient with her while she figures out how to proceed. Can you do that for me?”

Mateo considers what’s been asked of him. “If I’m going to support her, then I’m going to need to speak with her personally. Can you promise me that?”

“She’s not scheduled to come back out of stasis for another ten thousand years.”

“Then I’ll be back in ten thousand years,” Mateo responds.

“Okay, then. I’ll escort you back to your pod.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 17, 2398

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Everybody found their own room, and slept in The Constant that night. They didn’t make any plans for the next day, but it seemed as good a place as any. They stayed close to each other, even though they consisted of two parties of strangers. The next day, with nothing better to do, Ramses and Leona start looking into the database, or what’s left of it. There’s a lot still here, but it becomes clearer the more they look through the directories that a lot of data has been stripped. When Danica left, she knew someone else could find this place one day, and she didn’t want them to have access to certain information. The fact that she didn’t just run out all of the sudden, or die without warning, was already obvious. She had the wherewithal to seal up the top of the main elevator, and dismantle the elevator car itself. If she recorded some kind of log that might give them an idea why she’s no longer here, she took that with her too.

The little girl, Trina runs into the room, holding a small black box. “What is this thing?”

Leona isn’t paying her any attention, so Ramses takes it from her, and looks it over. “I have no idea? Wait. It looks like some kind of magnetic memory storage device.”

Leona turns her head. “It’s a video cassette tape.” She turns back.

“Where did you get it?” Ramses asks Trina.

“I think it was a library, but this is the only thing that was in it.”

Now Leona’s interested. “How big was this library?”

“Like, four stories tall, and maybe endlessly long?” Trina ballparks.

“And that’s the only thing you found?” Leona presses.

“Yeah, it was in this thing.” She hands Leona the case.

Jim Carrey is dreaming of himself lying on the snow next to Kate Winslet. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”

“Is it a movie?” Trina guesses.

“Yeah.”

“Is it good? It must be good if they cleared out the entire library, except for this one thing.”

“Did you find it fallen on the floor, as if someone had dropped it, or still sitting on the shelf?”

“It was on the first shelf I saw when I walked in, facing the door. I looked through several aisles. They were all empty.”

Leona and Ramses give each other a look, but they’re not thinking the same thing. “Computer, where do you keep the VCR?”

The computer doesn’t respond vocally. It just lights up the floor and walls to lead them down to the legacy technology sector. Leona follows it, and Ramses and Trina follow her. They find the VCR already connected to a box TV, rather than tucked away somewhere. She expects to blow dust off of the top, but it’s perfectly clean. There’s a robot in here somewhere who’s been maintaining the bunker. Leona inserts the tape, and presses play.

“I love you,” says Joel.

“Meet me in Montauk,” Clementine whispers back.

That’s it. It’s stuck between 1:30:50 and 1:30:55, repeating those two lines over, and over, and over again. The tape keeps skipping. Ramses thinks he might be able to fix it, but Leona stops him. “It’s a clue.”

“It’s a clue for what?”

Leona pauses the video, and echoes the last line herself. “Meet me in Montauk. Meet me in Montauk.”

“Does that mean anything to you?” Trina asks.

“That sounds like a city. Is that where we’re meant to go?” Ramses questions.

Leona tilts her head, considering the words, and what they may mean in a more figurative sense. Thinking she has it figured out, she runs off. The other two follow her again, down the hallways, and into the main living area. Heath, Alyssa, and the boys are already there, chatting about this and that.

“Is everything okay?” Heath stands up to help in whatever way necessary.

Leona ignores him, and heads straight for the corner of the room. She stares at the wall. “Where’s that sledgehammer?”

“Why do you need it?” Heath asks.

She just turns to him and scowls. He’s not really in a position to question her. Intellectually, she knows she shouldn’t blame him—that it could never have been his idea to use a time bullet to blow a hole in a concrete ceiling five kilometers up—but she can’t help but be angry at him anyway.

He steps over to the main elevator shaft, and retrieves the sledgehammer.

“Rambo,” Leona says, “he’s still recovering. Could you do the honors?”

Ramses accepts the tool from Heath. He gets in position, but doesn’t swing. He places the business end against the wall that she’s staring at. “Right here?”

“Yes,” she orders.

He does as he’s told, bashing the hammer against the wall over, and over, and over again. The facility is constructed out of metal, probably graphene, and maybe other metamaterials. There’s no wood, or even brick anywhere. They wouldn’t last very long. Why is this made out of wood? Once he’s gotten through, they find a door on the other side. He knocks the last of the wall out of the way, and wrenches it open. A light flickers on to reveal an upright stasis pod. There’s only one reason to design a pod like that, and it’s if the user is literally kept in stasis. Time is probably moving at infinitely slow speeds, so almost none will have passed since they stepped in. As long as you have power, it’s the only way a normal person could survive for many thousands of years, if not longer. Other methods allow for too much aging, radiation poisoning, and other failures.

Leona uses the touchscreen to command the pod to open. When it does, Mateo steps out. “You’re here!” she exclaims. “You’ve been here the whole time?”

Mateo takes her by the shoulders, and pushes her out. He looks around the main living area to take stock. “Is everybody who came down here in this room right now?”

“What? What are you talking about?” Ramses asks.

Mateo screams in his face, “is everyone here!”

“Yes.”

“Then run!” Mateo sprints across the room, to the little secondary elevator. He holds the door open, and ushers everyone in one by one. First Leona, then Ramses, Trina, Carlin, Moray, and Alyssa. Heath and Mateo squeeze in last, making it a very tight fit. But it’ll be worth it. Mateo pops open the firefighter access panel with a flathead screwdriver that he has in his pocket. He reaches in, but waits. “There are more people in here than I thought there would be. Make sure the young ones are in the middle.

Moray has to adjust a little, but it’s about as good as they’ll do.

Mateo pulls the switch. They shoot upwards, faster than any elevator should safely move. They can feel the g-force desperately trying to squish them into the floor. But it’ll be worth it.

“Oh my God!” Heath shouts.

“Whoopee!” Trina cries.

At some point, the elevator car starts to tip over. Everybody begins to yell in fear, even the little one, because they’ve reached the surface, and now they’re coming back down. They don’t crash, though. They can feel themselves bouncing, rolling, bouncing, and rolling. When the ride finally ends, the door opens automatically, allowing them to see the giant air bags that released automatically, which are now gradually deflating.

“What the hell was that?” Leona demands to know.

Before Mateo can say anything, they hear a boom. A plume of dirt rises into the sky. He runs over, and the rest are compelled to do the same. They hear rushing water as they near the road, and after they get over the hill, they can see the crater. It’s filling up with water, resourced from pipes that they barely have time to see before they’re covered up.

“I say again...what the hell was that?” Leona repeats.

Mateo catches his breath. “It’s Danica Lake.” He falls to the ground, and passes out.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 8, 2398

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Everyone seems to be having problems at their jobs, but Angela’s is going well. She likes the people she works with, and she likes the work itself. She feels a little guilty about this, though, so she doesn’t talk about it at home. The team dynamic has definitely shifted. They used to pretty much go through everything together, with only a few major exceptions, like when almost all of them died, leaving Leona alone to deal with the aftermath. Now it feels like Angela is the one left out, unable to really do anything to help, while the rest struggle. She works on her studies, and helps other library-goers do the same, but she doesn’t contribute to her family. Mateo was feeling this before, but it’s only recently come to her attention that she’s kind of in the same boat. She’s smart, experienced, and knowledgeable, but what good is that if she doesn’t do anything with it?

“Hey.”

“Oh, hi, Rance.” Rance volunteers here too, and started around the same time she did, so he thinks of them as friends. She does too, but maybe it’s a little more than that?

“Need any help with those encyclopedias?”

“No, I’m all right.”

“Okay.” He looks nervous.

“Is everything all right?”

“What? Oh, yeah. I just...” He sighs. “My friends told me to come up with a cool pickup line, but I’m too honest to say something like that, so I’m just going to be blunt. Do you want to go on a date with me tonight or tomorrow night?”

Yeah, she would. He’s a nice guy who cares about people. He likes to read too, which is high up on her list of preferable traits. She smiles, and tries to say yes, but for some reason, it sounds a little more like, “I’m married.” What the hell was that?

“Oh, I didn’t realize that. I’m sorry, you just never talk about your partner.”

“Well, he’s real. His name is Heath, and I have to go. Can you cover for me?”

“Of course,” Rance promises. “See you tomorrow?”

“Maybe.” She runs off.

She burst into the condo. She had the evening shift, so everyone is home already, except for Leona, who is still at her primary job. She leans back against the door to catch her breath.

“Angela, are you okay?” Mateo asks. He’s probably getting ready to go pick Leona up.

“My name is Marie.”

He flinches, and walks backwards down the entryway, until he can see the living area. “No, she’s over here. Right? You’re Marie?”

“Yep,” the real Marie answers.

Angela follows him around the corner. “No, I’m Marie. You don’t even exist.”

“Whoa,” Marie says with a frown, “what are we talking about here?”

Angela gathers her composure. “You’re going to Croatia to get an abortion.”

Marie’s frown deepens. “Yes, unfortunately.”

“But when you come back, they’ll know that you went there, and they’ll question whether that’s why you were there, especially since you’ve already been to the doctor, so they already know about the baby.”

“They won’t necessarily know,” Heath contends. “When you fly private, there are certain ways you can get around being discovered.”

“But they could still find out,” Marie adds. “Angela, we’ve already discussed the plan. I’m going to fake a miscarriage before we even leave.”

“That’s not going to work,” Angela argues. “The authorities are not stupid. Nor are your medical professionals.”

“We have to try,” Heath insists.

“Or you don’t. Like I said, one of us doesn’t exist,” Angela repeats.

“Please explain,” Marie urges.

“I have never been pregnant before,” Angela begins to reason. “If the authorities attempt to examine me, they will find no proof that I was pregnant, or that I had an abortion. So I need to take your place. I need to become you, and you need to become nobody, like I am right now.”

“You have an identity now,” Ramses reminds her. “You’re Angela Bolton.”

Angela shakes her head. “That’s never been scrutinized. The forger inserted my name into the system. She can take it back out. Meanwhile, I take on Marie’s identity, and Marie just becomes this secret person with no identity. If she ever needs to prove who she is, she’ll pretend to be herself again, but hopefully we can just keep her under wraps, because I need to be the one available for a pregnancy test.”

“How will you explain why all those medical professionals you mentioned all believed that I was pregnant at one point?” Marie questions.

Angela scoffs. “They’re liars. They’re dirty, rotten liars, the lot of ‘em. Prove it. Prove that I ever took a blood test with them, or had an examination. You can’t, can you, because Leona is going to hack into their records, and erase them, and once it’s done, it’s their word against mine, but the authorities will believe me, because they’ll find no evidence that I was pregnant, as I’ve said.”

Heath looks over at his wife. “This is just gonna complicate things even more. It won’t make it easier.”

“But it will make it safer,” Mateo determines. “She’s right. It doesn’t matter what claims the people at the doctor’s office make. They’ll be proven wrong. They can run a million tests if they want, but they will not find the evidence they’re looking for in Angela’s body.”

“Marie will have to live the rest of her life in hiding,” Heath argues. “We had an excuse for her long-lost twin sister. Now they can’t ever show their faces in public simultaneously, because they’ll quite quickly realize what’s happening.”

“That’s assuming anyone even wonders whether Marie had an abortion in the first place,” Ramses says. “They may never knock on our door. You’re not going to be telling people that you went to Croatia.”

“Plus,” Angela goes on, “there will be undeniable proof that I didn’t even leave the country, because I’ll be taking her place at work, and the grocery store, and whatever. I’ll get myself under as many security cameras as I can find while you’re gone.”

Heath looks back at his wife. “It’s up to you. I’m worried about the risk. Abortion is illegal, and it comes with consequences, but combined with fraud, I don’t know what they’ll do to you. I doubt anything like this has ever been attempted.”

Marie faces him. “This is kind of what we do. We have a long and complicated history of tricking the bad guys into believing things that aren’t true. I’m willing to try, but only if you’re sure, Angie.”

“Let’s do it,” Angela agrees with a nod. “The first step is you telling me what you do for a living again?”