If Vitalie went back in time, presumably to Ex-741, why didn’t she prevent
the planet from being destroyed? Well, there was a logical answer to that,
though there was no way of knowing whether it was the right answer. The
world suffered a massive matter-antimatter reaction, worse than the one that
decimated the refugee world that the team tried to stay on in the Fifth
Division. This one was catastrophic enough to tear the whole thing apart, so
there was no reason to believe that anyone survived it, and since the chain
reaction was obviously triggered by their arrival, they had every reason to
suspect that their deaths was the ultimate goal. Perhaps any vessel that
tried to land would have triggered the reaction, but since the Exins would
have proverbially gotten away with their oppressive ways if it weren’t for
the meddling kids, the team decided to assume that they were the specific
targets. So they were almost certainly dead, their means of survival being
so outrageous that the Exins would not have even considered it as a possible
outcome, and the best thing that Team Matic could do was to stay dead. To
make that happen without just running away, or pointlessly orbiting a star
for years on end would be to start hiding in plain sight.
The old ship that Vitalie apparently programmed to meet them on the asteroid
was rather small. Perhaps old wasn’t the word for it...certified preowned,
maybe? They didn’t find any auto history report in it, though, so they
couldn’t tell what it had been through. Ramses found a database of
information in the central computer, but it didn’t say anything about how
the vessel was used in the past. It just provided him with the technical
specifications, and the implication that it was very, very old. Oh, and they
also knew that it was called The Dorsch. It was not a rustbucket, but as
mentioned, it was small; smaller than the Dante, though still larger than
the little unnamed thing they were using that was just destroyed a few years
ago. Ram spent the rest of the day affixing the pocket dimension generator
to one of the doors, as well as making some other retrofits. The rest of the
team had school.
While the Dorsch was going to shapeshift using exterior holographics, the
rest of the team needed to do the same. Fortunately, they were all capable
of changing their appearances. The power was replicated from Alyssa McIver,
though none of them had used it much. Leona was the most experienced, but
the rest had only tried a few times, so she spent most of the day teaching
them how to hold convincing and sustained false images. They couldn’t lose
focus for a split second, or it would totally undermine the ruse. The next
day, only Marie and Angela were excelling at the new skill, so it was
decided that the others would not yet face any of the locals at their next
destination. So only the three of them would be part of the outreach
program.
Mateo and Olimpia went off to find Vitalie!613, but that didn’t take long at
all, so they zipped back up to the Dorsch, where Ramses was working. The
holographic projectors were not yet ready, but that was all right, because
the idea was to always show up to each new planet looking different, and
they had never been anywhere else looking like this, so it was fine to use
for this trial run. They still didn’t know if their new modus operandi was
going to work in the short-term, let alone the long-run. “How long are you
gonna wait?” He was tweaking something on some device.
“I’ll wait several months,” Vitalie!613 decided. If she started butting into
lives of the Ex-613 natives right after this mysterious trio of women showed
up, they might make a connection between them, and if they did that, they
may start to suspect some connection to Team Matic, which would invalidate
this whole revised plan.
“What are you gonna do in the meantime?” Ramses pressed.
“I’ll just find an island somewhere, and have a nice vacation. That is,
unless you can give me your little illusion power, so I can blend in with
them.”
“It’s not that easy,” he said apologetically. The truth was that he didn’t
want this power spreading like a virus. Eventually, everyone would be able
to look like anyone, and then the entire concept of trust could be
vanquished from the universe. Was it selfish to hoard the ability, and keep
it just within the group? Probably, but he wasn’t going to apologize for it.
He would only apologize for the other reasons. “I couldn’t just give it to
you as you are. I would need to clone you, and transfer your consciousness,
and I don’t know enough about your current powers to replicate those as
well. It’s a delicate balance. You can’t just copy and paste powers. You
would end up being more than the sum of your parts, and the consequences of
that condition are too unpredictable.”
“You don’t have to tell me that,” Vitalie!613 said. “I don’t just have
Andromeda’s, Saga’s, Camen’s, and Étude’s powers separately. They’re all
mixed in with each other. Étude wasn’t born with the ability to teleport.
She was given the ability to be teleported, by the powers that be. The fact
that she retained any level of it always felt like a mistake to her. She
thought that the PTB forgot to take it away, because they would normally
pass it on to someone else, but she was last, so it slipped their minds. I
bet if we compared notes, we would find that the way I teleport is different
than your way.”
Ramses was working this whole time, but he stopped now to look up. Then he
turned to face her as he was lifting the lenses of his magnifying specs.
“That’s a good idea. Let’s compare notes.”
“That sounds time-intensive, and it doesn’t look like you have time. I’m not
leaving this planet, and you’re not staying.”
Ramses flicked the lenses back down. “Well, we’ll see. Leona may determine
that this world is a two-dayer.”
Meanwhile, down on the planet, Leona, Angela, and Marie were pretending to
be three survivors from the north. They found two major settlements on the
surface, which were on the same continent, but thousands of kilometers from
each other. They were not connected by any roads, and the level of
technology that they exhibited did not suggest that air transport was a
thing here. In addition, multiple mountain ranges separated them, making
foot-traffic unlikely, albeit not impossible, which would explain how these
three strangers made it all the way here. The northern settlement was in
ruins. They found bones, but no evidence of an attack. They probably died
out in an epidemic of some sort. All of this gave them a hopefully
believable reason why the southern settlement had never seen them before.
“So, you don’t want a parade?” the Director asked them.
“Why would we get a parade?” Leona asked him.
“We always put on a parade for new arrivals,” the Director explained. “The
only person who never got a parade was the first one here. She’s the one who
planned the parade for the second person. But I guess if you’ve been living
here, you already got your parade...unless they don’t do them up north.”
“Uh, we’re not sure,” Marie responded. “We never arrived here,” she lied.
“We were born on this world. Our parents might have had parades, though.”
He narrowed his eyes. “We were sterilized. We’re not supposed to have
children.”
“It must not have worked for them,” Angela reasoned. “The two of us are
twins. She’s our younger sister.”
“Really? She looks older.”
“I’ve had a harder life,” Leona said. They couldn’t make themselves look
like one of their friends from the stellar neighborhood, because any of them
could be just as famous as the members of the team. But they each knew
plenty of people from their pasts that had no connection to salmon and
choosers. The easiest way to form a skintight hologram of someone like that
was to let your subconsciousness do it for you. Leona didn’t even remember
who this person was that she looked like now. She could have been a fifth
grade art teacher, or a mother she stood behind in line in the grocery store
once. If she looked older than the inspirations that Angela and Marie’s
subconsciousnesses chose, it was nothing more than a coincidence.
Marie sighed. “Here’s what happened. She and I were born, and we lived up
north. Before we were old enough to keep memories, our parents had to leave.
The theory is that everyone else died. We don’t know how. Along the way, she
was born, which meant that she was always on the move, and never benefited
from the stability of a true home. That could be why she’s aged a little
faster. We have been heading this direction our entire lives. Our parents
died along the way, and now here we are.”
“Did you see any other resorts?” the Director asked them all.
“Resort?”
“Yeah, that’s what this is. It’s a resort. I am the Resort Director.”
“Oh.” Marie faced Leona. “It was a resort. If it was anything like this
place, our parents lived in a resort.”
Leona nodded. “They were so cagey. They refused to tell us much about where
we came from. That’s why we’re so confused and uninformed. Please forgive
us.”
“What is the purpose of this resort?” Angela asked, doubling down on their
excuse to be ignorant.
“It is a reward for a job well-done. We all came from different planets.
Every year, the Empire evaluates the merits of every planet under the
domain. One planet is selected which has exemplified the values and spirit
of the Exin Way of Life. At the same time, a potential winner on each planet
is found after its own rigorous evaluations. If the planet wins that year’s
round of evaluations, the planet’s winner is transported here from there. On
the planet where I’m from, the local winner receives consolation prizes if
that planet is not chosen as the above-all winner. On some planets, if the
planet doesn’t win that year, the individual winner wins nothing. They just
go on with their lives.”
“I see. So you’re all just living here together. All of your needs are
provided?” Leona asked him.
“Absolutely,” the Resort Director replied. “We always suspected that there
were other resorts, but we have no communication with them. This is big
news.”
“Do you have any problems? Any crime?”
“No. Like I said, we’re all chosen after rigorous evaluations. No one with
poor psychology, or proven bad behavior, is allowed in. Everything’s
perfect. I see no reason why you can’t join us. No one can be here if they
don’t belong, so you must belong.”
“Thanks. We’ll, uh...can we talk in private?” Leona asked.
“You may have the room,” he offered before leaving.
“I think we just got our Vitalie back,” Marie determined.
“Why?” Angela asked.
“They don’t need a Caretaker,” Leona figured. “This place
is...inconsequential. No one needs to be saved. They don’t need to be
stopped from doing anything bad.”
“Leona, Angela, Marie,” Olimpia began through the comms. “Get back up here.”
They all teleported back up to the ship.
“We’ve been listening,” Olimpia went on. “What were you gonna say, Vita?”
“I think I should stay,” Vitalie!613 believed.
“What would you do here?” Leona asked her.
“I would gather information. That’s what you need, right?”
“Well, yeah, but...”
“You have a star chart. You know the numeral designation of every planet you
go to, but you don’t know anything about it, do you? They might need your
help. They might be trying to destroy the galaxy. You just don’t know. Let
me find out for you, so you can prepare for the mission. There could be one
person from every single planet in the Empire here. I’ll talk to them, gain
their trust, and then relay information to you. Just give me one of those
little communication discs.”
“That’s not your mission, though; your self-appointed purpose. You
replicated yourself to take care. You’re the Caretaker.”
“Eh, things change,” Vitalie!613 mused. “Have you noticed when you’ve met
other versions of me that we all act a little bit differently? Because of
stasis, it hasn’t necessarily been very long since we diverged. Before the
OG Vitalie started replicating herself through time travel, she prepared
herself psycho-emotionally. She essentially trained herself to be flexible,
adaptable. Every one of me that you meet is different because the situation
is different, because you’re coming at me with different attitudes, based on
your own background, which shifts with every new experience that you have.
Yes, I came here to be a caretaker, but now as you’ve pointed out, Ex-613
doesn’t need that. It needs a spy.”
“I dunno,” Leona said. “You’re not invincible. People train in spycraft for
years. You don’t just wake up one day and start doing it. Infiltrating one
person’s life is difficult enough, but you want to infiltrate—and gain the
trust of—an entire population. That is a tall order for anyone. Forgive me,
but on Dardius, you operated primarily on brute force, because no one could
stop you. Subtlety is not something that you needed before.”
“Okay, so let’s start small. I’ll insert myself into the life of one person.
What’s the designation for the next planet you’re going to?”
“I have the list,” Olimpia announced. She pulled up her tablet. “The next
one over is Ex-666. Hm. Does that have the same connotation for you as it
did in my time?”
“Yes,” Angela and Marie answered simultaneously.
“I’ll find someone who lived on Ex-666, and tell you about it,” Vitalie!613
continued. “I’ll have months to get the information out of them gradually
before you come back into the timestream. Give me a chance. I can take care
of myself. Pun very intended.”
Leona thought about it, and eventually agreed. “But don’t forget that we can
come back for you. Not at any moment, but...”
“Thanks.”
The next year, they learned that no one on Ex-613 originally came from
Ex-666, and later that it was not given that number randomly. It was a penal
colony. Maybe the numbers did mean something.
