The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 7, 2489

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The Vellani Ambassador did not return to Castlebourne until the evening of July 6, 2488. Before the new crew could use it outside of training purposes, Ramses had to get into the slingdrive, and find out why the navigation system was still off. There was something he was missing, and he now believed he understood what it was. “It’s us.”

“Us?” Leona questioned.

“We’re a variable that’s not being accounted for. We may never be able to account for it. I think that our temporal energy is mixing with the quintessence, and interfering with its normal operation. Think about it, you jumped forward a year and a day to get to the Goldilocks Corridor, then another year and a day when you came back. It’s based on our pattern. It’s...including that in its calculations, for some reason.”

“You don’t think you can fix it?”

“I don’t know that we need to,” Ramses replied. “Is this our ship anymore?”

“That’s a good point,” Leona said. She looked around at the ol’ girl. She had served them well, but they had been training a replacement team for years now, even though Team Matic only came up with the idea days ago.

The year that the slingdrive was off-limits was not wasted. After three plus years of hard work, Mateo’s daughters were nearing the completion of their studies, and Prince Darko had already decided that they were fully ready for the field. During this past year, even though they weren’t allowed to jump into FTL, Mirage took the time to train the cadets in ship operations. They were delegated responsibilities, and no longer needed the aid of Ramses or Leona. It was time to make good on their mandate, and rescue as many people as they could from the tyranny of the Exin Empire.

“Okay,” Leona said with a sigh. “I’ll tell Mirage that she can upload herself.” Mirage was waiting to do this while Ramses worked, but his job here appeared to be over. Team Matic was once again aimless. They would have to find something new to do.

“Whoa, we still need you here,” Hrockas insisted an hour later at their daily briefing.

“One day at a time?” Ramses questioned.

“You get a lot done in that one day,” Hrockas reminded him.

It was true, Ramses had become exceedingly great at maximizing his presence in the timestream by setting up multiple projects for automation that would continue on while he was gone. Then, when he came back a year later, he would inspect them before moving on to the projects for the next interim year. The sky was positively littered with orbital defense platforms. One of the moons over Castlebourne was being converted into a sort of Death Star-like thing while the other moon continued to serve as a shipyard for a growing fleet. Some of the battleships and battledrones would stay here to defend the homeworld while others would be transdimensionally shrunk, and sent off to the Goldilocks Corridor to aid in the conflict against the Exin Empire. Ramses had done more for this world than anyone besides Hrockas himself, and the former had a hard time acknowledging that. He was too humble.

Azad and Costa were here too, having been fully read into the situation, in regards to time travel and whatnot. They had their own jobs here now. Azad was on defense, and Costa on offense. Hopefully, this star system would never be attacked, and the two of them would have nothing to do, but it was best to be prepared. “I still need to learn from you,” Azad told him. “This technology is way beyond anything we used a century ago, even ignoring the superpowers you all have.”

“Same goes for me,” Costa agreed.

“I always write manuals,” Ramses explained. “Or rather, I have them written by my AI. I don’t type them up myself, like an animal. The point is, you’ll be fine, wherever I end up.”

Hrockas offered Prince Darko a job, overseeing all internal security of the planet, but he had yet to accept it. He wasn’t sure whether there would be any more teaching opportunities, and if there were, he couldn’t do both. He was invited to the meeting anyway. “Let him rest if he wants to. People like us see time differently. Keep in mind, it’s only been a day for him since last year. He probably never gets breaks. Not even, like, an hour. Do you sleep anymore?” he asked Ramses.

“Occasionally,” Ramses answered.

“We have a number of relaxation domes for you to choose from,” Hrockas pitched. “Some of them are opaque with permanent nighttime holography, and we’re equipped with hibernation sedatives for the ultra-sleepbound.”

“I can control my own neurotransmitters and hormones,” Rames explained. “I could fall asleep right here, right now, in seconds.”

“Really?” Azad asked, intrigued. “Do it,” he goaded.

Ramses smiled, considering it. Then he leaned back a few centimeters, shut his eyes, and drifted away.

“Computer, is he asleep?” Hrockas asked.

“Affirmative.”

“That’s wild,” Azad said excitedly.

Leona looked over at her engineer. “To clarify his point, I believe that he is done. He has some...personal projects that he’s been putting off, and you should be able to operate without him at this point. He’s not designing any new ships or satellites. He’s just having them built. There are multiple people in this room qualified to carry on his legacy. That’s what this meeting is really about, actually.” She looked over at Team Kadiar. “Have you settled on a...hierarchy, for lack of a better term?”

Mirage stood up. “I’m the ship. I will become the Vellani Ambassador. While aboard, I serve as captain. Dubravka is my lieutenant, and while on an away mission, she will lead the team. Kivi is the primary negotiator while Romana handles team security. Lastly, Tertius controls everyone’s memories.”

“I’m also security,” Tertius adds. “I’m not a mindreader, per se, but I might be able to detect an infiltrator or mole in the population that we’re visiting. So I will alert the team to that, if it comes up.”

Mirage nodded in agreement. They had been discussing this for months.

“Sounds good to me,” Leona said. “I believe that I’m ready for handoff.”

Jesimula Utkin opened the door from the hallway, and strode right in. “What about me? Could I join you?”

“On the VA?” Mirage asked. “Doing what?”

“It sounds like you need a coordinator on the ground,” Jesi answered. “I’m quite capable of managing large batches of information. I used to hunt for cures all throughout time and space. Did you think I was just guessing?”

“You’ll need to go through proper training,” Dubra said to her. “Even Tertius went through basic.”

Jesi laughed. “I can handle myself in a fight.”

Darko stood up, and tried to look imposing. “Can you? Hit me.”

Most people in the room couldn’t quite tell what happened, but before too long, Darko was on the floor, and Jesi was on top of him, holding him in place. She leaned down, and kissed him on the forehead. “Tap out.”

He tapped twice against his leg. “Who taught you that?” he asked after she graciously let him get back to his feet.

Jesi smirked, and looked over at Leona. “I was trained by the Crucia Heavy of The Highest Order. She taught me everything she knew.”

Leona stood up quickly. “No shit?”

“No shit,” Jesi answered.

“Ever since we met?”

“And then some,” Jesi said.

Leona stared into Jesi’s eyes, perhaps looking for any hint of deception, or maybe even using some kind of psychic connection. “Mirage,” she began, “I am bound by my oath to recommend Jesimula Utkin for this assignment most ardently.

That seemed to be good enough for Mirage. “Very well.”

The meeting continued on for a little while. Hrockas offered Darko the head of security job again, but Mateo had the bright idea to suggest Kallias Bran, who had less experience with hand-to-hand combat, but more experience with police work. He would be better suited to the position, which shouldn’t involve any physical confrontation. That freed Prince Darko to found a training program. Who his students would be, and what their goals would be, were questions that they weren’t going to worry about asking quite yet.

Only after the meeting was over, and everyone else had left, did Mateo wake his friend up. “Did that help?”

Ramses quivered into his stretches, and looked around at the mostly empty room. “Yes, actually. That was a brilliant suggestion. Who was that again?”

“It was Azad who told you to sleep.”

“Remind me to thank him.” He yawned and stood up. “What did I miss?”

“Nothing you care about,” Mateo replied. “Leona said you have personal projects that you’ve delayed in service to others. I’m bored. What can you tell me about them?”

“Two major projects, which are related, but not inherently interdependent. Only one of them is ready. The other may never be. At any rate, they will be limited to the team. I mean it, I don’t even want Romana to have them. I believe that only the six of us are built to withstand the technological upgrades that I’m working on. I have a working prototype of the first one that I’ve been hoping to test, if you’re willing to be my guinea pig once more.”

“I’m in,” Mateo said sincerely.

Ramses offered his hand, then teleported them both to his lab. He looked around to make sure that no one was watching before approaching a wall. He started to make weird gestures in front of it, sometimes reaching out to caress or tap the surface, and stepping back a couple times to give it a strange look. Finally, the sound of a pocket door sliding open came from the perpendicular wall, but nothing changed visually. Still, Ramses pivoted, and walked straight through what was apparently only a hologram.

Mateo followed. They were in a new section of the lab. There wasn’t much here that was different from the main section, but some of the items looked more advanced, while others looked less complete. “We couldn’t have just teleported right inside?”

Ramses shut the door behind them. “Permanent teleporter suppressant. We couldn’t escape here either. It’s completely self-sufficient. All it shares with the main lab is that hidden door, and the regolith between the walls.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about it before? Does anyone else know?”

“Because you didn’t need to know before, and they still don’t.”

“I see.”

Ramses started to walk to the far end. “Take off your IMS; every layer of every module, and lie face down in your birthday suit.”

Mateo removed his suit, and walked over there buck naked. The table was mostly solid, but there were conspicuous and symmetrically placed openings throughout.

“Please read this,” Ramses asked.

A hologram appeared underneath the table’s face hole. It detailed what was going to be done to him in clear, unambiguous language. Even an idiot like him could understand it, and after finishing the brochure, he was now more interested than ever. “Can I see the needles?”

Ramses took a beat. “Probably shouldn’t.”

“Okay.”

“Do you consent?”

“I do.”

“And are you ready?”

“Absolutely.”

“You read the part where it says it’s gonna hurt?”

“Get on with it.”

“Brace yourself. Literally. Hold onto those handles.”

Mateo gripped the metal bars. The robot started swinging its various arms into position, which he could hear, but not see. One of them started lasering into his neck, and worked its way down his spine. Other incisions were made on his wrists, shoulders, ankles, the back of his knees, and even his mons pubis. The cuts hurt, but the implantation of the devices hurt even more. It was over surprisingly quickly, though the spinal implant took the longest. Another round of lasers sealed him back up, and it was all apparently over.

“How do you feel?”

“Ready to throw my IMS away,” Mateo said.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. Only the procedure has been tested. You need to learn how to activate the nanites.”

“I think I have it figured out.” Mateo could still feel the implants underneath his skin. They were too deep to protrude and be noticed by others, but he was acutely aware of them. The one against his brain gave him neural access to the whole network. He could sense them tucked away dormant in their little gel matrices. These were not his first nanites. In one go, he released them. They spread all over his body until he was fully encapsulated in only a few seconds. It was like something out of a scifi movie. Then again, that described their whole lives these days. He was now basically wearing an Integrated Multipurpose suit, except that it was extremely thin, with only one layer needed, reportedly vastly stronger than his last suit, and on him at all times. One thing seemed to be missing, though. “I still need a PRU to breathe, drink, and eat.”

Ramses held up an injector. “Collapse the facial segment so I can inject you with the life support pocket dimension array. It goes in your mouth.”

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Microstory 2296: To Be a Gathering

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I had a meeting today with the Mayor of Kansas City. She regrets that we’re doing the memorial service in Chicago, but she understands, especially since our two cities have such a great relationship with each other. Still, she would like to do something in honor of Nick, and I think that would be fine. We had a lot of trouble figuring out what that might be. He didn’t like parades, and a vigil seems too depressing. We spent most of the day discussing it, taking breaks here and there so she could manage other needs of the city. In the end, we decided that it’s just going to be a gathering where people can come up to the microphone on stage, and talk about whatever they want. It doesn’t even have to have anything to do with the deceased, if they have something else to say. It’s unconventional, and a little strange, and I think Nick would have liked it. Dutch would have, that’s for sure. That guy danced to the beat of his own drum. Don’t worry, we’re going to be screening people throughout, to make sure they’re not offensive or otherwise problematic. It’s going to be a lot to coordinate, but we think that we can be ready by Saturday of next week. There’s a reason we chose that date. This is kind of going to be a Kansas City thing, so if you’re coming from elsewhere, and have made travel arrangements to Chicago, we don’t want it to be too easy to add an extra thing. You are welcome to come, if you want, but it’s mostly just for us. Thanks for your understanding.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 23, 2399

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Mateo was missing his wife, so he’s teleported himself to Mangrove One, the floating platform off the coast of Balikpapan, Indonesia. He’s waiting in their quarters at the moment. When she gets off work, they’re gonna fight. She wants to come home, but she has to stay here and see this through. Aldona has asked her for help in completing the defensive capabilities of this reality’s version of Earth, and that’s what she’s going to do. She has some conditions, which she has spent the last couple of days researching. Her conditions would have been moot if the proverbial ship had already sailed.

First of all, they need to stop making ships. They can make a few more if they want, but they’re not the best way to go if the people running the show are being honest about their intentions. If they’re truly only doing it to protect the planet, then they should build a defensive orbital grid. The ships are great; they can be used for patrolling and transport. But they waste precious resources on mobility when all you really need is a wall. Aldona is fighting her on that point, but not because she doesn’t agree. She’s just spent so much time on this strategy. Leona has decided to let her cool off on that, and ask about something related. “Why didn’t you develop weapons for them?”

“I’m not here to help them kill people. I’m just here to protect people,” Aldona replies. “I wouldn’t have thought you would suggest such a thing.”

“I’m not suggesting it,” Leona says. “My biggest worry is why they didn’t demand you help them with offensive upgrades.”

Aldona chuckles and shrugs her shoulders. “They can demand in one hand, and shit in the other. I ain’t givin’ them jack.”

Leona narrows her eyes. “The U.S. has never asked us for weapons either. Why do you think that is?”

She shrugs again.

“You don’t find that suspicious?” Leona presses. “This world is famous for its wars, yet nobody has asked known time travelers for better ways to make that war?”

“You think they’re hiding something? Like what?” Aldona asks.

“Like a traveler that we don’t know about,” Leona hypothesizes.

Aldona goes back to plotting the locations of the next round of launching platforms. “I would think you would have found a way to find all the travelers by now.”

“We did. Well, we have, but we think there are two still left to check off our list.”

“Why do I feel like you’re about to ask me something?”

“You have a thousand of these ships, right? And you said that you’ve only been able to test one,” Leona begins.

“Mangrove Zero; launched from Panama, but Columbia was butthurt about it. It’s international waters from now on. Mangrove One is the only one this close to the coast.”

“But Mangrove Zero is still up there, correct? Doing what?”

“It was only proof of concept. It’s not doing anything. The small crew came back down in a drop ship. Why? Do you want it?”

“We lost our ship. We could use another. With a permanent orbital installment, I could confirm whether or not someone else is here, and where they are,” Leona explains.

Aldona considers the request. “Okay, I’ll send it up the chain. I can promise nothing, but my word should go a long way.”

Microstory 1459: A Continuation

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Starting in the year 2154, the city of Aljabara was gearing up for another election. They expected to elect Sekundas Drumpf for a third term, but there was no guarantee of that, and there were plenty of hopefuls who sought to unseat him. He had no interest in seeing this happen, so he made an argument for cancelling the election altogether. He was already in charge, and things were going great, so why mess with a good thing? According to reports, the war against the Thicket terrorists couldn’t be going any better. The truth was that he had made little to no progress on this front, but the people didn’t need to know that. He inflated numbers, and reframed narratives, and spun the truth, and also just made up flat-out lies. He made himself look like the best thing that had ever happened to this planet. He made it seem like people barely survived before him, and that they wouldn’t survive the future without him. He claimed to have a mage remnant seer in his pocket, who regularly warned him of oncoming events, and that only he knew what to do to protect his constituents. He swayed a lot of people using these tactics, but he couldn’t convince everyone. That was okay, because he didn’t need everyone. He really only needed the military. He had no legal authority to get rid of the election ballots, but get rid of them he did. He declared himself the autonomous authority over the entire planet, and challenged anyone to disagree with him on this matter. There were a few takers, but they were swiftly removed from their mortal coil, and no one dared push him towards the edge again. It didn’t bother him at all that his actions meant that they were no longer living under a republic, but a dictatorship. He wanted more power, and the only way to get it was to hold onto what he already had. Democracy could go take a hike for all he cared. He insisted they continue to call it The Republic, however, to make him look good, and to make the city look good, in case Earth ever found out about them. The history books didn’t even acknowledge a change in governmental type when looking back at this period of time, for all the official documentation suggested that nothing had been altered. The Durune were now living in a totalitarian state, and it didn’t feel like anything could make it the least bit better.

Microstory 1458: New War on Terrorism

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Sekundas Drumpf won reëlection for leader of Aljabara, which was the first time that ever happened on Durus since the Republic was founded. People liked change, and he gave it to them, and five years later, there was no reason to believe he wouldn’t keep changing things. He even promised to undo some of the policies he himself came up with in the first place, as if his past self were less of a man than the version of him in the present. People didn’t see this as contradictory or bizarre. The past was always worse, no matter what, even if this was objectively untrue. He had their confidence, and he had their votes. There was some evidence that the ballots had been tampered with by Drumpf’s loyalists, but no proof, and there was definitely nothing connecting him to this alleged crime. He would later get rid of any semblance of democracy altogether, but for now, he had work to do. He wanted to make this the best planet in the galaxy, and in order to do that, he had to take control over the whole planet. The first change he made was to his own administration. They were no longer going to call this the government of Aljabara, but of Durus, so that if they did one day expand beyond this one city, they would have control over everything. It wasn’t just about the future, though. It also made it a lot easier for him to go after what he considered to be man’s greatest enemy. Now that younger generations of girls would be indoctrinated into the belief that they could do nothing on their own, it was time to deal with The Thicket. These women could never change—never be taught. He figured they needed to die, like a household pest. He and his closest allies desperately wanted to go to war, and to leave no prisoners, but it wasn’t going to be easy. Surprisingly few were in favor of violence against women, or anyone. There was only one way to change their minds, and that was to reframe the narrative. The Thicket was already labeled an insurgent organization, but had yet to be fully recognized as a terrorist group. Making this change required diplomatic addendums, but starting there would have been a waste of time. He needed to make sure the public was on his side first, so he just started slipping the word into his speeches, increasing frequency each time, and boosting applause every moment he could. Once the civilians were convinced that the rebels were terrorists, it was easy to get it changed in the official documentation. That in turn made it easier to get the necessary support to start physical attacks. Until then, they had been trying to protect the city’s borders, but had yet to go on the offensive in any significant way. It took Drumpf several months, but he finally got approval. Then it took even longer for his army to find their opponents, who had grown used to hiding deep in the thicket. The War on Terrorism began in 2151, and never really technically ended, even when Hokusai Gimura showed up, and forced huge changes to the government. They never reached a peace treaty, or a ceasefire, or anything. They just kept fighting when they could, and taking strategic breaks when the intelligence dried up. A lot of other things happened in the meantime.

Microstory 1455: Institutional

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For a few years, The Thicket rebel force didn’t do anything. They were there, and defying the Republic, but they weren’t attacking the city, or rescuing women, or even protesting. They were hiding, and they were training. This was getting on the nerves of some of the members, though. They wanted to make real change in society, and better the lives of everyone in it, even their enemies. Well, that was the problem. There was little they could do, because the easiest course of action was to rise up and fight against the establishment violently. They didn’t really have any rights. They weren’t allowed to walk down the street alone, so they certainly weren’t going to be able to march on the Capitol. After half a century under this form of government, things were pretty well defined, good or bad. A lot of people had been alive during the Interstitial Chaos, and the Mage Protectorate, but the majority of Aljabaran citizens these days had only ever known the Republic. So getting the public on their side was not going to be easy. No one in the Thicket wanted to go to war, and no one wanted to make a big public demonstration. They wanted their voices heard, but maybe kind of in secret. Maybe they didn’t even want anyone to know that they were involved in whatever it was they ended up doing. What could that be, though? Statues. The government had erected statues, glorifying the worst criminals and leaders Durus had ever seen. They couldn’t even argue that the statues themselves were an important part of history. The one they built last year made Smith look like Superman. There were so many statues of that man that you would think he invented air. But no, Keanu ‘Ōpūnui was the one who did that, but he only had one statue, and it wasn’t even in the city; it was at his gravesite.

Earth had enjoyed a long history of protestors tearing down statues, so that sounded like the most reasonable next step for the Thicket. It was something they could do in secret, under cover of darkness, while most people were asleep. If they procured the right tools, and had enough womanpower, they could get it done quickly, and get out before anyone saw them. If anything went wrong, they could bolt and scatter as needed. They started with the latest Smith statue, then worked their way down the line, but they stopped at four. By then, the government had figured out the pattern, so in order to avoid being caught, they started randomizing their vandalism, not always going after statues, but other buildings. But they were only able to destroy a handful of things before it became impractical. The government was tired of trying to guess which statue or building would come next, so they just positioned guards at every single one of them. Aljabara wasn’t exactly the largest city in the galaxy; just the largest on the planet. It wasn’t that hard to protect all of them simultaneously. It wasn’t a piece of cake either, though. Seeing this, the Thicket switched gears, and developed their own version of the underground railroad. With personnel stretched thin, the Republicans were unable to cover all of their bases. They were so obsessed with only letting men perform the important jobs, and only promoting the best of the best for the most important jobs, they ended up with too little manpower. Of course they realized their problem, and corrected it by filling up their ranks. They obviously still didn’t allow women, but they didn’t worry too much about skill or experience. It was too late, though. The escape network was by then entrenched, and primed to rescue a lot more lives for the next two decades.

Microstory 1454: Growth of the Thicket

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One of the rules that the government on Durus set forth in regards to the Ladytown outpost was that Aljabarans would be allowed to visit whenever they wanted. As it stood, this had never actually occurred. The condition was there to make it so that they could enter the town limits in case they ever needed anything from the townsfolk, not to encourage camaraderie and community. For any Aljabaran to leave the city, for any reason, they needed explicit permission from someone pretty high up in the ranks, and no one had ever been granted this permission in order to travel to Ladytown. So while life was difficult in the outpost, and the Republicans had made numerous to destroy them, they were generally free from prying eyes. This all changed in the year 2140. A psychic spy sought audience with a government official, and claimed to him that he had heard the sound of crying babies through a vision. Now, he was only a mage remnant, and not a very good one at that, so no one believed him without question, but it was enough to spark an investigation. A team was sent to visit Ladytown, to see if it was true. This visit turned into a raid, and although they saw no actual babies, they did find signs of young life; cribs and the like. It was a miracle that they didn’t find the stolen books, or combat training paraphernalia. It would seem the psychic was telling the truth. Having been built on top of the old town of Hidden Depths, there were a lot of secret passageways the Ladytowners could use to keep their secrets protected, but that wasn’t going to be good enough forever. The government was going to send more goons, and they knew that it was only going to get worse. They were right.

A second team came through with a life signs detecting mage remnant, who found the babies for them. Without orders from on high, this team attempted to abduct the children, and the women were forced to show their skills by fighting back. No one was seriously hurt, but the proverbial shots were fired, and unless a remnant was born with the ability to reverse entropy, the bullets were not going back into that gun. This changed everything. Whereas before, they were training to defend themselves, now they were training to actively work against their oppressors, and drive real change for women on Durus. When Ladytown was founded, people just wanted to live how they pleased. And when the men were wiped out, they just wanted to prepare for the worst. But the government was forcing their hand, and building a real rebellion was the only response at this point. The town itself still needed to be preserved, however, so they could no longer maintain a base of operations there. Many would stay behind, in case another team came by to threaten the children, but the rest would move away. They set up shop so far from Hidden Depths that the government could not make any reasonable connection between the two groups. They could no longer live in houses, for they were too easy to spot, and impossible to move when one area became too dangerous. They lived in the wild, and scrounged for food wherever they could find it. When one campsite lost its value, or the government was too close to catching them, they packed up, and headed to a new location. Most of the planet was now covered by a sea of plant life that had always been referred to as the thicket. So this was what the insurgents decided to name themselves. This was the start of The Thicket Revolutionary Faction.

Microstory 1437: Shieldon

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Shortly after Motus was created, and started jumping around the surface of the planet, a group of people came together to brainstorm ideas for the twelfth town of Durus. Now, what could they do? Some of the towns avoided the monsters, if at all possible. Others were built specifically to defend the whole species against them. Each seemed to have their own special thing. Even Astau had a unique history, even though it ended up fairly normal. The new town’s planners didn’t want to be like that, or like any of the others. They felt they had to do something to set them apart, even if that was a self-imposed obligation, and one which pretty much ended with them. Either way, there was a reason why their proposal was never attempted before. It sounded reasonable, but it wasn’t. They wanted to use time powers to deploy a dome over their town, which would repulse the monsters automatically. It would hopefully extend much farther than the border, so their enemies couldn’t even get near them. It was similar to the concept used for Splitsville, but their towers worked by sending signals outwards that disrupted the monster’s already fragile physical integrity. They only sent this signal when necessary, and the machines required constant electrical energy, because they weren’t based on mage powers at all. Now, they weren’t the first to think of a time power version. In fact, the source mages once believed that would be the best solution to their problems. If they had found someone with the ability to form a protective bubble powerful enough to keep any intruder out, they probably would have ultimately built a single city where everyone could live.

The 2050 Mage Games gave them someone who could do it, but only on a much smaller scale. She could raise a shield around her body, as well as those closest to her, which would force an attacker away from them, whether monster, human, or anything else. If she gathered enough energy for herself, she could essentially punch a monster hundreds of meters away. The bubbles didn’t last long, and producing them always wore her out eventually. She was now also old, retired, and trying to live out her days in luxury. With the help of a seer, The Diagnostician knew something about this person’s future. Upon her death, she was fated to release a blast of energy the likes of which Durus hadn’t seen for decades. The original plan was to apport her to the monster portal just before her death, and let that moment destroy the whole ring, break it apart, or at least damage it a little. The planners begged the source mages, and the rest of the leadership, to change their minds about it. No one knew whether her death would be able to accomplish what they wanted. Was it powerful enough to end everything? So powerful that it killed all the humans too? Would it even make any real impact at all? No seer had been able to confirm these details, and the planners used that in their argument against it.  This woman’s domes were not necessarily meant to be used as weapons. They were a defense tool, which her teachers trained her to use as weapons of war, because personal shields weren’t useful enough in battle. If they timed it just right, her death could theoretically make a permanent bubble, just as they wanted. It might require constant energy input to stay up, but the initial swell should be large enough to be a viable option. There were plenty of people whose responsibility it was to transfer temporal energy, so that would not be a problem. In the end, there was no convincing the source mages that this was better than the original idea. If they could stop the monsters from getting to their world in the first place, a town with a defensive bubble around it was obsolete anyway. But it didn’t matter. The shield creator was the one with the power, so she was the one who decided what happened to her when she died. She agreed to what the planners asked of her, and after three years of slow construction, it was time. The town of Shieldon was born in 2082.

Microstory 1434: Fort Salient

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Now that Durus had a decent number of mages, it was so much easier to get things done. Construction was easier than it would probably ever be on Earth, and the monsters had become more of a common nuisance than a real enemy. A monster came in, a town mage was assigned to dispense with it, and they did. No one had died from an attack in decades, and no one had been seriously injured in several years. The Durune humans knew what they were doing, and their population continued to rise at a predictable rate. They stopped planning for new towns ahead of time, because each one would only take a matter of weeks, depending on which mages they had access to for a given development, and how complex they wanted that town to be. People did still want to move to new places though; that was a value that wasn’t going to change anytime soon, so whenever the need arose, someone would be there to make it happen. They would keep planning to build them until something changed about their situation, which it did. Fort Frontline proved to be one of the best ideas that the mages had ever come up with, but it was beginning to be less effective. The monsters were seeking out people, and to get to most of these people, they would usually end up going through Frontline first. That stopped being such a reliable outcome, though. For reasons no one could tell from this end of the broken portal, starting around 2077, monsters were coming in faster, and more abundantly. Experts still weren’t sure exactly what was on the other side or even what these things were—and no one was brave enough to investigate—so there was really no way to know what was causing the influx, but it could prove to be a problem.

The Fort Frontline method was no longer good enough on its own. The monsters were simply going around the fort, and not because they were becoming smart enough to avoid it, but because there were too many of them now, and they didn’t exactly travel in a single file line. Fortunately, there was a simple solution to this. All they would need to do was build a second military outpost. The tenth town, insomuch as it was a town, would be called Fort Salient. It was built closest to the portal ring than anyone ever thought it was possible to survive. While it was a crapshoot where on that ring a monster appeared, they did seem to come through more often on the Southwest side. So that was where Fort Salient sat, within clear view of the ring. It was the first thing these monsters saw, so they always went right for it. The strongest fighters in Fort Frontline, and elsewhere, were assigned there. If you were posted at Salient, it meant that the source mages saw potential in you. They wanted you to fight in the war until its bitter end, and there wasn’t a question whether that would happen, only when. Seers were predicting the end of the war, but seers are always purposefully vague. They’ll only give you enough information to make it to your destiny. If they just laid it all out on a roadmap, you would probably try to change it, and screw everything up. Some people interpreted this omen to mean they needed to go on the offensive, instead of just defending themselves, and Fort Salient became the first staging ground for these battles. This was when it turned back into a true war, complete with damage to infrastructure, and casualties. Some called this year the beginning of the end of the Protectorate, but most agree that it would have fallen much sooner if not for the brave men and women who fought here.