The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 30, 2543

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When the team first came out of the woods on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, they found a lone homestead. There were several bags of produce sitting on the grass several meters away from the entrance. A young woman was begrudgingly starting to carry them inside. They offered to help, which she accepted, explaining that the delivery drone kept using the wrong precise coordinates, but she couldn’t get it changed so that it always dropped them off right on her porch instead. After they were finished, Romana declared that she had officially become the team’s navigator, having won the bet with her mother. When Leona questioned it, Romana pointed out that they never specified the threshold for being at the right place at the right time, or helping the right person. That could have meant anything, from saving the world, to carrying groceries. She decided that it meant the latter, and since Leona never argued about it before their little tiny baby mission, she didn’t have any room to argue now. Romana was the navigator, and probably deserved it for successfully executing her foxy trick.

“Well, then, where are we going?” Ramses asked. They had spent all day at the homestead, completing chores, and enjoying the beauty of nature. Now it was a year later, and they were back in the timestream.

“Oh, uh...” Romana acted like she hadn’t even thought about it yet. She knew that she wanted the job, but now she was the dog that caught the car. She stood there awkwardly for so long that everyone just sort of faded away and moved on to other things for a while.

Mateo approached her later when everyone else was out of the room. “I thought you were doing this for your mother. I thought the whole reason you made yourself navigator was to get us back to her.”

“Ramses isn’t ready,” Romana replied. “I’m not ready,” she added in admission. She sat down on one end of the couch.

“I get it. That was a very mature choice.” He sat down on the other end, but more in the corner, so he was facing her.

“Yeah, but I still should have made some choice today,” she argued. “That wasn’t very mature of me. I looked like an idiot.”

“This is a beautiful planet,” Mateo pointed out. “There’s no reason why we can’t stay here for a bit. In fact, I think I’ll go for a swim in that lake.”

“After what happened to Proxima Doma as soon as we left, I’m not so sure that that will be true for much longer. Castlebourne practically went to war too. Maybe we’re cursed.”

“Those two problems were inevitable, and far beyond our control. Proxima Centauri is more unstable than anyone thought, and if you hadn’t helped all those refugees find safety on Castlebourne, maybe they wouldn’t be at war, but they would be oppressed. They carried their problems with them. That’s not on any of us.”

“I just don’t want something to happen here, that’s all,” Romana said.

“Is that why you couldn’t come up with an answer?” Leona asked as she was coming back into the common area.

“We left Doma just as things were falling apart,” Romana pointed out. “Had we stayed, we could have helped.”

Leona shook her head. “Centauri’s poles flipped, sending a massive coronal mass ejection towards the planet. The cataclysm was over in a matter of days. Everyone who died did so within that period. If we had returned a year later, there would have been nothing for us to do.”

“I don’t have to wait a year,” Romana contended.

“You still couldn’t have fixed it,” her father tried to explain. “The fact is, we’re on the other side of The Edge. We don’t have much information on what happens in this time period. We’re kind of flying blind here, and I think we’re all feeling that. It’s perfectly reasonable to see this as the calm before the storm. It’s unsettling. But I say, let’s just enjoy it. Let’s not leave Bida until we come across a reason to. That’s how it’s always been.”

“That’s not why I asked to be the navigator,” Romana said. “I was trying to put us in the driver’s seat for once.”

He chuckled. “I don’t think it works like that. Even without the powers that be forcing our hands, I don’t think it works like that.”

“I’m not sure I’m worried about the storm. I might be worried that there is no storm. I’m worried about purposelessness. I guess I’m not suggesting we caused all those issues on Doma and Castlebourne, and wherever. But I’ve read about your past exploits. You used to be busy every single day. You didn’t have breaks. You didn’t have vacations. Doesn’t it feel like things have slowed down? And don’t you think that’s weird?”

“It’s not weird, it’s by design.” Now Marie had come back. She walked over and turned on her fireplace, presumably for ambiance. It wasn’t like they got cold anymore. She sat down in an armchair. “When our ancestors were banging rocks together to make fire, every day was interesting for them too. Everything they saw was new, and they had to constantly solve problems. Sometimes, their solutions led to more problems. For millions of years, this didn’t stop. Those ancestors didn’t concern themselves with yearly taxes. They wouldn’t even understand the concept. Taxes were a solution to the problem of regulating the exchange of goods and services. The exchange of goods and services was the solution to the problem of high population and limited individual skill. The human race kept progressing, adding complexity, increasing the complications. In some ways, advancement made life easier, but it certainly didn’t make it simpler. We think of the Edge as some division between the common time traveler era, and the unknown ever after, but the truth is this has been in the works for a while. What the Edge really did was become the final move in a fundamental shift in how we advance.”

“What are you saying?” Not even Leona seemed to understand.

“I have been looking into it,” Marie went on. “That is what I’ve been spending my time on. The reason we’re no longer so busy is because almost no one is. Even new colonists don’t have to work hard. They send their automators ahead of time, they usually arrive via quantum terminals, they don’t start with low tech. We’re not advancing into complexity anymore, but for the first time in history, we’re advancing into simplicity. We’re trimming all the fat, and thriving with fewer things. An IMS unit has everything you need to survive except for gravity. A centrifugal cylinder or coin can get you that, or even just a hammer hab. Even the seven of us stopped needing a ship. So you have that, a synthesizer for replacement parts, maybe a virtual environment or two, and some means of generating power. That’s it. That gets you everything you need. You don’t even need a community anymore, as we see here on Bida.”

“How  do you explain Castlebourne then?” Ah, it was Angela’s turn now.

“Castlebourne is contrived complexity,” her sister argued. “No one has to live the way they do there, under those domes, having those adventures. That’s actually why they’re doing it, because real life has become too boring. There’s no struggle anymore. I admit, I can’t explain why they prefer those simulations to virtual constructs, but they still serve the same purpose. They’re there to keep you occupied, and from going insane. And the best part about them is that they’re relatively safe. Since they are designed, they’re controlled. No one in Zombiedome is in any real existential danger. The largest remaining population of undigitized humans was on Doma, and now that’s done with, either via death, or the holdouts giving in and finally digitizing their minds.

“We solved death, we solved boredom, and the only reason we are bored right now is because we don’t think we’re worthy of the free time. Mateo, you’re the first of us to have this pattern, and while you didn’t always know why, it was clear to you that there had to be some kind of reason. You don’t know any other way to live, because you’re still holding on to that higher calling. But it doesn’t exist anymore. Things do change, but they happen over longer time scales now. The days of the one day mission are simply over. The most interesting thing happening right now are the Ex Wars, and the reason we regretfully bowed out was because we all realized how useless we were. We can’t do anything, and that might be scary, but we need to stop trying.”

“So, this is it?” Olimpia asked from the doorway to her unit. “We have reached the end? There is just nothing left for us to do? We’ll just hole up in these belts, and have fun in simulations?”

“No, no, this can’t be true,” Mateo reasoned. “There are still some things we know about the future. That Everest Conway guy. We met him out of order. We haven’t met him for the first time yet,” he said with airquotes. “And we went on that unremembered mission with that guy named Amal. What was that? When was that?”

“Maybe that will never happen,” Marie offered. “Maybe we undid the futures they came from by meeting them out of order, and stepping on a butterfly together.”

“Or maybe we’re just in a lull,” Mateo decided. “Let’s go with that instead. I don’t really want bad things to happen, but I don’t want to be aimless either. If we were to be like that, why are we bothering to skip time anymore? I’m sure Ramses could find a way to suppress our patterns permanently.”

They all looked over at Ramses’ door, half expecting him to waltz back in too, but he was likely working on something important. When he didn’t show, the rest of the team seemed to agree that they didn’t want to talk about this anymore. It was pretty depressing, and while Marie’s thesis was interesting, they fittingly wished that it was more complicated than that. As Mateo said, they didn’t want bad things to happen so they could swoop in and fix them, but it would be weird if they just did what the general population was doing, and just had fun all day. They were decidedly different than the masses. They were special. There weren’t many time travelers around here, so it kind of fell on them to represent. They did decide on one thing, though. If by the end of the day, nothing happened that specifically kept them on this planet, they would leave, even if Romana couldn’t think of anywhere better to go.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 29, 2542

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During the team’s interim year, the pocket dimension generator belts they left behind explored the galaxy on their own. They did so while holographically invisible, in case the next encounter was with someone less kind than Renata and Quidel. The belt stack was able to visit nearly one new spot a day, for a total of 360 slings. When the stack arrived somewhere new, it had to wait for the coherence gauges to return to the violet. In the meantime, it took that opportunity to scan the region, providing Ramses with the data that he needed to rule out Spiral Station. The majority of the dots on the map were crabitats, but not all. Obviously, they started with the most remote since those were most likely to be what they were looking for. Besides Extremus, there was Verdemus, which created its own outpost around nearby stars. Some people from the Sixth Key had established a presence in this reality, and it didn’t look like they were hurting anyone, so the team decided to leave them be.

Every day, the belts would chip away at the map, gathering enough information to check each dot off. Now that they were back in the timestream, they elected to give the belts a break since the chances of being present when they found their target were low, and they really didn’t feel like going on another adventure. Ramses built them such a nice multidimensional home to live in, they decided to simply relax. The search was probably going to take years, so what was the rush?

Romana slammed her palm on the couch. “Downbeat!”

Everyone giggled. They actually weren’t even playing Downbeat, but trying to contrive the rules to another fictional game called Hassle the Fishmonger.

“No? I didn’t just win?” Romana questioned.

“Not unless you’re holding Mateo’s hand,” Marie suggested.

“Oh, good idea. I’m writing that down as a new rule,” Mateo said before taking his daughter’s hand in his.

They looked at each other before saying, “downbeat!” simultaneously. And then, as if it had been the magic words, the proximity alarm went off. A security feed appeared in front of the doors that led to the simulated backyard. A giant object had appeared before them, the technicolor webbing still fading away.

“Spiral Station,” Leona said, standing up.

“They must have been looking for us while we were looking for them,” Olimpia figured.

Without doing or saying a single thing, the station wrapped itself in bulk energy, and slung away.

“What the hell was the point of that?” Mateo questioned.

“They left something behind.” Ramses was tapping on his tablet. “It could be a bomb. Executing emergency teleportation.”

For about thirty minutes, they waited thousands of kilometers away, but nothing happened. Ramses had dropped a sensor buoy near the gift. It needed time to assess the threat level, but he was quickly confident that it contained no explosive materials. His best guess was that it was some kind of communication device, so they pulled it inside. He set it on the table and pressed the blinking red button. A hologram of Franka appeared behind the table. The sphere itself turned invisible to declutter the image. “Greetings, Team Matic. Word around the membrane is that you’ve been looking for us.”

Mateo stepped forward. “We have.”

“To what end?” Franka asked.

“Our slingdrive system,” Ramses began. “Someone pointed out that it can’t take us absolutely anywhere. It can only travel to a technological establishment, however remote. We were hoping you could fix that.”

“So you used the limitation to build a map of the galaxy, which pinpointed our location, albeit in an unlabeled manner. That’s clever,” Franka acknowledged.

Ramses looked awkwardly at Romana. “I’m not the one who came up with that either.”

“We’re guessing that you don’t have the same restrictions,” Leona said.

“We do not,” Franka admitted.

Dutch suddenly appeared behind her. He waved at the camera. “Hi, guys!”

“Hi, Dutch,” a few of them replied.

“Hi,” Romana said too, but in a very different tone. Not again.

“Okay, I’m talking here,” Franka said to Dutch, shooing him away without too much anger. She looked back at the team. “I’m afraid that bulk tech was my brother’s responsibility. I don’t know if you heard, but he kind of died?”

“We could have mourned together,” Leona argued, “but you abandoned us in the middle of nowhere.”

“You threatened me!” Franka volleyed. “I don’t like to be threatened!”

“Well, I’m sorry, I regret it!” Leona explained. “Which I would have said earlier, but we couldn’t find you!”

“Well, I’m sorry too!” Franka shouted back. “When you have this much power, it’s hard to remember how much normal people matter!”

“Well, okay!” Leona caught her breath. “I’m done with this sphere. You need to come back so we can have a real conversation.”

“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” Franka argued. She then tried to continue.

“We’re busy,” Dutch interrupted again.

“Thanks, Dutch, I got this.” Franka rolled her eyes in a way that suggested she liked having him around to keep the mood light, but it could be a bit much at times. “I brought you this intergalactic communicator so we could stay in contact, but Dutch wasn’t lying. We really are busy. I promise, it’s nothing you wouldn’t approve of, but you have your own destinies to fulfill. You are more boots on the ground, hands-on, street level people. And you...ya know, don’t exist most of the time? We have to stay out of the Milky Way galaxy, because it might cause a severe shift in the balance of power. The people there need to develop as they are for the most part. Project Starseed can’t have—forgive me for using this word—gods saving them all the time. They need people like you...with your limitations, your restrictions...your rules. I bet you’ve been trying to decide where to go. My advice? Go anywhere. Someone there will need you.”

“What about the Oaksent?” Mateo asked her.

“We’ve been monitoring the situation,” Franka told him. “It seems that you were...” She trailed off, and mumbled inaudibly.

“What was that?” Leona pressed. “We can’t hear you. There must be dark matter interference.”

“You were right!” Franka admitted. “The situation was a lot more nuanced than just the hypothetical assassination of one man. They are evidently fixing their own problems. A faction has broken off, and is on its way to go to war with Castlebourne, but it will take them long to get there and find it, and by the time they do, the balance of power will make their efforts fruitless. But instead of it being unfair and easy, the Castlebourners will have done it themselves. Thanks to people like you who made little changes, instead of sweeping decisions. The truth is, mom and dad, I admire you. And we can get to know each other better, but we can’t spend time. Our paths diverged before any of us were even born. One day, we might be able to team up again. I can see the Vellani Ambassador reuniting with the Iman Vellani. I see them working with The Jameela Jamil and Spiral Station. And I see Team Matic at the center of it. But for now, please stay in your corner. They need you, even if they don’t know it.”

“Wait,” Ramses said, worried that Franka was about to log off. “Is there anything you can do about my slingdrives? I know you didn’t design it, but surely Séarlas left behind operator’s manuals.”

“Why would you wanna go where there isn’t anyone else around?” Franka posed.

“I would like the option,” Ramses contended.

Franka sighed, and seemingly considered it. “When you return to the timestream next year, open your little map, and take note of a ping that you didn’t see before. That will be a beacon that I left in a remote region of the galaxy. You can go there for respite. But I’m not granting you access to all of time and space. This is the best I can do.”

“Well...thank you then,” Ramses said, having been hoping for a lot more.

“I better be going,” Franka said.

“Bye!” Dutch jumped back in. “You should go to Be—”

The call was disconnected.

“Well, that was weird,” Mateo said.

“We should try not to think of her as our daughter...because she isn’t,” Leona said to her husband. “She had different parents, who looked like us, and would make a lot of the same decisions as us, but were not us. We didn’t experience that, and we don’t have the right to treat her as family.”

There was an awkward silence, which Olimpia decided to break. “I think I’m gonna take a nap.”

“Yeah, me too,” Angela agreed. “Let’s all take an hour to do whatever we need to do, be that a nap, a talk, or a nice bath.”

Half an hour later, Mateo and Leona were in the former’s room, exhausted from having been talking about their feelings, when the slingdrives powered up. They ran out of their unit, and back into Marie’s. Most of their teammates were doing the same. Angela was fully naked, dripping wet from her shoulders down, and trying to dry herself off with a hand towel. Ramses came out last from his lab. “Who did that?”

“I did.” Romana was walking up the steps from Marie’s basement.

“Where did you bring us?” Leona questioned.

“The only logical place,” Romana answered enigmatically.

“Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida,” Ramses announced, looking at his device.

“Is this because of what Dutch said at the end of the call?” Mateo asked.

“This is obviously what he meant. Trust me, I looked through the colony catalogs, looking for an alternative, and this was the only place he could have possibly been trying to say before he was so rudely cut off.”

“Yeah, that’s probably true,” Leona agreed, “but that doesn’t mean we had to come here, or that you could make that decision without our input.”

Romana brushed it off. “Ugh, I’m so bored. I can’t take another game of Cones of Dunshire. It’s too thinky thinky.”

“The people who live here...” Leona began, trailing off, not knowing how to word it. “They’re not—oh my God. I don’t know how to put it. From the outside, they basically look like hermits, but instead of crabitats, they live in small pockets on the land and sea. Some do live in rotating cylinders, coins, and hammers, but up in orbit, because they don’t see their relative proximity to be any less isolating on a daily basis. No, that’s not right. They participate in community, but they technically live separately. They utilize technology efficiently, to make it so they don’t have to work. They otherwise worship nature, which makes sense given that this world is a miracle. I’m being really general here, but that’s to give you an idea of how they live. They don’t reject technology, and they don’t hate outsiders, but we probably shouldn’t meddle in their affairs.”

“Hold up,” Marie said. “Romy, you’re the one who sent us to Proxima Doma too. Is this the same thing? Did someone tell you to bring us here?”

“Yeah, Dutch,” Romana reminded them.

“I mean someone other than that. Did you meet a seer, or...?”

“It’s nothing like that,” Romana defended. “No more secrets. This is just our next stop. You don’t have to read anything into it. It’s just...we’re just...Doctor Who.”

“Doctor Who?” Leona asked. “How’s that now?”

“The Doctor doesn’t have to do anything,” Romana reasoned. “Everytime he goes somewhere, he pretty much always knows all the stuff. He’s not seeking out new life and new civilizations. He’s just flying around, and whenever he shows up, he helps whoever happens to be there. The writers gave up on contriving reasons for him to do that. It’s just the premise, and that’s enough. Let’s make that our premise. Let’s check out Bida for a little bit, and when we’re done, we’ll pick somewhere else to go. You don’t have to wait for someone to hand you a mission, should you choose to accept it. That’s what my sister was trying to tell us. She’s not my favorite sister, but it makes sense to me now, and I think I agree with her.”

Leona nodded. “It’s not a bad idea. The problem is that Bida has become almost entirely decentralized. That’s the consequence of extreme advancement in a post-scarcity economy. It’s why people like Linwood Meyers exist. Most aren’t misanthropic, but they lost their reasons to work together. Basically, everything that needed to be done is done. Some people will continue to look for new adventures, and new knowledge, but for a lot, a cabin in the woods is enough. They stand upon Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs alone because there is not much room at the top of a pyramid. So the people here probably don’t need us, and even if someone does, the chances of you landing us exactly at that settlement, instead of any of the other twenty million plots, are incredibly low.”

Romana held out her hand, but not in friendship. “I’ll take that bet.”

Leona smiled. “What are we betting?”

“If I win—if we’re where we’re supposed to be, helping the right person or people—you make me your navigator. As Captain, you reserve the right to veto, as I trust your judgment and wisdom, but as navigator, I initially choose our mission, every time.”

“And if I win?” Leona asked.

“If you win...you get infinite favors.” Romana seemed confident that she wouldn’t have to worry about the gravity of that offer.

Leona smiled wider now. “Okay.” She shook her daughter’s hand.

By the end of the day, Romana was the team’s navigator. It wasn’t even that hard. She cheated.

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Microstory 2334: Earth, January 22, 2179

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Dear Corinthia,

I beamed your contact card to dad, and he said that he’s going to write to you as soon as possible. Take that with a grain of salt, because his definition of possible might be different than yours. I would say, give it a couple of weeks, and then maybe just give up. I could talk to him again, if you wanted, but he’s really nervous. He doesn’t know if you forgive him, or hate him, or what. I have not told him anything about you. I told him that you and I were in contact now, and demanded he explain his involvement in our separation thirty-six years ago. I didn’t say anything about your job, or what your life is like on Vacuus. I did divulge that his wife, your mother, was dead. I felt like he had a right to know that, regardless of how at fault he is. Anyway, I hope that whatever happens between the two of you, it doesn’t negatively impact our relationship. I think he may be partially worried about that too. I want you to know that I won’t let him ruin our new sibling connection, and I would hope that you don’t let whatever he does or says—or doesn’t do or say—stop you from wanting to converse with me. Okay, I think I’m done with all this negativity now. You inspired me today. I actually don’t have much idea of how the platform can move from one part of the ocean to another. You’re right, it’s pretty big, so it can’t be easy. I’ve started taking some courses on it, not necessarily so I can tell you, but because I would like to understand it myself. I’m so old, I doubt that I’ll ever become an engineer, or a mechanic, or a sailor, but it doesn’t hurt to learn more stuff.

Until next time,

Condor

Microstory 2333: Vacuus, January 15, 2179

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Dear Condor,

That’s great news about the trade deal going through. I would be interested to know more about your floating dome, and how it’s navigated through the waters. It seems like something large enough to fit as many people as you seem to have in your population would move really slowly. As far as dad is concerned, you can give him my contact information. The way I see it, he has to take the first steps to building a relationship with me, not the other way around. If he never sends me a message, then so be it. But I’m not going to write the first letter, and then sit here in anticipation of a reply. Thank you for asking, it was very thoughtful of you, and of him. So yes, go ahead and tell him how to get a hold of me. I don’t know how, uhh, smart he is, but explain the light lag to him too if he doesn’t understand. That may make you laugh, but there are some older people here who don’t get how it works. Which is ridiculous, because they all volunteered for this mission, having been told how difficult it would be to call back to Earth. I mean, even if you’re only a geologist, you’re still an astronaut, and you still need a basic foundation of space science. I dunno. I was a baby when our ship launched. It was a passenger transport, unlike the ships of old, which were only for a crew. That is to say, technically, anyone could have flown on it, with no training whatsoever. That’s how I was, being too young to learn anything. Still, you would think an adult going on the mission would expect themselves to be  better prepared. Sorry, I’m rambling again. I’m just a little nervous. I just know that, after I send this message, the next one could be coming from you, or from our father. Don’t take that as hesitation, I’ve made my decision, but that’s not going to stop the anxiety. How about this? Why don’t you respond to me first, and then give him my number. That way, I can be a little more prepared. Again, he may not want to reach out at all. You never know what’s going on in someone else’s head. It just might be easier to at least have one last buffer. I would appreciate it.

Congratulations on your new immigrant friends,

Corinthia

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 26, 2478

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Ramses frantically searched through the operation logs, trying to figure out where Romana could have gone off to, but this ship wasn’t originally designed for time or instantaneous travel. He has had to develop the new navigation system from scratch, and that wasn’t something that he could just sit down and code. Like the explorers of yore, he needed information, and the only way to get it would be to go out and blaze the trails first. It wasn’t ready. None of this was ready, and he was freaking out again, feeling like a failure. He spent all day on it, and then the computers worked on it without him for a year. Nothing. They needed new avenues of data collection.

They had given Romana a communication disc, and her own IMS, but she wasn’t wearing an upgraded substrate, so she didn’t enjoy an emotional bond with the others. That was probably why she spun off alone, leaving everyone else behind. What they realized they needed to do now was determine whether the tether worked for any of them. Perhaps they couldn’t find her because it didn’t work at all, or perhaps they just didn’t know what they were doing yet. Since the Vellani Ambassador was preoccupied by a proverbial level three diagnostic, they were gonna have to do this themselves.

“How far should I go?” Mateo’s helmet was locked in, but his visor was still up.

“As far as you can,” Leona answered as she was making sure there weren’t any leaks in his suit. “We’ll instruct you from here.”

Marie was doing the same for Olimpia. “Just make sure you’re going in opposite directions. You head towards the sun. Pia, go for Pluto.”

“Got it,” Olimpia confirmed, jerking her head down as her visor dropped as if the gesture had caused it to happen. She quickly switched the helmet to depth hologram mode, which essentially turned the whole thing invisible.

Mateo did the same, then walked over to her. They reached out with their right arms, and slammed them against each other. “See you on the other side, love.”

“Not if I see you first.” Olimpia quickly let go, and spun around before disappearing.

Mateo tipped himself over backwards, and disappeared at the last second before hitting the floor. He found himself floating in orbit over Castlebourne. He hung there for a moment, just to admire the view. Then he pushed himself into burst mode, and jumped as far from the planet as he could. He went a few degrees off the host star, but eventually passed it, and kept it at its back. He stayed in contact with his friends, especially Olimpia, who was making good time too. He was starting to get tired, but he never said anything, and never gave up.

“Okay, kids, you’re far enough,” Leona began over comms. “Switch off your beacons, and go radio silent. Choose a new direction in secret, and keep going for another ten minutes. Zig zag if you want, just don’t tell us where you are. Only make contact in an emergency.”

“Roger, boss,” Olimpia replied.

“Understood,” Mateo added. “Going dark now.” He did as he was asked, then started teleporting again, somewhat perpendicular to the orbital plane. It wasn’t a perfect ninety degree angle, though. He was on his way sort of back towards the sun, but on the scenic route. He did zig a few times, and even zagged, but kept mostly on a straight line. Ten minutes later, he stopped jumping, and just let himself drift. It took a lot out of him, so he drank some water, and some dayfruit smoothie. He thought about watching the next episode of American Housewife on the queue to pass the time, but he was supposed to be darklurking. Even a little extra heat waste could alert the team to his location. Ramses wanted to design miniature heat shunt pocket dimensions for their suits, but it was low on the priority list at the moment. They were supposed to ignore such old school tracking techniques anyway, but it was best to not tempt fate.

Less than thirty minutes later, a suited somebody appeared out of nowhere, and tackled Mateo. “Tag, you’re it!” Angela cried through helmet conduction.

“It worked?” Mateo asked. “You could sense my location?”

“It did. Turn your comms back on. Marie already found Olimpia. She turned right around, and came back towards the planet to trick us, so she was pretty close again.”

“I thought about doing that,” Mateo said for all to hear.

“I’m glad we both didn’t do the same thing,” Olimpia decided.

Outer space and the sun suddenly disappeared to be replaced by the interior of the Vellani. They were back in the airlock. Ramses walked in. “That confirms it, we can find each other, but not Romana.”

“Theories,” Marie asked, “besides the obvious that the tether’s range is limited, and we are limited in our ability to test it?”

“Everyone be quiet,” Ramses ordered. “Just close your eyes and ears, and listen with your mind. Think about her, and only her. You should hear something.”

They did as he said. It took Mateo a moment, but there was something. It wasn’t Romana’s location, but it was something. It was like...static? Some sort of noise. It wasn’t constant, though, like television snow. There were blips, and if they were exhibiting a pattern, surely one of the smarties would be able to translate it.

“Calibration delay,” Leona finally figured.

“That’s right,” Ramses agreed. “At least I think so.”

“What does that mean?” Olimpia asked.

“The tether has to take a moment to recalculate its connections each time there’s a significant change in position of one of its nodes, e.g. one of us. We could feel it as you two were teleporting away from us. Of course, since you were still relatively close, there wasn’t much of a delay...”

“But if Romana went a lot further or farther, it will take a lot longer for us to pinpoint her location,” Angela realized. “But it’s been quite a while. How long are we expecting it to take?”

Ramses took a moment to respond. “The calibration should be measured in seconds, even at the furthest reaches of time and space. The reason we can’t find her is probably because she’s not staying in one place. She’s in constant flux.”

“Like my sister, Aquila,” Mateo guessed.

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Ramses said. “It was before my time, but maybe. If our hypothesis is correct, Romana is truly lost in time.”

“What could we possibly do from here?” Marie asked. “Could we—I dunno...try to match her energy?”

Leona smiled. “That’s a nice thought. If we intentionally became as erratic as her, we might end up in the same temporal dimension. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t work. If anything, it would make it worse by triggering more calibration than our tethers should be expected to calculate.”

“So, what do we do?” Mateo pressed. “How do we find my daughter?”

Leona and Ramses were silent.

“What do we do!” Mateo repeated himself in a raised voice.

“I don’t know,” Ramses admitted.

Mateo finally removed his helmet, and dropped it on the floor. He tried to walk towards his best friend, but the helmet slid along right behind him. “Goddamn proximity control magnets. Tethers will be the death of me!” He hastily turned off the feature to cut his stalker loose, so he could talk to Ramses in peace. “Do whatever you have to do. Tear that machine apart and put it back together backwards, take every ounce of temporal energy from me, call a time god; I don’t care. Find her.”

Ramses briskly walked out of the room, presumably to comply.

“What? Do you think I was too harsh?” Mateo questioned the room.

“Ram’s okay,” Leona assured him. “He understands that he doesn’t understand what it’s like to have a kid. That being said, it doesn’t give you the right to treat friends like enemies, so make sure you keep your eyes peeled for that line, lest you cross it.”

“Okay.” Mateo put his helmet back on. “I’ll be on the roof.” He teleported outside and activated his boot magnets to stay in place. The ship was moving at very low subfractional speeds to get back to the planet. There wasn’t any reason to jump back there instantaneously, even though they obviously could with ease. He stared into the abyss, and when he grew tired, he lay down and watched the stars above him.

A clanking of boots approached him. Someone else wearing an IMS appeared in his view. They switched on their hologram to make themselves look like Romana.

“I don’t need role play therapy, whoever you are,” he contended, forgetting to turn his comms on. “I’ll tell her whatever I need to tell her when I see her for real.”

The way Angela talked to him before, by placing her helmet against his, was a way to send soundwaves into each other’s air spaces since they wouldn’t make it across the vacuum. This was a really great way for two people to communicate without involving anyone else. Theoretically, any signal could be hacked one way or another. In an atmosphere, even if there were no electronic or mechanical devices nearby, maybe someone was eavesdropping. Helmet conduction was probably the safest way to keep a secret that was ever invented, as long as everyone kept their radios off, which was true of Mateo in this case. This mystery person didn’t need to crouch down and place their helmets directly together, though. They took out a device that was specifically designed for it. They stuck one patch on their own visor, extended the second patch out with the retractable wire, and stuck the second one on his. “I really am Romana.”

“They found you?” Mateo asked, still not sure if he believed it.

She sat down next to him as he was sitting up. “No, not yet. But they will.”

“Tell me how we do it in the future, so we can just do it faster this time.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” she replied. “Rambo has to go through the whole process. I only came back in time to alleviate your stress.”

He stared at her for a moment, then looked away. “You’re not really her.”

“You really think one of your friends would trick you? Plus, I just read your mind.”

“If you’re from the future, you would know them better than me.”

“I’m not from that far in the future,” she claimed. “But here’s the funny thing, we never did run that DNA test, did we? The girl you met the other day might not have ever really been Romana. Or maybe she was, but her history wasn’t true in the first place. Because you actually never ran a DNA test, meaning Romana the baby was never necessarily your child in the first place. It could be Silenus’ baby instead, and the whole embryo being passed down the matrilineal line was a giant lie. Or you do have a baby, and she’s out there somewhere, or she was, or she will be, and we cloned her, and inserted someone else into the copy. Or someone else cloned her, and I’m the real one, and every version you’ve met until now has been an impostor.”

“Okay, okay, I get it. You never really know someone.”

“All we can do is our best,” she added.

“I thought you were supposed to make me feel better. How is this helping?”

“I am, and it is. Here’s the lesson; you’re an advancer. The whole point of you as a salmon was to force you to jump through time, leaving everyone behind. Other time travelers leave their families in their own pasts, but they usually do it all at once, like ripping off an adhesive bandage. You did it gradually, giving you time to watch them slip through your fingers. You should be used to it by now. If you never see me again, you’ll be okay. You have three other daughters, and a son. You didn’t raise them either.”

“Again, your pep talk isn’t working. The fact that I don’t know any of my own kids is not a point of pride. It is my great shame.”

She sighed and nodded as she watched Castlebourne grow larger and larger. She removed a silver business card from her arm cache, and handed it to him. It clinked a little, and felt hard, like metal, instead of paper, but it appeared to be blank. “I’m not really here to make you feel better. That’s not something I could ever do. You lost out on fifteen years with me. I’ve had exactly that much time to come to terms with it. You haven’t. Activate that whenever you’re feeling upset, and need to talk to someone who understands. Most rendezvous cards are single use, but this one is permanent.”

“This is therapy? Who’s it with? Dr. Hammer?”

She smiled with teeth. “Good guess. She’s the facilitator, but it’s more of a support group, full of people who have gone through what you have. I’m sure your story beats ‘em all, but they’ll be a great resource just the same.”

“They all lost their children in general,” he pressed, “or time travel took them?”

“The second one,” she promised. “Some of them are the travelers, some of them were the ones left behind. Some are both.”

He frowned at her. “How long will it take Ramses and Leona to find you? When will you close this loop?”

Mateo’s comms disc pinged, so he opened a channel. “Mateo, come back inside, I figured something out,” Ramses said.

Romana helped her father up from the hull. “Won’t be long now. You go first. I don’t want you to see me leave again. It must be so traumatizing by now.”

After a quick hug, he disappeared, but he secretly jumped back outside to watch her from a distance. Dark particles. That was how she came here, and how she left. This somehow all involved Buddy Citrus. Realizing that there was nothing he could do about that at the moment, he went back to the group inside.

Ramses presented them with something that they all recognized. It was the little machine that scientists in the Fifth Division designed to help them locate each other before, back when Dalton Hawk separated them to all the five realities. “The original is long gone, but I still have the specs, so I printed a new one. This is how we’re gonna find your girl. All I need to do is figure out how to interface it with the slingdrive.”

Mateo stepped out of the armor module of his IMS. He stumbled back  a little like a newborn fawn, bracing himself on the wall before leaning against it. “Do it.”

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Extremus: Year 87

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Day One. Officially, anyway. Up until now, Tinaya has been wearing full dress uniform, which is usually reserved for ceremonies, and other formal events, such as her Commissioning Ceremony last week. But she has not been allowed to take it off throughout the entire transitional period. Traditionally, this week has not been part of the program for shift changes, but this is what the council decided on some years ago, and it’s the first time they’ve had the opportunity to see it through. In a weird twist on these procedures, Tinaya even has to sleep in these damn things, which have not been very comfortable, and she doesn’t really understand why they forced it upon her. Lataran didn’t have to do that, though she has her own problems. They had her Advancement Ceremony yesterday, where she was awarded the rank of Admiral. She will now become Tinaya’s primary advisor, and she’s struggling with it in ways that she has yet to clarify for Tinaya. If Soto Tamm were still alive, and hadn’t been stripped of his rank, he would be serving in this capacity as well. One day. One day, when Tinaya advances as well, there will finally be two Admirals at once.

It’s different for her, though. She is not the same kind of captain as Halan Yenant, Kaiora Leithe, Soto Tamm, or Lataran Keen. She’s only here to act as a bridge between Lataran and whoever ends up getting the job next. They still don’t know who that’s going to be, but they have about ten years to find them. They will become a normal captain for the next twenty-four years, and all will be right with the world. Tinaya is just here to make sure that happens. She had to lobby for the title of Interim Captain, instead of a regular Captain. What does this do? Very little right now, but once her shift is over, she’ll be promoted to Vice Admiral, instead of Full Admiral, and that distinction is quite important. It’s not just symbolic, but even if it were, that would be enough. She doesn’t want this to be seen as a dynasty, as she explained to the council before accepting this position. The people need to know that she’s not a power-hungry monster; that she is only here to help. She’s humble; one of the people.

Everyone knows her already, of course. She’s been working alongside the crew since the beginning of the year, and she was famous before this anyway. But still, now that the transition period is over, she wants to address the crew. Literally the entire crew. Thistle—the not-so-artificial intelligence—is handling every single one of the ship’s systems. Obviously, he could always be doing this, even if he weren’t pretending to not be a real boy, but they’re not going to cancel hundreds of jobs just because of the logic. People want to work, they want to contribute. And one way that Tinaya contributes is by making them feel valued and welcome. And comfortable. She’s standing on stage. Lataran is at her flank, smiling widely, and ready to add her two cents if she’s called to. Arqut is to Tinaya’s other side. He’s no longer the Superintendent, having stepped down at the same time Tinaya stepped up. There is no one in the position right now, but if he’s still alive when the need arises again, he’ll get back to it...unless someone asks him not to, in which case he’ll have a decision to make.

Tinaya is thinking about all this, stuck in her own head again. Lataran clears her throat suggestively. “Yes, thank you, Admiral Keen,” Tinaya says into the microphone for all to hear. “I wasn’t asleep. I wanted to wait one more minute for any stragglers.”

“Everyone’s here,” Athan says from the steps of the stage, where it does seem like he’s been keeping a close eye on the crowd. “I counted.” He was Lataran’s First Lieutenant, but his shift is over now too. Tinaya has yet to replace him, or the Second Lieutenant. He has some ideas for her, but she hasn’t taken the time to look them over. He’s widely considered to be the hardest working man on the ship, having served as Tamm’s Second Lieutenant before this, and just generally being known to go above and beyond with his duties. He’s probably exhausted, but he’s probably right about who Tinaya should choose as her lieutenants.

“Thank you, Lieutenant Velitchkov,” Tinaya says, into the mic again.

“Uh, it’s Mister Velitchkov,” he corrects.

“Not until you stop helping me, and start focusing more on self-care, Lieutenant,” she says affectionately, triggering the audience’s laughter. She starts to raise her voice, which likely forces the sound engineer to lower the volume on the speakers. “Now that we’ve confirmed our headcount, we’ll begin. I won’t keep you too long, I know that you all have very important things to get to. It is my hope that you will consider this to be a nice, relaxing break, rather than a dreadfully annoying inconvenience. I know that transitions can be difficult, and I want to thank you all for being so patient and helpful to me during my first week. I’m warning you now that I will continue to need your help as we push forward to our objective. I won’t talk about that, though; that none of us will be alive to see the Extremus planet. Every leader who has ever given you a speech has mentioned how brave you are for that. You already know that you are. Instead, I’ll remind you that I have a lot of experience in helping people make their respective departments and jobs better. I didn’t succeed in that alone, and I won’t succeed in this new job alone either. I need you. Therefore...I need you to be comfortable.

“I had my security briefing earlier this morning, where I was informed that the majority of you have been operating under PREPCON Three. I have worn the armor module myself before. I know how heavy and cumbersome it can be, especially after long periods of one-g. They also informed me that some of you have lowered the gravity in your sections to help with this. I’m not going to get you in trouble for that, but I would like it to stop. It places undue strain on our power systems, and risks the integrity of propulsion. The preparedness conditions were created by a group of smart Earthans who knew nothing of temporal manipulation. In particular, they didn’t know about teleportation. I am not at liberty to downgrade our condition to PREPCON Four. That is a military decision that I cannot overrule unless I want to instigate martial law, which I know none of us wants me to do. However, it is well within my rights to alter the mandate for my people. The military can do whatever they want. They are seeing a threat, whether it is there or not, but if it’s there, it will be their job to handle it; not yours. I am creating a new condition between Four and Three. I dunno, let’s call it Three-point-Five.

“You will wear your base modules, and your response modules over them, along with your glove liners, just like you would if you were in PREPCON Four. In addition, you will place your armor modules in active support mode, and each and every one of you will know where it is at all times, and maintain a spatial tether to it for your safety. It doesn’t have to be nearby, but you can’t sever the tether for any reason. At the first sign of danger, you will apport your armor module to your exact location, and be automatically inside of it. This is something that the models we use on the Extremus have always been capable of. We just needed to switch the feature on shipwide. Please note that this compromise applies to the general population of the crew unless given other orders. There will be times when your duties demand that you be wearing the armor module regardless, or even the PRU and helmet. I’m certainly not going to let you go on a spacewalk without these things. Also note that I have the power to change this at any point, for anyone and everyone. I could push you all to PREPCON One if I wanted to. It’s a moving target, as it always has been. Does this all sound fair?”

The crew seems rather responsive to this modification to the rules. Some seem extremely relieved by it. The Exin Empire is a constant threat to them, but as long as the ship stays in intergalactic space, there shouldn’t be any territorial disagreements. They could always come up and attack them unprovoked just because they’re assholes, but no one has given Tinaya a reason to believe that this will actually happen. The security briefing reported wide open spaces from here to the Extremus planet. The fact that they are at PREPCON Three is more of a precaution, based on a sense of paranoia that will hopefully lessen over time. She doesn’t want everyone to live in fear. If they’re going to do that, they may as well turn right back around and return to Gatewood.

Tinaya goes over a few more things. She welcomes others who have started their own shifts this week, and preemptively thanks those whose shifts will be ending soon. When the meeting is over, she sends them all back, either to active duty, or their downtime. Having heard that it was over, Thistle pings her to ask for a private meeting. She obliges, but takes Lataran and Athan with her. They teleport to the captain’s ready room, which Lataran apparently only ever used once. There are plenty of other secret meeting places on the ship, and she was always partial to a literally invisible room right next to the portal that led to the Bridger Section.

Thistle appears as a hologram. “I didn’t ask for them to be here.”

“Anything you can say to—”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Thistle demands. “You have any idea how many times I’ve heard every cliché in the book? At any rate, this involves the two of them. I’m not sure how you’ll want to proceed after I tell you what I’ve discovered after I was given access to the navigational data.”

“Oh,” Lataran says. “You’re talking about the recourse jumps. Oh my God, I totally forgot about those.”

“Me too,” Athan agrees.

“I’ve not forgotten,” Tinaya says, “because I don’t know what they are.”

Thistle glares at Lataran in case she wants to answer instead.

She does. “Sixty-two years ago, then-Captain Yenant made a major course correction to save the ship from collision with a planet that was placed in its path to destroy the passengers. It would have resulted in the death of our ancestors, the prevention of all of our births, and the end of the mission forever. He went into hock for it, and died disgraced.” She is reluctant to continue, but musters the courage. “Olindse Belo was subsequently assigned to replace him as interim Captain, before Kaiora Leithe took over the position for a full shift. Before the transition, the two of them got together, and came up with a plan. They didn’t want to be in the void. That’s not where we’re going. We’re not trying to get tens of thousands of light years from where we started. We’re trying to get to the other side of a galaxy. In order to reclaim this objective, they started making new course corrections. Tiny ones. Tiny, imperceptible ones, thanks to the ship’s emergency teleporter.”

Tinaya stuffs her face in both of her palms, and incidentally moistens them up with a deep exhale. She pulls her eyes out from under her fingers, but keeps her nose and mouth still trapped. “Are you trying to tell me that this ship has been turning for sixty years, and no one noticed!”

“Yes,” Athan replies.

“We’re all complicit,” Tinaya laments. “We’re all complicit in a crime. Halan Yenant is considered to be the greatest Captain this ship has ever seen, and they still threw him in hock for it. You think they won’t do the same to us when they find out?”

“As I said,” Lataran goes on, “they’re tiny jumps. They’re within tolerable margins. They’re not illegal at all.”

Tinaya exhales again, but is now looking straight up, trying to gradually blind herself with the ceiling light. “Those margins are there to account for course deviations that occur during minor gravitational disturbances through space while traveling at reframe speeds. That’s what I was just talking about with the crew; blaming them for messing up our vector to feel a little more comfortable in their suits. Now I’m finding out that them adjusting the internal gravity of a few work areas hasn’t had any effect at all, and our problems with propulsion are actually the result of a systematic plan to undermine the rule of law on this ship, which has been going on since I was born. That is unacceptable Lataran. How can you be so calm?”

“Well, I found out about it myself more than two decades ago.”

“Well, to be fair,” Athan interjects, “you weren’t upset about it like she is.”

Lataran ignores this remark, and redirects her attention to Tinaya. “I’ve told you, captains keep secrets. You’ll do it too. You’ll even keep this one.”

“Oh, will I?”

“Yes, because if you don’t, we’re screwed!” she cries.

“We’re already screwed!” Tinaya cries back. “The whole reason Halan made that sacrifice is to protect us from the Exins, who want us to stay away from their beautiful little hellscape paradise. We’re in the void to survive, and the closer we get back to the galaxy, the more danger we’re in.”

“That’s another benefit of it being little by little,” Lataran reasons. “By the time we get back to it, we’ll be far beyond their region of space. There’s no way that they’ve taken over the whole galaxy.”

“They’re time travelers, Lataran! All they have is time. Yes, they may have taken over the whole galaxy. They may have done it four billion years ago!”

Lataran scoffs. “That’s not what the intelligence reports determine.”

“Maybe not,” Tinaya agrees, “but this is still a breach of trust. I ran my campaign for First Chair on a platform of transparency, and I erased my own job to actually make that work. I didn’t want to take this position because of how secretive it is, and I hoped to change that. But on my first full day, I learn that there is something I can’t change, because not only will it ruin the reputation of my aunt, but put my best friend in hock for the rest of her life. Either I get on board, and run the risk of the same outcome for all of us eventually, or I do the right thing now, and end up being the only one left unscathed, if that. Arqut was Superintendent, did he know?”

“Doubtful,” Athan responds.

“I never told him,” Lataran adds.

Tinaya frowns, and tries to figure out what she’s going to do about this. She’s damned if she does, and damned if she doesn’t. But if she comes clean, it’s worse for everyone. At least there’s hope that everything turns out okay if she just keeps lying, as Lataran predicted. So that’s the clincher. “Thistle, erase all knowledge of this from your memory. We’re covering this up. Goddammit.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 0 EXT

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

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

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

Everyone raised their hand.

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

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

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

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

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

“Report,” Leona ordered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s a good idea. Thanks.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“For..for what?” she stammered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“For safety,” he answered.

“I can’t die in here,” she reasoned.

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

“Who taught you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How far?” Leona asked.

“One hop, one skip, and one jump.”

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

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

“I know.”

They removed their bands, and got out of bed.

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