Microstory 2489: Coasterdome

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It’s the largest amusement park in the known universe. Varkas Reflex has some pretty crazy stuff, but there’s not as much diversity with their rides. When I say that this one is the largest, that doesn’t mean it takes up the whole dome. In fact, I believe they intentionally left room for expansion, basing their future plans on feedback from the fans. So I’ll use this space to discuss my ideas. First off, the rides they have are great. I have no notes on them. There are so many of them, and they’re all different, and there are hardly any lines, and people just kind of naturally spread out. One thing is when you show up, you’re transported to a different entrance using an underground local vactrain network. So I think they were always aware of the concern for bottlenecking, and deliberately assign you an area to start with. It’s not like you’re not allowed to travel as far as you want, but this helps with overcrowding. I will say that as far as the layout itself goes, there doesn’t really seem to be any sense of organization, which I think is probably a consequence of this multi-entrance thing. There’s no dedicated area for the slower rides, or one which aren’t really rides at all, but still belong in an amusement park. There’s no gaming zone, or eating establishment neighborhood. They’re all spread out, and the map is hard to get a handle on. It’s interactive, so you can tell it what you’re looking for, and it will give you options, and show you the directions, so it’s not like all hope is lost. I dunno, I guess this is how they’ve designed it, and there’s no changing it now. As far as new rides are concerned, you could take the megaengineering aspect of Castlebourne more seriously. I propose a drop tower right in the center that goes all the way up to the apex of the dome. That’s 41.5 kilometers, in case you forgot. It would be the most impressive ride I’ve ever heard of. You could also go to the other axis, and design a coaster that flies around the whole perimeter without any lulls. It would be like the trains in Eldome, but much faster. Of course, organies might face health and safety issues with a ride that long, or a drop tower that tall, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t exist. You just tell people who can’t handle it that they can’t go. I already came up with some great names for these new rides, but I don’t want to share them here, because I don’t want someone to steal them. Perhaps you’re already thinking about these things, I just thought I would offer a few ideas. You can even contact me if you want more. I got loads of ‘em. I’m kind of famous in certain circles for designing the craziest of rides in VR. I have a bit of a following, no big deal. But I’m just telling you that I do have experience, and I’m not just some rando. HMU, if you want.

Microstory 2444: The Sandbox

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This dome isn’t for everyone, but it’s available to anyone. Do you have an idea for a new dome, or an improvement on a preexisting dome? You can come here to conceptualize, pitch, and even engineer these designs. Not everyone here has the educational or working background to translate their thoughts into functioning prototypes, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have their voices heard. I’m not either of these people. I don’t have any ideas, or the means to implement them. But I did want to hear from other people, and they were totally cool with this. Some meetings have closed doors, but it was always very clear. They have a constantly updating map on their prospectus, which shows you when and where the next meetings will be, and whether you’re allowed to just show up to watch and listen. It’s not even always about some crazy and unique concept that’s meant to blow people’s minds. I was at this one pitch from someone from a planet that I had never heard of because it was mostly just a number. She was asking whether they might consider building smaller domes for smaller communities. I can’t tell you whether they’re going to do that, but it’s not a bad suggestion. I’ve always wondered why every dome has the exact same dimensions regardless of the theme. My gut tells me that they constructed all the domes in one go, pressurized them, and only decided afterwards what the purpose of each one was going to be. That would be an all right excuse, but there’s still a lot of land out there that hasn’t been domed over, mostly because the terrain doesn’t allow it, but again, if it’s going to be smaller, that might be okay. Or, instead of that, you could have one large dome with lots of smaller domes inside of it, which might be good enough for what that woman was looking for. Anyway, the Sandbox is for ideas. If you have even only one suggestion, you can send this dome a message, or take the vactrain to it. They seem to be really considering the feedback that they receive. If an idea grows from there, it looks like they sometimes begin building models or prototypes here before making an investment at full scale. A lot of those were kept secret, though, and even the ones I did see, I don’t feel comfortable reporting. You’ll just have to come see for yourself, and find out what they’re willing to show you.

Microstory 2432: Infinity Suite

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Oh, I’ve just discovered that, not only can you review an entire dome, but also individual parts of that dome. So here I am, talking about the Infinity Suite in the Palacium Hotel. If there’s one thing this planet does well, it’s not worrying about how much space people take up. The Infinity Suite is the best example of this. I have no clue how it works, but that’s the right word for it. No matter how far I walk, or how many doors I step through, there’s always somewhere new to be. There’s always a new room to explore. Yet, I can’t get lost in it either. Each room, with no exception, has at least three doors. You can go back the way you came, press forward to explore more, or exit to the hallway. And when you do exit—again, no matter how deep you’ve gone—you’re back where you started. But here’s the thing. Your suite has two entrances from the main hallway. One goes back to the beginning, and the other returns to where you last were. So it’s not just some kind of trick of the mind, or an illusion. Or maybe it still is. It boggles my mind, I can’t figure out how the crazy Escher configurations work. Your last known location is somehow being stored in memory. And don’t you think that I’m just in a new hallway that was designed to look exactly like the original one. I’ve made changes, both inside and out, and tracked my progress. I’ve left little numbered pieces of paper on counters, chairs, and couches to create a map. I’ve matched each number with a photo of the room where I put it in. It matches afterwards. I can go back in through the second door, and retrace my steps, and nothing will have shifted. Those rooms are all in there where they’re supposed to be. That still doesn’t rule out some kind of advanced holographic illusion, but I suppose it doesn’t matter, does it? It’s still the craziest place I’ve ever been. They let me stay here for two nights, but then I had to give it up, so someone else could try it. There were presumably an infinite number of bedrooms, but I barely slept, because I was too busy trying to figure out how it works. If you manage to secure a booking, please write your own review, and provide any answers that you may have. Or, if you have any explanations, or ideas of what other tests that we could possibly run, comment below. I’m so confused and curious. I won’t ever stop thinking about it.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 0 EXT

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Leona looked over the new control console that Ramses had installed on the bridge of the Vellani Ambassador. He had revamped the whole thing, instead of simply integrating this new engine that he had fabricated into the old system. He was calling it the quintessence drive. It worked by pushing against the fabric of the universe, which was composed of what was once known as dark matter. Instead of fully piercing the membrane, it only reached through it enough to adjust the temporal properties of the ship. Outside of any universe, time was a spatial dimension, instead of a temporal one, which essentially meant that time didn’t really pass in any humanly fathomable sense. One could travel untold distances in the blink of an eye by stealing energy from the highest dimension possible. Machines like the Crossover and the Transit did this all the time, but they usually did it to travel from one brane to another. All the quintessence drive did was skip over the realspace in one brane, and end up somewhere else much faster than any other vessel in histories. Not even The Globetrotter, Maqsud Al-Amin was as fast. At least that was the idea. They had yet to test it.

“Show of hands, who is willing to risk it?” Ramses asked, now that he had clearly explained the deal.

“That’s not your call,” Leona reminded him. She took a beat before repeating the question herself verbatim.

Everyone raised their hand.

“All right,” Leona decided. “Rambo, this is your thing, so if you say you’ve done the necessary preflight check, I’ll believe you.”

“I’ve done it,” Ramses said. “Navigation is the hardest component, as it always is. I can’t guarantee that we’ll be right on target, but we’ll be close, and we’re not going to be liquified, or turned back into babies, or something.”

“Why would you even bring that up?” Mateo questioned.

“Because it’s not going to happen, it’s fine, don’t worry about it.” He slammed his hand on the physical button that he had incorporated into the console, and declared, “yalla!” That was usually Leona’s line, but it was his language.

A web of technicolor threads appeared on the viewscreens. The bridge offered them a 360 degree view of the outside using exterior cameras. The web continued to spread out, and encompass the whole ship. It closed in on them tightly, like a silkworm forming its cocoon. It didn’t remain in this state for long before it stretched back out into infinity, pulling all of spacetime along with it. The stretching decelerated as the colors faded into oblivion, and for a moment, they saw nothing in the absolute black. Not a single photon of light was making its way towards them. And then the stars blinked into existence as if God had switched them back on. They were there. Well, they were somewhere anyway.

“Report,” Leona ordered.

“PMS is recalibrating,” Ramses replied. Back when researchers were first really contemplating using the galaxy’s pulsars to determine a ship’s relative position in space, they devised the Pulsar Mapping System. By the time people pointed out the unfortunate acronym, it was kind of too late. They did officially change it to the PPS, a.k.a. the Pulsar Positioning System, but a lot of developers preferred the original term specifically for its humor value, and it wasn’t illegal to call it that.

“Just call it the PPS, dude,” Leona suggested.

“What? Oh, yeah.” Ramses watched the screen, gradually falling into a blank face.

Leona could have read it the whole time herself, but it was his job, so she hadn’t bothered. Now she turned her head to check as well, and saw what he was seeing. “Insufficient data. Position indeterminable,” she read.

“What does that mean, we’re too far for it to know?” Marie asked.

“We could be too far from the extent of the pulsar map in three dimensions,” Leona began, “or in four.”

“We may have traveled through time too?” Angela surmised.

“Lee-Lee, your watch,” Mateo pointed out.

“Right, of course.” Her watch could tell her the time no matter where or when she went. It would either default to standard human culture, or reach out to the nearest civilization that was advanced enough to have their own timekeeping standards. If none of these was available, it would display the relative temporal distance from its last known position. “Two thousand, eight hundred and fifteen years.”

“That’s the year, or the...” Olimpia prodded.

“That’s how far back we went,” Leona clarified. “We’re about 350 years before the start of the common era.”

“Can you...plug that into the PMS?” Angela asked, gesturing towards the console. “Or the PPS. Do we know where these pulsar things were back then?”

“We do not,” Ramses answered, shaking his head. “The map doesn’t account for such big time differences. Perhaps a time traveler could make such a map, just for people like us. Because without it, there’s no way to know where we are. There’s no decent way to even measure regular stellar drift in this period. Everything is different. And until we figure it out, we’re not going anywhere. Trying to make another jump would be even more dangerous. I seem to have sorely overestimated my abilities.”

“It’s all right, bro.” Mateo slapped him on the back. “We’re still here in seven pieces, that’s all the matters.”

“I need to run a diagnostic on the rest of the ship’s systems,” Leona said. “If we’re stranded, we need to know if anything’s damaged. Waltons, could you take stock of our inventory?” She placed her hand on Ramses’ shoulder. “Keep working at it. Find Sagittarius A* and at least two neighboring galaxies. Those will not have moved much. It won’t give us our exact location, but we’ll get a better frame of reference.”

“That’s a good idea. Thanks.”

Leona went off to check the other systems, like the reframe engine, and hull integrity. Verdemus was nowhere to be seen, so the new drive had taken them somewhere else, and they needed to understand whether there were any consequences or limitations to that. Angela and Marie went off to see what kind of supplies they had with them. This left the dummies with nothing to do once again.

For the most part, the six of them preferred to be rather close to each other. Their private rooms in the main pocket dimension were small; no one was more than several meters away at any time while they were on the ship. There were times when that was just a little too much. Fortunately, Ramses had built this second pocket altogether, which was used by the delegators during The Rock meetings. Though Ramses was considering upgrading his lab to the entirety of this space, it was presently still completely vacant. There was a bicycle in here, which someone must have requested from the industrial synthesizer in the engineering section. He didn’t think that any of the delegators were allowed to use that without supervision, so maybe they had had it, and someone else on the team had decided that it was okay.

“Got one for me?” Olimpia asked, having followed him inside.

“I don’t think so,” Mateo replied. “We could take turns.” He tilted the bike away from his body, balancing the end of the left handlebar on the tip of his index finger.

She brushed it away with a wave of her hand. “It’s all you, buddy. I don’t even know how to ride.”

Mateo smiled. “Neither did my daughter. I taught her while we were in the Sixth Key. It was a touching moment. Shoulda caught it on camera.”

Olimpia nodded. She was alone in the void during that time. Well, it was technically the future, but they didn’t reunite with her until she had spent some time there, fighting for freedom, and also for what little hope she had left.

He sighed, and looked around. “There’s not really much room. I don’t know how they used it. I guess there’s this hallway that wraps all around. But when you’re learning, you kind of need wide open spaces.”

“It’s fine,” Olimpia replied, sincerely confused. “I wasn’t asking for you to teach me. I don’t need to know how to ride. It’s...” She consulted her forearm interface screen. “...the fucking future.”

He thought about it for a moment, then he leaned the bike back against the wall, and started to leave the pocket. “Come on.” He led her across Delegation Hall, and into their usual pocket. He opened Olimpia’s door, and ushered her inside. “Lie down.”

“For..for what?” she stammered.

He tapped two fingers against the corner of the VR drawer to open it. He took out the headband, and waited patiently. “We can have as much space as we need.” All in all,  they didn’t use the virtual environments that much. They just didn’t really have the time, what with all the running around, fighting bad guys, and saving universes. They were always there, though, and the Ambassador came equipped with a decent number of virtual stacks.

She smiled without showing teeth, and lay down on her back.

“Scooch over.” After she was closer to the wall, he gently placed the band over her head, like a nurse preparing her for a medical procedure. He then reached back into the drawer to retrieve the second band. He lay down next to her, and slipped his on.

They appeared next to each other on the street that ran by Mateo’s childhood home in Topeka. Thanks to satellite imagery, stitched panoramas, and supplemental photographs, the majority of civilization since the late two thousand aughts was available for visiting through the stacks. People were dreaming up virtual worlds every single day. It was pretty much impossible to have a copy of every single one of them, especially since most of the point was for people to come together on a joint server. But these mapping images, which could be scaled to any point since 2007, depending on where you want to go, had become standard issue in every copy of the central archives. This included the street images, ocean views, and sky maps. The idea was to simulate the real world, using a real world physics engine. Anything beyond that was user’s choice. This was what they needed today. Olimpia needed to feel what it would be like if she were sitting on a real bicycle.

They could smell the fresh autumn air, and hear the dogs and leaf blowers in the distance. There was no pollution, or bits of trash on the street, though, so it wasn’t exactly like it was in the real world, but it was an idyllic version of it. This is what things looked like in 2013, not long before Mateo first disappeared.

“Why am I wearing a helmet?” Olimpia questioned.

“For safety,” he answered.

“I can’t die in here,” she reasoned.

“It’s a simulation,” he argued. “We’re simulating it. No, you can’t actually die. Even if we really traveled to Earth, and you fell down, you would barely be hurt in this all but perfect body of yours. But I want you to feel like it was like back when I was learning. Well, I mean, twenty years later, but we don’t have data from 1992.”

“Who taught you?”

Mateo smiled, and looked up at the house. The imagery didn’t contain people unless the user programmed them in. Even then, likeness was difficult to acquire. He couldn’t just conjure up his family out of nothing, and there was no getting the rights to them from here. “My mother. My birth mother. She couldn’t take care of me on her own, but she still wanted to be there for the milestones. She disappeared in ninety-four.”

“I didn’t have much in the way of parents myself,” Olimpia said. “I couldn’t be around people with my voice the way it was before this—” She cut herself off when she looked at her arm, and realized that she had no need for the Cassidy cuff in here. “Well, you know what I’m talking about.”

“Yeah.” He placed one hand underneath the seat, and the other on the handlebar. “Put both feet on the pedals. Don’t worry, I won’t let go.”

“It would be fine if you did, remember?” Olimpia turned her head, and realized how close their faces were. “But please don’t anyway.”

They could smell each other’s breaths. Regardless of what they ate today, they both smelled good in this world. Scientists did studies centuries ago, and while there was no accounting for taste, citrus seemed like a pretty universally appreciated scent, so that was the default in VR. In fact, pink grapefruit was the most common default in most systems. She looked up at him with those eyes.

Scared of whatever the hell was happening, Mateo jumped back, accidentally pushing the bike over in the process. “Holy shit, I’m so sorry.”

Olimpia stood back up, leaving the bike where it was. “I’m fine, my pain sensors are at a very low setting.”

“I’m sorry, it’s just that...Leona...”

“I know. I’m not trying to get between you two. But you were just talking about my perfect body, and you have to admit, we’re more alike than you two are.”

“Yeah, because we’re both morons. We could be the progenitors of Idiocracy!”

“I don’t think a moron would know the word progenitor.”

Their comm discs buzzed in the real world. It was from Ramses. “Team, I found something. It’s a planet, and there’s an energy signature coming from it.”

“How far?” Leona asked.

“One hop, one skip, and one jump.”

“Plot a course. Everyone get back to the bridge. I’m pretty sure it’s the Exins.”

Mateo and Olimpia looked at each other awkwardly. “We need to talk, the three of us,” he decided.

“I know.”

They removed their bands, and got out of bed.

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Microstory 2090: Still Delusional

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The doctor is allowing me to write one blog post, assuring my readers that I am not an alien from another universe, and everything I’ve been posting this year has been an attempt to make myself seem more interesting, and gain followers. I was born to this world, just like everyone else. Everything that I have been doing for the last few days has been the result of an illness that I experienced from the nursery. Earlier this year (when I came to town, but not when I first came to this planet, because I was born on this planet) I got sick from a virus. As I was recovering, I got a bacterial infection. More recently, due to my exposure to certain plants where I work, I contracted a parasitic infection. Of course, other people were exposed to the same thing, but I was immunocompromised, so it hit me harder. If I were still delusional, I may tell you that I believe I was indeed infected by a parasite, but that the main reason I was susceptible was because I’m originally from another Earth, where we don’t necessarily have such parasites. Now I know I’m not. I’m from here, and I’m being treated right now. I should be back to myself in no time, and no longer have the compulsion to go to random points on the map to destroy portals to other worlds. I’m sorry for anyone who has been worried about me. I didn’t mean to scare anyone. I was sick, and not in my right mind. I trust my doctors, and I know that they have my best interests at heart. Once I’m released from the hospital, my landlord says that I still absolutely have a home to go back to. Unfortunately, I will no longer be able to work at the plant nursery. It’s too dangerous for me. My weakened immune system may be a permanent issue. There is no way to know yet. My support system, though, which includes my soon-to-be-ex boss, is stronger than ever. They have all promised to help me find something better; maybe something with conditioned air. I don’t know what that could be. Since I’m not actually from another universe—where I had a life for three decades—I don’t have any work experience to speak of, so what even am I qualified for? I guess that’s a problem for tomorrow. Tonight, I just need to sleep, and let the medicines do their job. I’m glad to finally be getting better. Thank you all for being patient and understanding with me as I navigate this difficult time.

Microstory 2089: To Break Me Out

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I made a mistake. I left a hard copy of my map, and other pertinent information regarding the mysterious slew of missing persons, in my attic room at my landlord’s house. She found it, and called the cops on me. They say that I’m a danger to myself, and possibly to others. I was able to stop today’s disappearance by destroying the Westfall portal, but I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow if I can’t get myself the hell out of here. They’ve locked me in this all white room. It’s not padded, but we all know that they think I’m mentally unstable. Fortunately, they never found my emergency social box in my special underpocket. It’s a USB stick-sized computer with a small screen that only works through voice transcription. It takes a really long time to make sure that neither I nor the device has made any mistakes. It has two buttons. One opens up transcription, while the other accepts other commands, like punctuation, and moving the cursor. A wheel on the side scrolls through the text and menu items for file management. Forgive me if I ended up missing something. I bought this at the internet cafe a long time ago. Posting here is a secondary function of the device, but it was mostly invented for protection. If you’re mugged, and they take your regular phone, this will allow you to make a call, or send a text message without all the proverbial bells and whistles. I don’t need to send a message to anyone, though, because everyone I thought I could trust has turned against me. I just need to get my story out, and maybe one of my readers can do something about this total misunderstanding. I’m not crazy. I really am from another universe, and I really do need to stop others from accidentally being spirited away from it. Please, you have to break me out. I’ll do anything; pay anything, even if I have to do it in installments. I don’t belong in this room!

Microstory 2088: Ill Keep Fighting

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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 2053: Cold, Or Whatever

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Welp, I made a mistake. I really should have focused on shelter. One thing they don’t tell you when you first start to travel the multiverse is that each world comes with its own set of special diseases. Even if two worlds have the same thing, and call it the same thing, they’ll be different strains. When I first entered Havenverse, I got sick, and now that I’m in Boreverse, it’s happening again. Whatever this is, I’m sure it’s very common and unexciting to the natives, but it could actually kill me. According to the internet, there are free clinics. One of them isn’t even that far, but it’s unclear how good it is. Your mapping service allows people to rate businesses, but not review them. It seems as though they never thought of that. It doesn’t even use the star system either. You either hate it or love; nothing in between. But they don’t actually tell you how people rated it either. They then take the ratings, and categorize them according to a vague unnumbered list of impressions, like seems okay, or not great. In addition to being boring, this world also appears to be rather unhelpful. Wish me luck anyway. I’m headed there now to see if anything can be done about this cold, or whatever. Hopefully they won’t turn me down because I don’t have an ID. I don’t know what I would do then. I guess I would just die. I don’t look it, but I’m pushin’ 60, I guess.

Microstory 2050: Minnesota

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Now, some of you may say that my papa never made it to all fifty states. He died in Oklahoma before he ever got the chance to see Minnesota. But my family and I don’t feel the same way that you do. After he died, we had a funeral service for him in Florida. My grandma has a hard time moving around. She doesn’t have ALS, but she’s old, and that’s just what happens. My aunt, uncle, and cousins all flew down to be there too. All of papa’s friends from college, the Navy, and his co-workers from the submarine company were there. Papa met a lot of people as he was going to every state. I didn’t talk a whole lot about that, but he didn’t just step over the borders, and take photos. He became involved in people’s lives, and they remembered him later. People heard of his accomplishment, and because of my dad’s work with the news, it made it into national news. Everyone knew that he had died, and they knew when the funeral was. They even had to move the service to a bigger room, because there wasn’t enough space in the one we had booked. When it was all over, we took papa’s cremains up to Minnesota. When you die, you might be buried in the ground, but they also may turn your body into ashes. It may be scary, but a lot of people want this to happen to them, and that’s what my papa wanted. We spread his ashes in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota. Papa loved forests, so we thought that it was a good place to do it. Don’t worry, we asked for permission first. Some of the ashes are still in a little urn on our mantel. We had the special map framed, and it’s hanging on the wall right above it. The rest of the ashes will stay in Minnesota forever. I think that’s fitting. My papa went to all fifty states in the United States of America. I think that’s pretty amazing. Thank you for watching and listening to my presentation about my papa.

Microstory 2049: Oklahoma

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Back in August, my papa was sitting in his wheelchair in the dining room. He was looking up at the map where he and my dad had placed stickers to show which states they had gone to. My papa was only missing two states. He had never gone to Oklahoma or Minnesota. It was hard for him to pick up objects, but he asked me to hand him a quarter. When he let go of it, it fell to the floor. It landed on tails, which he had decided meant that he would be going to Oklahoma. I think he knew that he didn’t have very much time left, because that is where he died. He was sitting in a blue camping chair, watching the sunset with his favorite people. My dad was sitting on his right, and I was sitting on his left. Grandma Daphne, Aunt Cooper, Uncle Currian, and my cousins, Nash, Osmond, and Thatcher were all there too. Even though we knew that it was going to happen, it was sad, especially since I was there to see it. Still, I’m glad that he was looking at something so beautiful when it happened, instead of just staring up at the ceiling, or something.

Microstory 2043: West Virginia

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After we got back from Ethiopia, my fathers started talking about all of the other places that they had been too. They ended up getting out an old map that papa’s mom used to hang in her home office. They hung it in the basement, and each of them picked a color of stickers, and started marking where they had been to. My dad has been to several states, but my papa’s stickers were all over that map. They realized that there were not many states left that he hadn’t been to yet. The closest one was Pennsylvania, but he decided to make a trip to West Virginia instead. He and my dad wanted to go down there for their anniversary, because it was really close to that museum in Virginia where they had first gotten to know each other. I went on the trip to West Virginia too, but I was 8 years old already, so I could take care of myself a little without too much help. I let them spend some time together without me. I even went to a puppet show next door to the bed and breakfast alone. We only spent one night there, and then we went back home, because I had to go to school on Monday.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: February 19, 2399

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Ramses was given a new lab to work in on Mangrove One. There’s nothing wrong with the emergency pandemic facility back in Kansas City, but nearly everyone has moved here at this point, because this is where everything else is. Vearden and Arcadia are still in the hospital, but the former checks in via text, sometimes audio, and the occasional video to update the team on the latter’s progress, or lack thereof. She’s still in a coma, and her child is still growing rapidly in her body, but mama and baby are otherwise both very healthy and stable.

Leona enters the lab. “How is it going?”

“It’s not,” Vearden replies. “It can’t be done. There’s a reason that darkbursting and darklurking exist. If you’re invisible, then everything else is invisible to you.”

“Can you siphon the radiation to another dimension?” Leona suggests.

“Yeah, in the Parallel, maybe the main sequence. But we don’t have other dimensions in this reality. Our only advantage before was a lack of technological advancement on this culture’s part. That is quickly changing as Aldona provides them with something new each day to maintain her value on the global stage.”

Leona nods as she scans the room for no particular reason. “Then bring it online. If they attack again, we’ll respond again. We’ll remain vigilant, and update the defense software regularly. I’ll deploy a second satellite to watch for imminent threats if I have to. I’m going to find Alyssa, and I’m going to find the volcano where my husband died.”

“I’m sorry that I don’t know where it is,” Ramses apologizes again. “He navigated. And when I left, my subconscious just sent me to Egypt.”

“I know. We’ll figure it out, we always do.”

“What about the Nexus? I never really heard why you left, but that would be a great resource, right?”

“Um.” She scratches at her ear awkwardly. “I can do anything I want with the Nexus, and its computer. It will respond to any request I make for a task that it is capable of performing. I appear to have full administrative privileges.”

“That sounds like a good thing.”

“It’s too good,” she replies. “They didn’t want me there, I’m too powerful. My comrad in The Highest Order, Iris Blume made me leave.”

“Well, by your own admission, you probably could have let yourself stay by locking up the Nexus computer, or something.”

“These are our allies, not my subjects. The Nexus may help us return home one day, but I don’t see much use for it at this point. I would rather focus on relationships than technology.”

“Except for right now,” he muses. He’s hovering his hand over the execute button.

“Except for now. Do it.”

Ramses reawakens the satellite, and watches the data pour in. “All systems online, and operating at optimal efficiency. No hyperadvanced alien technology detected. Apparently Aldona’s tech doesn’t qualify under my parameters. I’ll tweak that so we always know what she’s up to as well. Let’s see, brain scanner operational, no errors yet. Temporal anomalies, zero. Temporal energy, zero, even though we all know it shouldn’t be.”

“Vanguard scope?” Leona asks.

“On the lookout for incoming vessels. We won’t have much warning; I couldn’t make it too big, or we wouldn’t have been able to launch. Oh, there. There’s an error. No, two actually.”

“São Paulo, Brasil. That’s in the top ten densest cities in the world by population.”

“Oh.”

“Wait, how long before you can scan the Philippines?”

“Maybe a half hour, thought it may not find any errors until it gets straight overhead, which will be closer to forty minutes.”

She shakes her head as she’s staring at the map. “It has to be them. Other than Antarctica right now, the only travelers we’ve found have been loners. Roeland and his daughter,” she says with airquotes, “are the only pair we’ve met.” Their original plan was to hide out in a remote spot where no one would think to look, but that obviously backfired when Leona showed up. He probably believes that no one will find them in the new city, not with such a dense population for them to blend in with. He doesn’t know that the brain scanner ignores all those other people. He doesn’t even know about the scanner in the first place. He’s probably going to be so pissed when she shows up again, but she still doesn’t know who this other person he’s with is. If it’s not Alyssa, then she’ll leave them alone, but if it is, she’s going to bring her home. Then again, could it really be her? She would look like Leona herself, and he didn’t bat an eye when she answered the door at that quarantine hotel. It doesn’t matter, nothing is certain. She has no choice but to try to find them again, and this time, not let any bureaucratic bullshit get in her way.

“You think they moved?” Ramses assumes.

“I think Tarboda and I spooked them, so yeah, it would stand to reason.”

“We won’t have to wait that long to confirm. Let’s give it the full ninety minutes before you rush off to get answers.”

“I won’t be rushing off anywhere. Not without you, anyway. You’re the only one of us who can teleport, remember?”

“As long as that shipment of Existence water comes in,” he points out.

“I’ll go check on that now.”

“Thanks.

Leona heads out, and goes straight to Winona, who is in charge of supplies. “Honeycutt, I have a question.”

“Let me guess, you’re a little thirsty,” she guesses suggestively.

“Is it on its way?”

“I just got off the phone with the Navy. There’s a major delay. Evidently the local governments have noticed that we’ve found something special in the Bermuda Triangle, and they would like to get in on the action.”

“It means nothing to them, it’s just water.”

“That’s not something that we can explain,” Winona reasons.

Leona sighs, annoyed. “Yeah, I know.” Her watch beeps. “Motherf—.”

“What is it?” Winona asks worriedly.

“They’re firing another goddamn missile.”

“What are ya gonna do, teleport it away again?”

Leona scowls, and considers her options. “No, they’ll just send another.” She thinks some more. “I’m gonna steal it, and drop it in their backyard. Let’s see how they like it.” She races out of the room.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 18, 2399

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Ramses purged the version of Constance that he had uploaded to The Bridgette. They don’t know if it’s been compromised, but they can’t take any chances. The AI served them well for a long time without giving them any issues, or giving them any reason to doubt it. It’s only when the one from the Fifth Division showed up that they started having issues. The question is, is it even from the Fifth Division? Was that all a lie? Did Impostor!Mateo give them a partial truth? Could it have been an anti-Alyssa who was just using their illusion powers to pretend to be Mateo, while having a backup plan of prompting the wrong investigation if they were even discovered to be an impostor?

Leona, Ramses, and the McIvers are in an SD6 safehouse right now. It’s not completely devoid of electronics, but there aren’t any microphones that could listen in on their conversation, which they are having in the kitchen while the boys play a card game in the one and only bedroom. “Any ideas?” Leona asks. She waits for a response that never comes. “We were all meant to sleep on it.”

“I doubt anyone slept well under these conditions,” Alyssa notes.

“You’re the one who had the bed,” Ramses points out.

“With two smelly boys in puberty,” she counters.

“We heard that!” Carlin shouts from the room.

“I wasn’t trying to be quiet!” she shouts right back.

“All right,” Leona says. “Are we all in agreement?”

“Agreement of what?” Ramses questions, confused.

“We all agree that we don’t know what the fuck we’re doing, and we don’t have any idea how to proceed?

“Heard that too!” young Moray exclaims.

“First we have to decide whether we think that was Mateo, infected by a psychic, or someone else entirely?” Alyssa says. “If it’s the latter, we need to find the real Mateo.”

“It’s not really something we can decide, but yes. I’m not sure how we go about doing that. It’s not like we can look for a scar underneath his right eye, or something. It’s entirely reasonable that he would get himself into a pristine body. The impostor’s story about Mateo going to the Fifth Division was not unbelievable.”

“You think that really happened, but Constance!Five somehow transformed herself into him, and left him somewhere?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time. Fax!Mateo did it so he could sacrifice himself in Alt!Mateo’s body.”

“This is getting confusing,” Alyssa admits. “Has your life always been like this?”

“It hasn’t,” Leona begins. “Back in the day, when Mateo and I were just jumping forward in time, we met a lot of time travelers, but we never had to wonder whether they were the wrong version of someone we already knew. I mean, there was The Rogue, and then Makarion after that, but it didn’t happen nearly as much as it does now. For a reality that doesn’t allow temporal manipulation, there do seem to be a lot of wibbly wobbly, timey-wimey shit. Sorry,” she adds in reference to the children.

“It’s fine,” Alyssa promises.

Young Moray comes down the hallway, pulling away from every attempt of Carlin’s to keep him back. “What about the error detector?”

“What do you mean?” Leona asks.

“That thing you had in the sky. It told you where all the weird time people were, right? If the real Mr. Matic is somewhere else, that should be able to find him, right?”

Leona looks over at Ramses. “We need to replace that anyway to find the remaining errors, don’t we, since the AOC is gone?”

“Oh my God, the AOC!” Ramses laments. The error detector was on that, and now it’s gone. He feels so stupid. It would have been so easy to deploy a nanosatellite from the AOC, and it’s a lot more difficult now that they have to rely on this antiquated Third Rail technology. Months of living here, and he has still not gotten used to that. He keeps making these mistakes, and it’s really starting to piss him off. “The detector isn’t up there anymore. I’m such an idiot.”

“Now hold on,” Alyssa says. “Maybe we don’t need it. If Mateo isn’t dead—which, I’m guessing the detector wouldn’t detect anyway—and our theory is correct, then Constance!Five is keeping him somewhere relatively safe. He would need food, water, shelter. She hasn’t been here long, so she doesn’t know of a whole lot of places.”

“It would appear that she knows everything that Mateo does,” Leona replies. “He has a lot of places in his head.”

“How many of those places are isolated or hidden, so no one will stumble upon him?” Alyssa asks.

“Where was he last time,” Carlin offers, “the first time this happened?”

“The bunker,” Leona answers. She gets out of her chair, then just stands there.

“What’s happening?” Ramses asks her.

“I can’t jump,” she replies. “This body metabolizes temporal energy too quickly.”

“I don’t have any left either,” Ramses says apologetically. “I’ve had to use a lot recently, and I’m in no position to synthesize more.”

“I can still feel the power in this body. If that’s okay with you?”

“No, go, please.” Leona urges. “No one else will go with you to conserve the power you have left. I’ll show you where it is on the map, then we’ll catch up with you by car.”

Alyssa teleports to the middle of the forest, and can instantly feel that it was her last trip. She either gets her hands on more temporal energy, or she never jumps again. Her mother taught her how to read a map without satnav, so she can also tell that she’s a little off the mark, but not too far away. She carefully climbs down the hill, and finds the secret entrance to the underground bunker. She slides down the ladder to find Mateo on the opposite wall. He’s nearly naked, strapped to what seems to be a wire bed frame. He looks dehydrated and exhausted. “Oh my God! What happened to you!”

“Fuh...” he’s really struggling to speak. “Cons...conste...”

“Constance!Five, yeah, we know. She was impersonating you.”

“No.” He shakes his head while she tries to get the restraints off. He musters what little energy he has left. “Constellation.” He passes out.

“What?”

One more push. “Constellation. Phoenix. We have to go there.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 22, 2398

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Marie called it in, and confirmed her suspicions. A spy satellite feed showed that a small speedboat-like watercraft was moving at top speed from the shores of Panama, while a fleet of larger ships were in pursuit. They could have overcome it at pretty much any time. There must be a reason that they want to maintain distance. The most likely explanation is that there is something dangerous on board, like a bomb, or a deadly chemical. Leona and Marie don’t want to teleport there if they don’t have to. According to Ramses’ research, their ability to metabolize the Bermuda Triangle water is diminishing. If they keep using it to reactivate their powers, it eventually won’t work anymore. Theoretically, they can’t overdose on the stuff, but also theoretically, they can. It’s here in case of an emergency, though, if the pursuing ships change tactics, or if either party reacts to their arrival. To be safe, by the time they make their interception, the SD6 team will put on their hazmat suits, just in case that’s what the problem is.

It took the team a long time, but they’re here now. They have the boats in their sights, and nothing has changed from the last satellite view that they saw. The pursuing ships are still 900 meters from the speedboat. It’s been on the water for so long, it has to be running out of power. It was going all night, so it had to rely on its battery reserves, and those things are not designed for overnight trips. The driver is running out of power, and it will probably happen soon. When it does, that could be enough to cause the ships to make bolder moves. The team has to get to it now, and figure this out. They don’t know if they’re target is good or bad, dangerous or harmless, so they’re not going to take any chances. Leona and Marie have their immortality water boosters inside their hazmat suits, ready to take the other three members of the team with them, plus the target, if necessary. Then again, they’re still not close enough to know if there even is only one person on the vessel. It’s the only one they can track using Ramses’ scanner, but that doesn’t mean that person is alone.

Once the team breaks the 900-meter radius, that’s when the ships start to change direction. They all move at the same time. “Oh, no,” Leona laments. “They’re coming in to attack us. Get your auto-injector ready.”

“No,” Marie says with a shake of her head. “That’s not what they’re doing. They’re leaving.” She’s right. They’re not getting into attack formation. They’re turning. It’s going to take them a long time at their sizes, going at their speeds, but they’re definitely turning away. From what, them? That is even weirder. What are they so afraid of? Why did they spend all this time and effort going after this little boat, only to bail when a three crew-sized tactical amphibious vessel shows up? Surely they have their own satellites, and would have seen them coming from literally miles away.

They’re not going to spend too much time dwelling on it. They get closer to the speedboat, which is being maneuvered into parallel position. Once they’re tied together, the hatch from the cabin opens. Bhulan Cargill climbs out of it, except it’s not Bhulan. It’s Mateo’s once-sister, Aquila in Bhulan’s body. “Why are you wearing those things?”

“We didn’t know what to expect,” Leona says. “This whole mission has been bizarre. Why were they coming after you, and why are they giving up now?”

Aquila looks back at the fleet. “Oh, they weren’t coming after me. Those are my escort ships. They were making sure no one attacked. We need to talk...about Mateo.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 21, 2398

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In the main sequence, the concept of international waters was determined by a bunch of people a long time ago who talked about it for a long time, and used math to make clear and mostly unequivocal calculations. In The Third Rail, things went a little bit differently. For much of human history, if one could see land using a normal handheld spyglass, they were floating within territorial waters, and subject to that state’s laws and customs. When two or more states could be viewed from the same point, those states had to come to some kind of agreement, not subject to any outsider’s opinion or authority on the matter. World War I in the 1850s predominantly concerned how boundaries were divided, and who was entitled to what land resources. Each dispute inspired two more fronts to pop up elsewhere, and settle their own grievances. Pretty soon, the whole planet was on fire. The end of The Terrible War—as it was known colloquially, especially at the time—was when all of the major disagreements had been resolved. It was also when a new definition of transboundary waters was established. Basically, if you could defend it with a naval or coastal force, you could have it.

Since then, smaller wars have been fought over further discord, but they were mostly not tied together, and World War II didn’t begin for another 140 years, which finalized a lot of the lingering border ambiguity through treaties and trade agreements. Much of World War III in the 2040s involved starting the argument over again, but this time regarding airspace, as that was the innovation at the time. These laws have not technically changed over the centuries, but the boundaries have naturally become standardized for the majority of nations. It is strikingly similar to the figure used in the main sequence. There, it’s 370 kilometers. Here, it’s 350 kilometers. Unless you’re talking about Panama, where it’s closer to 900 kilometers.

Jamaica, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Ecuador do not have international waters to speak of. They only have a small sliver of internal waters, which essentially come down to how far out a small fishing boat can go for a day of work, and still make it back to shore by nightfall. The wars, the peace negotiations, and the trade policies that led to this interesting situation are impossible to explain on a single page, but the details are irrelevant. Marie, Leona, and their SD6 team need to get into Panama, but none of those other countries listed is willing to host them. The closest they can get is a small island chain straddling the equator called Xeros. Overlaying the correspondence map that Leona created onto this reality’s map makes it obvious that in the main sequence, they’re called the Galápagos Islands. There, they were named for the tortoises that call it home. Here, they’re named for the fact that nothing lives here. The fauna, and much of the flora, was decimated so long ago that the history books don’t remember who was responsible, but they did such a good job of it that these are mostly just made of rocks, sand, and a few shrubs here and there. Tourism does not exist. At all. So at least they have some privacy while the diplo team gets their diplomacy on.

“Hey. Hey look.” Doric has been playing games on his tablet in between scanner updates. “I was right. The dot is definitely in the water now, and closer than last time.”

Marie takes it from him. She looks out over the water, even though the dot is still hundreds of kilometers away. “This looks like an escape pattern. Our target is trying to get out of Panama. Piss and gear up. We’re going in.”