The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 12, 2556

« < » > Table of Contents

Generated by Gemini Pro text-to-video AI software, powered by Omni Flash

They found themselves an ice cave to hole up in to get out of the wind. They were not going to die anytime soon, but it still wasn’t comfortable. Ramses and Leona got to work, trying to figure out what was wrong with their suits, but really, there was nothing they could do. None of their technology was working. They couldn’t even activate sensors to find out why. Nothing in the natural universe was known to do this. There could be interference, which made certain technologies malfunction, but they wouldn’t simply not turn on, full stop. Marie and Angela volunteered to take a short hike to higher ground to search for any sort of artificial settlement. Their comms devices didn’t work, but they would signal trouble using their empathetic connections. Those were all organic, so they were functioning fine. They didn’t find anything, though.

When they were mere seconds from midnight, Mateo walked outside, threw a rock he found up into the air, and watched it go up. When midnight hit, the rock didn’t fall down. It simply disappeared. He found it near his feet, covered in a layer of snow, which told them that their patterns had not been suppressed. During the interim year, nothing had changed. They couldn’t turn anything on, or access anything from their pocket dimensions. If it required power, it was off limits. Ramses was at a loss, so they decided to go exploring to see if there were any resources here. Their advanced substrates would keep them alive for a while, but not indefinitely. They still needed to find food, as well as fuel to make a fire so they could melt some snow for the water. Except that was dangerous too, because there could have been contaminants, or it wasn’t purely water ice in the first place. No one was panicking, but they were all worried.

“Look!” Romana announced. The sun was setting, and they could see a little bit of the night sky. Flashes of light were appearing in an artificial sequence, proving that they couldn’t have simply been meteors, or some other natural phenomenon. So there were people here, but they were only in orbit, or maybe others were just a few miles out of view. As they were watching, they spotted a fiery object much larger than the others. While they faded into the atmosphere, this one continued to plummet towards them until a parachute burst out of it, and it slowly drifted down to the surface.

 “Wait!” Leona warned as they began to walk towards it. “It could be a trap. It could be an explosive device. It could be anything.” Even if it wasn’t, that didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous. It could be waiting for their approach so it could disperse a toxic gas, or some other creative way to kill them. All the way out here, they couldn’t rely on the afterlife simulation as backup. This could be it for them.

“We have to look at it, Lee,” Olimpia reasoned. “If they wanted to blow us up, they would have sent a missile that we couldn’t dodge. It’s not like there are any police to get them in trouble.” She led the group a few hundred meters away to see what it was.

It was a small capsule, still hot from the descent, but cooling rapidly. Mateo opened the little hatch on the side to find a rolled up piece of paper. There was also what looked like a compass, though of no familiar design. There were no electronics here either. He unrolled the paper, and examined it alone at first. “It looks like directions.” He looked up, trying to get his bearings. “Written in kilometers,” he added as he handed it over to Leona. “About eighty-three of them to the destination.”

“Still could be a trap,” Leona said. “Maybe they don’t want to kill us, but harvest our organs, or something. That’s why they didn’t send a missile.”

“Either way, we’re obviously going,” Olimpia reasoned. “We can escape a trap, but we can’t escape the nothingness. Yalla.”

« < » > Table of Contents

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 11, 2555

« < » > Table of Contents

Generated by Gemini Pro text-to-video AI software, powered by Omni Flash

Ramses had something else to show them, which he had evidently been working on at the same time as Operation Starframe. That was on the moon. This was down on the planet, in their main, branch-themed, dome. It felt like he invented something new every day, so while he wanted to show them, it wasn’t done with any fanfare. He just summoned them all to one his labs, and showed him the new thing. “It’s a slingdrive pad. Or a slingpad. Or something like that. Instead of you taking the whole thing with you, it just sends you to the destination alone. Since it’s ground-based, it doesn’t need a coherence gauge. It always has as much power as it needs. We will still need our arrays to come back, or go somewhere else, but this will let us do that instantly, instead of waiting for our own gauges to recharge. They stay topped up for the first trip.” It was pretty big, much larger than they would need for just the seven of them, even if they each had to return with two guests.

Perfect, they had themselves a real operation. Now they only needed to figure out how they would determine where they were needed. The galaxy hadn’t gotten any harder. Their top candidate was the Goldilocks Corridor, but that was a delicate situation. They had that treaty, and while individual interference didn’t technically go against it, they didn’t want to complicate matters too much. They could leave that all to Team Kadiar. “Great,” Mateo said. “Thank you. We’ll be able to breathe easier, knowing we have a full tank of gas every time we go out. The question is, where are we going?”

Romana separated herself from the audience, and stood next to Ramses. “I took the liberty of compiling a list of candidates.” She flung the data to their devices. “There aren’t any specific needs that we know about, but it’s time we ignore the stellar neighborhood for the most part, especially the Core Worlds. They’re mostly doing fine on their own as they have plenty of infrastructure and systems in place. It’s the 26th century. Colonists have made a lot of claims in the Charter Cloud, but many don’t have very useful charters. They benefit from almost no protection or emergency services. They’re also pretty deep into the Extended Bubble, which were given no resources, except for what they could afford from Gatewood. We don’t know who is out there, or what they’re lacking, but if anyone could use our help, it’s them. I know I’m the navigator, but I’m asking for your input. Should we throw a dart and pick one?”

Leona stopped looking at the spreadsheet. “I don’t care how you do it. You choose one, and send us there. I’ll even let you select the team. It could be all of us, or only three. You can put yourself on it, or not. It’s all up to you today. We’re all ready, right?”

They all nodded in agreement. They were itching to be productive.

Romana was pleased. “All right.” She swiped through her lower arm interface. “Okay. This colony is called Tartarus, which I find both interesting, but also worrisome enough to maybe investigate in case there’s something weird going on? It’s 290 light years from Earth so they don’t have to follow any rules. The colonists were set to arrive a few days ago.” She turned to Ramses. “Do you need to stay to monitor the equipment?”

“Nope,” he answered. “I’ve already tested it with a bunch of probes. “It’s ready.”

“Lovely,” Romana said. “Then we’ll all go. Boot ‘n’ rally.”

They arrived to find that it was either named ironically, or something got lost in translation. It was incredibly cold, snowy, and windy. And for some reason their suits wouldn’t work, so they didn’t have access to their slingdrives either. They were stuck here. No one else was around.

« < » > Table of Contents

Microstory 2462: Aztec Empire

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3

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

Microstory 2088: Ill Keep Fighting

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2

I didn’t go into work today, and I didn’t ask for anyone to fill in for me. I just have so many lives to save, I couldn’t think about anything else. Here’s a summary: I saved someone’s life yesterday. I don’t know who it would have been, but I finally broke the pattern. A missing person a day, but I stopped it. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen again, though, or my work would be over. The pattern can easily start over again, which is why I had to do the same thing today at the next location in the pattern. Fortunately, now I know what must be done. I have the prior missing persons plotted on a map, which is how I noticed that they always disappear in a spiral formation, which means it’s relatively easy to predict where the next disappearance will happen. It’s a not insignificantly sized radius, but I don’t have to worry about staking out the whole thing. All I have to do is find the epicenter. As soon as I step into it, the portal to the interversal conduit is ripped apart. My current theory is that I’m contaminated. The bulk doesn’t like me anymore. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve traveled to so many worlds already, or because I used to have superpowers, or maybe because Westfall decided that I should be here, and I’m not allowed to leave. It doesn’t really matter, but I put a bad taste in the mouth of the cosmos, which now gives me the power to destroy portals. I’m a pathogen, and it’s immune to me now. This is good for this situation, because that way no one else can accidentally fall into it.

After I did the same thing today that I did yesterday, I went back to the neighborhood from yesterday. I started knocking on doors, showed them the pictures of a few people who have already gone missing because of all of this, and asked them if they knew where their loved ones were. Like I said, there’s no way to know who it might have been taken if it turns out I failed. A lot of people slammed the door in my face, but that’s okay. They don’t have to tell me. Even the possibility that someone they care about has gone missing will force them to check. If any of them had come up short on their respective headcounts, I would have heard about it by now. Nothing has been reported, which means that I’m succeeding. All I have to do is keep doing what I’m doing with the portals. Even if I have to do it forever, I won’t have to keep canvassing, because I’ll eventually be confident that I’m successfully putting a stop to the disappearances. My boss called, but I didn’t pick up. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go back to my real job. I’ll scavenge for food in dumpsters if that’s the only way I have to survive. This is all my fault, and I can’t take any breaks. I’m the only hope that these innocent people have. I’m not much of a cartographer, nor any sort of artist, but I’m working on a way to upload the future disappearance locations, so you can share it with everyone you know in the area. Ill keep fighting, but it would be even safer if people just stayed away from the danger zones entirely anyway. It’s just like when the bomb squad is called in to disarm the bomb, it’s not like they stop evacuating the building, right? Well, this is a bomb, just like any other, except it only ever claims one victim. I’m trying to bring that number down to zero in the future, but I could use some help.

Microstory 2087: Into the Epicenter

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2

I went to the place where I knew someone was going to disappear mysteriously, and immediately started getting a weird feeling. The more I walked, the stranger I felt. I eventually passed out of the blast radius, and had to turn around. Through a little trial and error, I was able to determine the center of everything. There was nothing there but empty space in the middle of an alleyway, and I didn’t think that someone would necessarily disappear from that exact spot. They would have to be incredibly unlucky to happen to pass over it at the perfect moment. It was going to happen, though, and I was the only one who could stop it. I realized after standing there for a few minutes, keeping my head on a swivel to see if anyone else was in the area, that I had already felt this before. It’s what I felt when I first came to this universe. The incident was being replicated, one person at a time. This could either mean that they were going to Havenverse, which is where I last was before this world, or somewhere else entirely. This was Westfall. I mentioned that in an earlier post. It’s one of the things that takes people back and forth through the bulk. Most people don’t even realize that anything has happened, because they end up on a version of Earth sufficiently similar to their own. I have no clue how often this occurs, or in what universes, but this seems excessive. There always seems to be a purpose to it. The person who’s taken has something to accomplish in the next world over, even if they don’t understand it. It’s unlikely that this need perfectly matches up with the spiral I noticed on the map. No, I did this. I have caused Westfall to malfunction, and as I was saying, I have to stop it. Not knowing what else to do, I stepped into the epicenter, where I felt a rush of energy sweep upwards from my feet, and dissipate in the air above me. The strange feeling that’s indicative of Westfall went away with it. I think I destroyed the interversal conduit just by stepping into it. If there’s a way to escape, it could be through one of these, or it could be that I’m the only one in the world who can’t access these conduits. I don’t know, but there have been no new reports of any missing persons today. It may take some time for a loved one to realize it, but I have high hopes that I fixed it. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen again tomorrow, though, so I’m going to do the same at the next spot. This is going to become tedious and tiresome, but it’s my responsibility.