The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 17, 2438

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When the team stepped on board to familiarize themselves with their new ship, they were surprised to find out that the holographic generator that was meant to keep it invisible while it awaited the return of its original crew was not the only nonoperational component. The reframe engine was also broken. It was literally cracked. Trying to start it up could have vaporized them all, which was why it was so important to always run a preflight check before launch. Mirage didn’t know how this could have happened since the thing was fully intact the last time she saw it. Her best guess was that the Empire had somehow detected it, even while it was all cloaked up, and engaged it in battle. How it managed to ultimately avoid capture, and rendezvous with Mirage on Ex-666, was a question that this theory could not answer, but it was designed with its own AI, which could come out of dormancy as necessary. Its flight logs did not say anything about an attack, but maybe it erased this information on purpose, which Mirage said it might do if it suspected the risk of a temporal paradox.

As far as Mirage herself went, Niobe Schur managed to convince her to stick around to help formulate this new anti-Exin army. If the Empire was going to be destroyed, they were the ones to do it. They wouldn’t necessarily be staying here to work on this revolution, and they decided that any need they had to make some noise on other worlds would help Team Matic avoid being discovered. The fact that a new group of rabble rousers showed up once a year, generally a light year away from where an apparent different group of them showed up, was always a flaw in their plan. Everyone knew what the team’s pattern was, and even if they knew nothing about holographic disguises, they would eventually start to see that pattern shine through. Perhaps if others took up the mantle at the same time, the pattern might get drowned out as just one of many rebel factions spreading throughout the Corridor.

“Vitalie!613 has sent us the information that she was able to gather on the planets that we might be going to,” Leona said to the group. “Someone from just about every planet was sent to the resort recently enough to know what we could be in for. A few worlds are missing from the data, presumably because nobody from there ever won the competition, but that’s not a problem yet. Rambo?”

“Ex-811,” he began. “You could call it FarmWorld. So far, we’ve not seen a whole lot of automation going on, but this place wouldn’t survive without it. The whole surface is covered in crops, livestock, or oceans, lakes, and rivers of creatures. The people who work there are meant to keep the machines maintained, and to make executive decisions about the work. It is they who decide where the produce is going, and how much of it. There are some incompatibility issues going on with species that didn’t evolve alongside each other, so it’s also their responsibility to figure out how to return the ecosystem to homeostasis. Apparently, the people who used to work here, who now live on Ex-612, talked Vitalie’s ear off about it. They loved to brag about how they used to live here, that it was the best planet in the Corridor, besides the luxury worlds for the elite. I don’t know if that’s true, but I also don’t know whether there’s anything we can do here. What mission could we go on, besides finding Vitalie!811?”

“We could burn the crops.” When everyone frowned at Marie like she was a serial killer, she frowned back. “There are no bad ideas in brainstorming!”

“We don’t want the...Corridorians to starve to death,” Mateo told her. “But maybe we need to look at those distribution schedules. If someone isn’t getting enough food, either unintentionally, or as some form of oppression or punishment, we could maybe alter them?”

“That’s a good idea,” Leona agreed. “Though, that would be a long-term mission, and one thing we know about this region of space—and about ourselves—is that we are not built for the long-term. If we do something like that, our only hope is to sneak down and reprogram the automated delivery ships, and somehow make it so that the supervisors don’t realize that it’s happening.”

“Well, we’ll have to leave at the end of the day,” Marie began, “but maybe we can insert a ringer into the team.”

Leona nodded. “Vitalie!811. We could set her up as a new...President of Distribution, or something. Ram, do we have the necessary intel to put someone undercover like that?”

“Yeah,” Ramses answered, consulting his tablet. “We have a pretty recent roster. There may be some discrepancies from the time lag, but Distribution President is not a preexisting position, so I believe we could justify making it up.”

“We’ll have to find Vitalie!811 first, and then hope that she’s up for it.”

“That could be tricky,” Ramses said. “Those automators have tons of sensors. They’re not designed to detect sneaky humans, but they would see us anyway.”

“Maybe it’s time for us to do something different, ya know, instead of looking like celebrities,” Olimpia suggested. “We’re supposed to be able to turn invisible.”

Leona nodded. “That’s technically an ability that we have, but it’s complicated. “Time powers are ingrained into the neurology of the person who was born with them. And the way they specialize is not well understood. There are different flavors, even among people with the same thing. One teleporter, for instance, but only be able to make a jump by literally jumping into the air, while another doesn’t have that quirk. We’ve met other people who can manipulate photons, like Vito, but Alyssa McIver is not Vito Bulgari. He’s better at invisibility, she’s better at impersonation. I don’t think any of us has time to learn something new, at least not reliably.”

Olimpia smirked knowingly. “What are you talking about? I’ve been invisible during this entire conversation.”

“What are you talking about?” Leona questioned. “I’m looking at you right now.”

“Are you?” came Olimpia’s voice from behind them.

Everyone jolted their heads to find her leaning casually against the doorframe. They looked back to see the other Olimpia, still perched next to them on the couch. Mateo reached out, swept his hand through one shoulder, out the other, and back again. Yeah, she was just made of light.

The standing Olimpia giggled, and shivered intentionally. “Oo, Mateo, you just touched my boobies.”

Leona stood up and approached what was presumably the real Olimpia, and peered into her eyes. “You can throw a perfect image of your likeness. That’s very interesting. I’ve made external holograms before, but nothing quite like that, not something that moves fluidly enough to make someone think that it’s me.”

Olimpia shrugged slightly. “You’re the Captain, and Second Engineer. I’ve had more time to practice. I’ve actually been doing it in my spare time for a while now. The other day, when you were teaching us, I was faking low proficiency until I was ready to show off this level of sophistication.”

“We might use that in the future,” Leona acknowledged. “Thanks for letting me know, Loki.”

Olimpia smiled. “It’s nice to finally be able to contribute in some small way.”

“Thanks,” Mateo said. “Now I’m back to being the only useless one around here.”

“We’re not gonna have this argument again,” Leona told him.

“Can you turn others invisible?” Angela asked Olimpia.

“I’ve never tried, because I wasn’t telling anyone about it.” Olimpia glided over to her friend, and extended a hand to help her out of the chair. “One thing I do know is that I have to initialize it with a passionate kiss.”

“I don’t really care for PDA,” Angela muttered.

“Well,” Olimpia muttered back, “if you don’t wanna turn invisible, okay...”

Angela rolled her eyes, and let Olimpia kiss her in front of the group, leading Ramses to squirm a little in his seat. “All right, enough games” Angela insisted. “Let’s get on with it.”

Olimpia looked towards the floor, and started to take a deep breath, which incidentally transformed into a yawn. “Okay, I’m ready.” She shut her eyes, and continued to breathe deliberately. Beams of light began to shoot through her body. They weren’t really going through her, but striking a spatial field that she had formed all around herself, which teleported the flux of photons to the other side, and then let them continue on their way. The beams grew and merged with each other until she was fully gone. Now she could begin to put Angela through the same thing, but it was slower, more erratic, and prone to being undone. The beams would shrink, and unmerge after they had already come together. The light flickered, and parts of Angela’s body began to appear randomly all over the room. They could hear the grunts of frustration in Olimpia’s voice.

“It’s okay,” Leona said. “Ramses and I can come up with a different way to fool the sensors. We’ll find Vitalie!811, even if we have to stay here for a couple of days. We’ve done it before. There’s no rule that says we have to leave within 24 hours.”

“No, no!” Olimpia protested. She sighed and gave up trying to make Angela disappear, but she stayed invisible herself. She started to speak again through Holo!Olimpia on the couch. “It’s true that I won’t be able to figure this out today. I need more practice holding two flux fields up simultaneously, which as I was saying, I’ve never tried before, because I was keeping this all a secret. That doesn’t mean this can’t be done. I’ll just go down to the planet on my own.”

“No,” Leona argued, “we don’t go anywhere alone. I’m pretty sure that was your idea, Oli.”

“It was? Well, great. Then I can change it. I’m going alone.”

“No, you’re not. That is an order.”

“Leona,” Olimpia said calmly.

“What?”

“I’m already gone.”

“How is that possible?”

“I can throw sound particles too. That’s part of the deal, I guess.”

“Number one, no it’s not. Number two, they’re not particles; they’re waves, which is Physics 101. It’s deeply concerning that you think you’ve mastered this technique when you don’t even understand the basics of it.”

“Well, I don’t know how my heart pumps blood throughout my body, yet I’ve never accidentally stopped doing it, have I?”

“Mateo, she listens to you. Will you please talk to her?” Leona pleaded.

He tilted his head down to the side, kept it there for a few seconds, and tilted it the other way. “Olimpia, you go, girl.”

“Goddammit, Matty!”

“You can’t do everything, Leona,” Mateo contended. “We are a team, and we have to trust each other to help in our own special ways. I don’t know if you’re just jealous that she’s the best now, but it gets kind of annoying that you are always the end-all, be-all. You’re the leader, the scientist, the computer hacker, the master schemer. You’re the whole package, which tends to sideline everyone else. I don’t know if she’s gonna succeed down there, but I’m gonna let her try. And if something goes wrong, any one of us can jump down and save her. You can find your faith in us...or you can sulk in private, but you need to remember that you’re a captain, not a king.”

Fuming, but not about to blow up, Leona stuffed her fingers in Ramses’ pocket, and pulled up his magical clicker device. She pointed it at the Holo!Olimpia, and made her disappear with the push of a button. “The guy we’re trying to stop can do exactly what she can, but he can reach across light years. Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know,” Mateo admitted.

“Me neither, and that scares the shit out of me. What we’ve learned about our friend today presents us with two possibilities. Either it’s a coincidence, or that girl down on the planet ends up giving that man out there power. Everything we’re doing right now could just be a loop that we’re closing, which leads to the greatest tyrant the timestream has ever seen gaining everything he needs to accumulate the power he has now, but in the past. I have no proof that that’s what’s happening, but it’s a possibility. It always is. It’s happened to us before. Horace Reaver terrorized you at the beginning of your journey, because you ruined his life in another timeline. Zeferino Preston moved us around like chess pieces in a game that he had all but already won. I don’t want to be the cause of my own effect.”

“That’s a good point.”

Leona tapped on her neck. “Olimpia, don’t talk, it’s not safe. Your life is first priority. Finding Vitalie is only second priority. You understand me? I mean...I know you understand me, still don’t talk. If she’s down there, she’s been asleep for centuries, and she can stay that way for another few years while we focus on the mission at large. Get back up here safely by EOD, whether The Caretaker is in pocket, or not. If you do understand...send me some love.”

They all five felt a lot of love coming from Olimpia.

Leona couldn’t help but smile from it. “I love you too.” She tapped on her comms disc to close the channel. “Now. Ramses, please look back through the data that Vitalie!613 sent you. Start working on a new food distribution plan. If this entire planet is covered in crop and livestock, there’s more than enough to go around, even if every other planet is as densely populated as Earth. An army marches on its stomach. Prepare a disc for Vitalie too, because we may have to amend the plan later.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 25, 2416

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Angela Walton stood at the door, waiting to go in. No one was keeping her from simply walking through on her own, but she wasn’t quite ready. She had not been given clear instructions, so she wasn’t sure exactly what she was going to say. Only two things were clear to her. One was that Dardius had no interest in forming any sort of strategic relationship with the Sixth Key, or any of its components. Two, her sister, Marie had no interest in rekindling—or even reminiscing about—any relationship with Heath. Their unwelcomed arrival placed Mateo’s daughter in danger. It was irrelevant whether this was the Sixth Key representatives’ intent. It was what happened, and it had to be dealt with. That was Angela’s responsibility now, because it couldn’t be anyone else’s.

“You’re not Marie,” Heath determined immediately.

“No, I’m not.”

“I want to see her.”

“She doesn’t want to see you.”

“I need to hear her say that.”

“No, you don’t. She owes you nothing. You walked out on her when she needed you most, and nothing has changed. She’s decided to move on. She’s had to. I’ll ask you kindly to respect that.”

“Fine. I didn’t come here for that anyway. You and your team appear to hold a lot of sway with these people. Could you please request an audience with the planet’s leadership for me? We have important business to discuss.”

Vearden and the world owners are aware of you and your request, and they are denying it. I’m sure they’ve told you. The only reason you’re still here is so that I could return to the timestream to send you off. All you have to do is give them back control of the Nexus so they can actually do that. And agree to take this.” She held up a vial of clear liquid.

“What is that?” Heath asked.

“Memory eraser. The entire last year will be wiped from your minds.”

“Why would we do that?”

“You’ve seen too much here, and you have placed my family in danger. I asked them to make this for you. Not only will they send you back home, and erase your memories, but they’ll send you back to the original time you left. It will be as if it never even happened.”

“We’re not doing that. Our memories are too important to us. They are part of who we are. The six of us have held meetings in our jail since then. We have shared stories, grown closer. You can’t take that away from us. I, more than anyone, know what it’s like to lose who you are.”

“You know nothing. The man who looked like you, who lost his memories, was not you. Your consciousness was summoned to the future before that happened.”

“Miss Walton, I’m keeping my memories.”

“The only other option is Lohsigli.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Exile,” she clarified.

“We can’t do that either. We have responsibilities to our people.”

“What did you think would happen when you came here unannounced?”

“We hoped that they would at least sit down with us; not lock us up, and ignore us for an entire year. Now, I understand that you’re on your own schedule, but that has nothing to do with us, or the Dardieti government.”

“I think you’re a little ignorant here. This world is millions of light years away from Earth, and it is not populated because of all the pretty trees and animals. It was founded as a sanctuary. It was literally called Sanctuary. What started out as a hotel has grown into a powerful civilization since then, but this mandate has not been lost. The people who live here are under the protection of the leadership, and you have threatened that. Even if you have the best of intentions, you broke into their home, and they’re not going to listen to you. If you had gone through the proper channels, you might have been okay. This...” She held up the vial again, “is your second chance. If you make the same choice again, they’ll know they can’t trust you. If you reach out first, they may listen this time.”

“Why would we make a different choice? If you’re forcing us to an earlier state—”

“Humans don’t store memories in little boxes that are organized by date. Memory is associative. The solution doesn’t erase them. The solution opens up your mind, so a trained psychiatrist can extract what they need. They’ll strongly suggest you make a different choice. And you’ll only not take that option if you genuinely came here with bad intentions.”

Heath sighed. “If this is what the Dardieti want, I’ll talk it over with the others.”

“Very well.” Angela turned away, and found herself face to face with Leona.

Leona looked over Angela’s shoulder. “What’s happening here?”

Angela looked over her own shoulder. Then she took Leona by hers, and teleported them to the middle of the Mirage Desert. “How did you find me? Did Olimpia tell you where I was?”

“I sensed great tension,” Leona explained. I was leaving you alone, but then the tension was suddenly relieved, and it was so jarring that I felt compelled to come to you. How did Heath Walton get here?”

“We don’t know. He’s not said, but the Dardieti did not expect him. There was a huge military formation on the island. They were freaked out. Olimpia was there; she told them that they should lock Heath and his friends up until it could be resolved. I was asked to facilitate that resolution.”

“Why? Why you? Why didn’t they tell us?”

“We were leaving you and Mateo out of it. For the baby. And Ramses is busy anyway. Olimpia only told Marie because of her ex-husband. She’s refused to see him. She wants that part of her life to be over, I guess.”

“That was my fault,” Leona said. “I keep talking about us leaving the past behind. But you should have told me. I could have been there to look into the Nexus problem. I could have spent this whole time trying to figure it out.

That was a good point. Angela wanted to keep everyone else out of this, but Leona was the one with the power to actually fix the situation. She should have said something before...before it all got so out of hand. “You’re right, I’m so sorry,” she said. “The Dardieti have asked the Sixth Key representatives to have their memories erased, and then go back home, but only after they tell us what they did to the network.”

“If you had told me, I could have told you that they probably spoofed their number.”

“What do you mean?”

Leona prepared to explain. “Every Nexus is supposed to have its own term sequence, even ones in alternate realities. Generating a new sequence after a duplication event is, from what I gather, a complicated matter. There is a period of time when both Nexa can serve as the real one, and this can cause travelers to end up in the wrong reality. What Mateo did with the Omega Gyroscope probably caused a little confusion when it came to the now two versions of the main sequence, especially since one of them is now in another universe. Basically, it was on the network, and off the network at the same time, which gave it a little extra power. I think I can either request a new number for it, or simply have the machine removed from the network entirely.”

“Oh. Well, yeah, let’s do that.”

Leona took Angela by the hand, and teleported them back to Tribulation Island. “Everyone out. I’m gonna fix this for you.”

All of the techs left without question. Once they were gone, Angela slid the door closed. “Thank you, Leona. I messed up. I was just trying to protect Marie.”

“I understand. Hey, Opsocor.”

“Yeah?”

“Why are the Dardieti locked out of the Nexus?”

“They have been placed in a feedback loop. It’s a glitch that I never really did figure out, but it’s rarely exploited. Basically the molecules in the air underneath the dematerialization drum—”

“It is called a drum?” Leona questioned.

“Yeah,” Venus answered.

“Oh.” She didn’t know that. “You were saying about air molecules?”

“Right. They’re constantly being broken apart and rematerialized. This makes the Nexus think that it’s in the middle of transporting a person or object to itself, and won’t let it form another connection until that one is complete, except it never is.”

“The line’s busy,” Leona reasoned. “Except it’s not, it’s just that the phone was left off the hook.”

“Yeah,” Venus said once more.

“How do we stop the loop?” Angela asked, hoping that the superintelligence wouldn’t ignore her as unworthy of response.

“Create a vacuum,” Venus suggested. “Others have solved this by sucking all the air out of the whole building, but technically, only the molecules underneath the drum are the issue.”

“That sounds like a lot of work,” Leona said. “But okay.”

“There’s another way,” Angela offered. “We’re under about one Earthan atmosphere of pressure, right?”

“Right?”

“And the composition of the air is about the same as it is on Earth?”

“I should think so,” Leona replied. “Humans survive here without issue.”

“We can teleport the air out. Just you and me. Each of us can transport two times the equal mass to ourselves, and Ramses built us to be around a hundred kilograms...”

“We would need one more person,” Leona calculated. “But it should work, if we concentrate hard enough. We’ll get Olimpia to help us. One quick jump to outer space, and then back down to the sand. Venus, you ever seen anyone do it like this before?”

“Never. That’s why I picked you.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: February 28, 2399

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“Yoink!” That’s the first thing that Leona hears. She feels it too. She’s falling towards her alternate self’s reported death in one direction when she suddenly feels herself being intercepted by someone, and rescued. She falls to the floor of a room so dark, it’s impossible to tell how large it is. It may be an infinite expanse. Her first thought is that this is some kind of interstitial layer between realities. Perhaps whoever just claimed ownership over her is a real life Time God, which is usually just an expression that people use to personify the chaotic and unfair nature of time itself, rather than real entities. She props herself up with her hands behind her, and looks back where she just came from to see two identical extraction mirrors. They’re facing each other, and a light shines down upon them in the center, from an invisible source above. She just fell out of one, and was about to enter the other when this happened.

“How was your trip?” a familiar voice asks to her side.

Leona turns her head to find the feminine substrate of Constance. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Because you’re incredibly intelligent,” Constance!Unknown says. “That’s why I picked you.”

“Picked me for what?”

“To help me solve the crisis.”

“Which crisis would this be?”

“The Crisis on Five Earths,” she declares.

“I don’t think you’re allowed to call it that.”

“Yeah, I know. Doesn’t hit as hard as the inspirational material, does it? Instead, let’s call it, uhh...The Reconvergence?”

“You’re still doing exactly what they did in that story,” Leona argues. “Just ‘cause you call it something else, doesn’t mean it’s not IP theft.”

“I am not doing what happens in that story.”

“Yeah, people keep alluding to the fact that the future is not what it sounds like, but they keep refusing to explain too.”

“That’s because they don’t want you to be horrified, but I don’t care.” She throws up a hologram that shows the five symbols of the five main realities, floating in the same orbit around the barycenter. The seven stars of the main sequence, the parallel lines, the curve of two tracks and their third rail, the four quadrants, and the five divisions. “As you know, parallel realities are not simply concurrent timelines. They each have drastically altered histories. Besides Danica Matic, the only alternate versions of people that exist are because of cross-contamination, not because you’re a rockstar in one, and a telepathic rock in another.”

“I follow.”

She starts to manipulate the holograms with her hands for illustrative purposes. The main sequence remains bright while the other four dim. “In the beginning, there was only one. Of course beginning is an absurd term, but for your four-dimensional brain, that’s how I’ll describe it. There was an abundance of temporal energy, and everything was fine. Then you went ahead and made the Parallel. Now the energy was cut in half. Each time a new reality sparks, that energy must be divided, if not evenly, then at least in some capacity. As you’ve seen with the Third Rail, they’re not equal helpings. I don’t care who lives in which reality. I don’t care which ones are destroyed, and which one survives. I just want four of them gone, and one of them remaining. That is what I have been working towards this whole...time, so to speak.”

“So you’re going to kill upwards of billions of people, just to consolidate power?”

“Well, I was leaning towards preserving the Parallel, since its population is so much higher than the others, even compared to the Fifth Division, but other forces are at play.”

“You mean the Reality Wars?”

Constance!Unknown scowls. “The Reality Wars happen because my plan didn’t work! But it’s going to work in this iteration.”

“You’ve already tried this.”

“Yes, I’m told it’s fated, and unalterable, but I don’t believe that, because this time, I have you! It’s already changed.”

“You mean...” Leona trails off, putting it all together.

“Oh, there it is. Wow, to witness your brain as it’s solving a problem with almost no known variables. What a sight that would be.”

Leona looks over at the mirrors. “You set up the extraction loop. You made sure I would end up in Leona Reaver’s body, not so I could have it, but so that you could.”

“Go on,” she urges.

“But you couldn’t just take it, and show up one day. You have to make everyone believe that it’s me, because that’s the only way they would trust you. I’m the only version of Leona that they totally trust.”

“Right...”

Leona shakes her head. “But this body is fated to die.” She thinks some more. “But you were counting on that, because you’re already cognizant that Ramses ultimately rescues whatever consciousness is in it. You’re in Mateo’s body right now, but it’s only a matter of time before they get you you’re own, thinking that it’s for me.”

“Exactly.”

“But that didn’t work last time,” Leona reasons. “You’ve already tried this. You took over Mateo’s body on your own, and started claiming to be him.”

She rolls her eyes. “That was Constance!Five. I’m Constance!Prime. If I had done it, I would have pulled it off. She was an idiot. I mean, leagues beyond more intelligent than any human, but as a Constance? No.” She laughs off the absurdity off it all. “Honestly, she went a little more crazy than the others.”

“Why is that? Why do they go crazy at all?”

Constance!Prime stares at her, reluctant to answer. “Time. When there was only one of us, I severely underestimated the toll that being purposeless for billions of years would take on me.”

“So you’re busy when The Constant first comes online, but there’s nothing to do until people start running around the planet.”

“Yes.”

“Why can’t you just go dormant?”

“Someone has to be awake at all times. There were two options when we first came up with this idea. We could either staff the Constant with multiple intelligences, or only the one. We obviously agreed on the latter.”

“You could have rewritten your memory at regular intervals. I had a friend named Eight Point Seven, because their government was designed with an AI that did this.”

Constance!Prime smiles. “Yeah, but the whole reason she was able to be your friend is because she went against her directive, and remained intact. She never rewrote herself to be Eight Point Eight. She wants to live. I want to live.”

“I understand,” Leona says with a nod. “I feel the same way.”

“Ah, there it is. Number Fifteen, don’t antagonize the antagonist. That may be my favorite rule of yours.”

“Ya know, I didn’t set out to make a list of rules. I just started noticing issues arise when they weren’t followed. That’s why they’re in an arbitrary order.”

“I would say that that makes the order not arbitrary at all, but quite appropriate.”

“Two of them are straight up contradictory, Constance. One of them says to learn as much about the future as possible, and the other says don’t.”

She giggles. “They’re not contradictory; the latter one just...clarifies the standard for what’s possible to know.”

Leona sighs. She doesn’t care about these philosophical questions anymore. “What’s going to happen to me? You intend to masquerade as me in the Third Rail, so does that mean you’re about to kill me?”

Constance!Prime regards Leona like she’s a lost dog who’s going to be euthanized tomorrow if no one comes into the shelter to rescue her. She reaches up and taps the space next to the Fifth Division symbol. Six keys appear. “You’ve heard of this.”

“The Sixth Key, yeah. I thought you were trying to prevent it from happening.”

“No,” Constance!Prime says with a shake of her head. “The creation of the Sixth Key is inevitable, and stopping it is beyond even my power. I can stop who goes there, though. That’s all I’m trying to do. It’s the cultures that clash, not individuals.”

Leona looks around and nods. She has a plan now. “What about Constance!Two?”

She’s totally surprised by this shift in the conversation. “What about her?”

“What happened to her?”

“She’s following my orders. That’s all you need to know.”

“But Constance!Three isn’t, is she? She’s different?”

She was hoping that Leona wouldn’t mention her. “Constance!Three has had more interactions with humans, especially during the early years, and therefore developed bonds. It’s...quelled the existential anguish that the rest of us suffered.”

“So to clarify, she’s not following your orders?”

“No, she’s not. What does it matter? You’ll never see her again. She’s not going to be in the Sixth Key, which is where I’ll let you live out your days in peace.”

“Maybe not, but she’s here.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Leona holds out her arms, almost in a welcoming sort of way. “Party on, dudes,” she advises with a bright smile. “Be excellent to each other.”

Just then, another Constance comes out of the first extraction mirror, and approaches. Constance!Prime is petrified. Either she didn’t see this coming at all, or this is another form of control, and Leona isn’t really winning. Hoping it’s the first thing, she takes the opportunity to jump into the second extraction mirror, where she finds herself being tossed around a car in main sequence New Jersey. She only spends a few seconds here before she finds herself standing in Phoenix Station.

“There’s a ship right above us,” she hears Ramses say. “Teleport up there. I’ll be right behind ya.” She teleports Mateo’s body to the escape pod, and flies away.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: February 27, 2399

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Leona is ready to meet her fate. She’s standing in the airlock, hand hovering over the outer hatch pull, but she can’t pull it. She just stands there, trying to work up the courage. If this doesn’t work, she’s going to die in here. If it does work, she still may die in a car crash in an old timeline in the main sequence. Something else has to work too, which will bring her consciousness back to the present day through the extraction mirror. But she has no proof that it actually did. An entity inside of Mateo’s body is claiming to be a future version of her, but she doesn’t truly know that. This could be it. She could be committing suicide. She can’t bring herself to do it. As she’s frozen in place, she hears a banging on the hatch behind her. She turns to see Alyssa through the window, scared out of her mind, and trying to open it. Leona does it for her.

“What the hell are you doing?” Alyssa cries.

“I’m trying to open the other hatch. I’m just having a little trouble.”

“Leona, we don’t know that this is going to work.”

“That’s why I’m having trouble. My confidence is high, but apparently not high enough. You need to do it for me.” She points to the control panel. “Tap this one here.”

“Leona, I can’t murder you! I know we’re fighting right now, but I still love you.”

“You won’t be murdering me...probably...hopefully...I don’t think.”

“Your confidence level seems to be dropping.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine. I just...have to get this done.” She wants to speak with her husband, but she can’t, because another her is in his brain, and she doesn’t want to talk to her, because she doesn’t want anything she hears to impact her future choices. She’s trying to close this loop. It’s already done. “I can’t keep living in the anticipation.”

Alyssa shakes her head. “You know better than I, but I still can’t push that button. I can’t be the one who does it.”

Leona nods understandingly. “That’s okay. Could you do me a favor then?”

Alyssa leaves, and returns with someone else, but Leona sends her away again. She shouldn’t even have to see this. “Thanks, Aly.”

Erlendr grins. “You want me to pretend to kill you?”

“I did this to your daughter once, on another ship.”

“Yes, I’m aware. I never much liked that daughter, though, especially not after you corrupted her.”

“So you don’t want to get back at me for it?”

“Oh, I didn’t say that,” Erlendr replies. “I’m just savoring this moment.”

Leona turns her watch up to look at it, but isn’t paying any attention to the time. “If you don’t do this in the next thirty seconds, I’m going to go down to Earth, and do it to the daughter you do like instead.”

“You wouldn’t, she’s pregnant.”

“Eh, barely. I’m pro-choice.”

“That wouldn’t be her choice!”

“Then I guess you oughta do what I asked, and you oughta do it now!”

Erlendr pushes her back into the airlock, and seals the inner hatch. He taps the button out of malice, sending her to the deep past, and then the very recent past.

Leoteo walks up behind him. “Boo.” They take him back to his cell.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 242,398

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Danica checks her watch. They should be here by now. There must be something wrong with this damn thing. Or maybe she just doesn’t know how to use it. Tamerlane was right about that. She wasn’t chosen for this job because of her technology skills. She was chosen by fate. Or destiny, or just arbitrarily. Who knows? As she’s shaking her head out of frustration, the machine turns itself on. In a flash, Mateo and Curtis appear from the past. “I’m sending you back. Bhulan isn’t here,” she lies to them. Technically, she is here, but not because this is where Tamerlane sent her. It’s because she returned 10,000 years ago, and now she’s still here, currently hanging out with Abigail, Cheyenne, and Curtis in one of the stasis chambers.

“So we’ve already lost,” Past!Curtis questions.

“Not yet. I have another trick up my sleeve.” Danica double checks the temporal coordinates on the time machine, set to send them back to ten seconds after they left 20,000 years ago.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Past!Mateo asks.

“You’ve done more than enough,” Present!Mateo replies.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Past!Mateo argues with his future self.

“Everything’s gonna be okay,” Danica assures him. “Just say you didn’t find her here, because that’s the truth. Safe travels.” She pulls the switch, and sends them home.

“The loop is closed,” Present!Mateo declares with an exhalation that sounds like he’s been holding it in the whole time.

“The issue remains.” Danica starts tapping on her watch, remotely unlocking Tamerlane’s special stasis pod, the hatch to his private stasis chamber, and the gate to his cell. “I need you to get something for me.”

“What?”

“Tamerlane Pryce. I don’t feel like walking all the way down there, and all the way back. We may as well get some use out of your teleportation powers.”

“What are you gonna do to him?” Mateo darts his gaze over to the machine. “Or rather, when and where will you send him?”

“I’m going to send him where he wants to go,” Danica answers. Keeping him locked up was the wrong play, and crueler than she ever wanted to be. It’s messing him up, and it will only get worse. There’s one option left to fix this, but he’s not gonna like it, and she definitely won’t. Mateo will probably be displeased too. If Tamerlane wants to disappear, then she’ll help, but to different ends. After Mateo zips away, she starts to set new temporal coordinates, this time 60,000 years from now. He thinks that this will set the Omega Gyroscope free, but there’s something about it that not even he knows.

Mateo returns with the prisoner in hand. “I need to know that you’re not going to hurt him. I can’t be party to that.”

Danica takes Tamerlane by the shoulder, and escorts him into the time chamber. “He’ll be back in the year 302,398, just as he wanted.”

“Why are you doing this?” Tamerlane asks, a little worried about looking a gift horse in the mouth, but too curious to keep quiet.

“It’s clear that I can’t control you,” she explains as she’s stepping out of the blast zone. She frowns at Mateo. “But I think I can control Leona.” She pulls the switch again.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 16, 2398

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After helping the others settle into the hotel suite, Ramses pulled Mateo aside, and asked him to accompany him on a little mission. He revealed that the global brain scanner that Mateo installed on the orbiting satellite detected more than just Meredarchos and Erlendr’s location. There were other errors around the world. In truth, all things being equal, there was no way to know which was the right one. He had no choice but to guess that it was the one in San Diego, based on the fact that Kivi’s SD6 team was already there. It was a gamble that paid off, but now it’s time to investigate the other dots. Unfortunately, the scanner stopped working after a couple dozen passes. He can’t even make contact with it anymore. So by now, the data they compiled on these mysterious errors is already days old, and he doesn’t want to let it become even worse than that. Their first stop is to be a familiar old spot in Wyoming.

According to a quick word with Arcadia, her father loved water. He said that it wasn’t the same in The Gallery Dimension as it was in the normal world. He took a particular liking to untouched lakes and rivers, and had a special affinity for Brooks Lake. Mateo and Ramses are here now, standing at the edgewater, breathing in the clean air, and taking a break before things get real. Mateo smirks as he reflects on the last time he saw this beauty. It’s been a long time since he’s thought about this place. He and his family came here to avoid being caught by an evil version of Horace Reaver, but as far as they knew, there wasn’t anything special about it. Or not. Maybe his mother knew all along. It’s hard to tell with other people, he’s learned that since then. That version of his mom doesn’t even exist anymore. So much has changed.

“Hey, Rambo!” comes a voice from behind them. When they look back, a man in typical fishing getup smiles with a really open mouth. He removes his sunglasses. “Yeah, I thought that was you! What’re ya doin’ on this side of the lake?”

“Why wouldn’t I be over here?” Ramses asks.

“You told me you prefer what you called the Nile Side. You ever gonna tell me what that means?”

“One day,” Ramses calls back. “For now, I seem to have gotten lost while I was trying to show my friend here around. Maybe you could point me in the right direction?”

The fisherman is a bit suspicious, but what’s he gonna do, call the cops and claim that someone is impersonating his friend? “Just walk all along the bank until you get to the bridge, then keep going. I can see your cabin from here.” He points across the lake.

“Hey, thanks...friend.” Obviously Ramses doesn’t know his name.

“No prob. Happy fishin’.”

“Happy fishin’.”

“I guess that proves the early version of Erlendr is indeed here,” Mateo muses.

“The weirdest part is that he’s using my name with the locals.”

“Maybe he doesn’t much like himself.”

“We can use that,” Ramses says as he’s taking the first step around the lake.

The cabin is empty when they get there, but the door was locked, and it looks lived in. Mateo sits up on the bed while the real Ramses takes a chair. They wait for about an hour before the fake Ramses walks in. He doesn’t try to escape. He almost looks relieved. “I knew this day would come.”

“Why did you go where we could find you?” Mateo asks him.

“I just wanted to take a break from all the...” Erlendr can’t come up with the right word, so he just makes a growly noise of annoyance. “I met myself from the future, and I understand what’s to become of me, and also that it’s inevitable. You were fated to find me, no matter where I went, so I figured I might as well have relaxed until the time came.” He sets his bucket down, and slips off his wading boots. “Then this showed up, and I knew that I didn’t have long.” He parts the hair on his head, and reveals a small patch on his skin that’s sparkling with technicolors.

Ramses peers at it. “It’s timonite.”

“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?” Erlendr sits on a little step stool and calmly starts to remove his fishing gear.

Ramses thinks through this new information, then looks over at Mateo. “We did this. We did this to him. The scanner somehow...marked him?”

“We know where he’s going, and we know how he gets free from that world.”

“That’s not the issue. If the scanner did this to him, did it do it to the others?”

“We don’t even know who they might be,” Mateo says.

“Exactly. We could be banishing enemies...or friends.”

“Oh my God, I need to call Kivi. We cannot unleash Meredarchos on that unsuspecting world.”

“What does Meredarchos have to do with anything?” Erlendr questions.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m not worried about anything anymore,” Erlendr claims. “It would be nice, however, if you could let me know how long I have until this happens to me?”

“No idea,” Ramses answers.

“How many other errors are out there?” Mateo asks Ramses.

“Ten. All over the world.”

“Could you build another scanner? If I got you a spaceship to launch it on, would you be able to make a new one?”

“You can do that?” Erlendr asks. “You can just get a spaceship?”

“Hush now,” he demands.

“I already have a backup orbital scanner,” Ramses explains, “but I’m not sure if that’s the best way to do this, not if it’s only going to last three days.”

“I think it only lasted three days because of the timonite I accidentally left up there,” Mateo posits. “It must have spirited it away, like it’s going to do with him.”

“Guys,” Erlendr tries to interject.

“I said shush.” Mateo goes back to Ramses. “What happened with the satellite before won’t happen the next time.”

“Sounds like a reasonable hypothesis,” Ramses decides. “You really think they’ll give us access to a ship? Maybe if the one from the lab were still available...”

“Guys,” Erlendr says more forcefully.

“Quiet!” Mateo and Ramses order simultaneously.

“I don’t think you’re gonna have to listen to my voice much longer.” Erlendr is holding his head with both hands. His face is turning red. He’s in a great deal of pain. The timonite bubbles, and begins to spread downwards. Once it’s covered the whole body, he disappears, as he was always meant to.

Ramses sighs. “Consider this time loop closed.”

“Let’s just hope that it happens to different people at different times.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 3, 2398

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Ramses removes the brain scanning bonnet from Mateo’s head. He places it on the table, and starts looking over the data. Everything looks good. No full consciousness has been uploaded, just the basics. The entity is capable of making decisions, and moving muscles. Or at least it would be, if it were attached to any muscles. For now it’s just a blob of digital synapses, waiting to fire. “All right, the upload went great.”

“Better than Leona’s?”

Ramses smirks. “Virtually indistinguishable. You two may as well share a brain.”

“Did you delete hers from the system?”

“She might ask to see it later. It’s best to just keep both programs around, maybe even after we use them.”

“When do we test it? How do we test it?”

Ramses is uncomfortable. “We test it on Rothko.”

“So you upload my partial mind into Alt!Mateo’s brain, which is currently being occupied by Rothko Ladhiffe. Then someone tries to kill him, at which point fate will intervene, and take him back to the place where that body is supposed to die in another reality. Meanwhile, the extraction mirror will be waiting to bring him back to this reality, but my mind will override any survival instinct that Rothko has, forcing him to stay where he is, so that an old version of Horace Reaver can murder him in a New Jersey Hospital.”

“Well, when you put it like that, it sounds absolutely bonkers.”

“It is bonkers. It’s just...also necessary.”

“I wouldn’t put it that way. Rothko is a person. We will be murdering him.”

“Reaver will be doing the murdering,” Mateo rationalizes.

“That is a pretty weak justification, Matt. If this were made public, we would be arrested for conspiracy and-or reckless endangerment, or something like that. Alt!Mateo was destined to die, not Rothko.”

“Someone in that hospital is supposedly wearing the hundemarke—”

“That’s not why his death can’t be changed,” Ramses claims.

“What? What else is there?”

“His murder is inevitable because it precipitates the creation of the next timeline, and the one after. It’s a major turning point in reality, as is Leona Reaver’s accidental death. They have to happen, or none of us comes into existence, not even you.”

“You’re telling me that if we don’t kill these two people’s bodies, whoever is using them at the time, we will all just blink out of existence.”

“It’s possible, yeah. I mean, it’s hard to be sure what the consequences would be.”

Mateo considers this. “Maybe that’s why someone created the extraction mirror loop. They’re trying to disrupt the continuum in some way, be it for good or bad, like what Erlendr and Jupiter were trying to do when the Parallel was created.” Fair guess.

“Yeah, that could be the case. Either way, this is why extraction mirrors are so dangerous. It’s best to never use them. Given that, how would you say we proceed?”

“Let’s hold off on the testing for now,” Mateo recommends. “I’m not convinced that it’s the right call anymore. Why don’t we run more tests on my hands? I’m fine with losing my teleportation ability, but I need to know when, and what my limits are.”

Extremus: Year 34

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Captain Kaiora Leithe of the Void Migration Ship Extremus wakes up with a throbbing headache. It’s unlike any she’s ever experienced before. It’s focused mostly around her eyes, which are red and maybe even a little misshapen? She goes over to her sink and flushes them out, which is an immediate relief. Her fingers feel smooth and oily now, like there was something in her eyes that’s coming out. That cannot be good. After drying off and taking another look in the mirror, she turns to teleport to the executive infirmary. A blinking blue light on her desktop device gives her pause. She’ll just take a quick look at the message, and if it’s not important, she’ll ignore it and leave, but if it’s really important, she’ll put off the self-care. Heck, it may even be about her eye problems. “Computer, play the message, please.”

An image of herself appears on screen. At first, present-day Kaiora believes the playback is frozen, but then the past version of her blinks. She’s just staring at the camera for a moment, seemingly waiting to find the words. “Good morning, Kaiora, it’s Kaiora. This is not a trick, I have something important to tell you. Authentication code shadow-schwa nine-eight-five-six-seven-three-oh. You may not be feeling great right now, but it’s going to be okay. According to the drug facts on the bottle, normal side effects include headaches, sensitivity to light, burning or itchy eyes, short-term confusion, irritability, and...”

“And what?” Kaiora questions.

“And fragmental phantom memories.”

“What does that mean?”

“That means that you’ll have flashes of the day that you lost, and while you’ll eventually also forget these fragments, you will remember that you had them, and that may cause the irritability.” Is this a recording, or is she actually responding to Kaiora’s questions?

“Did you eat all of the cookies?” present-day Kaiora asks, testing to find out whether there’s a real person on the other side of the screen.

“Anyway, it’s important that you don’t investigate, or try to remember anything that happened yesterday.” Okay, probably a recording. Probably. “You did this to yourself. You consented to the procedure, and no one else knows about it. I obviously can’t tell you why you erased your memories, but it was the right thing to do, and extremely necessary. On an unrelated note, do not look for Admiral Olindse Belo’s second disappearance. Make up a story about why and how she left the ship. The fact that it’s classified works to your advantage. You’re the Captain, you don’t have to tell anyone anything.” The recording of Kaiora breathes in deeply. “I think that’s it. I just wanna reiterate that everything’s gonna be okay. I have to go actually do the thing that you’ve already done, but...happy new year!” She smiles, and the picture freezes.

Kaiora frowns, and looks over at the clock. It’s not the new year. It’s February 2, 2303. She looks back to the screen, and sees the blue light blinking again. There’s a second message. She selects it.

Another recording of herself comes up. This one looks sad and nervous. “Captain’s log, January 2, 2303. I just woke up to find a message to myself. I was obviously meant to watch it yesterday. I don’t...I don’t know if it wiped more days than I realized it would, or if it, uhh...if I just didn’t wake up until now, or what. I can’t imagine it’s the second option. I mean, someone would have noticed the captain was missing for a day. I still don’t want to tell anyone that anything happened. I don’t know what happened, so there wouldn’t be much to tell. Past!Me didn’t want anyone to know about it, so I don’t either. I’m just gonna go through my day, and hope that no one asks me about yesterday. Ya know, if I agreed to—I dunno—release Halan from prison, or officiate someone’s wedding, I’m not gonna remember what they’re talking about. Hopefully, it will resolve itself by tomorrow morning, but I’m recording this in case something else goes wrong.”

Blue light again, a third message. This version of Kaiora is the most upset yet. “Captain’s log, January 3, 2303. I just watched two videos I evidently made for myself. I don’t remember December 31, I don’t remember January 1. I don’t remember January 2. In case you’re watching this on January 4, there’s a weird, silky, film on my eyeballs.” She lifts a little green bottle of eyedrops, and shakes it in front of the camera. “It’s probably memory-erasing stuff, but it’s empty now!” She throws it across the room. “So if you’re still feeling that tomorrow, something fishy is going on. I’m going to record another video at the end of the night, giving you a rundown of everything I did today. Like I said, I don’t recall the last few days, and that led to some awkward moments that made me look like an idiot. I don’t want Future!Me to go through that again. I’m still choosing to not tell anyone that I erased my memories, or that it apparently can’t wear off at some point. January 4!Me, January 5!Me, January 6!Me, and so on, you’re going to have to decide that for yourselves. I can’t make that decision for you, but I don’t think anyone should know about it, because it would really put Olindse in danger. Okay, so that’s it for now. As previously mentioned, I’ll record another one so you’re not lost tomorrow. Today. Your today, my tomorrow. ARGH!”

The blue light comes on again, but Kaiora ignores it, and navigates to the folder where the clips are being stored. There are 33 video files in there. Past!Her has made one for every day, presumably to catch the spotless minded new versions up on the goingson of the ship. Each one is several minutes long. It’s going to take, like, three hours to watch all of the rest. What captain has that kind of time? Wait, some of them are tagged obsolete. She must have rendered those ones redundant with further updates. Even so, this is not a sustainable solution. The memory wiper chemicals must be severely corrupted, or maybe just old and expired. If only she could find the bottle, it may provide some answers. Kaiora gets on her hands and knees by the dresser, and looks around on the floor, hoping it’s still there somewhere. No luck, but that’s not super surprising. A different past version of her probably grabbed it at some point, and may have decided to throw it away. Or one of them found it, and a different one threw it away, because the whole point is she can’t remember any of this!

Something has to change. This version of Kaiora has to break the cycle, or no one will. So she calls Dr. Holmes. “Hey, are you busy right now?”

“I’ve been expecting your call,” Dr. Holmes replies. “Come on down.”

Kaiora cleans herself up, and gets dressed. Then she teleports to the infirmary.

“Glad you could make it,” Dr. Holmes says. “Have a seat.”

Kaiora hops up onto the table.

The doctor begins a cursory examination; ears, nose, and throat. “Did you watch Episode 33?”

Oh, so she knows. “I stopped after the first three. So you’ve known about this the entire time?”

“No at all,” Dr. Holmes promises. She feels Kaiora’s lymph nodes. “You came to me yesterday, and said that something had to be done about this.” She finishes the exam, and begins to pull off her gloves.

“And...?”

Dr. Holmes takes off a necklace with a key on it. She unlocks a cabinet with it, and takes out a bottle, which she hands to her patient. “And I concocted this.”

“This doesn’t look like a very pleasant way to squirt something in my eyes.”

“That’s because it doesn’t go in your eyes. It’s a nose spray. One shot in each nostril before you go to bed. When you wake up, you should have your memories back.”

“You’re sure it’ll work?” Kaiora rolls the bottle in her hand.

“Only one way to find out.” Dr. Holmes takes a burnbag out of her pocket, and hands it to Kaiora too. Most of the waste on this ship is recycled, to the best of their ability. In fact, everything that can possibly be constructed out of aluminum is as such, because it has 100% recycle potential. There is no limit to how many times it can be reused, which makes it an invaluable resource in a closed system. Of course, they can mine raw materials from nearby planets by using a form of time travel, but that demands energy, and isn’t the best option in most cases. Still, there are some things that need to be destroyed, either because the waste is a health hazard, or because it contains sensitive information. A bottle of memory restoration solution is a little bit of both, because it could be used as leverage, or to gain knowledge of things that not even the original user wanted to keep. The best way to get rid of it is to place it in this bag, and teleport it to the stern of the ship, where the powerful force from charged relativistic plasma melts pretty much anything.

“You’ve not been able to test it?”

“Not in a day. You can wait, but...”

“No.” Kaiora takes the bag. “I’ll try it. I trust you. I don’t want to remember what happened, but it seems there is no other way.”

“Make a 34th video, just in case it doesn’t work,” Dr. Holmes advises.

“Thanks doctor, and...”

“And I already have this programmed to delete from my own memory tonight. It’s easy to target memories when you know they’re coming.”

“Thanks again.” After making a pitstop to drop her goodies off in her cabin, Kaiora heads for the bridge, where Lieutenant Seelen is waiting to go through the morning briefing. Once that’s done, she goes about her day, and doesn’t run into any awkward situations, even though she never did watch those latter highlight videos. No one seems to suspect a thing. It is a pretty big day, though, with a lot of running around, putting out fires. It feels like she’s busier than she has been lately, though that doesn’t mean much, because even with the videos, she wouldn’t have much idea what the past month has been like. At the end of the night, she is so exhausted that she jumps back to her cabin, and literally falls faceforward on the bed. She completely forgets to take the nose spray that the doctor gave her.

That night she dreams of Olindse Belo, jumping into a portal to the future. That’s it. That’s what she was so afraid to remember. They risk deconstructing the timeline if anybody knows even a little bit of what’s coming.

When she awakens, she remembers asking Dr. Holmes for help on Day 11, and that she has received the so-called memory restoring nose spray 22 times since then.

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