Microstory 2482: Teledome

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This is the biggest known ground-based telescope in existence. They make them bigger, but they’re all floating in space, because that’s the best way to avoid atmospheric distortions, and other artifacts. For those of you not in the know, Earth launched two arrays of telescopes for something called Project Topdown. These are currently on their way out into the two intergalactic voids adjacent to each face of the Milky Way Galaxy. They’re all about the practical applications. I won’t go the details, because you can look it up in the central archives, but I’ll say that the purpose of it is to map our galaxy, as well as peer into the local group, unencumbered by the light and other distractions that come from being within the “border” of our own galaxy. Of course, these are not the only telescopes in existence, and it’s not like we’ll ever dismantle the more local ones in favor of using Topdown exclusively. Earth still has its Bouman Interferometer Array, and other worlds in the stellar neighborhood are working on their own projects. Castlebourne isn’t trying to make any breakthrough discoveries with its Teledome, but it certainly seemed logical to build it anyway. At 5400 square kilometers, the Sugimoto Phased Radio-Optical Telescope takes up nearly the entire area of the dome. You might ask yourself, why is it even under a dome? It shouldn’t need to be. Other telescopes certainly aren’t. Well, dust; that’s why. The space within the confines of the dome is pristine, and very easy to keep well-maintained. If they had to worry about dust storms clogging up the sensors, it would be this huge constant chore. So instead of a geodesic dome, it’s a smooth one. And instead of diamond, it’s made of an ultra-clear polycarbonate. It’s not a single object, however. There are seams in it, but they’re bonded at the molecular level. So if it suffers damage, only that section has to be replaced, but that’s only in the event of catastrophic damage, because it’s just as self-healing as any other metamaterial. As for the telescope itself, the name tells you that it’s both radio and optical. It’s also not made of a single, uniform lens. Nanomodules can shift between states, allowing for the absorption of a wide range of frequencies on the light spectrum. There is an atmosphere on Castlebourne, however thin, and it does create artifacts on the image, but as I’ve been saying, they didn’t engineer this to be perfect. We have plenty of alternatives, and they’re always building more. If you want to see the telescope first hand, you can come here, but obviously, the prospectus includes a live feed of the image, and a constant readout of the data, for your own analysis and synthesis. So you don’t have to come here, but it’s cool to see anyhow, so I still recommend it.

Microstory 2440: Heavendome

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No one knows what real heaven is like, or even if it exists. Come to this place recognizing that this is but one specific interpretation. I see these other reviews criticizing it for its Christian-centric roots as if the creators had any obligation to be secular and all-inclusive. If you want to find your own personal idea of heaven, then either build it yourself with your own two hands, or do the same in a virtual environment. I mean, what did you expect, that this would be all for you, or that your concept is the best one, and we should be following that one instead? The point of this dome is to simulate to the best of science’s ability to simulate conditions of a heaven that was purported to be in the clouds. That’s not real, folks. You can’t walk on clouds. I don’t know if real Christians of the past were just dumb enough to not know that clouds aren’t solid objects, or if they thought that God was magic, and he could let you do anything just ‘cause. Still, it’s a powerful image, a cloud city in the sky. How do you even do that? Well, you start with an aerogel matrix that extends the entire area of an upper level of the dome. So it’s solid, but still soft and cushiony, which you would expect a cloud to be if you could somehow walk on it. Below that is a layer of clouds. I’m not sure if they’re real water vapor clinging to the aerogel ceiling, because that would not be out of the realm of possibility. Above the aerogel surface is a dense fog that you wade through. I think that was really important, to suggest that the floor of a magical cloud isn’t just like a bunch of pillows lying next to each other. This fog is supposedly the lighter, whispier cloud “material” (suggesting again, that clouds aren’t condensed water vapor, but some sort of independent stuff that you can grab onto, like cotton). You actually kind of can grab this fog, so I think it’s made of nanites, but you won’t be able to carry it around with you. It sort of melts and drifts away? It’s a funny feeling, you should try it. They really thought it through in a fun way. And to explain, you can push this fog away from you with your hands. And you can push away the lower level of the clouds below you by punching the aerogel surface. That would seem to suggest that the lower level clouds are nanites too, not real. This whole cloud layer is around two kilometers up in the sky, which is where real clouds like this would be. Below that is land. I don’t think it’s a hologram. I think it’s really what the bottom of the dome looks like. I can’t see anyone walking around down there, but I’m wondering if they’ll let people in one day, so there can be two sections. Perhaps you combine Heavendome with two different layers, and the lower one is just regular people who live on “Earth”. Or hey, what about a third layer? The one underground could be a Christo-centric version of Hell. That would be insane. I’m not sure who would go down there, but it could be scary in a fun way, like Bloodbourne. For now, though, we only have Heaven, and that’s good enough. There are other components for ambiance, like rays of light, pearly gates, and “angels” with wings. They’re pretty stunning creatures, and often exhibit traits of a slightly more universal definition of anyone’s heaven...if you know what I mean. They don’t speak, and I don’t think they can really fly, but they really add to the ethereal vibe that they’re trying to evoke here. Overall, I give it a five out of five. It’s not really a place that you live, so you might as well take some time to check it out.

Microstory 2419: Underbelly

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Not to be confused with Underburg. Believe me, you don’t want to mix them up. Nothing could be further from the idyllic, beautiful, pleasant hellscape of suburban America. I don’t understand why anyone would want to live there. I grew up in a town like that, back before the arcologies. It might look nice in old movies and TV shows, but I was miserable. Ravensgate is a real city. It’s full of violence, crime, and the champions that serve as the only protection against these terrible forces. Choose your own adventure. Are you a hero, or a villain? I know this sounds like an ad, and it is. This is the entire reason I came to this planet. My friend casted first, and wrote back with tales of his exploits. He knew that I would like the Underbelly dome. I read all the comic books, and saw all the adaptations. I know what makes for a good superhero story, and I’ve always wanted to be a part of that. It’s funny, back in the day, all these superpowers were fictional. They seemed impossible. The strength of ten men, the speed of a train; normal humans could only dream of such fantastical abilities. And then, as technology progressed, we actually started being able to make them a reality. Nanotechnology alone gives us shapeshifting, invisibility, onboard weaponry, and more. Some things are still off limits, and if you want to have those gifts, you’re gonna need to log in to a virtual world. Flight is impossible. Well, it’s not impossible, but the Superman or Homelander kind is totally off limits. It breaks the laws of physics. A lot of comics have magic, and you can’t do that stuff either. You can’t just turn someone into a frog, or something. Street level heroing is what they call it. You fight bad guys, and help the innocent. Most of them are androids, but they’re as lifelike as any, so it’s easy to forget that, and feel genuine anger towards the former, and empathy for the latter. But I should probably go back to the beginning, because you’re not assigned the powers you end up with. You choose them yourself. But you don’t get to just select from a menu, and upload into your new substrate. No, you gotta design it yourself. You choose the physical attributes of the body. Are you visibly muscular, or are you secretly superhumanly strong? What hair color, eye color, nose shape? You choose it all, and you have to work through the design program to make it look how you want. They don’t give you any ideas about what kind of powers to include either. That’s all you too. You’re only limited to the technology available in the 26th century. You also design your own backstory, which might be decades in the past, or more recent. Maybe you’re a kid who’s just discovered his powers after reaching puberty, or you fell in a vat of acid during a university science experiment. Or you don’t have powers at all, and your character had to invent everything themselves. It’s up to you, but the more complex and complicated the scenario, the longer it’s going to take before you can get out there. I could write a book on this, but you really just have to come try it. You don’t even have to be a hero or villain. You can just be a regular person, trying to survive in the metropolis. Again, this is all you. Right now, it’s just Northwest Ravensgate and Southeast Ravensgate, separated by a river, but they’ve left the nearby domes unused in case this gets to be so popular that it has to expand into new cities. There’s a reason the dome and city aren’t named the same thing. We could really build something here. It may not be real, per se, but if you open your mind, it can be just as exciting as anything else in base reality. This only gets better with more visitors. We can’t do it without ya.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 6, 2427

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Something interesting happened when Ramses started to program Lilac’s stasis pod to help her jump to the future faster. He expected to be able to start from scratch, and run his own program, but a link request popped up when he tried. He almost swiped it away, because it always carries over other default settings that he needs to alter himself, but it should not have done it at all this time. This was the only pod in operation for at least a light year. Right?

“There’s another pod?” Leona asked.

“Yes,” Ramses answers. “Well, there’s another stasis program running nearby anyway, which could turn out to be any number of other pods, as long as they happen to be on the same time differential.”

“How do you know this?” Olimpia asked.

“Pods like this are self-sustaining and modular,” Ramses began to explain. “They don’t have to be connected to each other, or to some singular power source or network, which is why I was able to just pull this out of the wall in Scorpius Station, and bring it with us. But sometimes you want them to be connected, so they can share preferences, and other settings. It helps for when you have to program thousands of sleepers in the same ship. When I activated this one, it alerted me to a currently running program, which I can evidently become a part of too.”

“So, it’s like when you take your phone into a restaurant, and it picks up the WiFi,” Mateo reasoned.

“That’s a good analogy, yes,” Ramses replied. “It’s offering to connect us to a network that we didn’t know was there.”

“This world does not look like it’s advanced enough to have stasis pods,” Angela pointed out.

“Well, no matter. Where is this other pod?” Marie asked. “Or pods?”

“There’s no way to know,” Ramses explained. “But it has to be close. I’ll look deeper into the specifications to get a better picture, but I doubt it’s more than a few thousand kilometers.”

“Oh, that close?” Mateo laughed.

“If it’s a facility,” Leona began, “we might be able to track it down. If it’s a single pod underground, it might be next to impossible. These things aren’t designed to locate each other. This feature only exists to keep everyone in a given population on the same timetable. The diameter of the Earthan moon, Luna is sort of the far end of the typical ranges you might ever need. You generally don’t even need to go that far.”

“Can you change the range?” Mateo asked.

“What do you mean?” Ramses questioned.

“Can you adjust the signal until it stops picking up the other program?”

“Oh, I see where you’re going with this,” Ramses said. “We might be able to pinpoint the location once we find an exact radius. You’re getting smarter.”

“It happens,” Mateo muses.

“Give me a little time. Like she was saying, this isn’t designed as a buddy locator. I’ll have to tinker with the innards.”

“What about me?” Lilac asked, arms crossed.

“Oh, right,” Ramses said. “I forgot why I was even doing this. Lee-Lee, while I’m working on this one, why don’t you get one of the other pods set up for her?”

“I can’t do that,” Leona contended. “If I set up a new pod, and start a new program...”

Ramses realized the issue. “The linkseeker on this first pod will find the second one instead, which could make it harder to locate the one we’re looking for.”

“So, I’m screwed?” Lilac figured.

“No, no. We’ll turn it off next year. I know you wanted us to wait to wake you up once we found your son, but we really do need to investigate this.”

“Okay,” Leona said. “Give Ramses a few hours to find the radius. Once he’s done, we’ll place you in another pod. We’ll wake you up next year, and try to actually look for the thing. I’ll want to spend some time inspecting our new ship anyway, but I promise we’ll get off planet by the end of the day. Is that okay?”

They carried out the plan. While Leona was programming the nanofactory to engineer an interstellar ship for them that was capable of reaching maximum sublight, but not of reframe speeds, Ramses was trying to find this mysterious other stasis program. He ripped the guts out of the pod, and just used whatever part of the machinery, since he didn’t need the entire apparatus to do the job. This would make it easier to triangulate a position. It actually didn’t take them the entire rest of the next day to complete the work. He found the radius, which was around 1200 kilometers away, but of course, that was 1200 kilometers in any direction. So he made a random jump 600 kilometers away. This dropped him into the ocean, and also out of range, so he knew he was going the wrong way. He went back to the center, and made a jump in the opposite direction. Now he was still in range, but the radius remained at 1200, so he had to lower it until the other program reappeared on the screen. He kept adjusting it, making ever shorter jumps several times until he found the spot. It was within about a hectare search grid. There was nothing there, and midnight central was approaching, so he went back to camp to wait.

The next day, they were glad that he was able to narrow it down that much, because that was as good as it ever got. Starting up Lilac’s pod severed the linked preferences from the first time, and they weren’t able to restore them, even when they woke her up, and powered her pod down. While Leona was working on their ship, and the Walton sisters were continuing to help the Welriosians, and Olimpia was helping the natives, Mateo and Ramses started a more direct search. It reminded Mateo of the time that he and Tarboda Hobson were in Madagascar in the Third Rail. Alyssa used her teleportation ability to search for whatever they might find there that could solve their problems. It was much quicker, but if the thing they were looking for were underground, it might be virtually impossible to locate, especially with their short window of availability. They were leaving today, whether the secret pod was found or not. Fortunately, they found it.

It was underground, but not in a bunker, or something. It was just buried in the dirt, part of the top corner exposed to the elements, probably due to natural erosion. They dug it out with their hands like a dog until it was exposed enough to be lifted out of the ground by hand. Ramses tried to wipe the viewscreen clean to see who was in it, but the face was obscured from the inside. There was no data on its occupant in the computer, so all they could do was cross their fingers, and open ‘er up. Vitalie Crawville leapt out of it with a crazed look on her face. She tackles Mateo to the ground, and tries to strangle him. Ramses spared no expense when he made these bodies. Humans, for whatever reason, evolved to have pitifully fragile necks, but it was relatively easy to engineer a superior substrate. Some called them superstrates. Vitalie could squeeze all she wanted, but there was no way she was breaking his windpipe. He didn’t fight back. He just lay there, waiting for her to recognize him. She did so after fifteen seconds, and got off of him right away. “Are you okay?” he asked her.

“Am I okay? Are you okay?”

Not a big deal. “I’m all right. How long were you in there?”

Vitalie looked back at the pod in disgust. “Hell if I know.”

“Someone put you in there against your will?” Ramses asked.

She took a deep breath. “Yes. Called himself...The Oaksent.”

“We’ve met,” Mateo said with a nod.

She looked around at their surroundings. “This world has been without my help. I hope it’s not too late.”

“Too late for what?” Mateo asked.

“To do some good. Do you know how far we are from civilization?”

“We’ll take you there.” Mateo offered her a hand.

She was confused for a moment. “Do you know how to be a navigator for a teleporter?”

“I know how to be a navigator,” Mateo answered, “and a teleporter.” He took her hand, and jumped them both to New Welrios.

“I wanna take a look at this pod,” Ramses said through his comm.

“Be careful,” Mateo warned him. “There could be a tamper-proof self-destruct.”

“A lot has changed about you, Mister Matic,” Vitalie noted. “Looks like I got some competition here.”

“You don’t,” he clarified. “My team and I have to go. We’re looking for a friend, and the only thing we know is that he’s not on this world. We’re doing everything we can, but a lot of people here don’t deserve to be helped.” He jerked his head towards the Welriosians who were milling about outside the entrance to the giant residential cave. “These ones were once innocent slaves. We saved them from the destruction of their planet, then we had to save them again once the natives got their hands on them. The others live on the other side of the planet. Their society is complicated, and there’s only so much effort we’re putting into their redemption. You can do whatever you want, Vitalie, or you can come with us.”

She smiled at him while she watched the people. “My name’s Vitalie. It’s The Caretaker, and wherever you’re going, you’ll find me there too.”

“You duplicated yourself?” he guessed.

“Dupe means two.” She paused, and tilted her forehead towards him. “I didn’t stop at two.”

“How many worlds are you on?”

She waited to answer. “All of them. Well, except for the ones who don’t need it, like all systems in the stellar neighborhood. I may or may not be on Earth II. I was still trying to decide when I left, so my alternates would have had to make that decision.”

“How did you get to each world, though?”

“The Nexus.”

“There’s a Nexus here?”

“I don’t think so,” she assumed. “You don’t need a Nexus to exit. You just need one to leave from.”

Mateo nodded. This was true.

Ramses suddenly appeared a few meters from them. Or rather, Vitalie’s pod appeared. It was standing up, but the bottom wasn’t stable, so it fell onto its back. He climbed out of it like a zombie from its casket. “This is not a stasis pod. It’s a medical pod with a—argh!” He ripped something out of a panel in the ceiling, “...stasis generator jury-rigged to it.”

“Is there a self-destruct?” Mateo asked him.

Ramses laughed. “No. They’re safe to use it as needed.”

“Do they even know how?” He looked at Vitalie. “Do you?”

She shook her head. “I can push a button. Is it that easy?”

“It’s easy enough to use,” Ramses said, “but difficult to maintain. A me will have to stay behind to help them, and with other things.”

“A you?” Mateo asked. “Did you just said a me?”

Ramses took a breath, and approached Vitalie surprisingly cautiously. “You’re a time traveler, aren’t you?”

“I am. That’s how I replicate myself.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why?”

“There’s so much work left to do here. They could use a superhero like you, but...they need a genius like me. So send me back in time, just a few seconds. One version will stay behind, and the other will go on with the mission.”

“Now, hold on,” Mateo started to say. “If we have a time traveler, why can’t we just go back to before they took the kid? We could render this all moot.”

“That’s not possible, is it?” Ramses asked Vitalie.

“That asshole said it wouldn’t be. I’ve not tested it yet. I’ve been talking to you.”

Ramses shook the device in his hands like you’re not supposed to shake a Polaroid picture. “There was always a chance she would eventually escape the pod, and she could go back in time and stop the Oaksent from putting her in it in the first place. Anything that ever exists, always exists. He doesn’t have the hundemarke, so he found a workaround to prevent her from being able to undo what he did to her.”

“I don’t understand,” Mateo said.

“Let’s call it a Time Lid,” Ramses went on. “I think I read about something similar in a story once. She can’t go back any further than the moment we let her out of the pod, and disabled the stasis generator. The past is completely beyond her access now. What’s done is done...is done, is done.”

“All we can do is move forward,” Vitalie agreed, but it wasn’t the same one they had just been talking to. It was Future!Vitalie. And she was standing next to a future version of Ramses.

“I guess you convince me,” Present!Vitalie mused.

Leona appeared, having been listening to the entire interaction through comms. “I couldn’t get away in time to stop you. Ramses, you don’t have to do this. Neither of you does.”

“It’s already done,” Present!Ramses and Future!Ramses replied in unison. Without communicating with each other, each of them placed a fist in an open palm to prepare for a game of regular Rock, Paper, Scissors. They had to play two dozen times before one of them finally chose something different.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 31, 2399

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There should be no one on the moon but the three of them. How the man outside is surviving the vacuum of space is a nonissue. Leona can think of a number of ways for him to accomplish such a feat. The problem is that there is nothing out here. They scanned the entire surface several times while they were still in orbit. They found no structures, no power signatures, no nothin’. They’ve also not detected any new arrivals since they’ve come. Best guess, he’s an android who lay dormant in a hole somewhere, and woke up when Mangrove Zero showed up. That wouldn’t explain who he is, or exactly what he wants, but either he’s crazy, and he thinks he’s asking someone who isn’t here, or Cedar is a thing that Leona should know. Here for Cedar. What does that mean? Is it a band? A place? A tree? Does he think Cedar is on this ship, or is Cedar the person who asked him to come here, and he is the one who actually wants something?

Regardless of what’s going on here, the guy is a creepy moonwalker, so no way in hell is he getting in. She’ll fight him to the death to protect the children. She’s chosen not to say anything to Mateo and Ramses, as they have enough on their minds, and their mission is more important than ever. If this is a sign of a conspiracy, their leechcraft array could be the thing that saves them. Instead, she has tried to contact Aldona, who is not answering. One would think she would want to keep apprised of the situation up here, but who knows what she’s dealing with at the moment?

Leona checked on the boys once to make sure they were okay, but has not returned to reclamation since. She has to stay out here, so she can keep an eye on the would-be intruder, and look out for any accomplices. He or they may just be waiting for enough alone time to break through. Aldona built this thing to be a stronghold, but it is not impenetrable. Nothing is impenetrable. If brute force isn’t working, you’re just not using enough of it. It’s been a day, and this is all she’s been doing. They have spent the last hour literally staring at each other through a viewport, as if in a contest. If he really is an android, there’s no reason for him to blink. She’s all right for now, but she’s no longer wearing the upgraded body that Ramses built for her, so she’s going to need to sleep at some point. That’s most likely what he’s waiting for.

Carlin comes up to her.

“I told you to stay put,” Leona scolds.

“Can he hear us?”

Leona glares at the stranger. “Possibly.” He can probably read lips, and he may be able to eavesdrop in more creative ways, like measuring vibrations, or even reading minds. Though, if it’s that second one, there’s nothing they can do to stop it anyway.

“Let’s go somewhere where he can’t.”

“I have to keep an eye on him.”

“Use the cameras. We have to talk.”

Leona exhales through her nose, then leads Carlin to the nearest bathroom, which is away from any exterior wall, but close enough to get back on the defensive if need be. “What is it?”

“We met someone.”

“What do you mean, you met someone?”

“His name is Cedar. He’s in a secret room behind the place where Moray and I were sleeping on the floor. He let us in.”

Now everything makes more sense. Mateo must have found out about him when he first came here, and he was trying to protect him by not saying anything. He hopefully didn’t know about this stranger, though, or it would have been irresponsible to leave, and leave her in the dark. “I see. Is he nice?”

“Yeah, he’s very nice. He’s Aldona’s nephew.”

“I see,” she repeats.

“What do we do?”

Leona looks at the camera feed on her handheld device. The stranger is still where he was when they left, staring into that viewport. Maybe he’s on standby mode. Goddamn, if Leona only had her real body, she would just teleport him to the South Pole, and build a new propulsion system with the nanites, scheduled to be completed before he had the time to get back. “If he’s Aldona’s nephew, he must have a way to contact her.”

“He did. She told him to stay inside, and go radio silent,” Carlin explains. “That’s literally all she said apparently.”

“Yeah, that thing out there might be able to intercept the signal.” She looks away to think. “Go back and follow those directions. Stay there, and stay radio silent.”

“What are you gonna do?” he asks.

“I’m gonna try to talk to him,” she replies.

“Is that safe?”

“Nope.”

Carlin goes back to reclamation, and Leona heads for the airlock. The stranger is still standing on the other side of the building, biding his time, no doubt. She puts her vacuum suit back on, and prepares to exit. She grabs the golf club at the last second for a modicum of protection. She seals the hatch with a code known only to her, then walks around to meet the man. She stands to the side of him for a while, waiting for him to react in any way. When he finally does, he acts like he’s just realized that she was there. He really was in standby mode, wasn’t he? She taps her helmet where her ear would be if the helmet were her head. Then she points to herself, and then to him with an inquisitive face. “Can you hear me?” she asks at the same time.

He taps his thumb with his index and middle finger at her. He then holds his head out, palm forward and down, and slowly moves towards her helmet. He’s sporting an inquisitive face too. He seems to be asking whether he can touch her helmet.

She cautiously makes a fist, and taps the air twice to indicate a yes.

He raises his hand up, and places it upon her helmet. “I can hear you now,” he says. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes.” He’s sending intelligible vibrations down his arm, and then into her helmet space, which is atmospheric, and can propagate sound, unlike the space outside. “Are you an android?”

He tilts his head. “I’m using an android body. Saying that I am an android is a bit...how do I put this? Opprobrious.”

Opprobrious. What a douche.

He may or may not be reacting to her thoughts.

If you don’t remove your hand from my helmet, I’m going to rip both of your arms off, and set you on fire, she thinks.

No reaction. So either he can’t read her thoughts, or he’s pretending not to.

“State your business.”

“I’ve told you. I’m here for Cedar.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Say I did. Why should I help you?”

“Because I’ll kill your sons in front of you if you don’t.”

Hmm. If he thinks that Carlin and Moray are her sons, then he doesn’t know who she is. That’s good. “What do you want with this Cedar?”

“That’s not your problem.”

“You threatened my kids. It is indeed my problem.”

“That’s only if you don’t comply.”

“Doesn’t matter. You’ve said it, which means you’ve established yourself as an enemy. I don’t like having enemies. I always get rid of them.”

“How do you usually do that?”

“If they refuse to become my friend, I either kill them...or I erase their entire existence, past and future.” She’s not lying.

“You’re more than someone who was simply hired to protect the boy.”

“What has the boy done that makes you hate him so?”

“It’s not what he’s done. It’s what he will do.”

“This reality has no time travel. You can’t know the future.”

“We obviously both know that it’s more complicated than that.”

“What is your issue? What does he do? Why shouldn’t he do it?”

He looks away for a second, seemingly not wanting to clarify. “This is not what I intended when I founded Operation Free Will. This universe is too messy now. These parallel realities, and these people who are capable of reaching backwards to collapsed timelines; they’re too much. I was just trying to give people choice. I didn’t know that the elite few would use their choices to control everyone else. That is not free will.”

“What is Operation Free Will?” She doesn’t get the chance to hear the response. Something behind Leona catches his eye. She turns around to see what it is. An object is falling towards them rapidly from space. It’s this close to them when she realizes that it’s a missile. It’s heading for them; not the rocket, but the two of them, specifically. It’s very precise. At the last millisecond, she feels a pair of arms wrap around her shoulders, and spirit her away.

She’s in the hallway now of the flightworthy part of the rocket, looking into the control room. Ramses is at the radio. “Mangrove One, this is Mangrove Zero. All lives accounted for. I repeat, all of our people have been rescued.”

“Thank you, Mangrove Zero,” Aldona’s voice replies.

Leona turns around to find her husband. “Cut it a little close, don’t you think?”

“You were unwittingly distracting him,” Mateo replies.

“Who is he? Or was he, rather?”

He sighs. Aldona didn’t say much when we asked for help, but he is a bit of an inaccurate pronoun. It’s more of an it. There’s more than one parallel reality, which means there’s more than one Constant...”

Leona nods, finally getting it. “Which means there’s more than one version of Constance. Constance!Five was just the beginning.”

“We were so wrong. The AI doesn’t work for Danica. Danica works for the AI. This is who Tamerlane kept calling the boss.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 30, 2399

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Aldona has apparently never heard of the principle of SCR&M, because she didn’t design this rocket to be modular. It’s one giant tube, with living spaces at the top, cargo in the middle, and propulsion at the bottom. It’s a good thing that the first two aren’t switched, because while it’s not modular, it is compartmentalized. With a little bit of effort, they were able to pull it apart to leave one section on the moon, while the rest flew away, using the auxiliary control room as now the only control room.

Ramses and Mateo are heading back towards Earth to deploy their supersecret array of leechcraft. They’ll enter a high orbit, and launch the little leeches as they pass by other objects. Once those are dispersed, they’ll drop down to a lower orbit for another round. They’ll keep doing that until every sufficiently sized object up there has a little piece of hardware on it that Team Matic controls. Is this ethical? One hundred percent no. Is it morally right? Absolutely yes. Aldona and the world leaders are primarily concerned with external enemies, like the other parallel realities, but they know that there are plenty of domestic hostile forces to worry about. That’s what these technologies do. Like Ramses said before, this is more than just a temporal error detector. The software will map the behavioral patterns of everyone in the world, synthesize the data, and model the threats.

No specific individual is going to be targeted through this system. The artificial intelligence that Ramses curated himself will only ever output locational concerns, not people or groups. The AI is not based on the Constance program. The Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez already had its own intelligence, which became dormant when Constance was uploaded for consistency, but Ramses still has a copy of it, so there is no concern of an uprising, like they have on their hands with Constance!Five. That’s something that Aldona doesn’t even know about, which puts civilization at more risk than just aliens from other dimensions. It’s why they’re doing this. Ramses’ little assistant, Mateo is certain that people will thank them for this one day.

While all of this is going on, Leona will be on the moon with the boys. She’s not being sidelined, though. There’s plenty of work to be done here. The far side of the moon is a perfect place to install a vanguard extrasolar incursion detection system. There are others, like the Lagrange points, but it has to start somewhere. The orbital defense grid will protect Earth, but it works best with forewarning. The small container of nanites that they came here with has grown extraordinarily in just a few days. Until now, all they have been doing is replicating themselves using lunar material. Now it’s time to build some stuff. Half will be sent with Ramses to turn into leechcraft during the deliberately slow journey. The rest are for Leona’s special projects.

She’s going to expand what little infrastructure is here now into a full-fledged lunar base. Hundreds of people will be able to move in by the end of next month, and thousands by the start of this future war. This time next year, it could potentially be considered the center of a colony of millions. That’s a long way off, if ever. For now she just needs to focus on making sure she and the kids don’t die in the vacuum of space. That doesn’t mean they can’t have a little fun at the same time, though.

Little Moray’s face is pressed against the glass, watching the nanites work their magic. The shaft is done, and the head is nearly there. “What is it?”

“You’ve never seen one of these before?” Leona twirls the finished one.

“No.”

“You don’t have golf on your world?”

“Never heard of it.”

“Oh, I think you’ll like it. Go get your brother, and meet me in the airlock. I’ll show you how to use them.”

Moray runs off to grab Carlin. When they get to the airlock, Leona helps them into their custom-made vacuum suits, then gets into her own. Then they go out for a walk. “Four hundred and twenty-eight years ago tomorrow—in the main sequence—a man by the name of Alan Shepard landed on the moon. He was there to collect moon rocks, and do a bunch of science stuff, but he secretly smuggled one of these bad boys with him.” She holds up Carlin’s club. “He also had a couple of these.” She pulls several balls out of her bag, and drops them onto the lunar regolith.

“I assume you’re supposed to hit the balls with the sticks?” Carlin figures.

“Clubs, and yes,” Leona confirms.

“Farthest one wins?” Moray asks.

“Well, in regular golf, you would want to aim for a tiny little hole that’s hundreds of meters away. It’s never just a straight shot, and they put all kinds of hazards between you and the hole, like water and sand traps. I don’t have time to build all that, so yeah, farthest hit wins.”

“How far did Alan Shepard hit it?” Carlin asks.

“About thirty-seven meters, but his suit was extremely cumbersome, and he could only hit it with one hand.”

“How are you supposed to hit it?” Carlin presses.

“I’ve never played. So let’s watch a video.” She taps on her wrist device, and releases a hologram for them all to watch. It’s a tutorial from some famous golf player that was being stored in the AOC’s databank of main sequence knowledge.”

They had to modify their grip, because even though these suits are a lot more streamlined than the early Apollo missions ever could have dreamed of, they still weren’t designed for extreme dexterity. Even so, they were able to make it work. To no one’s surprise, Carlin was the best at it. He barely tried, and he hit it as far as an experienced player would, though maybe without too much accuracy. Given more time and practice, he could play it for real. They evidently have to get through this war first. Once all of the balls are gone, they head back for the base. Perhaps she’ll build a rover on her downtime that can go retrieve the balls later for another competition.

That night, the three of them are trying to eat their freeze-dried dinner when they hear a banging coming from down the hallway. “Do you remember when I showed you reclamation?” Leona asks.

“Yes,” the boys reply in sync.

“Go there, and find somewhere to hide,” she instructions. After they run off, Leona heads in the direction of the banging, holding the longer club. They come in a pattern, suggesting an intelligence behind them. The exterior security cameras aren’t showing anything, but there’s a blindspot right against the hatch to the airlock. She steps inside, and peeks out the viewport to find a man. He’s not wearing a suit, and is casually tossing one of the golf balls into the...moon air. “Can I help you?” Leona asks.

He nods, and slaps his free hand against the viewport. Written on his palm in black marker reads HERE FOR CEDAR.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 28, 2399

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It’s true that Leona has stolen control over Mangrove Zero, but that doesn’t mean they’re not at risk. Going up to orbit didn’t automatically protect them. Aldona could always launch a second rocket, or even a missile, at them. As soon as they arrived, she and Ramses went to work. He had already been studying the bridge systems whenever he took a break from rebuilding his satellite. It wasn’t long before they figured out how to break orbit, and head for the moon. They weren’t necessarily safe there either, but maybe safer. Theoretically, Aldona wouldn’t try to harm them while there were children on board, but she died centuries ago, and lived the rest of the time in the afterlife simulation. It’s unclear whether Tamerlane ever conducted any case studies to determine how that impacts an individual or group’s outlook on life and death.

Orbiting the Earth is no small feat, but orbiting the moon is even harder. It’s lumpy, and gravitationally unstable. Mangrove Zero was apparently designed just to show the primitives down on the planet how easy it was for Aldona to build and launch it. She didn’t equip it with an AI, or any other significant means of maintaining stability. Someone has to be at the controls the whole time to keep it from crashing on the surface, and of course, Leona and Ramses are the only ones with the skills to do that. They taught Mateo the basics, so he would be able to take over in an emergency, but even that is probably not enough to actually save their lives. They would land if they could, but they’re going to have to spend a little more time reading the manual.

Good news is they’re now sufficiently far from Earth to give Leona and Ramses their powers back. Bad news is Carlin and Moray have no powers to speak of, so the mission is still in just as much danger of cataclysmic failure. That’s the constant threat looming over them. The more general issue is that they can’t launch Ramses’ satellite from here, and even if they could, any world superpower would have the technology capable of blowing it out of the sky. As it stands there’s no way to make it invisible. None of them has the power to do that, and there is no traditional technological path towards it. Not even the Parallel can do it. It’s a fundamental rule of physics. If an object does work, it produces heat, and if it produces heat, it can be detected. Fortunately, there may be a workaround. Leona holds the bottle in the palm of her hand.

“Starter nanites?” Ramses asks. Nanobots are usually designed to serve a single purpose. Some repair a specific organ in the body. Others will maintain an inorganic system, like a quantum computer. Starter nanites have not yet specialized. Think of them as the stem cells of industry. There aren’t very many in the bottle, but that’s the beauty of it. If you even have one of these microscopic things, and the right raw material, you can build anything. It may take a long time, but it is possible. Any good emergency kit will have one of these, or something similar. “What are we building?”

Leona swings her other arm around, In her hand is a mostly black object about the size of a phablet or large phone, but much more narrow. It has little protrusions, and maybe a button or two. “I call it...leechcraft.”

“Isn’t that what ancient physicians used to use to heal,” he asks with airquotes.

“This is not that,” Leona begins. “This will find a preexisting satellite, and leech its power. In turn, the other satellite will mask its power signature. It can even latch onto space junk. Why have one satellite when you could have tens of thousands?”

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 21, 2399

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Winona called Leona out of the blue yesterday evening, asking to meet her in Balikpapan, Indonesia. The team doesn’t know that much about the area. It’s not a known special location that holds unusual temporal properties. Nor is it a place that any of them has ever been. It’s the destination of one of the Stonehenge portals in the Fourth Quadrant, though. They’ve not really thought to investigate it, because they have had so much else going on. This morning, Leona took the Bridgette up alone, piloting it relatively manually since they no longer have a safe AI to help them. She’s landing at the coordinates now. It’s not on land at all, but about 33 kilometers off the coast. A little ways away, she can see a large blue floating platform structure. “Um. Platform Structure, this is the Stateless Private Multicraft Bridgette. Do you read me?”

“It’s fine, Leona,” Winona’s voice returns. “Come and dock wherever you can.”

Leona navigates the boat to the edge of the platform, and ties it off. That’s when Winona comes walking down the dock. “What is this?” Leona asks her.

“We call it Mangrove One,” Winona answers. “It’s a joint operation from the entire Global Council.”

“Operation for what?”

“You’ll see.” She leads Leona up the dock, and through a door to a set of stairs, which go deeper into the platform than it ought to given the height of it above water. They’re under the surface now.

Leona can look over the railing, and see a hell of a lot of floors ever below them, suggesting this to be of skyscraperesque dimensions. That must be why they call it the Mangrove, as their seeds can float vertically in order to take root and grow into full trees. The purpose of this place, however, is yet to be seen.

“Are you ready for this?” Winona asks, hands waiting on the crash bar at the eleventh level.

“I don’t know what it is, so...yeah.”

Winona smirks. She opens the door into a huge hollow vertical tube. Before them is unmistakably a rocket, probably about twice as large as the one in Kansas City. “They just finished it last week. It’s now officially spaceworthy. It was built with the fusion power technology you gave us in mind, instead of being retrofitted to a preexisting ship, so everything is integrated perfectly. What do you think?”

What does she think? Leona can only marvel at it, unlike the way she reacted when she saw the first one. She was unimpressed by it, because it was the result of years of engineering and construction. This they made too fast. This they did without her. Did someone else help? You built this from my designs? That was only months ago.”

“Saying that we built it is a bit of a stretch,” Leona says. “I didn’t know it was happening at all until a few weeks ago. They didn’t think it was relevant to my job. There are a lot of fingers in this cookie jar. Come on, I would like you to meet someone.”

They start going around the catwalk, down another few flights, and back out of the launch tube. They continue through a few corridors until reaching an office. Someone is working on the other side of a desk, face obscured by a computer screen. “Leona Matic, this is Aldona Lanka.”

Aldona pops her head around the monitor. “

“Mrs. Matic. Hello, I was wondering when our paths would cross.”

“So we’ve never met?” Leona asks.

“We have. Very, very, very briefly. You and your team put mine and my brother’s minds into Arcadia and Erlendr Preston’s bodies.”

“I recall” Of course, that was in the main sequence. “How did you get here? You don’t look like Arcadia.”

Aldona looks over at Winona. “Thank you. You can go now.”

Winona sighs. “I decided to connect you two so you could work together; not so you could shut me out.”

“You will be read in if I deem it necessary,” Aldona says. “I’ll let you know. For now, this needs to be private.”

“Very well.” Winona leaves in a slight huff.

Leona closes the door behind her. “Report.”

“I lived a long life, and then I died, and I went to the afterlife simulation.”

“I see. How did you end up here?”

“The sim is not what you think it is. It was leading to something, and I was a part of creating that future.” She stands up, and slides open a window, which allows her to see the rocket she apparently created. They’re painting lettering on it, but they can’t see which letters from here. “Well, I was there at the tail-end of it, anyway.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s okay. I’m not going to clarify where it was, and who else was there, so for now, let’s just say...it was the future. That’s a simple enough concept for anyone to grasp. There are things about that future that I did not like. There is a war.”

“We heard about it,” Leona reveals.

“You did?” She fights a satisfied smile. “That’s quite interesting. But you don’t know who’s fighting it?”

“It’s a war between realities. That’s what it sounds like, at least. Our friend called it the Reality Wars.”

“That’s what they are. The main sequence, the Parallel, and the Fifth Division all have extremely advanced technology. They...cheated with time. The Fourth Quadrant, and the Third Rail, however, are little helpless babies.” She points at the ship. “I built this for them to level the playing field, so they don’t get wiped out.”

“You can’t just stop the war?” Leona suggests.

Aldona looks at her. “We’re talking about quadrillions and quadrillions of people, fighting over the only resource that matters. Do you know what that is, Mrs. Matic?”

Leona thinks about it for a few moments. She takes away food and water, because those resources are easy to come by, and trivial in cultures such as the Parallel. Fiat money, precious gems, even data. It’s all meaningless if you don’t have the one thing required to process them. “Energy.”

She nods. “Ten points for Ravenclaw. There are a ton of stars out there, but the closest ones are easiest to get to, and they couldn’t agree one what to do with them.”

“What did they end up deciding?”

Aldona chuckles. “Nanotech. That’s how we built that ship out there.”

Leona nods. “That explains the timetable. It should have taken years.”

“We don’t have years.” Aldona shuts the window partition dramatically. The Reality Wars are starting soon. I could use your help to protect these people. They’re asking for a thousand of these satellite carriers by April. I’ve only made a hundred.”