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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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 18, 2399

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Agreement of what?” Ramses questions, confused.

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

“Heard that too!” young Moray exclaims.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s fine,” Alyssa promises.

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

“What do you mean?” Leona asks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s happening?” Ramses asks her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What?”

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

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 3, 2398

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When Alyssa McIver was fully brought into the fold last week, she decided that she wouldn’t feel comfortable here if she wasn’t contributing in some way. Some of these people have jobs, and some go on missions, and who knows what’s going on that she and her family don’t even see? There had to be something she could do. Perhaps they wanted a roof garden. She could certainly help with that, but someone would have to pay for it, so that seemed like an odd request, since it could sound like she was being too greedy and needy. There was a way, though. On the first floor of the building, they had set up the security room. They didn’t have any security guards to work out of there, but they had plenty of cameras. They even had ones installed in a parking lot less than a mile away. She didn’t understand at first, but then they explained that that’s where everybody seems to end up when they come to this reality from elsewhere. It’s an easy job, but not one that can be ignored. Someone has to watch the footage, or at least review it fast forwarded later.

So that’s what she’s been doing for the last week. She keeps an eye on all of the cameras, some of which are just pointing at lava lamps, for reasons that she’s not expected to care about. Again, it’s not particularly difficult, but it keeps it off of other people’s plates, freeing them to conduct more important business. She’s sitting here right now, and has just realized that the building’s been nearly all cleared out. She doesn’t have audio, so she doesn’t know why, but it seems everyone left for different reasons, rather than as part of some conspiracy. Leona Matic had to go inspect a manufacturing plant, Angela and Kivi had to have a business lunch; who knows? As she’s rechecking the monitors, just in case she spots someone somewhere, she sees movement out of the corner of her eye. It’s one of the parking lot cameras. That’s not that weird. People drive in and out of it all the time. It’s an overflow lot, so it’s not extremely packed, but it sees traffic every day. Still, when that happens, she’s been asked to run it back to see if the persons there walked or drove like normal, or appeared out of nowhere. She jumps back ten seconds. Holy crap, he appeared out of nowhere. Wait, go back again, and keep an eye on the timestamp. Yep, it happened. It’s a time traveler.

It’s been almost a minute now, and every second that passes gives the visitor more time to leave. He may not even be trying to escape, but just not know to stick around and wait for the welcome party. There are so many people that Alyssa could call, but she doesn’t know who among them is closest to the lot, or whether they’re in a position to get there anyway. The Lofts aren’t that far from it, though. It’s within walking distance. More appropriately, it’s within running distance. She doesn’t have time to think this through. She’ll ask for forgiveness later. This is her best opportunity to demonstrate her value, and she considers it part of her job here. They didn’t specifically say that it was, but they didn’t tell her what else to do, probably because they didn’t truly believe that it would ever come up.

Carlin is in the hallway when Alyssa bursts out of the security room. “Lock up for me!” she yells back. “Moray is in charge!”

“Where are you going?” he questions.

“To the lot!” Someone ought to know where she’s run off to.

She races down Main Street as fast as she can, then steers to the left at Grand. She doesn’t stop, even when her shins begin to scream angrily at her. She just has to make it there, and then she can rest. The visitor needs to know that he’s not alone. Even if he runs off after that, at least he would have gotten that message. Or maybe he won’t get any message at all. Even at top speed, it still takes her five minutes to cover the distance, and the guy is no longer around when she reaches his last known location. He may be meters from her, but if he turned the corner of a nearby building, she wouldn’t be able to see him, and she has no idea which direction to try. What would someone who has just experienced this do? Where would they go? That depends on who they are, and what they know of all this. It’s an impossible question to answer.

Alyssa’s phone rings, and she picks it up instinctively, but keeps looking around for clues, all the while trying to catch her breath. “Carlin, I’m kind of busy right now.”

“He went south on Warwick,” Carlin replies.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“The guy you’re trying to find. He’s heading south, probably intending to cut through that park.”

“How do you know this?” Alyssa asks him.

“You left the room open. I took a look at the cameras, and watched him walk away. He’s out of range now, but if you hurry, you’ll catch up. He doesn’t seem to be in any sort of rush. Once he got his bearings, it looked like he kind of knew where he wanted to go.”

“Thanks,” Alyssa says. “I assume you’re watching me right now. Which way is Warwick?”

After she gets the info, Alyssa hangs up and heads off. She drops to a jog, because she no longer needs to break the land speed record, she only needs to close the gap. Before too long, she sees the back of the head of the target. He’s wearing the same clothes, so it’s got to be him. She drops pace so it doesn’t look like she’s coming for an attack, but maintains an advance.

He notices that someone is behind him, so he looks over his shoulder, but since they’re in a park of all places, it doesn’t concern him. He must assume she’s just out to get some exercise. She decides not to wave. He may freak out yet, and if he does, she ought to be closer. He turns back, and keeps going, but then he stops. He turns around completely, and steps forward to meet her in the middle. “Alyssa? I thought that was you,” he says like they went to high school together.

She stops, worried. Maybe she’s the one who’s going to have to run away.

“Oh, sorry. I thought you were someone else,” the man backtracks.

She’s not buying it. “My name is Alyssa, so you really do know me. How?”

The man looks around. “Is it a coincidence that you’re in this park, or did you know that I arrived?”

She doesn’t speak, but it’s written all over her face.

He nods. “If you knew that you would find me here, you must know at least a little bit about time travel. You are from my past, but I must be from your future. That explains why you look a little younger than when I last saw you.”

“When was this?” she asks him.

“That’s too much information. We are not what the kids call simpatico, which means that I know things about your personal future. Best not to tamper with that.”

“Can you at least tell me your name?” she asks.

“Of course. I’m Vearden Haywood.”