The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 5, 2518

« < » > Table of Contents

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

Only Mateo was able to try the Daedalus wings during the reception, and that was only because he flew off before Ramses could stop him. They should have been inspected first to make sure that they were safe. Humans with wings were not impossible these days. There was, in fact, a relatively small community of wingèd people on the Core Worlds. The main reason they were impossible prior to genetic engineering and bioengineering was the weight. Wings with enough lift to carry a person would have to be so large that no one was physically capable of flapping them. If they were mechanical, well, that just added to the weight, especially with a powersource, and this all made it totally impractical. Only when humans could build new substrates for themselves did it become a reasonable prospect. Ramses designed the team’s bodies to be lighter than a natural human being’s, but they still weren’t specifically tailored for flight. Daedalus was an android of some kind, and since the mythology stated that the character had fabricated wings, he was almost certainly designed to be perfectly suited for flight. Mateo was not, and that was dangerous.

Fortunately, once Ramses did manage to get his hands on the things, he discovered that they weren’t just well-ordered feathers. Carefully hidden along the underside were tiny little fusion thrusters, which provided the lift, and the forward movement. They were controlled by the adjustment of the wearer’s head. It was essentially a cleverly disguised jetpack. It was unclear whether Daedalus’ own wings operated on the same principles, or if he was just somehow smart enough to build them after being instantiated in this physical simulation. He should have been placed under this dome with the knowledge typical of the time period he supposedly lived in, but who knew what was going on in Hrockas’ head when he conceived of Mythodome? It was one of the few domes that he conceptualized with hardly any help from his AI. He was an expert in Earthan mythology prior to his travels to the Charter Cloud, so this one was near and dear to his heart. He refused to explain it, expecting the art and adventure to speak for themselves.

Now that Ramses was satisfied with the results of his assessment, everyone was trying them. Well, he wasn’t so much as satisfied as he wasn’t allowed to block them anymore. He was hesitant to trust a gift from such a mysterious legendary individual, but he was overruled. Daedalus probably really did have a hidden agenda, but that doubtfully involved killing anybody on Team Matic, or anyone else. He did put his foot down at Romana, though. Her temporary reyoungification had not yet worn off, and she was still walking around in her original substrate. He might consider it later, but he wouldn’t allow anyone else on Castlebourne to use them unless they agreed to let him perform a thorough physical exam, which they didn’t. Leona was the last to give them a go before Ramses took them back, and secured them in his lab. That was okay, because it was about time to get to work.

“Wait, you’re not having a honeymoon?” Angela questioned.

“The average honeymoon these days,” Mateo began to reply, “is one month. That’s thirty years for us. We don’t have time for that.”

“Okay, well, you don’t have to do a full month,” Marie reasoned. “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t choose a dome or two, and relax for a bit.”

Mateo and Leona exchanged a knowing look.

“What? What was that?” Marie asked.

“You should have noticed by now,” Leona said, to her, and the group, “that there is no such thing as a vacation for us. As soon as we try to relax,” she explained with airquotes, “something will come up, and we won’t be as prepared for it as we should be.”

“What are you talking about?” Angela pressed. “We relaxed for, like, three years on Flindekeldan before The Warrior finally found us.”

“The exception that proves the rule,” Mateo contended.

“You’re not using that right,” Leona told him reluctantly.

Mateo was about to ask for clarification when they heard whooping and hollering in the distance. An indistinct dot appeared just under the lowest clouds a few kilometers away. They focused their telescopic eyes, and were able to zoom in enough to make out that it was Young!Romana. She was wearing the wings, having presumably stolen them from Ramses’ lab. She flew towards them, and almost kissed the ground, but arced upwards at the last second, and headed back for the sky. “Hell yeah!” she exclaimed in her little high-pitched voice.

Ramses was noticeably upset. “I give you people too much access to my operations. I will be changing that.”

“She’s just a kid,” Marie reasoned.

“No, she’s not,” Ramses volleyed.

“Shouldn’t she have re-aged by now?” Olimpia asked. “I thought she said it wouldn’t last more than a day.”

“Yeah, that’s why she went down for a nap,” Leona said. “She said she thought it would trigger her transformation back. I’m not sure if she lied about that, or the nap, but she obviously teleported to Treasure Hunting Dome at some point to sneak into Ramses’ lab.”

Ramses was fiddling with his armband. “I’m working on new security protocols now.”

“She just wanted to be part of the group,” Mateo defended his daughter. “She’s been through a lot over the last few years. She needs this.”

“Daedalus didn’t design those things for a child’s body,” Ramses argued.

“They’re adjustable,” Marie reminded them. “That’s why I was able to wear them after Olimpia managed to fit the straps around her ample bosom.”

“Please,” Olimpia said, feigning disgust while holding up the back of her hand. “I’m a married woman.” She lowered all of her fingers but her ring finger, simultaneously showcasing her wedding ring while making it look like she was flipping Marie off.

“For now...” Marie joked.

“I can teleport up and grab her if you want,” Angela volunteered.

“No, that’s too dangerous,” Ramses replied. “She has to come down eventually.”

“Will the fusion thrusters run out of fuel at some point?” Mateo asked.

Ramses shook his head. “The feathers are lined with microscopic ramscoop nodes, which can draw in hydrogen for processing, so...no. She’ll get tired, though. She’s just a baby. Speaking of which, we need to fix that. Who are these twins who did this to her?”

“The Ashvins,” Angela reminded him. “Twin gods, part of the Hindu pantheon. We found them in the Dawnlands. This dome has many sectors, and they can’t all be accessed just by walking through a door. If you don’t have access to the right portal, you can’t go. Of course as teleporters, we can skip over those rules.”

Ramses tapped on his comms. “Romy, you’ve had your fun. I’m worried about your condition. I’ll let you use the wings later, but first, you need to go from Allen to Garner.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Romana responded.

“Just get back down here, please. I’m not mad, but you could be in medical distress, and not know it until it’s too late.”

Romana suddenly appeared a few meters above them. She slowly glided down towards the ground, and landed with grace and poise. The wings collapsed into their little box, which slipped off of her chest.

“You’ll navigate us to the Dawnlands,” Leona said as she was picking up the box.

“No,” Ramses decided. “The Walton twins are right. You need some kind of honeymoon. Get on the catalog, and choose a dome for your vacation. I don’t want to see you at least until 2521. That’s not that long of a honeymoon. Doesn’t it sound fair?”

“Yes, sir,” Mateo said, standing up straight, and saluting. He bent over real low and gave his daughter a kiss on the forehead. “I love you, sweetie. Be good for Uncle Ram-Ram.”

“Okay, I think we do need to go see the Ashvins again.” Them playfully treating her like an actual little girl got old a long time ago.

After a few more goodbyes, the newlyweds ran off for their honeymoon adventures. They weren’t going to confine themselves to only one dome, but a series of them, starting with Mud World: World of Mud. Ramses and Angela then split off to take Romana back to the Dawnlands sector. Marie said that she would be staying behind to do her own thing elsewhere without telling anyone what or where.

The name was absolutely appropriate. It was dawn here. It was bright enough for them to walk around without running into anything, but not clear enough to see the details of the landscape. It was a beautiful and calming place. Even the air seemed ultraclean, like something you would breathe out of an oxygen tank. As they were standing there,  two horses trotted up to them, pulling a golden chariot. Two strong young men stepped out, and approached. One had lighter skin, and the other darker. They moved with grace, symmetry, and synchronization. They were perfectly attuned to each other, perhaps by some kind of centralized hivemind shared between them. When they spoke, they did so in a seamless concerted effort, finishing each other’s sentences in some cases, and saying words simultaneously in others. “Hello, and welcome to the Dawnlands, foothills to Svarga, the celestial plane of light. How may we help you?”

“Could you undo what you did to her?” Ramses requested, gesturing to Romana. “She was told that the de-aging process would be temporary.”

The Ashvins smiled, again in sync. “Youth is temporary for all before they enter the Svarga or Naraka Loka. Aging is a part of life. It may be undone, but as the lotus reliably blooms each year, so too will man grow and change.”

Ramses gently closes his eyes, exasperated. “Are you telling me that she will only return to her normal age because she’s aging normally from here, and will eventually reach it anyway?”

“She will one day be as old as she was, and following, she will be even older. So too will you.”

“That’s not how my species works.”

The Ashvins were confused by this as it was leaning on the fourth wall, and they did not have a response.

“Look, we need this to happen faster than the full twenty years,” Ramses went on. “She clearly misunderstood the rules when she requested this from you.” She looked down at Romana. “Right?”

“Right. I didn’t want this to be permanent, or...so slow,” Romana confirmed.

“Apologies for the confusion,” the Ashvins claimed, “we meant no harm to your body or mind. We may reverse the ravages of changing seasons, but not hasten them. We cannot return you to the state you were in before your bath in the Sindhu River.”

Ramses shook his head again, which he felt like he was doing a lot of today. “Do you know of anyone—in any realm—who might be able to do what we ask?” No one on the team had ever heard of a retroverter who wasn’t also a proverter, but to be fair, they weren’t all too familiar with the concept. They really should have been questioning how such temporal powers ended up on this planet in the first place. They hadn’t recruited anyone with such abilities. Perhaps someone they did bring here, however, had connected Hrockas with other time travelers. These others could have donated their gifts to building Mythodome, or maybe even other domes, in such ways that broke the publicly known laws of physics.

“That is not something that we would know,” the Ashvins answered, a little bit sadly, but still believing that this wasn’t their fault. They did not know that they should clarify how Romana’s situation would work.

“All right. Let’s go do some research,” Ramses said, turning around. “There are a lot of mythological beings here. Maybe one of the other gods has real powers too.”

“Wait,” Romana said, stopping him with a hand on his arm. “I know someone who can do it.”

“Who?”

“You.”

Ramses’ eyes darted over to Angela’s from a brief feeling of panic, because he didn’t know what Romana was talking about. “I can’t do what you ask. I’m not a proverter either.”

“I don’t need a proverter,” Romana clarified. “I need a cloner.”

Ramses sighed. “That is a big decision, and it’s also irreversible. Once your consciousness is digitized, it can’t be undone. You will never be what you once were. A scar you got when you skinned your knee skateboarding in first grade. A missing appendix from surgery. You will lose all of that. The body that you’re in now, at whatever age you happen to be, will be destroyed as biomedical waste. Your consciousness will remain intact, but not everyone appreciates that. There are those who have expressed regret at being uploaded.”

“I know the process, and the rules. It’s about time I become more like you all, particularly Mateo. If I’m gonna be on this team, I wanna feel like a part of it.”

“Ro-ro,” Angela began, placing a hand on her shoulder. “If we’ve ever made you feel excluded, that was not our intention. You are on the team. That’s undeniable.”

“It’s nothing that you’ve done. In the past, I’ve hesitated to digitize, but it’s the practical choice, and it’s inevitable. I don’t wanna die any more than you do. I’m more vulnerable than all of you, and I don’t like it. People have to be more worried about me than they should. This isn’t out of nowhere. I’ve been considering it. I think...maybe, reaching out to the Ashvins was my way of testing the waters, to see how I would feel about my body changing so drastically. I am ready now.”

“Well, it’s complicated,” Ramses started to try to explain. “You were born with your time-skipping power. The rest of us were either made that way from Tamerlane Pryce’s design, or we stole it from those who were. I don’t know if I know how to replicate what you are. You have to remember that we’re not technically on the same pattern. They just technically match up. If you had a hiccup, and got off by one day, we may never sync back up.”

“All the more reason to do this,” Romana contended, like it was obvious. “Don’t worry about understanding my pattern. Just put me on yours.”

“We’ll need to talk to your father first,” Ramses insisted.

“This isn’t his decision,” Romana retorted.

“Absolutely, but he’ll never forgive me if we just do this without even so much as a heads-up. He would feel the same if you got a secret tattoo, or...” He cleared his throat, and chose not to finish that thought.

“Okay. We’ll take our time with this,” Romana agreed, “but it’s happening, one way or another. If not you, then I’ll find some other cloner to do it. You’re not the only member of The Shortlist.”

Ramses nodded. “All right. Now let’s get back to THD. I’m mythed out.”

“Uth too.”

« < » > Table of Contents

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 4, 2517

« < » > Table of Contents

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

The wedding was going to be a lot smaller than the last one, and much more intimate. When Mateo and Leona married in the replica of The Colosseum on Tribulation Island, over 48,000 people attended. This was at the behest of Arcadia Preston, who was forcing them to marry. It wasn’t that they didn’t love each other, but it wasn’t on their terms, so the event would always have that asterisk next to it. This was their choice. The two of them wanted to marry Olimpia, and she them. Hrockas assumed that they would want to choose a venue in Party Central, but they weren’t really interested in that. Sure, it had plenty of options. It could be indoors or outdoors, rustic or modern, big or small. But they wanted something different; something special. They chose Mythodome for Olimpia’s affinity for fantasy stories. It wasn’t the safest dome on the planet, but it was a lot of fun, and one of the more interesting ones. They also came up with a system to protect the ceremony from outside interference. Thanks to a program which Hrockas instituted, the wedding party shouldn’t have to worry about it.

Mateo, Leona, and Olimpia were getting dressed in their fancy stylish outfits in front of a wall of mirrors, the former in the middle. She was working and reworking her hair. “Where are we again?”

“Hall of Hephaestus,” Leona answered, straightening the collar of her dress. “You don’t have to keep doing it manually. Here.” She took Olimpia’s hand, and placed her palm on the glass. She turned it to the right, prompting the image to change. Olimpia still looked like herself, but her skirt was now a pale mint green.

“Ugh,” Olimpia said. “Pastels are not my colors.”

“It’s somewhere in your subconscious,” Leona explained. “I’m not making the image change. You are. It’s powered by your intuition, so just imagine what you want to look like, and this will show you.”

“Done.” Mateo playfully adjusted his bowtie.

“Great,” Leona replied sarcastically. She faced Olimpia again. “I like your hair the way it is, but if you want to change it, find your preference in the mirror, and we’ll ask Medusa to style it for real.”

Olimpia laughed. “This place is wild.”

“Hey, guys, look. I have cold feet.” Mateo was playing around with the Protean glass now too, making it look like he was standing on the snow and ice. Actually, it was probably Jotunheim.

The gigantic doors to their left opened up. Angela walked in and approached them. “I don’t want you to be mad. Romana is considering this to be her wedding gift to her father, but she doesn’t know how you’ll take it, so just...be nice.”

Mateo stepped away from his mirror. “What did she do?”

“We met two twins called the Ashvins. I don’t know how they did it, but they seem to have retroverting abilities.”

“What?” As Mateo was trying to figure out how he was going to react, Romana walked in, but it was unlike how he knew her. She was about seven or eight years old. It was quite alarming. “Romy! What a surprise!” He still didn’t know how he should feel about this.

“Before you freak out,” Romana began, “this is temporary. I just wanted to be a flower girl, instead of a flower woman.”

“I didn’t want you to change for me,” Mateo contended. That was all right to say to her, right? Right?

“I know, but you had a little ring bear at your first wedding, and I just think this will give it a better look. You’re not mad, are you?”

“No, of course not,” Mateo replied. Yeah, that was definitely the right thing to say. He stepped over to hug his little girl. “I never got to see you like this. It’s a lovely gesture, and we appreciate it.”

“This is just for you,” Romana said. “You each get your own gift. Them’s the rules.”

“We don’t need gifts at all,” Leona reasoned.

“Then you don’t need to get married,” Romana volleyed, playfully, but still trying to win the argument, since they were getting gifts, whether they wanted them or not.

“Thank you very much, little girl,” Olimpia joked. “Do you need to go potty before the ceremony?”

“It will wear off,” Romana reminded her with a frown. “I do have to go get my basket, though.” She spun around a few times like a ballerina before hopping away.

“Kind of wish it wouldn’t,” Mateo admitted. “...wear off, that is.”

“She’s still your baby,” Leona assured him.

Magnolia walked in from the other—smaller—door on the other side of the room. “Hey, wadya’ll still doin’ here? We gotta keep things moving. Where are your other escorts?”

“I believe Ramses is inventing a gift for us,” Mateo answered.

“We don’t have time for that. Gifts later. Chop-chop,” Magnolia insisted.

“Your hair,” Leona said.

Olimpia changed the mirror back to being a true reflection. “You’re right, I’ll keep it as it is. Let’s get out there.”

Angela stuck her elbow out, and let Olimpia take it. Even though it was only the three of them who were getting married, everyone on the team was involved. While Romana was throwing flowers on the ground before them, they all walked down the aisle together. Angela was escorting Olimpia, followed by Ramses with Leona, and Marie with Mateo. This wasn’t their version of a father giving away her daughter, but an expression of the love that they all shared for each other, and a reinforcement of their bond. No chief attendants, nor honor attendants; just seven people up there to advance their dynamic in a loving and meaningful way.

The Officiant was officiating, having already conducted her compatibility meeting earlier this morning. All of their closest family and friends were in the audience. Gavix was here too, as he had invited himself years ago, having known that it was coming. Three invitees weren’t in their seats, but up and about. Mythodome was an unpredictable, and potentially dangerous, place. Mythological creatures and figures from all sorts of cultures were basically tossed into a melting pot. Their customs and responsibilities were often naturally contradictory, and so a new culture emerged. There were different types of beings with the same name, for instance, coexisting here in as much harmony as anyone could expect to find. There were political alliances, and tensions threatening to break them apart. Individuals had their own motivations and agendas. Learning any given mythology wouldn’t help you all that much here. Not even studying them all would do a whole lot of good. The combination of these disparate and diverse customs created something new. A unique civilization was taking shape, and not everyone would be pleased to hear about the wedding. They chose to hold it in Takamagahara. Not only was it gorgeous and serene, but on an upper level of the dome, and not somewhere that just anyone could travel to.

To protect them from outside interference by troublemaking locals, they conscripted the help of Kallias Bran, Aeolia Sarai, and Jesimula Utkin. Everyone on Team Matic was what Hrockas decided to call a Regent. For programmed intelligences who were not cognizant that they were living in a simulation, a Regent could essentially control them. If a manticore, for instance, made their way here, and started trying to eat the guests, a Regent could simply command them to stop. The manticore wouldn’t understand why it had to obey such commands, but it would do so without question, and leave if asked. Since all Regents were part of the wedding party, they asked their friends to take on the role temporarily. They chose these three to be proxy regents because they could be trusted, they lived here, and they wouldn’t feel left out for not technically being part of the wedding. They also all knew how to protect themselves, in case their commands didn’t work. Nothing should go wrong, but if it did, they would be here to insulate the event from attack, or just from being bothered by a trickster god, or a kitsune.

The vows were about to begin when they heard a commotion in the back. “Stop! Stop, stop, stop, stop!” Jesi cried.

There was nothing that she could do, though. A man with wings soared over them in the air, swung around, and landed off to the right side of the little stage.

Kallias jogged up, and placed himself between the man and the wedding party. “Get out of here right now.”

The man chuckled, and dismissively said, “please. That doesn’t work on me.” He lifted a perfume bottle up, and sprayed it in Kallias’ face, causing him to fall down to his side. “Fear not,” the stranger said when some in the audience started to get defensive, particularly Darko. “He is only asleep. My name is Daedalus, and I run this dome.” He looked around at their surprised faces. “That’s right, I am aware of the dome. Did you think I wouldn’t notice? If you walk far enough in any direction, you will hit a wall that looks like a sky. Do not worry, however, as I have not told anyone else. I am not here to cause trouble. It is actually to my benefit that I should be the only one to understand what this world truly is. But my silence and compliance does not come without a price. Two, actually. Number one, I insist on respect, and a formal recognition of my authority over these lands, internally speaking. To prove to me that I have it, you must ask for my blessing to allow these nuptials to continue.”

Mateo didn’t remember much from his western civilization class, but he remembered that Daedalus wasn’t an evil guy, and he definitely remembered Leona’s Rules for Time Travel. There was no reason to antagonize this guy, whether he was an antagonist, or otherwise. “Kind sir, Daedalus. May we have your blessing to marry?”

Daedalus was a bit shocked at how easy it was, and how quickly he received a positive reaction. “You have my blessing.”

“I thank you.”

“What is your second condition?” Darko pressed. He was still ready to take action.

Daedalus smirked. “I’ll let you get on with it. You’ll find out later.” He spread his wings, jumped into the air, and flew away.

“Wow, that was weird,” Marie noted.

“Sorry, guys,” Olimpia said.

“You didn’t make him do that,” Leona replied. “This is a lovely place to hold the ceremony. I couldn’t have chosen somewhere better. Go on, Officiant.”

The Officiant opened her mouth to continue, but a small wooden box suddenly fell from the sky, and landed in the grass. “Wedding gift!” Daedalus shouted down to them.

Ramses pointed his fist at the box. Part of his suit emerged into what looked like a weapon. He fired one laser shot at the box, and it disappeared.

“Did you just destroy that?” Mateo questioned.

“Teleporter gun. I placed it in quarantine in one of my pocket dimensions. We’ll worry about it afterwards. Please, proceed. No more interruptions.”

There weren’t any other interruptions. The vows were relatively short, despite there being three people getting married today. Both Mateo and Leona were relieved to have the chance to make up for their less than stellar speeches at their previous wedding. They really took the time to make sure they came up with beautiful and profound words. They were older and more experienced now, and not feeling Arcadia’s pressure, so that had a lot to do with their success. Olimpia’s vow was just as lovely. Once it was over, Magnolia had the audience stand up, and move off to the back. She generated her black hole portals under all of the chairs, spiriting them a few meters away, so they were each now circling tables. The center area was now a dance floor, which everyone was able to begin crossing within seconds.

People were eating and dancing during the reception, and enjoying the incredible views. Kallias woke up near the beginning of it, feeling rested and energized, and ready to get back to work. He and the other proxy regents apologized for not being able to stop Daedalus from breaching the perimeter, but really, what were they gonna do? He had wings, and was reportedly a genius. Mateo tried to have fun at the party, but he couldn’t think about anything but that little wooden box. What was inside? What could it possibly be? In their world, you could fit an entire universe in there, but surely Daedalus had his limitations. Surely he didn’t know anything about that stuff. He was programmed to be familiar with ancient times, and to only be ahead of his peers from that frame of reference. “Man, I gotta see what’s in there.”

“I wouldn’t,” Ramses argued. “I’ve been scanning it, but it’s shielded. Whatever it is, it’s not something you would expect to find in Ancient Greece. Since magic isn’t real, a guy like Daedalus should still be working within the laws of normal physics.”

“If he knows about the dome, maybe he knows about temporal manipulation, and the like. He’s not the real Daedalus, since the real Daedalus didn’t exist. Correct?”

“You think that’s a better reason to open it, Matt?”

“Come on, it’s my special day,” Mateo insisted.

“Oh...you can play that card once. It won’t work tomorrow.”

“I don’t need to play it tomorrow. I’m playing it right now.”

Ramses turned his hand, and apported the box into it. “Open at your own peril.”

“You’re here too. So is everyone else.” They both looked over at the party-goers, and thought better of it simultaneously. Without speaking, they teleported a few hundred meters away, to the middle of a meadow. Mateo took a breath and opened the lid of the box. Some sort of something or other that moved too quickly to spot flew out of the inside, and latched itself onto Mateo’s chest. It spread like nanites, wrapping itself around his chest, with the two ends meeting each other in the center of his back. They continued to spread from there, though Mateo obviously couldn’t see. Suddenly, wings appeared from behind him, and spread out to the side. “Hell yeah!”

“Hell yeah!” Ramses agreed.

“Hell yeah!” they repeated in unison.

« < » > Table of Contents

Microstory 2492: Mythodome

< > Table of Contents

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

This is a very complex dome, and it’s due to the interconnectedness of world mythology. As I’m sure you’re aware, Earth is home to many a myth, which people once believed, or at least found value in the stories that described them. Since there have been so many cultures in our history, these myths often contradict each other. Lots of them, for instance, came up with a god of the sun, but they could never all be true. That’s where this dome takes liberties, because they are all “true” insomuch as they coexist here. There are indeed multiple sun gods, and they operate as a sort of council. Don’t ask me what they do, though, because as I’m sure you’re also aware, this is all made up. In real life, God doesn’t exist, elves don’t exist, trolls don’t exist. This is an immersive world where such creatures and beings have been engineered out of the specifications presented in the various source materials. It can be hard to track. Some myths even contradict themselves, as told by different authors, and diverging translations. So, Mythodome does its best, but the interesting result—which I’ve been trying to drive at this whole time—is that it is more than the sum of its parts. It has spawned a new mythology, which includes that sun-god council I mentioned, and various factional alliances that never existed in the original stories, because they weren’t culturally related. Part of the experience is learning the new story that has come out of this, which could have hypothetically been its own franchise in traditional media, if someone had thought to be quite this comprehensive before. There are different kinds of elves, for instance, because there have been different interpretations in the stories, and these elves are aware of each other, and have developed complicated relationships with each other naturally. That’s my understanding anyway, which is that their dynamics have taken on a life of their own to form this fresh society, and I think they were doing it before any Earthans came to visit. That alone is interesting enough, not just that these mythical creatures can be genetically engineered, but that we end up with unpredictable consequences as a result of so many variables. I’m rambling now, but suffice it to say that it would not be difficult to spend years here. You could even spend an entire lifetime, making your own way, and finding your purpose. Because very little about this place was prewritten. It’s all been developing on its own, and who knows where it will take us next?

Microstory 2457: Horseback Mountain

< > Table of Contents

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

I love horses, and if you don’t, then we can’t be friends, so don’t @ me. Horseback Mountain is a pretty simple concept. It’s all about horses, and horseback riding. It’s not one mountain, though, which I think is a little weird, but I don’t really care, because I love horses. The first thing I did when I heard about Castlebourne was access the prospectus, and look for a place like this, and it was the first thing to come up. There’s another dome that has ranchland, and a few other horse-inclusive environments, but this is the one where that’s all there is. You can ride horses on a mountain (of course), but there are other areas too. There are plains and prairies, muddy trails, dirt roads, and even beaches. The ocean next to it isn’t real. Curious, a member of one of my riding parties got off, jumped into the water, and started swimming. He was still within yelling distance when he reached the dome’s walls. A hologram makes it look much bigger than it is. This isn’t a complaint, by the way; I really don’t care. The point is to have a place for the horses to run, and the can’t run in deep water anyway. If you want the ocean, go to one of the big ones on the poles. Now for the big question. Are the horses real? The answer is...it’s your choice! There are many real horses available, though they are in limited supply. It takes a long time to grow an animal this large, and they have to be introduced to their environment—and to people—using safe and ethical methods. I much prefer a real horse, but the same can’t be said for everyone, which is why there are other options. There’s more variety, though, than simply organic versus automaton. Your horse can be programmed with whatever temperament or personality you chose. We passed by a group of kids whose horses were fully intelligent. There was only one adult with them. From what we could gather, the horses were the children’s chaperones. They were keeping them in line when they got too rowdy, and teaching them about nature, particularly horses, as you can imagine. I believe the human adult was there in case there was an emergency that required adult hands. I don’t know what kind of intelligence she was, because she didn’t speak while we were passing by. I just think that’s a cool little feature that I wouldn’t have thought of myself. Before you ask, all kinds of equines are here, including donkeys and mules,  zebras, and a few other things. Yes, there are unicorns and pegasuses. You cannot ride either of these things, because if they existed in the real world, they wouldn’t let you, at least according to the Castlebournian interpretation of the mythology. The pegasuses can’t fly. I don’t know how they would without breaking any law of physics, but they have wings, so they look cool. They’re supposed to be rare, but you can go on a particular tour where you’re guaranteed to see what you’re looking for, because they’re either programmed or trained to be in sight. I honestly don’t know if they were mechanical or organic. I didn’t ask, because I don’t care about mythological creatures. I’m a horse girl, and a purist. That’s why I never want to leave. This isn’t a residential dome, but I’ve requested that they make an exception, and build me a home to live in, so I don’t have to take the vactrain here every day. I’m waiting for their response. Wish me luck.

Microstory 2011: Arizona

< > Table of Contents

My papa applied to go to a ton of different colleges, and got into a lot of them. Grandma says that he filled out more applications than most students do. She laughed when she talked about how much money that they must have spent to send in all of those applications. Did you know that just asking to go to a college costs money? Maybe I won’t go to Harvard. It’s probably really expensive just to apply! As I was saying, grandma can’t remember why he did it for so many of them, but she thought maybe he was playing the odds, but I’m not sure what that means. He only went to visit a few of them, mostly to the ones in the states that he had already been to, but it was the first time that he went to Arizona. He didn’t end up going to school there, so no one can remember which school it was, but everybody thinks that he only chose it because it was on the way to California, which was where he really wanted to go. He wasn’t going to San Diego for a college, though. On the next slide, I’ll tell you why he was there instead, but apparently, he didn’t really care about touring the college. It was just an excuse to drive south. The capital of Arizona is a phoenix, which my dad says is his favorite mythical animal. I think it’s pretty cool too.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 7, 2396

« < » > Table of Contents

As soon as Mateo and Ramses jumped to April 7, 2396—or what passed for the date in this reality—the friend detector alerted them to the relative proximity of one of their people. They didn’t know which reality they were in, or who it was, but Mateo couldn’t help but feel hopeful that it would turn out to be Leona. He loved Olimpia, Angela, and Marie, but not like he loved his wife. “Is this going to work?”

Ramses sighed. “We may not have much time to think about it. I’ve done all I can to prepare. But if our target is in a hostile environment, it’s best that we get to her as soon as possible.”

“Then do it,” Mateo decided.

Scientists from the Parallel created these devices for them. The one that accessed other realities was originally designed to grapple onto the target, and pull them here. It wasn’t meant to actually go to that reality. But Ramses wasn’t satisfied with that. He wanted to leave the Parallel, and never come back. Mateo pointed out that they may still have to in the future. When Dalton separated them throughout time and space, there was no guarantee that they each landed nice and neatly in their own special pocket of the cosmos. It was neither predictable, nor necessarily evenly distributed. Leona could show up here ten years from now, or ten thousand. However, Ramses could tell that they were going to a different reality right now. Three realities, three years, each falling on a proper day on their pattern. That was a pattern in its own right. “Okay. Hold on.” He pushed the button.

It felt just as it had before, when Ramses pulled Mateo from the Fourth Quadrant, except in reverse. They were pushed across dimensional barriers, and gracelessly dropped at their destination. Mateo wasn’t knocked unconscious, but he suffered a terribly annoying headache, and was on the verge of retching. “Ow,” he said plainly.

Leona was hovering over him. She helped him off the floor. “Mateo. Do you know why we’re back here?”

“I don’t know where we are.” That wasn’t true. He looked around, and quickly realized they knew what this was. It was the wreckage of the Suadona, back in the Fifth Division. All that, and they were right back where they started. “Where’s Ramses?”

“I only saw you, but it was a blur. I’ve only just arrived myself.”

“Ramses? Ramses!”

A weak voice came from the other side of some debris, “here.”

They climbed over it to find their friend badly hurt. A metal bar of some kind had impaled him through the stomach, perhaps at his kidney. “Oh my God! What do we do?”

“We have to cut him out of it,” Leona determined.

“No,” Ramses said amidst the coughs. “Just pull me off.”

“That’s not how it’s done,” Leona argued.

“I’ll be fine, my body will heal,” Ramses insisted, “but it can’t do that until you get it out of me. Don’t worry about how much it hurts along the way. That will go away too.”

Though Leona never took the Hippocratic Oath, this still felt wrong. Even so, Ramses obviously knew more about these bodies than she did, so she chose to trust him. They carefully lifted him off of the spike, and laid him back down in a safe space. “What do you need? What kind of medical attention will help?” She opened her bag, and awaited a response.”

“I don’t need anything,” Ramses answered. “I’ve rested recently, absorbed sufficient amounts of sunlight, and consumed the necessary nutrients. I just need time.”

“Do we have time?” Leona asked.

“Matty?” Ramses prompted.

Mateo checked the friend detector. No one else was close enough to sense. “So far, so good. Just let your substrate do its thing, buddy.”

Leona was hesitant to leave him alone, but they needed to get out of the wreckage of the ship to assess their situation. There could be danger nearby. Perhaps this reality contained scavengers. They began to teleport around the ship to see if they could find any sign of more recent activity. “Report.”

“Dalton screwed up. He separated us. Ramses went to the Parallel, but didn’t travel through time. I stayed in the Fourth Quadrant, but jumped forward a year. You jumped two years, and came here. The others are theoretically elsewhere, and elsewhen. We may all have been sent to different parallel realities.”

“The math doesn’t check out,” Leona warned. “There are only five concurrent realities, and six of us.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve only heard of five.”

“Maybe there are more that you’ve never heard of.”

“We’re time travelers, Mateo. If anyone ever discovers a sixth reality, and if they ever return to report this development, that information can travel in both directions of time.”

“You had heard of the Fifth Division before we first came here?”

“Yes. I didn’t know anything about it, and I didn’t know we would ever come here, but it was a known unknown.”

Mateo thought about it. “What’s the last one; the one we haven’t gone to yet?”

“They call it the Third Rail. I don’t know much about it either, except that we’re—to some degree—not supposed to go there.”

“We’re probably gonna go there.”

“I know.”

“And there may be another one after that. There are a lot of things we don’t know about until we know them. I was at my own memorial service on Dardius. Billions of people were aware both of the fact that it happened, and that I survived it anyway. Like you said, information moves in both directions of time. Yet no one ever talked about it beforehand. As soon as I killed Hitler, and created the new timeline, somebody could have shown up to warn me about it, but they didn’t. They don’t tell us everything. That’s just one example.”

“You’re right. Just because information travels, doesn’t mean it’ll come to us.”

Mateo tilted his lizard brain, which given the fact that he was now genetically engineered, he shouldn’t really have anymore. “Do you feel that?”

Leona smiled. “Yeah, he’s not feeling any pain anymore.”

“When I was shot, it happened even faster than that.”

She shrugged, but made no attempt to explain the discrepancy.

Once they were finished checking the perimeter, they were about to go back to Ramses when a small ship approached them from the mountains. Its shape reminded Mateo of a container of floss. It was smooth and rounded, with no sharp corners.  “Let’s assume they don’t know about him, and stay here.”

“Of course.”

The ship hovered before them for a moment. Then lasers came out of it, and transported them inside against their will. Before them stood a man that only one of them recognized.

“Hello,” Mateo said politely. Rule number fifteen, don’t antagonize the antagonist. Except maybe he wasn’t an antagonist at all, what did he know?

“Hi, Mithridates,” Leona said a little less politely.

“I heard you left,” Mithri pointed out.

“We came back. It was an accident.”

“Well, you’ll be happy to know that I have not wavered in my promise to be an agent of peace in this reality. Rátfrid and I have been making real progress. Xerian Oyana of the Security Watchhouse Detachment absorbed the Dominion Defense and Offensive Contingency Detachments, and they have all been standing down. Unfortunately, the Warmaker Training Detachment detached again, and declared war on the rest of us, but I have faith in the future.”

“Glad to hear it,” Leona acknowledged.

“I would like to ask if you also kept your promise, or if you found a way to age yourselves up,” Mithri asked.

“No,” Leona lied. “It’s just been awhile for us since we’ve been here.”

He squinted at her. “You’re lying. Why are you lying to me?”

“I’m not lying,” Leona dug in deeper.

“It’s okay,” Mithri said with a kind smile. “I never specified you had to stay that way. Time travelers gonna travel time.”

“Thank you. It was just...”

“Impossible to have sex? I bet. That was the joke, but I’m older and wiser now.”

“Since you’re being so understanding, is there somewhere here on Earth where we might find refuge? It seems pretty desolate, but I haven’t exactly circumnavigated it.”

“I have a place you can hide,” Mithri said as he turned to the controls. “We’ll pick up the injured Mr. Abdulrashid before we go.”

“We’re hiding?” Mateo asked while Leona was making sure Ramses was okay after he was transported inside. “Are you expecting an attack of some sort?”

Mithri placed his hand on a big lever, but waited to pull it. “Rule number sixteen, when Team Matic is involved, always anticipate conflict.” He pulled the lever.

What he didn’t say was that he was taking them through a Nexus, and transporting them tens of thousands of light years away. They were on a world so deep in the void that it would still have been outside the Milky Way galaxy proper if the stars were as spread out as they were originally. It orbited a Stage Tau Gerostar, which in the main sequence would be called a blue dwarf.

Leona placed her hands on the glass, and stared at it like a long lost lover. “How is this possible? Wait, you must have accelerated time.”

“We have only been here for tens of thousands of years,” Mithri explained, “and it was waiting for us, as was the Nexus building that we just came through. Even if we had accelerated to one second for every year, we wouldn’t have had time to make this. It would have taken two hundred thousand years. Besides, we don’t detect any temporal energy around it. You can check for yourself.”

“Could someone please explain this?” Mateo requested. “Why is it a big deal?”

She stopped gazing to address her husband. “Mateo, that thing would have to be six trillion years old, or older.”

“The universe isn’t that old, is it?”

Leona scoffed. “Uhh...no.”

“So how do we know a blue dwarf is even a thing?”

She sighed. “It’s science, Mateo, I can’t explain it.” She returned to gawking at the apparent anachronism. She surely could explain it, but she didn’t want to.

“It just looks white to me,” Mateo noted.

She growled.

“Is there somewhere I could rest?” Mateo asked Mithridates.

“Downstairs, pick any of the pods. Not the full-sized bed, that’s mine.”

Mateo giggled when he got down there. The sleeping pods along the wall were shaped just like the ship itself. The man must love to floss. Prestons were such an odd bunch. He wasn’t all that tired, so he just started snooping instead. There weren’t a whole lot of things to find here. The floors, walls, and ceilings were all white, and smooth. Pretty nondescript, he would say—aesthetically pleasing and classy, but not particularly interesting. That was until he opened the door to a pocket dimension. Inside was a full stable, with hay, and manure on the floors. He walked through it, peeking over the doors to see if there were any actual horses, but there weren’t. It wasn’t until he got to the last stable that he came across another lifeform. It was undoubtedly a centaur. She was saddled, but not wearing any other clothes.

“Oh, hello. Are you Mithri’s friend?”

“That’s a strong word,” Mateo answered. “I don’t really know him. Does he...um?”

“Does he ride me like I’m an actual horse?” she figured.

“Uhh...”

“My son is still in regular human form. This is how I get him around on our home planet. It’s only weird if you make it weird.”

“I don’t think it’s weird.” Mateo looked around the room. “Where is he, and where is your planet?”

“They’re in the same place. He’s at school right now. Mithridates agreed to help me get back to him after rescuing me from my captors.”

“You don’t seem that anxious about it?”

“My planet is safe, he’s fine.”

“I’m Mateo.”

“Delintza,” she returned.

“Delintza, we were to understand that consciousness transference isn’t a thing here, nor is cloning. No one realized after we had done it.”

“I’ve never heard of it either,” she said. “This is my real head and torso, and this was a real horse. A surgeon put us together.”

“Oh, so...the horse died? That doesn’t bother you?”

“No, why would I care? It’s just a dumb animal.”

The friend detector began to beep, which was good, because he didn’t want to have to get into an ethical debate with this stranger.

“What’s that?” she questioned.

“Sorry, gotta go.” He ran back upstairs.

« < » > Table of Contents

Microstory 1764: Phoenix Industry

< > Table of Contents

I’ve had a monopoly in my industry for the last two years. I had to hire a team of lawyers to protect me, so the government couldn’t come in and confiscate my property. Back when I was just a crematorium operator, I gave my administrator the task of finding me a new furnace. When the machine came in, I assumed she had bought something without going through me first, but it wasn’t long before I learned that she had had nothing to do with it. She’s trustworthy, but as lazy as I am, so she hadn’t even gotten around to starting her research. We never did figure out where the new furnace came from, and that’s kind of a big deal. Not only is it weird—and worrisome that someone had the ability to charge my company credit card without authorization—but it also appears to be unique. They call it the Phornax, which after I used it, I realized was a combination of the Latin word for furnace, fornax and phoenix. You see, it brings people back to life. It doesn’t matter if they’ve already been cremated, or if they’ve been dead for a long time. Any dead person I place in here will come out brand new in a few hours. There doesn’t even appear to be any side effects, like an insatiable hunger for human brains, or neurological issues. In fact, they usually return healthier than they were when they died. It cures them of all maladies and other medical conditions. The only caveat is that I do need all of the remains. I’ve tried to bring back someone with only a portion of their ashes, because part of it was spread into the ocean. It did not turn out right. I’ve seen a lot of disgusting things in this business, but I retched the most I ever had the day I opened that door, and found a horrific pile of boney goo of a man with incomplete cremains. Since then, I’ve been adamant about doing my due diligence.

I do charge for my services, but even though no one else can do what I do, I think I keep my prices fair, and I base them off of tax brackets. The rich pay handsomely, and that supplements the loss of income from my discounted rates, and my pro bono work. I work hard at this, and it’s not easy. I only take Saturdays off to rest. I shouldn’t even be in the office right now, but my administrator is on vacation, and there are a few records I have to verify. As I’m standing at her desk, trying to figure out her filing system, a man walks in. The door was supposed to be locked, so I’m not sure what happened there. Somehow I know that this is him. This is the man responsible for my furnace gift. I don’t know if he just works for a secret cabal, or if he’s straight up the devil, but I can tell that he’s involved. He confirms as much when he recites the full serial number of the Phornax, which he wouldn’t have known if he was just some rando off the street. I ask him why he did this, and he claims that this was all a test run. He and his people needed a way to assess whether my species was ready for the privilege of immortality. This was a great way to do that, because the process is irreproducible, so I’ve not been able to get around to helping all of the over hundred billion people who have died in history. He tells me he doesn’t like the results, and that he’s taking the furnace back. I beg him not to, that we deserve a second chance, but he refuses. I’m not a violent man, but I feel compelled to try to stop him physically. In the struggle, I somehow end up inside the Phornax. “Fine,” he says, before switching it on. I scream in pain as the fire overwhelms me. I break myself out hours later. I had always wondered what would happen if you put a living organism in here. It appears to give people superstrength. What else, though?

Microstory 1763: On the Wings of Perseus

< > Table of Contents

I thought I was alone on this alien planet, but there is another. I don’t know if he belongs here, or came here from somewhere else, like me, but he doesn’t seem the least bit surprised to find me. I should not be surprised that he is not surprised seeing as we’re standing before a fountain containing statues resembling the two of us, along with many other creatures, who I presume to all be evolved alien species. My guess is that this is a monument to the intelligent races who live in this galaxy, though I couldn’t say whether all of them visited here at some point, they’re only the ones that the Pegasus being specifically knows about, or it’s comprehensive. All I can say is that I’m so pleased to finally have someone else to talk to. And he does indeed talk, even though he looks like a horse with wings. The first thing he tells me is his name, and though I imagine his peoples don’t use Latin script for their written language, what I hear sounds a little bit like the name Perseus, albeit with some kind of non-North American accent and pronunciation. It’s interesting that he should be named that, since both Pegasus and Perseus appear in ancient Greek mythology together, and it’s never been suggested that they are one and the same, or that the latter is the proper name for just one particular member of a whole race of the former. Perhaps all religion was inspired by reality in some way, but the truth has been corrupted overtime, kind of like how the Norse gods are often depicted as real aliens with advanced technology, who humans mistook for deities. I try to ask Perseus what this fountain is, and why a statue of me is in it, but he sort of brushes it off and says that it’s “just this thing.” I find it strange that I should be placed closest to him in the artistic rendering, when we have only now met, and the other aliens probably have much more experience with their interstellar neighbors. He brushes this off as well, and offers to give me a ride on his back. I feel awkward, accepting such a thing from a clearly sentient entity, but if he doesn’t, I shouldn’t.

We fly up, and up, and up, through the clouds, into the bitter cold, and right past what I might consider to be the boundary between atmosphere and outer space. I don’t bother freaking out, or trying to hold my breath. If this is his way of murdering me, then so be it. What am I gonna do, hop off, and go back down? I don’t die, of course. I assume some kind of invisible protective barrier forms to hold in the air, and the heat. The farther we go, the faster we move, until we’re traveling at faster-than-light speeds. Our ships can do that, but not nearly this fast, and before I know it, we’re on a new planet, which I initially figure to be Perseus’ homeworld. I don’t see any other Pegisides around, or whatever it is his people call themselves. I only see humans, standing in and around what I remember to be human architecture. They don’t gasp at the sight of the alien, so he has likely been here before. After I admire the city for a moment, Perseus explains what happened. The reason our scout ship crashed in the first place is due to tidal forces from a relatively nearby collapsis, which my ancestors used to refer to as a black hole. The planet’s proximity to this region of high gravity is also what caused me to experience only fifteen years of time while the human settlement here has been around for nearly two centuries. It’s nice to know that humanity survived the disasters on Earth, and also that I’m still around to enjoy the fruits of that labor myself. The people here welcome me warmly, and I realize just how much I missed being around other people.

Microstory 1762: Pegasus Fountain

< > Table of Contents

I’ve lived alone on this world for the last fifteen years. Actually, if we’re talking about the time it takes for the planet to orbit its host star, then it’s been 38, but I can’t get used to using any other calendar than the one I grew up with on Earth. Our world was dying, and our civilization crumbling, so we were sent to look for a new one. We weren’t trying to save everyone, but our species. Only the peaceful would be allowed to migrate, while the rioters and warmongers stayed behind to fight amongst themselves. Our ship crashed here, and I was the only survivor, so I don’t know whether any of the other scouts were successful. I can only hope, but it’s entirely possible that I am the last human in the entire universe by now. I’ve spent my time here doing what I do best, which is building things. I started with a Columbarium, so I could lay my comrades to rest, but I didn’t stop there. I constructed cages to trap the albibirds, which is the only source of meat available. It would be crazy if only one animal species lives on this whole planet. They don’t act omnivorous, but perhaps they hunted everything else to extinction long before I showed up. I’ve traveled great distances by now, but not everywhere. My helicopter has a short range, and I don’t like to venture too far from home, so it’s not like I’ve been able to cover the entire planet. That changes today. I finally fixed the ship. Well, I didn’t so much as fix it as I took it apart, and built a brand new ship from the wreckage. It’s much smaller than the one we took to get here, but since it only needs to accommodate me, that shouldn’t be a problem. It’s not fast enough to reach Earth—or any of the other candidate settlements—in any reasonable amount of time, but it’s much better at handling atmosphere, and that’s all I really need.

The protium harvesters worked, and the fusion reactor is operational. It would be great if I discovered how little of the surface I’ve truly explored, and the rest of it is lush with vegetation and game. It will be sad, of course, leaving the cremains of my friends behind, but I have to focus on myself now. Either I’m on a desert planet, or I just happened to end up in a desert on a normal planet, but no matter what, I have to know the truth. I spend months surveying the land, searching for anything better than what I started with, but there’s nothing. There’s no ocean, no mountain ranges...certainly no signs of animal life, let alone intelligence. The computer generates a map for me, and I start to see a bigger picture. It is all desert, with oases scattered throughout, and not randomly either. They’re equidistant from each other, which is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen. It makes no sense; nature would not distribute them so evenly. Then the computer spots something even weirder, so I drop down to check it out. It’s another oasis, but it’s unlike any other. In place of a more natural-looking well, there’s a gigantic fountain; probably larger than anything made on Earth. It’s the only sign of evolved life I’ve found on this rock. It’s filled with statues of creatures I’ve never seen before, spewing water out of their orifices, but I’m drawn to their eyes, which seem intelligent. I think each represents an evolved alien species. The largest one in the center looks eerily like a pegasus from Earthan mythology. It’s uncanny, really, the horse and its wings. That’s when I notice that I actually do recognize one of the statue creatures, standing proud below the pegasus. It was carved in the form of a human, but not just any human. It’s me. It looks exactly like me. Then a real pegasus flies down from the sky to greet me.