The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 3, 2547

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Ramses was unable to track the location of the missing slingbelts, and there was no recourse for this. He designed the bulk map so that, while most of the dots were showing non-specific points, the belts were distinct, and stood out. If they were anywhere out there, he would be able to spot them. Their two top hypotheses were that they were either destroyed, or taken through time. Whoever did it knew exactly what they were after. They weren’t just a couple of random kids swimming in the ocean, who happened to feel something invisible in the water. Their prime suspects were the Spiral Station crew, but they didn’t want to assume. They had plenty of genuine enemies, and since time travel was inherently involved, it could have been someone they hadn’t even crossed paths with yet. Instead of wasting pointless effort on figuring it out, Ramses just programmed his forge core to build three replacement belts during the interim year. Mateo, Leona, and Olimpia had lost all of their belongings, but that wasn’t a big deal.

It was interesting that the married trio were the ones whose belts were stolen. Ram calculated a 2.85% chance that this was entirely unintentionally, but the more practical odds said that it was vastly more improbable. Just the fact that the other four belts were left behind made it unlikely to have been random. They were magnetically linked to one another. It was actually more difficult for them to take only some of the belts, than to have swiped them all in one go.

The next day, the missing belts appeared on the bulk map. They had been transported halfway across the Milky Way, for reasons yet unknown. “Have we been there before?” Olimpia asked. “Do we know anyone there?”

“That is part of the nuclear star cluster, which is relatively close to Sagittarius A*, our galaxy’s central black hole” Leona explained. “It’s not the farthest we’ve ever been, but as you can see, no one else is there. It’s only our belts.”

“No one has ever been there,” Ramses added. “They’re on Southside. Extremus crossed over the black hole on the north side of the galactic plane. When the Matrioshka Body was studying time, it too was on Northside. The whole stellar neighborhood is on Northside, so we just don’t know too much about this region.”

Romana giggled. “They’re a gift.”

“Huh?” Mateo asked.

“We were just talking about Operation Starframe,” Romana said. “If we want to reach every corner of the galaxy, it’s best to start in the center. Now we can do that. Now we have something to lock onto. This will be our staging ground.”

“We don’t know that the thief did this as a favor,” Marie pointed out. “It could be a trap instead. I’m guessing this region is naturally fairly hostile, if it’s so close to the chaos of the supermassive black hole.”

Ramses made a facial shrug. “It’s not as dangerous as, say, the s-star cluster, which is much closer to the singularity, but it’s not particularly safe, like it is for Sol. I’m inclined to agree with Romy. It’s too coincidental. If I were the thief, I would put a trap around Sirius, or some other close but barely settled region. It took them too much work to get to where they are. Yes, I’m sure they are trying to lure us there. It’s irrational to believe that they hid the belts from detection last year, but forgot to shield them today when they would know we’ve returned to the timestream. But based on our track record, does anyone here really think that we’re not gonna go?”

They all laughed a little. “Yeah, we’re gonna go,” Mateo decided. He commanded his nanites to wrap him up in armor, leaving his face unprotected for now. “What did you say before, Romana? Boot ‘n’ rally.”

They all armored up too. “Yalla,” Leona ordered.

“Give me a minute,” Ramses defended. “I need to make the calculations.” He turned away and paced a little as he was tapping on his wrist device. “Okay do it again.”

“Yalla.”

They slung to the nucleus, and landed on a rocky planet. It wasn’t heavily vegetized, but not barren either. The plantlife was clearly alien, but decidedly alive. The sky was a beautiful sunset orange. Snowcapped mountains towered in the distance, and it looked a little greener on the foothills. They turned to find three dress form mannequins on a display curve. A slingbelt was fitted to each one.

“Yeah. Definitely brought here for us,” Romana agreed with herself.

“That’s not all,” Ramses said, looking at his interface again. “It’s breathable. For us, anyway. I’m seeing 83% nitro, 11% oxy, 5 for CO2, and a half percent each for hydrogen and trace gases.”

They decided to open their visors but keep the rest of their armor on, except for Romana, who chose to end up in a gray sports bra and yoga shorts. It still could be a trap. The atmosphere was indeed breathable, but it took a few minutes for their bodies to acclimate to the suboptimal environment. During this time, they were mildly suffocating before their carbon scrubber organs caught up to compensate for the extra toxin.

“Carbon load back down to manageable levels for everyone,” Angela announced. She had expressed an interest in serving as the closest thing to a medical professional the team had.

Romana instinctively walked around to the other side of the mannequins. She reached up to one of them, and pulled something off of it. “Sorry for taking these, but now you have extra, in case you need them. You won’t have to worry about us again. Don’t screw it up this time,” she read.

“They didn’t sign their name?” Mateo asked her.

“Not exactly,” she answered.

“They...initialized it?” Mateo couldn’t think of anything else that was close to a signature.

“They hand-wrote it, or I should say, you hand-wrote it.” She showed him the note, and she was right; it was in Mateo’s handwriting.

“Well, I suppose I can trust myself, can’t I?”

“No,” Leona replied bluntly.

“Fair enough.”

“Any other anomalies besides these belts?” Leona asked Ramses.

“No artificial signals,” Ramses began to answer from his interface. “No satellites, no power generators, no signs of life in the immediate vicinity...” He looked back up and regarded the horizon. “There is no way to know if we’re alone, but we seem to be.” He took out his forge core, and appeared to be in thought as he separated himself from the group, and also looked at the mountains.

“Are you considering building something here?” Mateo asked.

“Something?” Ramses returned. “Maybe everything.”

“Like a new lab? You just built a new one in your pocket,” Mateo reminded him.

“Yeah, I know, and I would still want to keep it with me as a mobile office.” Ramses turned back around. “But a real home base might be nice too. I once thought that that was Castlebourne, but there are too many people there. I think we should be more like Linwood Meyers, and take full ownership over a remote territory. No one else is here, it would just be ours. It will take tens of thousands of years before Project Stargate reaches this region. That’s more than a hundred and fifty years for us. This could be a safe place. We would really only have to worry about Spiral Station.”

“It’s not the farthest man has ever gone,” Olimpia said. “You just mentioned Linwood, who is even more remote on the far end of the galaxy. The Extremus isn’t too far from there. The Exin Empire has reframe engines, and several decades to kill.”

“They would have to find us,” Ramses continued to list. “This is a central location. It’s a great place to stage Operation Starframe. It’s uninhabitable by even some other posthuman models.”

“Still,” Olimpia pushed back. “Shouldn’t we go as far as we can? I agree, it’s perfect for Starframe, but not the best place for a home if we truly want to be hidden and remote.”

“The slingdrives have power constraints. Being ultra-distant has its disadvantages too. We’ll still defend our home. We’re not just gonna live like pioneers.”

“The note, it’s warning us about something,” Romana jumped back in. “We don’t know what. Did we come here in another timeline, or is that what changed? What exactly are we hoping to not screw up this time?”

“It’s doubtful that we were here before,” Leona determined. “We came here for the belts. That and the note probably mark the point of divergence. I think this planet is meant to change whatever issues Future!Mateo faced that he’s trying to fix now.”

“You just said we couldn’t trust him,” Marie contended. “Handwriting means nothing. Anyone could have forged it.”

“True,” Leona admitted.

“I’ll do my surveys,” Ramses reasoned. “I’ll build satellites and probes. We’ll map this whole star system, and beyond. Infrastructure will not be a problem. If we change our minds later, we can always leave. That is entirely what Starframe is even about. It gives us options, and this world gives us those options faster.”

“Anyone opposed?” Leona posed to the group. When no one said anything, she looked at Romana. “You’re our navigator, but you didn’t bring us here. Do you object to staying?”

“No,” Romana answered. “Like he said, we can always leave later.”

Leona nodded. “Okay. Let’s do some quick surveys before the infrastructure can be built, just to get some idea of what we’re dealing with. No one has to participate who doesn’t want to. What I’ll be doing is teleporting high up into the atmosphere, taking readings and images on my way down, and then popping back up over a different swath of land to image that area next. Anyone is welcome to spread out and do the same. But if you just want to stay here, that’s fine. If three of you would rather go back to the stellar neighborhood, that would be acceptable too.”

“No, we’re not gonna do that,” Olimpia promised. “We’ll stick together, as we always try to do. I had to argue against the plan to make sure it was a good plan. I’ve seen this movie before. This planet has monsters on it, and that’s the whole plot.”

“It would not be crazy if we did find complex life here,” Leona concurred. “With carbon dioxide levels this high, I’m more surprised that there’s even a desert. I suspect the majority of the surface will be fairly lush.”

Leona was correct. While Ramses camped out at their landing site to synthesize the data, the other six jumped around the atmosphere to serve as living survey probes. Their onboard sensors weren’t advanced enough to take highly detailed readings, but it was enough to generate a crude globe. They saw some more yellow and red, but they also saw green and blue. It looked not unlike Earth, though the night sky was a lot prettier. There wasn’t any light pollution, and this region of space had a denser cluster of stars to admire.

They found almost no manmade structures besides the display mannequins, but they didn’t find none at all. “Everyone jump to my position,” Marie requested.

“Even me?” Ramses questioned.

“Especially you,” she replied.

They all convened at Marie’s location. They found her standing on a grassy hill, elevated above a surrounding forest. They weren’t quite sure what other thing they were seeing here, though. It was a sphere of warped space, rotating so fast that they couldn’t even tell which direction it was moving. It reminded Leona of a black hole, but not exactly. “It’s not black,” Olimpia sort of joked, sort of really didn’t understand it at all.

“Back up anyway,” Leona suggested.

They all took several steps back because their guess was that it was a portal, and of course, they had no idea where it might take them. But like the gravity regulator machine back on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, it wasn’t going to give them any choice. It suddenly expanded, and engulfed them all.

It didn’t appear to have done anything to them. They were still standing on the same hill. The same forest was still surrounding them. “Is everyone okay?” Mateo asked. “Roll call.”

They took their turns declaring their respective statuses. They had settled on an order ahead of time, so it was predictable, except in any hypothetical situation where something actually was wrong with one of them. Everyone was fine this time; no currently detected health or temporal issues. The swirling portal was still there, so they elected to turn around and walk back down the hill to avoid any further issues.

“Mother,” came a voice from behind them. They turned to see a man standing near the top of the hill, right in front of the portal. No one recognized him.

“Who do you believe is your mother?” Leona asked in a way that implied she hoped it wasn’t her yet again.

The man slowly pointed at Olimpia.

“Me?” Olimpia questioned, shocked. “If I look like your mom, then she must be from a different timeline, because I don’t have any kids.”

“No, it’s definitely you. I was hoping we would meet sometime, but I didn’t want to push it. It had to be your choice. I left this reality portal here in case you ever came looking.”

Olimpia shook her head. “I don’t know how it would be possible.”

“You’re sometimes called The Echo, right?” the man pressed.

“Not so much anymore,” Olimpia countered.

“Well, I’m always called Echo. I’m your echo.” He took a deep breath. “Welcome back to The Sixth Key.”

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Microstory 2423: Oz

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My assumption is that the guy who made this planet was a huge fan of L. Frank Baum, and his works. If you haven’t read the books, you really should. You can see the movies, particularly the first one, but everything here is drawn from the source material. Oz is only one dome, complete with the Emerald City in the center, and the four countries around it. There’s a so-called Impassable Desert along the perimeter, but there’s not much to it before you just hit the wall. Which is fine. I mean, that qualifies as impassable, doesn’t it? Unless you go through a door. I’m overthinking it. The point is that Oz is only one dome, but the world of the Baum books includes many other regions on the planet, and each of them has their own dome too. They’re all on my list, because my father used to read me the books when I was a kid, multiple times. And when I grew up, I read them myself. On my way here, I read them yet again to refresh my memory. Yeah, I could have installed the data into my cybernetic mind, but there’s nothing like reading the words in realtime, is there? The bottom line is that this place is perfect for me. It’s as accurate as it can be given the lack of specifications from the books (which no one could expect from any writer). It exemplifies the spirit of the original story, I should say. They had to make their own decisions, and take some liberties, but they totally nailed it. This. Is. The Land of Oz. Are there some things that I would change if I could? Sure. Do I wish that they would ask me to help them make such changes? Yeah, I do. Could I offer my services? Yeah, I guess I could. I might just do that. They have people work here, right? It’s not all automated. I might wait just a little bit, though. I should take notes, and go through the entire thing. I should also wait until I’ve had time to do the same in the other Baum domes. I wouldn’t dream of telling you what to do, but you really should check it out. It is great and good.

Microstory 2286: Cathartic to Go Out Alone

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I did a bad thing yesterday; I escaped. I left a note, and my phone was on my person at all times, but everyone was still worried about me. I knew they would be, but I wasn’t thinking about that at the time. I know it’s not the same thing, but my life has felt so stifling these days, like I’m on house arrest. I wanted to be free, so I took the car for a drive. I found a small cemetery pretty far outside of town, and just sat there on one of the stone benches in the freezing cold. I’ve always felt rather comfortable in cemeteries, probably because there usually aren’t very many other people around. They make most people sad at best, and uncomfortable at worst. I go there to think, but also to peruse the headstones. I like to see all the different designs that they carve into them, and to note how many are grouped in families. I have an obsession with time, as you know, so I also look for the oldest grave, and do mental math on people’s lifetimes. Sometimes it really is sad, like when the year of death is the same as the year of birth. It was cathartic to go out alone, even though I really wasn’t supposed to. I was feeling so trapped, but it was still wrong of me, and I received a proper scolding from my security firm. I’m just still not used to being so attached and dependent on others. I mean, that’s not really true, is it? My life has always been a mess. I’ve always relied on others. Too much, truthfully. Money was meant to change that about me, but it’s only made it worse. Man, if I can’t ever go back home, it might be worth it just to escape this world, and start over fresh somewhere else. What’s that, you say? My writing? How’s my writing going? Does it help? No. It’s a nothing burger, as the saying goes. I’m feeling very unmotivated to write anything; fact or fiction. I think I’m probably gonna give up again.

Microstory 2191: Already Proud

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Have you ever seen a movie about making a movie, or maybe a play, or something. They have all these headshots on a table, and they’re shuffling them around, looking to cast the perfect actors for the parts. I’ve basically been doing that today, except not with headshots, because I don’t care what the people on my team look like. I’ve read through their résumés multiple times, and consulted the notes that I took during their interviews. It’s bittersweet for me to say that I have reached a conclusion on who we would like to extend offers to. The top candidates will be receiving calls over the course of the next week, once I receive higher level approvals. I don’t expect there to be any issue with any of the people I chose, but I do need to give it a little time, just in case. If you do not receive an offer by the end of the week, it’s possible that you still might. I don’t want to make anyone feel bad about being the runner-up, but that’s the way it works. Each position can only be filled by one person, and just because that person didn’t get there by being our first choice, doesn’t mean that they don’t deserve it. Plus, that’s not even necessarily the reason. We also could have experienced other delays, like technical issues, or legal questions, so even if you do receive a late offer, don’t think you know exactly why that was. I want to thank everyone who took the time to apply. The sheer amount of interest we received serves to reinforce the fact that what we’re trying to do here is the right thing, and that we will succeed in our mission. We’re going to make the judicial system better than it ever has been, and I’m already proud of that.

Microstory 2190: Ready to Hit the Ground

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If you want to know what we did today, just read my posts from the last few days, because it was pretty much the same. So far, we’ve not scheduled any interviews for next week, but we anticipate doing so. Jasmine and I might have to make a few calls over the weekend to coordinate that, but we won’t be working full time by any means. It’s going to start getting interesting on Tuesday. I’m intending to spend a lot of time on Monday going over the top candidates’ résumés, and my notes about them. We’ll be beginning to extend offers throughout the week while we continue to conduct the remaining interview sessions. We’re hoping to have a full roster by this time next Friday. Of course, no plan survives contact with the real world, to paraphrase the first rule of warfare. Some will not accept the offers, either because they changed their minds—because something changed in their lives, because their idea of the job was altered by speaking with me, or just because—or because they received a better offer, or are hoping to. That’s okay, they have every right to reject us. This is a business relationship, and I’m not going to get mad if they decide that they want something else out of life. We planned around all of these little complications and hiccups, and are confident that we will still be able to start our work with a complete team by the first of August. If we were to assume that we would send out all offers by EOD Friday, that would give the typical two-week waiting period until people could start. Some may be able to come in early, and some may need more time, so there’s a three day grace period to help with that. If we’re not ready to hit the ground running by our goal date, that’s okay too. We’ll work with what we have until the rest are ready to start. Onboarding will be easier if it’s not happening for everyone all on the same day anyway. I’m excited. It’s exciting. Are you excited? Get excited.

Extremus: Year 29

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Every day at 16:15, Olindse Belo sits down at her desk, and has herself a cup of tea. She’s done this since she was promoted to admiral, thinking it was the perfect time to not be needed elsewhere. She ended up not being needed much anyway, but it feels right to keep to a routine, so she’s continued doing it. Apparently knowing this about herself, Past!Olindse wrote a note, and then she burned it with a special lighter that Vice Admiral Thatch left in his desk, which she used for a time when she was first trying to figure out her new role on the ship. The lighter is designed to send messages across time and/or space. As the fire destroys the paper, the quantum configuration of that paper—including its text—is logged into an internal data drive. It then transmits the information to the calibrated destination, and rebuilds the message as it was stored. Past!Olindse scheduled this to happen when she knew her future self would be there to see it transpire. Watching the note materialize was as important as the message itself, or Future!Olindse may have had a harder time trusting the authentication.

The note is cryptic and short so as to preserve the secrecy. It simply reads, Extract Thatch pre-illness. Investigate Bridger section. Tell no one else. Authentication code ΔΟ-5456456. Okay. Well, it’s in her own handwriting, so it seems to be legit. She decides to trust her Past!Self, and follow the instructions. It could be a trick, yes, but there’s a bit of logic to it. She can recall once waking up with scattered memories of the previous day. That potentially fractured day was exactly one year ago. If she had her memories erased, for whatever reason, she probably had a pretty good reason for it, and this mysterious note strongly supports her assumption that the procedure was completely consensual.

Time travel is mostly illegal on Extremus. They don’t want anyone to be able to go back and mess things up, or jump to the future, and gather secret information. There are major exceptions to this. The time shuttle, which has been named the Perran Thatch, was specifically designated to do just that. The drones they occasionally send off to mine raw materials on worlds as they pass by don’t work without it. For the most part, though, it can’t be done without risking severe punishment. It’s not really clear why an extraction mirror was installed on the ship in the first place, given that the engineers never intended anyone to manipulate time at all. Perhaps they wanted later captains to be capable of seeking advice from past captains following their deaths, though that does not alleviate the reality-bending dangers of time travel, which is the whole reason it’s usually illegal. Still, it’s the most likely explanation since the only people who are allowed to even enter the extraction room must be a captain or an admiral. Not even a First Lieutenant has authorization. If Corinna so much as attempts to cross the threshold, even accompanied by Captain Leithe herself, she will supposedly endure terrible pain, and a swift banishment to the other side of the ship. Olindse is all but the only person who can do this, and Thatch is the only person she can extract.

She teleports down to the area, and enters her code into the pad. She could have been deauthorized at some point, since she was only ever an interim captain, and isn’t now a full admiral, but Kaiora would have had to make a point of doing that, and it seems unlikely she bothered. Still, she stands there at the entryway in fear, because she’s never tried this before, and precisely how much it hurts for any would-be trespassers is not a matter of record. Finally, she works up the courage, and steps through. She’s fine. It doesn’t hurt, and she’s not spirited away. She closes the door behind her, and walks up to the mirror. Ah, she should have written down the magic words. There’s a particular sequence a user has to say to activate the mirror. In the fictional source material, which is a book written in the 18th century, it seems to actually be magic. In this case, it’s just a passphrase that the creator employed after being inspired by said book. It’s equally important regardless. “Umm...I stand at the door of life and death? Come forward, spirit. Here’s life. Vice Admiral Perran Thatch of the TGS Extremus, smell blood! Smell life! I summon thee!”

Nothing happens.

“Oh, right. Uh.” She takes out her pocket knife, and cuts her finger, wiping it on the glass. Now it finally works. She doesn’t think she uttered the passphrase exactly as she was taught, but it was evidently close enough.

A youngish and healthyish Thatch is sitting at his desk, right hand cupped around a glass of liquor, while his left hand is working the holoscreen. It takes him a moment to realize that Olindse is there. “Am I about to die?”

“Depends. What is the date?”

“October 2, 2286,” he answers.

“Then no, you’re fine. You die of natural causes, but I need you mobile for a mission in the future, so I’m extracting you while I’m sure that’s still the case. I am Vice Admiral Olindse Belo, and you can’t tell anyone about this; not in my present, or yours.”

“Why is there another vice admiral on this ship?” he questions.

“It’s a long story, and by long, I mean classified.”

He sighs deeply, and downs the rest of his drink. “Very well.” He stands up, and walks through the mirror. “What can I do ya fer, Admiral?”

“While we’re both Vice,” Olindse begins, “you’re the only one authorized to enter the Bridger section. I was an interim captain, so while I’m afforded most privileges that come with my promotion, I do not enjoy them all. It was decided that I did not need access to that part of the ship. However, I actually do need to get in, because there’s something fishy going on.”

“Does this have something to do with that god-awful First Chair of the civilian government?” he asks.

“No.”

“Does it have to do with—”

“Please, no questions. This is about me finding answers to protect the future of this vessel; not about you gathering information to leverage against your friends and enemies.”

“Fine, but you’ll owe me.”

“I already paid,” Olindse lies, suggesting that he goes back to his own time, and collects something from her in her past, and if he has to believe that to be agreeable, then she’s not going to try to clarify.

The both of them look around to make sure no one is watching them, which is a little silly since they’re leaving a highly restricted area in order to travel to a different highly restricted area, but it just seems like the right thing to do. They teleport away.

There’s every chance that someone who works in the Bridger section will send them away and report them for access, but they can’t get in trouble for unauthorized access. Thatch has every right to be here, even though he’s supposed to be dead at this point in time, and he has the right to use his discretion to decide Olindse also has a right to be here. At worst, Olindse is stripped of her rank, but seeing as how she doesn’t do much around here, that doesn’t sound like too great of a loss. They won’t file charges, or place her in hock.

“Last chance. Are you sure about this?” Thatch asks as his hand hovers in front of the keypad.

“I need to know,” Olindse replies.

“Okay,” Thatch says. He punches in his code, and the door opens.

They walk inside. No one is there to greet, or protest against, them. That’s not surprising, though, since they deliberately chose to enter through a sort of back door. They carefully peek around the corners, and quietly begin walking towards the stern. They want to find a terminal to connect to that is as far from human activity as possible, because they won’t want any questions until—what the hell is this?

“What the hell is this?” Thatch asks, not expecting Olindse to know.

She answers the obvious, but still doesn’t get it. “Stasis pods.”

“Stasis pods for who?” Thatch continues. “And are they all full?”

She steps over to the terminal, and tries to look up information, but she has no authorization. Thatch has to enter his own codes to access it, but even he’s limited. “Is that...the number of pods, or somebody’s quantum sequence?”

“That is the number of pods,” Thatch confirms. “And that is the number of pods that are in use.”

“They’re the same.”

“Yes.”

“There are 60,000 secret people on this ship?” Olindse presses.

“It looks like it.”

Olindse looks down the deep corridor, knowing that there are more just like it in other subsections. “A quick bit of math in my head, this means that the Bridger section runs quite nearly the entire length of Extremus, and also most of the width.”

Thatch looks around for answers, but he’s really just working through it in his head. “It’s another ship.”

“A ship inside of a ship?”

“Yes,” he says. “We always knew that this was made as a contingency, we just didn’t know the extent. If everything else is destroyed, they’re supposed to be able to move on. And they would do this by physically separating from us.”

“We have 8500 people on this ship right now, and they still outnumber us three and a half to one.”

“I don’t think it’s a competition.”

“Isn’t it, though? I mean, think about it. “What makes them so special? Why do they get to reach the planet, while the rest of us have to die before the ship makes it all the way? This was meant to be a generational vessel. We voted for that. We agreed to it. We did not agree to this.” She turns towards him angrily. “Why have you not been down here before? Why didn’t you know about this?”

“It didn’t seem to be my place. They only gave me access so Halan wouldn’t be the only one outside of the Bridger crew.”

“Oh my God, Admiral Yenant knows about it, and so does my captain!”

“Probably.”

Olindse fumes for a moment, and then composes herself. “How did my past self find out about this, and why didn’t she let herself remember?”

“Wait, your past self?” Thatch questions.

“Yeah, she used your special lighter, and wrote me a note.”

“And then erased her memories?”

“Apparently.”

“Maybe she knew that someone was going to attack her, but couldn’t stop it.”

She was becoming angry again. “Well, she didn’t say that! Maybe if her note had been a little clearer, I would know what she wanted me to do with this information!”

“That would certainly be nice to know,” he agrees. “Why don’t we ask her?”

“Ask my past self?”

He shrugs. “It’s working for me.”

“That seems like it could turn into a bloody mess.”

“I’m just brainstor—” Thatch freezes in place.

As per protocol, Olindse waves her hand in front of his face. He does not react. She looks over to find a portal. Someone who looks exactly like her is on the other side of it, in the extraction room. “Umm, that is the wrong direction,” she complains. “I need answers from the past.”

“Well, you’re going to get them from the future,” Future!Olindse explains. “And you’re going to get them in the future. You’ll need a lot of patience for this one, honey.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“Sorry, but this is important,” Future!Olindse says. “In about five seconds, a Bridger is going to walk down here to perform her regular maintenance on some of the pods. She’s going to catch you, and while you eventually learn what you truly came down here to find out, you end up in hock before you can do anything about it.”

“But that’s you, you’re talking about yourself,” Present!Olindse points out.

“Yes, it’s me. I did those things. I got caught. I managed to convince Caldr to sneak me to the extraction room. And unless you want to become me one day, you’ll step through this portal right now, and change the past.”

“That’s illegal,” Present!Olindse states the obvious.

“Sometimes you have to break the law to protect it,” Future!Olindse claims, “but you won’t get that chance if you don’t come now and ask Halan about Operation Nova.”

“But...”

“There’s no time!”

“Time is frozen,” Present!Olindse contends.

“No, it’s not!” Future!Olindse argues. “It’s just going really slow!”

“What about him?”

“Bring him too, and then send him right back to his own time period.”

Present!Olindse takes a breath, and goes over her options, of which there is probably only one. Teleportation does not work down here, or they would have used it to get in. It’s a security measure. “Fine,” she growls. As soon as she takes Thatch by the shoulders, perceived time begins approaching the speed of realtime. Just as she’s pushing him through the portal, she hears the hatch opening up behind them.

“—do what I say.” Thatch tries to finish his sentence. “Why’d you bring us back?”

Olindse looks around for her alternate self, but there’s no one else here. “What was that about me having to do what you say?”

“No, I said, I’m just brainstorming. We don’t have to do what I say.”

“Oh.” But she’s preoccupied by her own confusion. Then it hits her. By coming here, she just erased her future self from the timeline, and replaced her.

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Extremus: Year 28

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Ovan Teleres is the first candidate for Olindse’s little rehabilitation experiment. They decided to stop calling it reintegration, because it suggested an outcome that may never materialize. One day, she hopes to get her mentor, Halan Yenant out of hock, but she can’t go straight for him. She has to play the political game, and begin with someone who has already shown remorse for his actions. In a moment of weakness, he tried to take control of the ship. It was pretty bad, and violent, resulting in the deaths of two people. He has since expressed a desire to repent for his actions, and improve himself. Today was the initial interview for the process. Once the program gets up and running, Olindse will step back, and let Counselor Persephone Falk establish her own therapeutic methods. This is just to make sure Ovan understands what’s going to happen, and why. If his sessions go well, they’ll restart the process with the other two permanent prisoners, along with anyone who ends up being sent here.

“Any further questions?” Olindse asks.

“No, I’m—I feel grateful for this opportunity,” Ovan replies. “I’m ready to begin.”

“That’s good to hear,” Olindse says. “The two of us will coordinate...”

Persephone nods.

Olindse goes on, “and you will probably have your first private session in two days.”

“Not private,” Armelle Lyons says. Head of Security is a weird position here. A shift lasts for eight years, but the end of it does not spell the end of the crewmember’s service to the ship. Armelle worked security before she was selected to run the team, and after she was finished, she went back to being a regular security officer. She will continue on this way until she chooses to retire, which could be any day now. The people who created the shift schedule determined that security could be the most stressful work over the long term, and they didn’t want to force anyone to stick around if they weren’t into it anymore. They wouldn’t be very good at maintaining security if they were burned out or sick of it. You have to prove your stamina to be appointed the leader, but there is still a limit to this.

“Well, we’re still working out the kinks,” Olindse admits, “which is why we’re not starting right away. All patients have the right to privacy, Madam Lyons. We’ll figure out some way to keep you close by without letting you hear what is said in this room.”

Armelle growls.

“Anyway, if that’s it, then I guess we’re done here.” She stands up, and accepts Ovan’s handshake amidst Armelle’s protests. This won’t work without a level of trust, and a handshake is the least that they can offer the prisoners.

Once they leave the cell, Hock Watcher Giordana asks to keep her down here while Armelle escorts Persephone out.

“What is it?” Olindse asks.

“It’s Vatal. He’s asked to speak with you,” Caldr reveals.

“He can wait his turn,” she decides.

“He says it’s time sensitive.”

“It sounds like a trick already.”

“I’ll be right there with you,” he promises. “I’ll magnetize him to the far side.” Every prisoner wears advanced cuffs around their wrists. They serve a number of purposes. They can release a chemical sedative into the bloodstream, or deliver a debilitating electrical shock, or sequester them to a certain area. The latter is used all the time. Cell doors are kept closed and locked when not in use, but they’re not technically necessary. None of them can cross the threshold. A dimensional barrier would just force them back like an extremely powerful wall of wind. Of course, there is also an electromagnet inside the cuffs, which can bind them to one another, or against the back wall. Olindse insisted that this not be done with Ovan, but Dvronen is another story. He’s an incredibly dangerous and intelligent man who hates the ship, and everyone on it. At least Ovan isn’t an evil spy.

“Very well. I’ll give him five minutes, at most.”

They stand before the door. Caldr is wearing his own cuff, which controls all the others. He taps the commands into it, and they hear the familiar clink of metal against metal. Caldr opens the door.

“Is this necessary?” Dvronen asks. He looks so pathetic, trapped there with his hands behind his back. He’s always been so prim and proper; it must be excruciatingly embarrassing, being reduced to this.

“Quite,” Caldr answers.

“What do you want?” Olindse questions.

“Why, Vice Admiral, this is not a good start to your reintegration program.”

“Rehabilitation,” she corrects.

“What did I say?”

“You have four minutes.”

“Is it safe to say that I am the most hated man on the ship?” Dvronen poses.

It’s his time, so if he wants to take the long way ‘round to go nowhere, then fine. “Sure, that sounds about right.”

“What if I told you that what Oaksent did when he took those genesis samples was actually all part of the plan?”

“I would say I know it was all part of the plan. It was his dirty plan. He clearly didn’t do it on a whim.”

Dvronen smirks. “No, I mean it was part of the ship’s mission.”

“The mission, according to who?” she questions.

“It’s whom.”

“Sorry,” she laughs. “I mean, the mission, according to who?”

He looks perturbed. “The Conceptualizers.” The Conceptualizers were a small group of people who originally wanted to leave Gatewood. They started formulating plans before Omega Parker even came to them with the idea for the Extremus ship. As their voices grew louder, their ranks grew too, and they eventually abandoned their collective term. Going by a specific name felt silly and juvenile. Most people didn’t refer to the people who framed the mission as Conceptualizers, but it was occasionally bandied around.

“They came up with the idea of attacking the ship, and trying to kill everyone on it?” That’s hard to believe.

“No, of course not. Their idea predates the Extremus concept. They wanted to seed life all throughout the Milky Way, and in order to compete with Earth, they wanted to do all this deep in the past. When Omega showed up with the new idea, everyone sort of fell in line. Well...not everyone.”

“Bronach Oaksent was not a Conceptualizer,” Olindse argues. “He was too young to have been involved in those discussions.”

Dvronen shakes his head. “He was, but his grandmother wasn’t. She used to let him sit in on their meetings. They talked about a number of different plans, and he was inspired.”

“It doesn’t matter that they talked about interfering with Earth’s Project Stargate, because they didn’t go through with it. They chose Extremus over it.”

“And like I was saying, not everyone agreed with that decision.”

“If that’s true, why did they involve Extremus at all? They could have built their own ship, and left us out of it. As I said, they attacked us, and they didn’t have to.”

“Do you know what’s in the Bridger section?” Dvronen goes on.

“Yeah, the Bridgers, and the samples that Oaksent left behind when he broke in.”

“There’s more. There’s a lot more down there. Maybe you wanna...find out for yourself?”

“I don’t have authorization. Neither do you. Neither did Oaksent.”

“Then you need to talk to someone who does.”

“The Captain is not going to go along with this. Nor should she.”

“You don’t need the Captain from the present day. You don’t even need a captain at all. Most admirals have—and will have—access to the Bridgers, because they will be former full captains. You’re a little different, since you were only interim.”

“Are you expecting me to go talk to a future admiral, or something?”

“There is another, and I don’t mean Yenant. Let’s not get him involved. There’s someone from the past who would be willing to help you. He never went down there, he doesn’t know the truth. But he could have, and he’ll still have authorization, because no one thinks to strip dead people of their access codes.”

“If I go down there and investigate, what are you getting out of it?” Olindse questions.

“I think...when you learn what’s really going on on this vessel, you’ll want to release me from hock. You’ll be on my side at that point.”

She laughs. “Wow, you really believe that, don’t you? Your five minutes were up a long time ago, by the way.”

“See? You’re already starting to like me. Otherwise, you would have been strict about that time limit.”

“Goodbye Dvronen. I’ll see you in a few weeks for the start of your rehabilitation.”

“Go down there, Admiral. Go see for yourself,” Dvronen says as Olindse and Caldr are stepping out of the cell.

Once the door is closed, Caldr tries to release the magnets. She places a hand over his cuff. “No. Leave him like that for a few hours.”

“That’s considered torture, ma’am. It’s against the law.”

Olindse gives him a terrifying look.

“I’ll...fudge the report.”

“That can wait. Meet me in the executive infirmary in thirty minutes.”

“You want me to do what?” Dr. Holmes asks.

“Erase our memories. Mine, his, and Dvronen Vatal’s.”

Dr. Holmes looks over to Caldr, who just lets out a grimace. He kind of understands why it is Olindse is asking for this. “Any particular memories, or do you just want me to take ‘em all?”  This isn’t something that she’s allowed to just do when requested. It’s technically feasible, but there’s this whole protocol.

“Vatal is trying to gain an advantage over me, and I need him to not remember that. I need to not remember it either, or maybe he gets the advantage anyway. The Hock Watcher here was just an innocent bystander.”

“Plus me,” Dr. Holmes adds.

“No, you don’t need to know anything about it,” Olindse reasons.

Dr. Holmes shakes her head. “Actually, I do. In order to delete the right memories, I need to know what they are. I mean, I could take the entire day, but then you’d be, like, what the hell happened to my entire day!” She’s not usually this volatile.

“So, no matter what, someone would have to recall the memories?” Caldr figures.

Dr. Holmes sighs. “No, I could delete the entire procedure from my own mind without risking reversion, since I know how to convince myself to ignore the inconsistencies. I’ve been trained for this. I just don’t know if I should in this case.”

“It’s about the Bridger section,” Olindse explains.

Dr. Holmes takes some time to respond. “What do you know?”

“Too much already. What do you know?”

“About as much.”

“It shouldn’t be very hard,” Olindse assumes, “not for me, nor for Caldr. Vatal is a different story. He deliberately withheld information from us to maintain leverage. We don’t know what else he knows about the Bridgers, but we would certainly love to take that from him too. You see why that’s important, ethical ramifications notwithstanding.”

The doctor folds her arms, and leans back to consider those ethics. There is no obvious answer to this. Getting rid of anything and everything Dvronen knows about the ship that he shouldn’t would surely be a boon for them, but erasing memories without consent lies in shaky territory. It’s not illegal to do on a post-conviction hock prisoner, but it’s not something she takes lightly either. She would feel a lot better about it if someone could order her. A Vice Admiral doesn’t have that power. “The brain doesn’t store memories like a computer does. You would have to walk me through each idea, and tell me what to extract. It’s not a pleasant experience. It’s not painful, but it can be awkward and uncomfortable.”

“I understand.”

“How would you do the same with Vatal?” Caldr asks.

“Him, I would brute force,” Dr. Holmes begins. “I can rip out ancillary memories, and not worry about him experiencing time discrepancies. He’ll know something’s wrong, but he has no legal recourse to gripe about it. We have to be more delicate with you two, because you might make a big stink about me performing a medical procedure on you that you don’t remember. It won’t work if you realize that you’re missing something, and then we could all be in trouble.”

“Do it,” Olindse agrees. She looks over to Caldr, who agrees too, knowing that it has to be this way. “Please.”

They start with Dvronen. That’s the great thing about no one else working in the hock section, it’s easy to be sneaky. Caldr goes next, and then Olindse. Dr. Holmes navigates from the general, and makes her way down to the specific. She removes the conversation with Dvronen, but not the one with Ovan. As far as Olindse’s concerned, she left after the interview, and didn’t do anything else of significance today. She didn’t burn a secret note to herself, or talk to the doctor, or go back down to the hock.

A year later, the secret note reverses entropy, and rematerializes on her desk.

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