Microstory 2453: Threshold

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A liminal space is an empty place of transition, such as a hallway or a stairwell. The keypoint is that it’s empty, devoid of life...except for you. This invokes a sense of unease, suggestive of not simply being alone in the room that you happen to be in, but in the world, or even all of time. It is quiet and creepy, and behind every corner could be a lurking threat. It’s hard to decide if such a threat even would be worse, however, or if you wish something would be there just so something would happen to break up the emptiness. Just so you wouldn’t be alone anymore. That is the idea behind a dome simply called Threshold. It’s nothing but liminal space. Any empty room you come across will just lead to a closet, another hallway, or another empty room. You will occasionally come across a small white bucket on a table that’s missing a leg, or a stain on the carpet in the vague shape of a man. While it is generally quiet, random unplaceable noises will sound off somewhere nearby, like a creak, or a chirp. When you walk over to investigate, you won’t find anything, except maybe a surprise mirror, which could give you life-affirming jumpscare. I’ve been through this one a lot, because I revel in the disquiet. I see it as an opportunity for introspection and self-reflection, if there’s a difference. I should wander around and give a think on that. There are some water stations for safety, but no other supplies. You go in with a dayfruit grower-slash hygiene station combo cart, and a cot, but that’s it. Whenever you’re ready to leave, you can activate an exit beacon. A bot will come to retrieve you and lead you out through the nearest locked trapdoor. That’s the only time you’ll see someone else, and once you press that button, you gotta go. If you’re wondering if it’s even possible for multiple people to visit Threshold, and not run into each other once in a while, I assure you that not only is it possible, it may be impossible for two to cross paths. There is plenty of room here. Like the terminal, the outer shell of the liminal space complex takes up just about the entire volume of the dome, which—I looked it up—is 149 thousand cubic kilometers, or 149 billion megalitres. With over 13,800 floors, you’re not gonna run into anyone else. They make sure to keep us separated, and while I can’t be sure, I believe the locked doors I run into occasionally would lead to other people’s areas. Thresholders, as we like to call ourselves, have been discussing the possibilities on the message boards, but Castlebourne gives you very little information. Obviously part of the experience. Normally I wouldn’t discourage someone from visiting a dome. My reviews are usually pretty upbeat and favorable, but it takes a strong stomach to even cross one threshold once you’re inside, let alone a series of them. I don’t know for sure that there aren’t any monsters hiding in dark corners. I only know that I’ve never seen any before. But I do hear those noises, and I don’t know what’s making them.

Fluence: Aura (Part II)

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Briar was gone. Once Goswin felt like he knew enough about the Parallel justice system to trust that it was fair and, well...just, he returned to the X González to explain things to the suspect. Briar was not in his cabin, nor did it look like anyone had ever stayed there. The bedsheets were perfectly aligned, and the surfaces were dusty from disuse. Goswin stepped back into the hallway to see if he was just turned around, but this had to be the right cabin. Still, he checked all of the others, and Briar wasn’t anywhere else either. It wasn’t a huge ship. Eight Point Seven’s sensors were damaged, in addition to her memory, so she was unable to find his location. The researchers on this asteroid had their own security system, which could not find him either, nor detect that anyone besides Goswin and Weaver had ever stepped out of the González. It was a mystery, the answer to which almost certainly had something to do with time travel.

“There’s a database,” Pontus began to explain. “It stores the records of every single person in every reality, throughout all of time, in every timeline. It could trace Briar’s steps as long as he showed up somewhere that records such data. While it does have an unspeakable amount of data, it’s not magic. If someone went off somewhere alone, they could hide from it, just like you could slink through the blindspots of a security camera.”

“Might as well try it,” Goswin decided.

“It’s not that easy,” Pontus replied. “It’s not here. It’s hard to reach, and reportedly harder to access. Almost no one in the universe is granted permission, and even when they are, their activity is heavily monitored to prevent abuse. The Tanadama, which are sort of like our god-leaders, would be prone to letting someone like you use it, but you would still have to go there first, and there is no guarantee.”

“Can we just...call them?” Goswin asked. “I don’t need to look at this database myself. He’s a dangerous and unstable man. He was an adult before he met anyone besides his mother, and he found himself trusting the wrong person. I don’t know what he’s gonna do...and if he’s dead, I need to know that too.”

Pontus shook his head. “We can’t just call. Part of the point is making the journey to Sriav.” He looked towards the back entrance of the hollowed-out asteroid. “It’s out there, in the void, away from all others, in this tiny pocket of civilization. I couldn’t even give you the exact coordinates. I think you’re expected to intuit your vector somehow. They call it our sister outpost, but we’ve never interacted with them, and I’ve never given it much thought.”

“Well, this has to happen. Whatever you need from us, it will have to wait. Briar de Vries is our priority.” He turned away as he tapped on his comms disc to make it clear that he was starting a separate conversation. “Eight Point Seven, Weaver, we’re going to a world called Sriav.”

When he turned back to ask for permission to leave the asteroid, Pontus was gone. Beside him were Weaver and Eight Point Seven in her humanoid form. “How did you do that? Did you have that body ready and waiting?”

She was just as surprised as he was. She patted herself. “Are we all corporeal?”

“No way to test that,” Weaver acknowledged. “We could all be in a simulation.”

“Not a simulation,” came a voice behind them. “It’s Sriav.”

They turned to see a grand entrance to an expansive room. It was so wide and deep that they couldn’t see how big the room was. The walls and ceiling were ornately decorated, but it appeared to be completely unfurnished, like a shell waiting to be filled and used. “I’m sorry, I got the impression that this planet was located in the intergalactic void.”

“It is,” the woman confirmed. “It’s roughly a million light years from the edge of the Milky Way galaxy.”

“We were just on an asteroid in the Achernar system,” Weaver said.

“Well,” the woman began, “if you were going to be in one place one second, and another the next, it would be Po.”

“Po?”

“That’s the primary planet orbiting Alpha Eridani. Hi. I’m Madam Sriav. You came here for a reason, I presume?”

“Captain?” Eight Point Seven urged.

“We’re looking for a man by the name of Briar de Vries,” Goswin started to explain. “He disappeared from our ship. We don’t know exactly when, or how, and we certainly don’t know where we went. Our arrival here is the second time today we’ve jumped through spacetime inexplicably quick. I was told that you have a database?”

Madam Sriav smiled. “This world is quite remote, as I’ve said. We have true faster-than-light travel, of course, but you can’t use it to get here. If you try, you’ll slow down for no apparent reason. It’s a security feature. No, if you wanna come here, you have to do it the old fashioned way, with a simple reframe engine. That could take you upwards of 1400 years. Most barely try, and most of the rest quit. The few who have dedicated their lives to such a pursuit have ended up staying here. There is no better place to live, I believe.”

“Okay, but the database?” Goswin pressed.

She smiled again. “A mechanical rabbit lure, just to give people a reason to head in this direction.”

“So it doesn’t exist,” Weaver surmised.

“A computer that tracks everyone in every reality? What horrors could that lead to? I wouldn’t want to live in a universe that had something like that.”

Weaver faced Goswin. “There must be some reason we’re here. There’s a reason we were thrown to Achernar, and now this place. I think you’re doing it.”

Goswin shook his head with the confidence of a math professor. “No, I’m not.”

“There are only three reasons to slip timespace the way we’ve been doing it; incidentally, by one’s own hand...or by someone else’s,” Weaver went over.

“What is here?” Goswin asked Madam Sriav. “What is the purpose of this world?”

“If you have to ask, you don’t belong,” she answered.

“It would help us understand how we ended up here,” Eight Point Seven reasoned. “Perhaps Briar is already here.”

Madam Sriav sighed. “It would not be my place to say, but...”

“But what?” Goswin waved his loose hand in circles. “Go on.”

“You could always look for a tracker...assuming you can make it back to civilization.” Madam Sriav didn’t think that would ever happen. “There are people who specialize in it. Some have learned and trained, others are born with the gift. Some were imbued with power by the Tanadama themselves.”

“A tracker?” Goswin questioned. “Is there a real database of such people, like a...um...”

“The word you’re looking for is a phonebook,” Weaver helped. “Madam, I know you don’t use money for transactions, but if these people help people like businesses, there must be some central location to find them.”

Madam Sriav shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I was born on this world. I don’t have much of a practical understanding of the way they do things out there.”

Now Goswin sighed as he looked up at the high ceiling. “Well, do you have any ships? We forgot to bring ours.” Something weird happened. Did the ceiling change? Yeah, the ceiling appeared to change. It was sort of gradual, but also abrupt? He kept staring at it, and trying different angles. It looked more like a sky at dawn now.

“Captain. It happened again,” Eight Point Seven explained.

Goswin nodded, still checking different angles of the sky-ceiling. “Yeah, I know. I’m just afraid to look. Everytime I wanna go somewhere, we go.”

“It’s worse than that this time,” Weaver said.

Goswin dropped his chin. Madam Sriav was still here with them, and they were no longer in the frighteningly large room. They were outside, in the center of some kind of meadow nearish the top of a mountain. “I do apologize for...whatever is going on. With me, or with us. I just don’t know.”

“You need to get me back,” Madam Sriav insisted. “So please, figure it out.” She seemed like the kind of person who was not used to getting upset, and was desperately trying to keep her emotions in check, even though she had ever reason to be cross.

“Hey! Who are you?” A man was walking towards them from the slope.

“We are the crew of the X González,” Goswin replied, hoping that Madam Sriav would rather be lumped in with them than stand out in the presence of yet another stranger. “Can you tell us where we are?”

“You’re on Lorania, on the side of Mount Aura.”

“Lorania?” Eight Point Seven echoed, “as in, the island on Dardius?”

“That’s right,” the man said.

“Dardius only exists in the main sequence,” Madam Sriav revealed. “You brought us across realities. How are you doing this?”

“I still don’t know, but I’m worried that he’s accidentally joined us, and if I start thinking about going somewhere else, I’ll only make matters worse.”

“No,” Madam Sriav began to calculate. “Think about Sriav, and that’s where we’ll go. I don’t really care where anyone else goes. I welcomed you to my planet, because that is my job, and I can’t do it if I’m here, so I’m done humoring you.”

Wow, this situation escalated quickly. “Are you a tracker?” Goswin asked the new guy. “If you’re a tracker, that’s why I’m here.”

“No. I’m Harrison. Tracker Four is up there.”

“Great. Maybe they can help everyone get home,” Goswin hoped.

“She’s with another client,” Harrison said, stopping them from stepping forward with an imposing stance.

“You can come back for her later,” Sriav said to Goswin. “You take me back first.”

“I can’t control it,” Goswin argued. “I’m not even sure I am doing it. I don’t feel anything when it happens. Do either of you feel anything?”

Weaver and Eight Point Seven shook their heads.

“Yeah,” Goswin went on, “so let’s say it’s me. What if I accidentally send us to the inside of a volcano, or hell, just the vacuum of outer space?”

“Don’t even suggest things like that!” Sriav was raising her voice now. “Don’t put those thoughts in your own head!”

Goswin made prayer hands, with his index fingers wrapped around his nose, his middle fingers pressed up against his forehead, and his thumbs pushing up the corners of his lips. This is what he did when he was frustrated, and trying to solve a problem. “Harrison, is this region dangerous in any way.”

Harrison didn’t expect the question. “Uh, there’s a natural merge point a few kilometers that way, which will take you to prehistoric times. As long as you stay away from that, you should be good.”

“I’m not gonna try to do anything yet. Madam Sriav, I know that your life and your job are important to you, but you have a few hours to just wait, so I can get this right. I’m going to go meditate. When I get back, if you happen to have photos of where you live, there’s a chance that helps. I really couldn’t say for sure. I’m sorry if I did this to you, but this is uncharted territory, so your patience would be greatly appreciated.”

Still annoyed, Madam Sriav raised her eyebrows, and gestured for him to get on with it. Then she turned around, and started kicking at some nearby flowers.

Goswin wasn’t super into meditation, but he had done it a few times, and it was a great excuse to get away from everyone. If he really was responsible for all of this, standing around and being berated about it wasn’t going to help. He found a nice, soft patch of grass a couple hundred meters away from them. He sat down cross-legged, and closed his eyes, hoping to free his mind from all distractions. The birds were starting to chirp, but they were very consistent and melodic, so it actually helped. There was a slight breeze that cooled his face just enough to be comfortable in this tropical weather. He breathed in deeply, held it in for a few seconds, and exhaled through his mouth. This wasn’t him. It couldn’t be him. He didn’t have powers, or a pattern. He was just a normal guy who met a bunch of time travelers one day. That was why he jumped at the chance to board the X González. He wanted to know more, to meet other people. He wanted to have an adventure. He didn’t want to ruin people’s lives.

He was sitting there for several minutes when it began to rain. It was only a sprinkle at first, but then the drops began to fall harder. It didn’t stop him, though. He stayed where he was, trying to find his center. This was just another distraction that he had to let go of and ignore. Before too long, though, the rain was pouring. The grass under him was pushed away to be replaced by mud. He didn’t know how long he could stand it. It wasn’t the most discomfort he had ever experienced, but he certainly didn’t want it to worsen.

“Ēalā! Eart þu hāl!” an unfamiliar voice shouted to him.

He felt like he had no choice but to open his eyes. This was definitely not Lorania anymore. “What? Sorry, I slipped, but I’m okay.” He started to stand up. “Where am I?”

She seemed quite confused at his words. “It’s England.”

“Forgive me, but...what year?”

“Oh. You must have come through the cave.”

“What cave?”

“On Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. It’s the year 1133, on Earth. My name is Irene. Irene de Vries.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 25, 2399

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Alyssa went into the panic room to meditate in the dark yesterday. There’s only one way in, and one way out. It wasn’t designed for a criminal to get away undetected. It’s there to protect the homeowners from intruders while they wait for help to arrive. If she had left through the door, he would have seen her, and if she had teleported out, she would have said something. She wouldn’t have just disappeared. If for no other reason than to be here for her brothers, she would never have done something so irresponsible. Something happened to her, and Ramses is determined to remedy the situation. Since the Bridgette is already in Southeast Asian Oceania, he requested transport from the government. The McIver boys are here too, because now there’s no one else left to take care of them. Vearden has gotten everything he needs from the house by now, so he’s able to stay with Arcadia at the hospital permanently.

Mangrove One. Ramses thought the team had contributed a hell of a lot to this world’s development, but it’s nothing compared to what this Aldona woman has done, and she did it in a fraction of the time. He knows how to build nanofabricators, but he made a deliberate choice to withhold such technology. It’s not exactly the Prime Directive, but he didn’t think that these people deserved quite that level of sophistication, so he never bothered. He didn’t even want them to know that it was possible. Welp, the cat’s out of the bag, and he’s going to take advantage of it. There’s a spaceship at this ocean facility capable of reaching orbit, and sustaining life. There are other space agencies, of course, but gaining access to them would require reading too many people in to the whole time travelers situation, and would be a political nightmare. Ramses needs to deploy a new temporal error scanner, and this Mangrove Program is his only reasonable way of accomplishing that.

While Mateo stays with the kids, Ramses pleads his case to the little committee they formed here. It consists of Winona, Aldona, Leona, and a couple of other people, whose names may or may not also end in -ona. They never introduced themselves, and they have yet to say a word. Aldona is speaking now. “I’m sorry, we can’t do it.”

“And why is that?” Ramses questions. “It’s just a little satellite. All I need is a means of getting it up there.”

“You’ll just have to do what you need from the ground,” Aldona insists.

“The point is to get in orbit, so it scans the entire planet,” Ramses argues.

“Yes,” Aldona says, “and I do not feel comfortable with that. Honestly, if I had been aware of the last time you scanned literally every human brain on the planet, I would have tried to stop you back then.”

“Winona?” Ramses asks. “You let her push you around like this?”

“She’s...helping us,” Winona defends.

“More than we are,” Ramses says. “Got it.”

“It’s not like that,” Winona claims.

“No, no, I get it,” Ramses begins. “What you’re trying to say is that she has you over a barrel, and the water’s freezing. No, I understand perfectly. You lost your balls.”

“Watch it, Ramses,” Leona warns.

“Do you not want to rescue Alyssa?”

“Of course I do,” Leona contends, “but we’re not even sure she’s gone. It’s barely been a day.”

“Funny how differently you react when it’s not your husband,” he condemns.

“Watch it, I say,” Leona repeats.

Ramses sighs. “If you’re not going to let me take Mangrove One, then I need some temporal energy to make a few jumps up to Mangrove Zero. The equipment is too heavy to carry all at once, so I’ll have to partially disassemble it, and take multiple trips.”

“Why is it any heavier than the one that Mateo took up to the AOC the first time?” Leona asks.

“This one does a little more than just scan for temporal errors,” Ramses says. “I figured I might as well feed two birds with one worm while I’m up there. I didn’t know that I would get so much pushback.”

“Well, if you won’t even tell me what else that thing does, then I’m definitely not letting you go up there. Permission to enter Mangrove Zero is also hereby denied,” Aldona decides.

“You can’t stop me,” Ramses tells her.

“Do you have the temporal energy it would require to make it up there?” Aldona asks, annoyingly confident that she knows the answer, and feeling no need to wait for it. “I thought not. Permission to procure more is denied as well. I’m not telling you that you can’t go look for Alyssa, but you won’t do it by invading the privacy of everyone in the world. It’s my job to protect then, and I won’t have you undermine me.”

Ramses can’t accept that. He will find her. He doesn’t care how many bridges he has to burn. There may not be enough time to synthesize more temporal energy, and he doesn’t have a lab anyway. Here’s hoping he’s right that Mateo doesn’t run out anymore. He fumes at Aldona for another few seconds, then does the same for Winona, and especially Leona. “I don’t know if you and I will ever be okay.” He doesn’t lead them to believe that he’s going to go over their heads. He just tries to walk out of the room. He nearly runs into Mateo in the process.

Mateo places a finger in front of his lips.

Ramses has already faltered at the surprise, so he tries to cover with a cough. “Harrumph. I’m fine. You’ll be hearing from my lawyer,” he spits at them unconvincingly. He nods like that was a good save, and then leaves with Mateo.

“I was listening in,” Mateo says once they’re safely out of earshot.

“I gathered that.”

“I can’t believe that Leona isn’t backing you up. She must know something that we don’t. But if that’s true, we can only go on the information we have at the moment, and at the moment, it looks like the right thing to do is get you up to that ship.”

“I’m glad that someone around here hasn’t lost their mind yet.”

“No, the reptilians can’t catch me; I’m too fast for their chemtrails,” Mateo jokes in a conspiratorial tone.

After a laugh, Ramses takes Mateo to the hangar, where the new satellite has been set aside in the back corner. Together they disassemble it into more manageable parts. It takes them the rest of the day. It’s a surprise that no one surmises what they were doing all this time. Ramses accesses the blueprints for Mangrove Zero, so Mateo  knows where the cargo bay is. It’s only upon his last jump that something happens that they didn’t plan for. Aldona claimed that Mangrove Zero was completely unmanned. She was either lying, or mistaken.

“Hey,” the teenager says. “Are you here to kill me?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 24, 2399

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There is something wrong with Alyssa’s brain. Or her body. Or both. Or maybe there’s something wrong with Leona’s body instead. Ramses’ current theory—with no evidence—is that whoever wants Leona Matic to die had a two-fold plan to accomplish it. Step one: get her into Leona Reaver’s body. Step two: prevent her from leaving that body, or coming back to her real body. To put it another way, they locked her in, and just in case she ever found a way to break free, they also locked her out of her own body. Alyssa is just kind of caught in the crossfire of that. Now that she’s here, she is unable to leave, because it would open a vacancy for Leona’s return, and their enemy does not want that to happen.

Ramses also believes that it’s possible for Alyssa to look more like herself before he comes up with a permanent solution. Time powers are apparently more mental than they are physical, meaning that there’s a chance she can create illusions from here. He said that it can’t hurt to try, so she did a few times, but she never even came close. It didn’t feel like it did when she used her ability before. The way she sees it, it would be like transferring the mind of someone with legs into the body of an amputee, and expecting them to walk again just because they remember what it was once like. Still, she doesn’t want to give up, so when he urged her to meditate in order to reactivate that side of herself, she decided that she might as well. She’s been spending most waking hours doing it, if awake is even the right word. In the darkened room there are only candles, a pillow to sit upon, and a mirror in front of her. She has to force herself to concentrate and not check it every ten minutes. When she does check it, the result is always the same. She still looks like Leona, and that is probably never going to change.

“Okay,” Alyssa says to herself. “You can’t look for another hour. How am I meant to know when it’s been an hour? Well, people who are good at meditating probably develop the magical power to automatically know things like that, so you’re off to another bad start. Just close your eyes, and stop thinking.” She holds there for what may be the hour that she was waiting for, or just another ten minutes. “Stop. Thinking. You think too much.”

“I agree,” comes a voice.

She’s scared to check. Was that in her head, or is someone else in the room? It didn’t sound like Ramses, or anyone else she knows. “Is that you, God?”

“Close. I’m a hawk. Majestic creatures.”

Alyssa opens one eye. She’s not in the meditation room anymore. She has no idea where she is. She opens the other eye. “What just happened?”

“I brought you back. Your reality needs you,” the mysterious stranger claims.

“Who are you?”

“You don’t recognize me? No, I suppose you wouldn’t in this body. It’s Dalton.”

“Nice to meet you, Dalton...I think.”

“No, we’ve met. I traced your location. This is where I sent you, and it’s where you’ve been. I mean, it was where you were in the future, but it’s the past now.”

“What the hell are you talking about? How far back in the past are we?”

“About four and a half billion years.”

“This again? Goddammit!” Alyssa laments. “Okay, I have power, but I’m not that powerful. You’re telling me I ended up here just because I was meditating?”

“Must have been a coincidence,” Dalton says. “I’m the one who brought you back here, using the temporal translocator.”

“What do you want with me? I’m telling you, we’ve never met. Perhaps there’s another me in another reality, or something? I don’t know, I’m still learning this stuff.”

“Leona, I know that you—”

“Wait, Leona? That’s who you think you’re talking to? Well, that’s your problem, dude. I’m not really Leona. My name is Alyssa McIver. I’m just stuck in her body.”

“Pshaw. I’m the master of switching bodies. You don’t think I would be able to tell? I did my research. I know who you are.”

“Maybe that’s just who the assassin wants you to think. Something went wrong with the switch. We can’t switch back. Maybe it’s, like, masking our neural signatures; making me look like Leona, even from a brain scan. Honestly, now I’m just pulling words I’ve heard Ramses say.”

“So, you admit you’re lying, Leona.”

“That’s not what I meant!” She tries to remember what the internet said about meditating and centering one’s self. “Look, Mr. Dalton. I’m sure you have perfectly reasonable intentions, but you got the wrong guy. Why don’t we both just go to 2399, and get this all sorted out, okay?”

“No, I can’t. I can’t use the machine again,” he contends. “Even if you’re not really Leona, you’re close enough. If she switched bodies with you, it means she trusts you, which means you can do this job. I found you by hacking into the Omega Gyroscope, so it thinks you’re Leona too, and in the end, that’s all that really matters.”

“What job are you talking about? What’s the gyroscope thing again? I’ve never seen it, so I can’t remember what they said about it.”

“The Gyroscope is a thing that you own, but you’ll lose possession of it in 50,000 years. I can’t let that happen. Someone has to be in charge, or it won’t work. So I’m going to close the door, and leave you in here. You’ll reconnect to it every 49,000 years.”

“What? No. Don’t do that. What the hell are you doing? Let me out!”

“Don’t worry. The toilet and sink are in the corner. Those shelves are stocked with enough food for a month, but you won’t need it. You’ll only be inside for about five days. Try to get some rest, and don’t let yourself go crazy. It looked like you were meditating. You’ll have plenty of time to perfect your technique.”

“Stop!” Alyssa pleads, trying to keep the door open, but ultimately no match for his strength. “Please! I don’t want to be locked in! Please let me out! Dalton! Dalton!” He wins out, and gets the door closed. She starts to bang on it, and the walls, but receives no response. If anyone can hear her, they don’t care, can’t help, or won’t try. Though, if the time bubble activated immediately, it’s already been over a hundred thousand years for that guy. So she gives up, and just tries to teleport to the other side of the door. It doesn’t work. She spends the next hour-slash 36,000,000 years trying again, and looking for any other way out, but this is a cell designed to keep people in, and is probably inescapable. So she gives up on that too.

Four and a half billion years later, the door pops open on its own, and blinding light floods in through the crack. Alyssa tries to open it more, but there’s something blocking it. She pulls the door in, then back out, then it, then out. It’s going a little farther each time, and the sound it makes sounds familiar. Once her eyes adjust to the sunlight, she can see that it must be snow. It’s all over the place, part of which must be preventing her from getting out. She keeps working at it, though, and eventually shaves off enough to slip out. Wait, no, it’s freezing out here. She goes back inside, and retrieves a heated suit from the emergency kit. They’re thin overalls, but warm enough to handle the coldest of conditions. She takes the rest of the kit with her, and slips out again.

Alyssa comes face to face with a bear, growling at her. At least it looks like a bear, but unlike any kind she’s ever seen before, even in pictures. She realizes that she’s in a cave, and this big fella is the one what lives here. She presses her back against the ice wall behind her, and tries to inch her way to the side, but he doesn’t like that. He doesn’t want her to be there, he doesn’t want her to leave; why can’t this guy make up his mind? That’s when she remembers that she can teleport now. She tries to make a jump to the cave opening behind the bear, but it’s not working. Whatever was preventing her from escaping the stasis chamber is still doing its thing.

The emergency kit. It has a signal pistol. She carefully sets it on the ground, not wanting to make any sudden movements. She opens it slowly, and sticks her hand inside. She starts feeling around for the gun, maintaining eye contact with the bear. He hates it even more when she tries to look away. There it is. She quickly pulls it out, aims it, and shoots. The flare goes towards the bear, but doesn’t hit it. Instead, its lodges itself in the ice wall, and starts spewing out sparks. This is enough to scare the animal into running away from it. Alyssa takes this opportunity to run past it, and out of the cave. She’s not out of the woods yet, though. When the bear recalls that there’s no backdoor, it follows her, and starts to charge. She has to keep running, but she knows that she’s no match for its speed. She can practically feel its breath on the back of her neck when it suddenly disappears. She instinctively spins around, causing her to trip on a rock, and fall to her ass.

The bear is on the ground a few meters down the hill, a wooden pole sticking out of it. No, it’s not a pole. It’s a spear. She turns her head. A man still has his arm forward in the follow-through. Like the bear, though, there’s something very wrong with his face. He looks unlike any man she’s ever seen. It’s sort of flat and uglyish. He has one brow, instead of two, sitting upon a more pronounced forehead. He’s short and wide, but not fat. He does look like he’s smiling at her, though, so he probably was trying to save her life, instead of just wanting to kill the bear. As he approaches, Alyssa instinctively recoils, so he gives her a wider berth, and goes over to retrieve the spear from the bear. It’s still moving a little, so he serves it a death blow to the neck to put it out of its misery.

“Umm...thank you,” Alyssa says to him, still nervous.

He looks at her quizzically, and faces the direction he came from. He grunts something loudly in a language that she doesn’t recognize. A woman appears from behind the hill, carrying a child. He’s maybe four or five years old. She looks more like a regular person, and the child looks like a cross between the two of them.

“Oh! You’re a primacean!” They’re an ancient relative of humans who lived tens of thousands of years ago. Some believe they interbred with modern humans, while others do not. “I guess this proves those people wrong.”

He looks at her quizzically again, as does his mate as she draws nearer.

“The door opened too early,” Alyssa says to herself. “Oh no, this isn’t good. There’s no telling how far off the mark I am; I’m not a historian.”

The massive language barrier made it difficult to communicate, but she was able to determine that they wanted her help transporting their kill back home. She does, and eats with them that night. What else is she gonna do, fix the stasis chamber?

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: December 16, 2398

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Angela is sitting on her bed, trying to do breathing exercises. Why does she need a bed? She’s only going to be here for six hours. No, don’t get distracted, that doesn’t matter. Breathe in slowly. Breathe out slowlier. Sit up straight, and puff up your chest. Give as much room to your bladder as possible.

There’s a knock at the cabin. “Angela?”

She finishes exhaling. “Yes, Moray?”

“Are you okay?”

“Open the door, Moray.” She’s speaking in that calm, meditative voice that people use to sound relaxed and unintrusive.

Moray does so, and asks again, “are you okay?”

She opens her eyes, and turns to face him. “I’ll be all right. Did you need something?”

“We’re just worried about you, you never came back to the game.”

“Right, I forgot. I’m sorry about that.” She turns back to the wall, and breathes deliberately again.

“Are you pregnant?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You look like our cow did when she was pregnant with a calf.”

Angela smiles, which turns into a yawn. “I’m not pregnant, Moray. I’m just meditating.”

“Oh.” He’s silent for a moment. “Can I join you?”

“One day I can teach you, but uh...that day cannot be today.” She breathes again.

Moray stops speaking as she continues her exercises with her eyes closed, but she can still feel his presence. That’s okay, if he just wants to watch, she’s not going to get angry about it. Or maybe she should, because this isn’t helping control her bladder very much. Jogging didn’t work either. Nor did pelvic floor exercises, though she probably misread the database, which would have likely gone on to say that that’s more of a recurrent process than a quick fix. Perhaps what she really needs is medical intervention.

Angela sighs, and hops off the bed. “Do you know where the infirmary is?”

“Yeah, we saw it on our tour, before you arrived. Are you hurt?”

“That’s a personal question,” she says.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

He leads her down the hallways and ladders. “It’s over there. I won’t disturb you any further.”

“Hey, Moray...”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

He nods, and walks off.

Angela steps into the infirmary. Only one person is in there with a lab coat, implying that he’s the doctor. “Hello, can I help you?”

She sighs again. “I feel the need to urinate, but I’m not allowed to, for reasons that I can’t really explain to you, but it’s a matter of life and death, and I know that sounds really weird, and I can’t say any more about it, but just know that I’m telling the truth. It’s really important that I hold it in until after the trip, because—”

“Madam Walton, it’s okay. I think I know how to help you.” He steps over to a refrigerator, and starts looking through it. “Ah, here we go.” He takes the vial out, and shows it to her. “Gonagozole. Now, this is not a safe medication, and I would not prescribe it for prolonged use, but if you just need to get through the day, it should be fine, and we can treat the side effects afterwards. Are you okay with that?”

“If it works, I should be able to recover on my own, but...what does it do?”

“It does a number of things, but the result you’re looking for is that it shrinks the uterus, which will alleviate your bladder. But that may not be enough” He takes out another vial. “This will enlarge your bladder, so there’s less pressure to urinate.”

“What are the side effects of these two things?”

“Nausea, diarrhea, headache, dizziness, fatigue, hot flashes, increased heart rate. You could contract a UTI, but I don’t see that happening with one dose.”

“I can deal with most of those, even the UTI, but not the first two. It’s not just urine. I cannot expel anything. The water in my system has to stay there.”

He sighs, and goes over to another fridge to retrieve a bottle of over-the-counter medication. “This will stop the nausea, and cause constipation. You won’t release any fluids, you probably won’t even cry.”

“I didn’t think about crying.”

“Madam Walton—”

“Angela.”

“Madam Angela, I cannot recommend you take these three medications in tandem. The side effects are mounting. Now, I will give them to you, because I have been instructed to literally give you and the kids whatever you ask for. This will work, but you’re going to be in an incredible amount of pain. It’s going to make you unbearably miserable.”

“I only need to last a day.”

“Still...I’d like to talk you out of it.”

Angela looks between the three medications. She has to do this. If there’s even a tiny chance that Alt!Tamerlane isn’t lying, she has to do everything she can to protect Marie. They’re two separate people now, it’s not a selfish act. “Will they still work if I’m unconscious, or would I just soil myself?”

“No, they would still work.”

“Then I need you to give me a fourth drug.”

“A sedative,” he guesses.

“Yes.”

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

He doesn’t want to, but he apparently has to. “Follow me.” He leads her to the back of the infirmary, and into a nook with a somewhat private bed. “Lie down and get comfortable. You may remove your clothing, if you would prefer; I’ll close the curtain.”

“That won’t be necessary.” Angela stips down to her bra and underwear, and gets under the covers. She adjusts herself, and restarts her breathing exercises.

“Are you certain that you want to go through with this? You can still back out.”

She looks up at him with her most genuine facial expression. “Do it.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 29, 2398

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Mateo had to learn a few things about what it’s like to be on the road on this world. Most of it is the same. Cars look about the same as he remembered, though more advanced. Buttons and levers are in different places, but that can be true of variable models. While there are a great deal of driverless vehicles on the road, there are still plenty of human-driven ones left. If a cop has to pull you over, they would be a little surprised to learn that you were in control of it yourself, but not immensely so. There isn’t much that’s going to get Mateo pulled over, though. Part of what he had to learn was the fact that there is no such thing as a speed limit. They used to have them, just as they were in the main sequence, but eventually phased them out once they understood that most accidents were being caused by distracted driving, and not speeding. In fact, in many cases, drivers found themselves more focused when traveling at higher speeds, and more likely to let their eyes wander at slower speeds.

Mateo is allowed to go as fast as he wants. Which just so happens to be about as fast as Heath’s car can handle. Mapping software accounts for it. Since he’s only recently set up a new account, and his habits haven’t been measured yet, he has to tell the system about how fast he’ll go, and it will use that to calculate travel time. A trip that might take most people an hour is only half that for him. To his surprise, he finds his destination to be identical to the way it was back home. He hasn’t been here in a long time. He hasn’t even seen Topeka. They sort of moved their base of operations to Kansas City, and started calling that their home, but he’s feeling nostalgic, and wants to see it all again. He was especially missing his secret little graveyard.

He didn’t invite anyone to come along with him. Leona, Heath, and Marie are at work anyway. Ramses has a day off, and wanted to join, but Mateo just wants to do it solo. There have been other times when he’s gone off alone, but those have mostly been attempts to protect his family. Today, he only wants to clear his mind, and not worry about anything for a little while. The last time he tried that, it didn't work out. It wasn’t a bad thing; it was the day he met his Aunt Daria, but it did sort of defeat the purpose. Hopefully he can just sit here now, and remain uninterrupted by drama. He’s successful for about an hour.

As he’s meditating with his eyes closed, he here’s the crackling of leaves a few meters away. A fairly old woman steps up to a gravestone, and places a bouquet of flowers against it. She stares at it reverently, possibly praying over the body below. But it’s not a body. Mateo can’t remember exactly which grave that is, but the most recent burial was in 1974. She never could have met anyone here, or probably even heard stories. If his mental math is even remotely close to the truth, there’s a dozen and a half generations between her and the dead person, and that’s assuming she’s mourning the outlier. No matter what, all that’s left are bones. Most of these people died in the late 19th century, and early 20th. He decides to leave it alone, and not bug her, though. After all, that’s why he came here alone. It probably has to do with her religion. It would not be unreasonable to assume that at least one faith doesn’t worship a deity, but ancestors instead.

She completes her hushed ritual, and then walks over to him. “Who do you know here?”

“Nobody,” he answers. “I just like the quiet.”

She’s taken aback by this, but regains her composure. That’s not a crazy answer.

“Do you know someone here?”

She looks back at the grave out of the corner of her eye, over her shoulder. “Of course not. He died 480 years ago.”

Now he remembers. Brantley D’Amore; September 4, 1875 to April 29, 1918. He’s not one for great memory, but he remembers gravestones. “Then why do you bring him flowers?”

“Everyone deserves to be remembered, even by those who never knew them. I come on the respective anniversaries of everyone here. The only personal connection I have is to that one over there.”

“Rossella Crocetti; April 6, 1888 to April 6, 1899.”

“Did you memorize all of their names and dates?” she asks.

“She was a child who died on her birthday. That one’s easy to recall.”

She nods. “Yeah.”

“What’s your name?”

“I’m Ty—” she stammers, like she decides midword that she doesn’t want to give out her real name, which is fine. “Tallulah. I’m Tallulah.”

He, on the other hand, doesn’t feel compelled to lie. “Mateo,” he says in kind.

“It’s nice to meet you. I’ll let you get back to your meditation.” She turns to leave.

“Wait.” He has a dumb idea. “Quincy Halifax.”

“Is that a band, errr...?”

He studies her face to see if he can detect a reaction. She does react. She recognizes the name, but she doesn’t want to talk about it, so he decides not to press it. “He’s just another guy I’ve met in this graveyard. I thought you might have encountered him too.”

“Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.”

“Right. Bye, Tallulah.”

“Bye, Mr. Matic.” Wow, she’s not very good at this. He never told her his last name. Before realizing this, Mateo turns his head away, and by the time he turns it back, she’s gone. But he’ll see her again. All he needs to do is write down the death anniversary of everyone here.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, August 1, 2147

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Mateo wanted to get better. He wanted to get back to his zen, and he wouldn’t have been able to get anywhere without having it as a goal. Angela was vital to his recovery, and they only needed to meditate and do breathing exercises for a couple hours before he was back to his new normal. He kept a little edge in his heart, though, which he didn’t tell her about. Come the next day, they might need to fight someone, and being able to experience a sense of urgency could be useful. They knew enough about what was going to happen to save lives, but not enough to stop whatever it was they needed saving from, so being prepared to encounter an enemy was only logical. Staying calm and centered was great and all, but it wasn’t the best in all situations. A true master of his self understands this paradox, and knows when to exploit it.

Leona was gone for the rest of the day, and until the next year, but they remained connected through the cuffs. She wasn’t saying much about what she was doing, but reported that everything was fine, and that she was continuing to work on it. The first day of August, 2147 would be their last consecutive day—that is, the last that fell on Mateo and Leona’s original pattern. After this, they would jump over three years, and then another three years, and then another. From here on until whenever the transitions stopped, they were back to the true Bearimy-Matic pattern. Whatever happened today—whatever the consequences—they wouldn’t know what they were for awhile, and that was pretty stressful. Losing an entire year at a time was nerve-racking enough, but a three year jump was ridiculous now that they were so used to the old ways.

They were minutes from the next transition window, and Leona wasn’t back yet. She also hadn’t checked back in for an hour, and everyone was getting worried. “We’ll have to go without her,” Mateo acknowledged.

“I can’t believe you just said that,” Bran said.

“He’s enlightened again, remember?” Aeolia reminded him.

“If we have a chance to save Danica’s life, we have to take it. For now, I’m going to assume Leona is just incommunicado, and not hurt or dead.”

“Her vitals are fine,” Jeremy pointed out.

“See?” Mateo said. “Her vitals are fine. Wait, how do you know what her vitals are?” Jeremy responded right away, but Mateo realized at the same time, “the cuffs. Right, it’s always the cuffs.”

Angela climbed down the steps wearing her action suit.

“Are you coming with us?” Aeolia asked.

“I’m not staying with the ship again,” Angela replied with a sour face. “I’m older than all of you combined.” She looked up into the aether, and started vaguely counting on her fingers. “Well, maybe not...but I’m more skilled than you give me credit for. You hear that I died in the nineteenth century, and act like I would be amazed to encounter a microwave, but the afterlife simulation keeps pace with Earthan technology. I don’t know why, it should be more advanced, if anything, but I guess Pryce stunted development deliberately. Still...” She removed a bouncy ball from her pocket, and threw it down on the floor. It bounced against walls and tables and chairs, eventually ending up kind of heading back towards her, but not really. She reached out and caught it with ease, and without even ever looking at it, like a real life superhero. It was honestly pretty hot. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Is that...?” Bran started to ask.

“Some sort of magic ball?” Angela guessed he was going to ask. Suddenly, a handheld device flew towards her face. She leaned back out of its way, and let it pass her. Then she reached out like before, matched its speed as if soared towards the wall, and snatched it up. “No.” She casually tossed the device back to Jeremy, who was trying to test her. “You can do literally anything in a simulation, and with that freedom, people usually like to play around with physics. But I realized that I could improve myself if I stuck to the worlds that coded natural physics, and practiced skills like that, free from consequences. I can juggle three chainsaws, if you’d like.”

Their cuffs beeped, indicating that the transition window would be opening in one minute. “We don’t have time,” Bran said, disappointed.

“We still don’t have Leona either,” Aeolia stated the obvious.

Right on time, Leona teleported in, holding the hand of a stranger. “Sorry we’re late.”

Jeremy tossed her her action suit, and she caught it as well as Angela, and as if she knew it would be coming.

“Who is this?” Mateo asked.

“None of your goddamn business!” the young girl shouted.

“I know of her from the future,” Leona told them as she was putting on her suit. “I can’t say what she did for my people while she’s here, but if we encounter a portal in The Constant, she’ll be able to close it for us.”

“She doesn’t seem to wanna do that,” Angela noted.

“Like she said, I’m here!”

“She’s just a little bit nasty,” Leona explained. “I did not coerce her into coming, though. She just likes to be difficult.”

“Your face’s butthole was difficult for your mom last night.”

“Lovely.”

With that, the window opened up, and Nerakali defenestrated all of them.

They were still linked to the substitute Savior section, which none of them had ever been to before. They didn’t know how to get out of it, or where to go. They all held out their stun weapons, doing their best to mimic what they had seen on TV, but besides Bran, and apparently Angela, none of them had any real experience with this sort of thing. It was for this reason that Bran took point, though Mateo realized he and Aeolia probably didn’t need a weapon at all. None of them would if they had just taken the time to practice each other’s abilities. Next mission break they got, they would do that.

They continued down the passageways, which proved that this place was much larger than they knew. Before too long, though, things started looking a little more familiar, and Leona was able to lead them to the foyer, which was where Danica was most of the time. They found her at the reception desk, sitting there with a smile, which was weird, because a man in a creepy mask was standing at her flank. “Oh hey, guys. How did you get in here? I never sent out invitations.”

“Who are you?” Mateo demanded to know.

“I’m your cousin..from another timeline.”

“No, I know that, Dani. Who’s that?”

Danica looked over her shoulder. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I do,” Aeolia said. “He’s another coiner. He doesn’t think we can see him.”

The masked man took a knife out of a sheath, and held it against Danica’s throat. She became frightened, though was still unaware of why. If anyone would naturally be able to see people who had flipped a retgone coin, it should be her, but not even she was immune to its effects. “Mateo, what’s going on? Why am I so scared?”

“What are you doing at that desk,” Leona began, “at that computer?”

“Well, I was just...I dunno, what was I doing?”

“Keep going,” the evil coiner growled.

“Don’t keep going,” Aeolia countered.

“Keep! Going!” the man growled again, but a little louder this time.

“Stop!” Bran ordered. This back and forth was gonna get real old.

“Wait,” Mateo said, hoping to play mediator here. “Tell us what you want.”

“I want..to destroy..everything!

“That’s stupid,” Jeremy couldn’t help but say.

“Keep! Going!” the man repeated.

“Angela,” Mateo began. “Remember that ball game we played earlier?”

“Umm...yes?”

“I would really like to play that again. Like, now.”

Angela took the ball back out, and threw it over to the far wall, where it started bouncing around. Slightly distracted, the man released his grip on Danica for a split second, which was all Mateo needed. He dropped his stun weapon, and pulled out his teleporter pistol so he could shoot Danica with a time bullet. She disappeared before the man could react, and even when he did, it didn’t matter. Both Jeremy and Leona stunned him.

“Tie him up,” Bran barked.

“Where did you send her?” Leona asked Mateo.

“Up to the surface,” he answered. The elevator started rolling, prompting the rest of them to instinctively hold up their weapons again. “Wait”, he said, gently lowering Leona’s. “It’s probably just her, coming back down, and wondering why she’s not where she’s supposed to be.

It was her, but it wasn’t just her. When they doors opened, they found another masked man with another knife against her throat. “Why am I scared, and why do I feel like I can’t move. I don’t understand.”

“Is this the same guy, or a different one?” Jeremy wondered out loud.

Angela stepped forward. “There’s that same scar on his hand. It must be him, just from a different time.”

“I must destroy time travel,” the hostage-taker declared.

“Okay, well...the Constant isn’t, like, the source of time travel, or something,” Mateo tried to explain. Even he knew that.

“But it is connected to it,” the man volleyed. “It can summon every traveler, in every moment, in every timeline.”

“Is this true?” Mateo asked Danica.

“Is what true?” she asked back.

He sighed, and repeated what the man claimed for her benefit.

“What? No, that would be stupid.”

“It’s not a lie!” the man cried.

“Leona?” Mateo asked simply.

“Could something like that exist? I guess, but why would anyone build it? Does it exist, and is it here? I have no clue, but I think he’s just insane.”

“I’ve had enough of this!” the man shouted. “Everyone, shoot yourselves in the head!”

No one moved of course, except for Danica, who desperately tried to break free of him, so she could take one of her friends’ guns, and use it on herself. “That only works when people can’t remember you, idiot,” Aeolia antagonized.

“I’ve had enough of this too!” Angela shouted just as loud as he had. She took a syringe from her pocket.

The man cackled. “Good luck getting that all the way over here before I slit her throat.

“It’s not for you,” Angela said. She jammed it into her own neck. A reddish glow came from under her skin, and threatened to burst through. She began to shake uncontrollably, but it didn’t look like it hurt that much. Suddenly, she was gone, Danica was free from the man’s grasp, and the man was unconscious on the floor, right next to his alternate self. They heard a banging in the kitchen, pots and pans falling from their secure spots.

Mateo rushed over to find Angela crawling on the floor with her arms only, her legs completely limp and useless. “What do I do? Is there an antidote, or treatment?”

She struggled to speak, sounding almost as if she had frostbite, or was terribly shaky and afraid. “W-w-wwhite...r-r-r-re-re-re-remote. Hit.”

Mateo found the remote in her breast pocket. “Hit what? Rewind.”

“N-no-no. Pause.”

Mateo pointed it at her, and did as she requested. She froze in place. He hovered her hands over her body. “Can I touch her, or will I freeze too?”

Most of the group was behind him, watching. He could hear Bran making sounds in the background, presumably from tying up the two coiners. “Yes,” Leona replied. “This kind of time bubble conforms to her shape. Just do it very...slowly.”

Mateo scooped her up gently, and carried her over to the couch. It took him about fifteen minutes, even though it was only about five meters away. “What did she take? Velocity-nine?”

“Similar,” Aeolia answered, “but as you can see, it doesn’t last nearly as long. And it won’t kill her, but she’ll need full medical treatment to repair her cells. We shouldn’t have taken it from the Parallel,” she lamented. “It was only supposed to be used in an emergency, which is why we gave it to the one person we figured we could trust the most with it.”

“It was an emergency,” Mateo determined. “She saved my cousin’s life.”

“She saved my life from what?” Danica questioned.

Jeremy took out an extra cuff, and handed it to her to use temporarily.

Danica immediately went into crisis response mode. “We’ve been compromised. I need everyone out now, so I can reshape the variables.

“We came here to save you,” Leona argued. “Leaving you alone is not an option.”

Danica started to fight it, “you don’t understand—”

“No, you don’t understand. This place is gonna be destroyed.”

“I know,” Danica said calmly. “I’m going to destroy it.”

“What?” Mateo questioned. “No, we fixed it. Just change your passwords, and your locks, and...move on.”

“I can’t do that. In the case of an incursion, the Constant must be destroyed, the Concierge must retire, and a new Concierge must take her place in a new reality.”

“What does it look like when you destroy it?” Mateo continued. “Does it look like everything has been sucked into a black hole?”

“I guess, I’ve never seen it. I just know it happens from time to time, and the only way to protect it is to reshape it.”

Leona looked over at Bran and Aeolia. “You two are from an alternate timeline.”

“Oh.”

“What does retirement mean?” Mateo pressed. “It sounds innocuous, but it could mean death, for all I know.”

“In a way, it is, I suppose,” Danica decided. “We just like to call it quantum assimilation.”

“Guys,” Jeremy jumped in. “Look at the cuffs. It’s 2150 already, and time is moving fast.”

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