The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 30, 2482

« < » > Table of Contents

Generated by Google ImageFX text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 3

The technicolor web encompassed them as it did every time they used the quintessence drive. They faded into blackness before the stars and other celestial bodies reappeared. It didn’t look like anything had changed, though. They seemed to still be orbiting Dardius. Had something gone wrong? “Has something gone wrong?” Marie asked. “It looks the same.”

“Not exactly the same.” Her sister pointed through the window, at the terminator line that separated night from day. “We should see lights from the cities.”

“Lee-Lee?” Mateo asked.

She looked at her watch, knowing what he wasn’t saying. She stared at it for a moment before dropping her wrist, and regarding the group. “It’s June 30...2082.”

“I’ve never been to this year before.” Mateo shut his eyes, and concentrated. “I can feel her. She’s nearby. But...it’s weird. She’s still...”

“In flux?” Ramses guessed. “I feel that too.”

“What was this world like in this time period?” Olimpia asked.

“It wasn’t populated yet,” Leona began to explain. “I think these are the beginnings of something known as The Sanctuary. I suppose the whole planet ends up being thought of as a sanctuary, but back then, it was just one hotel. There could be no one down there besides Romana, or only a handful of people. If Meliora’s around already, she’ll be able to help us figure this out.”

“I can figure it out,” Mateo decided. “I’m just going to teleport down to her.”

“Don’t be reckless,” Leona warned.

“Helping or hurting, honey. Helping or hurting.” With that, he disappeared.

He was standing inside of a construction site. By the looks of the architecture, it appeared to be a hotel, but it was nowhere near ready for people to move in. This probably was indeed Sanctuary, just in its very early days. There could be enemies nearby, or not. There was no way to know, and the only rational reaction was to be cautious and quiet. He was standing in front of a door, which was where the tethering signal was coming from. He reached for the knob when one footstep gave him pause.

“What are you doing here?” Holy shit, that was a face he hadn’t seen in a good long while. It was Dave, a.k.a. The Chauffeur.

“Where should I be, if not here?” Mateo questioned.

Dave sized him up and down. “You hold yourself differently. You seem more comfortable. You’re not the same man you were when we last saw each other.” He was right. It had been centuries.

“You didn’t notice the spacesuit I’m now wearing?”

“That too.” Dave looked around for other threats. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but if you have plans for that young woman in there, I’m afraid I’m gonna have to ask you to take a step back.”

This surprised Mateo. “You’re protective of her?”

“She needs protection.”

Mateo flicked the door open. Romana was standing in a lit reading nook of the hotel suite. She was surrounded by a swirling swarm of dark particles. They made her disappear for a couple of seconds, only to return her for a couple more before sending her away again. It was unending. Her eyes were closed, as if trapped in some form of stasis. “That’s my daughter. I’ve been looking for her.”

“Are you lying?” Dave asked.

“Don’t you know me well enough?” Mateo asked him. “I’m the good guy. No, I’m not lying. Her name is Romana Nieman.” He watched as she disappeared and reappeared over and over and over again. This was Buddy’s doing, just as he suspected.

“I’ve been trying to get her out of there for years,” Dave explained. “Every time I get close, those black fly things attack me, and send me somewhere else. Sometimes it’s just to the other side of the room, but I have had to claw my way back from decades in the past. I’m afraid they will one day zoicize me.”

“This is my fault. The man who has her captive and I did not part ways well.”

Dave lifted his chin in realization. “That sounds about right. Can you help her?”

“Tell me where Buddy is.”

“I’ve never even heard of him.”

“Yeah, he’s new, for whatever that’s worth in our world.”

“There’s been no one at the construction site, besides me, The Builder, and Meliora Reaver.”

“Rutherford,” Mateo corrected. “Her name is Meliora Rutherford.”

“Indeed.”

“Give me a second,” he said with a finger up. “Why has no one come down here with me?” he asked through comms. “To stop me, or help?”

“We don’t see Dave Seidel as a threat,” Leona responded. “Do you need help?”

“I may. I’m going to try to take her by the hand. Come find me if I end up back in dinosaur times.”

Leona appeared from the other end of the hallway. “I’m here. We’ll battle the dinosaurs together.”

“A lot of changes with you too.”

All three of them stepped into the room. The dark particles menacingly expanded from Romana’s body, like bees protecting the hive, but they weren’t attacking yet. “I keep forgetting the rule, don’t antagonize the antagonist.”

“Not everything is about you,” a voice came from nowhere. A second swarm of dark particles appeared in a corner from which Buddy materialized. “The truth is, I didn’t even know you knew this woman. I took her to test Dave’s resolve.”

“My resolve?” Dave asked. “I don’t understand.”

“You’re special,” Buddy claimed. “Your powers are special. And I need them.”

“He wants you to get him a fruit,” Mateo said, jumping right to the end of this dumb spiel. “A citrus, to be exact.”

“Oh,” Dave said, knowing the limitations of time travel. “I can’t do that.”

Buddy laughed. “Temporal Citrus Explosion Syndrome is just another time illness, except instead of a person getting sick, it’s a fruit. You can protect organisms traveling through time. That’s your whole deal.”

“I’ve already tried,” Dave contended. “That was, like, the first thing Meliora had me attempt after she turned me into this. She too thought I was a loophole. And she didn’t have to kidnap anyone for it. She just asked, asshole.”

“As I said, it was a test. You failed to free her from her prison, and so here she shall remain forever. Sorry, Mr. Matic. I harbor no ill will against you, or her. I am aware that you had nothing to do with Superintendent Grieves’ betrayal a few years back. You weren’t even there!”

“Wait,” Dave said. He really needed to save the girl. “Perhaps there’s something else I can do for you. Let the girl go, and I’ll try my best. I can make no promises, but I may come up with an alternate solution that you haven’t thought of. My powers are not all that define me. I’m pretty clever.”

Buddy considered the offer. “You’ll have to do everything I say, no arguments. You have to make a genuine offer to get me that citron, even if it’s not exactly pleasant.”

“Okay,” Dave conceded.

“Thank you, Dave,” Mateo said sincerely.

“Just take care of her.” The way Dave said that, as if it was personal for him. He had never met Romana, but perhaps she reminded him of someone else.

Buddy reached out, and shook a reluctant Dave’s hand. “We got a deal.” He moved his hand over towards Romana. The dark particles broke orbit, and sped towards their master.

After he had reabsorbed them all from her, Romana’s knees buckled, but Mateo made a short jump, and caught her in time. “It’s okay, I got you.” She was still unconscious. He lifted her up in his arms, and looked over at Buddy. “If she doesn’t recover, you’ve become a real enemy, and that is not something you wanna be.”

Buddy titled his head and shrugged, apparently accepting the possibility.

“Dave,” Mateo went on. “Don’t lose yourself.” He exchanged a look with Leona, then they both disappeared.

“Get us out of here as fast as you can,” Leona ordered.

Ramses was hovering over the console, ready for this, having been listening to the brief but charged conversation. He engaged the machine again, and sent them away. It was a rocky trip this time. The technicolor web engulfed them on all sides, as usual, but it was uneven. The whole ship shook like it was experiencing turbulence. When it spit them out at the destination, they were sent tumbling through space, and were still feeling it here on the inside. Ramses first made sure that there weren’t any objects nearby that they might collide with. Then he shut off the viewscreens, so they wouldn’t be so dizzy anymore. The internal inertial dampeners were still shuttering a little bit, but holding together.

“The watch is having trouble calibrating,” Leona announced, bracing her hip against the wall. “Something went wrong.”

“All that matters is we’re together,” Mateo said. “I’m taking her to the realspace infirmary.” There were three infirmaries on this vessel. Two of them were in pocket dimensions, but one was just built on the ship itself.

“Good idea,” Leona replied to him before addressing the group. “No teleporting, and stay out of the pockets. They may be compromised.”

Ramses worked on the console to stabilize the ship. After a minute, it was still having attitude problems, but the shaking stopped. While he was trying to fix the rest, Leona sat down, and fiddled with the watch. She tapped on her comm disc. “June 30, 2182. We only jumped a hundred years.”

“That’s not where I was trying to take us!” Ramses complained.

“We’ll figure it out,” Leona assured him.

They did figure it out, and it didn’t take them very long either. The slingdrive was very sensitive, and could only make one jump before it needed some time to rest. It was all too technical for Mateo to understand, and he didn’t care to learn the details anyway. It needed a break in between uses. Whatever. That changed nothing about Romana’s condition. She was okay, though, and he needed Olimpia’s comfort to remember that. According to the medical pod’s diagnosis, she was only sleeping. Her EEG suggested that she would wake up on her own, and it was safer to just wait for that to happen than to try to wake her up some other way.

There was a little bit of news while Mateo sat by his daughter’s side. While seemingly random at first, their arrival at this particular point in spacetime led them to a discovery. The Insulator of Life was just floating in the middle of space. There was no telling what it had been through, but Ramses seemed to think that someone’s consciousness was being stored inside of it. He was forced to put the investigation on the backburner while he sorted through the slingdrive issues. They must have solved the issue one way or another, because by the end of the day, they were able to make another jump. Leona announced that they were where they wanted to be, orbiting Castlebourne on June 30, 2482.

He never left the infirmary, and neither did Olimpia. He ran through the past couple of weeks in his head, replaying the events that led him here. What could he have done differently? Could he have handled the Buddy situation differently? Could he have urged Ramses to exercise caution, and wait on trying to tether the group. It seemed like a good idea at the time, to prevent any of them from getting lost, but their plan backfired, and this may have lasting consequences. One of those consequences was staring him in the face. Rather, she would have been if her eyes were open. “Have you noticed?” he asked after a long time in the silence. “She looks older.”

Olimpia cleared her throat. “I believe she is. If she’s been off of the pattern since she disappeared, it’s been five years for her.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Leona said, stepping into the room to check on them. “I didn’t stop to make precise calculations, but just working from memory, I would say that she existed in the timestream for about four seconds at a time before jumping forward two seconds. I don’t know if it was exactly that, or what, but I did notice her being present for around twice as long as she was gone. I think Buddy knew more than he admitted. He obviously did this to disable our tether’s ability to track her location. She never had to jump forward very far in the future; just enough to clear the last ping before it reset.”

“So, how old is she?” Mateo pressed.

“At a two to one ratio, that’s about three and a third years.”

He looked back down at her. “She’s eighteen.”

“Her body is,” Leona clarified. “I don’t know how it subsisted this long in the dark particle temporal bubble, but we don’t know what happened to her mind in there. Age isn’t about how long you’ve been alive. It’s about how much time you’ve experienced.”

“I wish I could look at it that way, but all I see is five more years that I could have spent getting to know my daughter.”

They wanted to keep talking it through, but he just wanted to return to the silence. A couple of hours later, while Mateo and Olimpia were eating their feelings out of a dayfruit that was programmed to taste like chocolate cake, Romana finally woke up. It seemed, however, to be a double-edged sword. He was relieved for a moment when the EEG alerted them that her brain activity was increasing, then very concerned when she opened her eyes, and several dark particles wafted out of them before fading into nothingness.

« < » > Table of Contents

Microstory 2267: 2018 Was No Bueno

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 3

Funny story. Obviously, before you meet the President, the Diplomatic Protection Authority has to run a thorough background check on you. You have heard of everyone that I know. I’ve mentioned literally everyone I’ve ever met here beyond random customers and clients. I don’t have a past from before the beginning of this year, and the DPA doesn’t know what to do with that. I think they still don’t believe me, which is understandable, but I don’t know what to tell ya. I can’t conjure a family out of nowhere, and no matter how deep you dig, you’re not gonna find them, because you’re looking in the wrong world. I’m guessing that there are two camps; one which wants to believe me, and one which thinks that this is all part of an extremely intricate coverup to hide the fact that I’m some kind of international assassin. That would be one hell of a long con. Could you imagine, doing everything I’ve done for a year just on the off-chance that the leader of the free world would eventually want to meet me? I gave myself an incurable disease, managed to cure it in a matter of moments anyway, and everyone who saw it happen is somehow loyal to me, or has been paid off. That’s more bonkers than the truth. I didn’t ask for this meeting. I didn’t see it coming. So if you want to cancel on me, that’s fine. I have no strong feelings about it. As I’ve said, I just got here, so I’m not all that familiar with your history, or your politics. I don’t even know whether I would have voted for her if I had been born on this planet. One major difference between my world and yours is that it’s okay to be apolitical, because you’re not deciding between a decent human being, and one of the worst monsters ever created. Trust me, I know that I call you boring, but this is far better. The administration I left behind in 2018 was no bueno.

Microstory 2264: Tell You a Secret

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 3

Yeah, it’s true, I’m considering relenting, and writing an autobiography. I didn’t want to do that, but I’m told that passively donating my money to various charities isn’t enough. I have to bolster my reputation through action. This could mean volunteer work, and hopefully one day, I’ll feel safe enough to get back out there without a posse of bodyguards. But for now, the charities need a reason to accept my donations. They don’t just take money from anyone. That can cause a whole lot of sociopolitical issues, as you can imagine. People are also making things up about me, because even though I’ve been talking about myself on this site, it’s not really organized, and it evidently doesn’t have enough about my past. People wanna know where I came from, and what my world is like. They’re envisioning wondrous and grand differences that just aren’t there. I guess it’s my job to set the record straight. Against my publicist’s instructions, I’m gonna tell you a secret, which is that I hate autobiographies. It’s not just because, how dare you think your life is so interesting that anyone would want to read about it, but also they’re usually pretty boring. But I may have no choice if someone else decides to write one of their own, and gets a ton of stuff wrong. I’ve not committed to anything yet. It’ll take a long time to write, and I don’t want it taking away from my other responsibilities.

Extremus: Year 80

« < » > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2, and by Pixlr AI image editor

Tinaya and Aristotle are stuck in the past, but they are not in a new timeline. Their other selves are still in their midst, but they’re unable to interact with them. It’s like a parallel dimension, but with some bizarre rules. Fruits and vegetables are available here, as if they straddle the dimensional border. But people and animals are practically invisible. They can still detect them under certain conditions, and they’ve pieced the puzzle together enough to determine that the strongest appearances come during moments of temporal energy use. When Past!Tinaya passes through a wall using her mirror powers, Future!Tinaya and everyone else can see her shadow, as well as that of the wall. When Past!Aristotle trots to another celestial body in the solar system, the people in the parallel can witness his disappearance, as well as the surge of power that emanates from the event.

The two of them are not alone here. Vaska made it through, as did a bunch of survivors of the settlement explosion seven years ago. Future!Tinaya saved them with her weird mirror abilities. How exactly that worked, though, she’ll never know. Her glass skin is gone, having apparently been transferred all the way into the big showdown with the explosion. It still happened, just in the main dimension. Now their only concern is finding a way to get there themselves, but they’ve not had any ideas in the last seven years. None of the people on the settlement is an expert in a pertinent field. Not all of them even feel that they should be worried about it at all.

“This is our home now.” Bartel Ateren was assigned the Verdemus mission in the capacity of a botanist. His job was not originally meant to require that he do any actual work on the ship on a regular basis. The people who first set foot on Extremus were never going to be the ones to land on the destination planet. In fact, most of the people who lived there would never see the future world at all. Or so they have always been led to believe. Tinaya knows better, but she’s not supposed to, and she’s not allowed to talk about it. Most people are not aware of the truth, yet they continue to study fields of research that will only be particularly useful on the new homeworld.

Theoretically, the information that their descendants will need to survive and thrive can just be pulled from the central archives, which exist as many copies on multiple servers. Still, it only seemed right that the knowledge be passed down through teachers instead. Again, the majority of students will never get any opportunity to use what they learned, but they do it anyway. Bartel, on the other hand, was not actually a teacher. He was more like an emergency teacher, there to be available should anything happen to the regular teacher before they could pass the knowledge on to the next generation. He was able to move to Verdemus in secret, because he had no living relatives, nor many friends, and the next generation has successfully grasped the necessary concepts, meaning his original job is done. He has since become a reliable leader for the survivors.

“But we’re not really here,” Tinaya argues. “On the other side of the planet, they built a megablock to house the soldiers that are being deployed in the Ex Wars. We have no way of getting there, and even if we did, we probably couldn’t live there, even though there would be plenty of room. It’s inaccessible from this dimension.”

“I don’t need the megablock,” Bartel reasons. “The huts we’ve built here are more than enough for us to be happy.”

“What about your children, and your children’s children? You don’t want more for them? You want them to live their lives with no hope of even contacting the rest of the galaxy, or the ship? If you’re digging in, then you ought to do it right.”

“That’s exactly why I wouldn’t want us to try to live in the megablock. I want them to make their own way, to build a new society from the ground up...literally. This is what they had in mind for the Extremus mission in the first place. Well, not exactly this, but you know what I mean. The self-reliance, and the journey of development. That’s the point. We’re just doing it here and now, instead of out there, and in the future. And anyway, who cares which version of Verdemus we’re on? We can’t leave the planet either way. Sorry, I know Totle’s your friend, but he’s not had any success with his powers.”

That’s fair, they never expected to be able to leave Verdemus in the first place. So they’re stuck on a different Verdemus, so what? What’s the difference, in the end? Well, family; that’s the difference. So maybe this isn’t that great of an argument. “He deserves to go back to his mother and Niobe, and I want to see Spirit again. And Belahkay, and even Omega. Ilias, I could do without, and Eagan is whatever.”

“I can understand that,” Bartel concedes. “But I’m worried that if we succeed in crossing back over to the main dimension, they actually will find a way to return us to Extremus. I was never the kind of person who was angry to be born on a ship that I would never leave, but I didn’t know what I was missing. This place is paradise. The people still on that hunk of metal...they should be so lucky.”

Tinaya smiles at him, and nods. “That’s exactly why we have an obligation to go back; back to the real Verdemus, and then to Extremus. If you feel so strongly about it, you should try to tell others about it who may feel the same. I can’t guarantee that the council will give you the chance. They may decide to shut you up so you don’t ruin their plans. But one thing’s for sure, if we stay here, trapped in this parallel on this planet, there’s no hope at all of spreading the message.”

He tries to take a breath, but a yawn comes over instead, and he finds himself opening and closing his eyes one at a time. “Sorry. Yes. I, uhh...yeah. You’re right. But that doesn’t change the fact that we have no idea how to get back.”

“Vaska has a theory about that.”

“Yes, she mentioned that.” The two of them work closely together, studying the ecosystem to figure out exactly where they are, cosmically speaking, and how they can touch the plants, but not the people or the artificial structures. “It had something to do with a particular plant we discovered, and the other you?”

“She can explain it better,” Tinaya decides. “She’ll be here any minute.” When the bomb went off, besides the people who she saved, only the mess hall remained standing, and only in this parallel dimension. It’s not a very cozy place to live, which is why they’ve built new structures on this side, but they still use this as a communal area. On its own, it’s a temporal anomaly, which is why it’s the only place on the whole planet where other-siders are perfectly visible. When one happens to wander within its walls, which are invisible to them, they can see them. It doesn’t occur often, though.

“I’m here! I’m here,” Vaska says. “Whoops.” She instinctively avoids running into Eagan, who just so happens to be in her path. He’s here a lot. Since they’re in different dimensions, they would simply pass through each other without feeling a thing, but she’s forgotten that for a second. “I can’t remember, how many people are with us?”

“There are thirty-one,” Tinaya reminds her. “Twenty-eight survivors, plus you, me, and Aristotle.”

Vaska nods as she’s inspecting the walls of the mess hall. “I believe that will work.” She peeks through one of the windows. “That corner is slightly closer.”

“You said something about the two Tinayas making contact with each other?” Bartel says. “What does this building have to do with anything?”

Vaska faces Tinaya. “When you told me where you and Aristotle were standing when he tried to trot you off the planet, and you ended up in the Gatewood Collective, were you accurate? I mean, were you precise?”

“Yeah,” Tinaya confirms. It was right over there. Or it will be, rather, later today.” This is the day that they accidentally travel through time. She’s about to close her loop.

Vaska holds up a grassy plant. There’s nothing special about it in appearance. It really just looks like prairie grass, or something else equally mundane. “We can touch the plantlife, but this? This is different. This is special. When we take hold of any other plant, we pull it into our dimension, stealing it from theirs. For some reason, this stuff maintains its connection to the others. I’ve tickled Ilias’ nose with it. He couldn’t see it anymore, and he didn’t know what was going on, but it happened.”

“What does that mean for us?” Bartel asks her.

“This building is a temporal anomaly. The moment Tinaya and Aristotle go back in time is also a temporal anomaly. We need to connect them to each other.” Vaska cups her hands together. “We do that with this plant. I propose we build a chain with our own bodies, linking the corner of the mess hall to Past!Tinaya. She’ll anchor us to the main dimension, and unwittingly pull us through whatever barrier separates us.”

Future!Tinaya and Bartel just stare at her. “That’s...a contrivance.”

“No, it’s not. It’ll work.”

“How do you know? You just made it up.”

“I’ve been studying this plant. It’s a keystone species. Scratch that; it’s the keystone species. The other plants; they can’t communicate with each other without it. It’s like a telephone wire.”

“What’s a telephone wire?” Bartel questions.

“I’m telling you, this will work. We need a chain. But to reach all the way over there, which I’ve calculated to be forty-two meters away, it will require all thirty-one of us. We got a lot of shorties.”

Tinaya looks at her sadly. “Vaska, I know you want this to work, but Bartel’s right. You’re just guessing.”

Vaska huffs a bit, and shakes her head. “The explosion that destroyed the settlement was larger than it should have been. The explosion that destroyed the time mirror, and imbued you with its glass power, was more focused than it should have been. Aristotle’s jumps; Tinaya, your creation of this parallel dimension in the first place—all of these things have been affected by this. It’s all about the grass!” She urgently shakes the sample she has in her hand. “I’m gonna call it timogramen,” she says matter-of-factly, like anyone has any interest in arguing against it. “It explains everything. The way you tell it, dumbasses wasted their time finding suitable trees to make paper, when they really should have been studying this instead. It is unlike anything I have ever heard of before. I don’t know how it evolved, or what else it can do, but I do know that it can send us back to where we need to be. And besides, what’s the worst that can happen if it doesn’t work?”

Both Tinaya and Bartel think it over. It does sound rather random and silly, but she’s right, if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. It’s not like they have some other option which this could interfere with. “Okay,” Tinaya finally says. “We’ll bring it to the group. Hopefully they all agree. Like you said, we need everybody.”

“I’ll help too,” Eagan says. “I believe that you are overestimating the arm span of everyone here.”

The three of them are flabbergasted. “Y—you can see and hear us?” Bartel asks.

“Yes,” Eagan replies.

Tinaya throws her hands up. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“You’re from the future; I didn’t want to disrupt the timeline,” Eagan answers. Oh, that’s actually good logic.

“Well, I suppose that makes sense,” Tinaya admits. “Still, you could have communicated with us.”

“I was gathering information. Why did you think that I was always standing over here? The mess hall doesn’t exist on my side. It’s just ash and ruins.”

“You’re just weird, Eagan; you’re weird,” Tinaya reiterates.

“Fair enough,” he says.

“Are we gonna do this thing, or what?” Vaska asks impatiently. “Time is running out. Past!Aristotle and Past!Tinaya are about to disappear.”

“Wait, can’t we just have them get closer to the building?” Bartel suggests. “Or even in the building? We don’t need a human chain if Eagan helps.”

“No, he’s right,” Tinaya contends. “That would disrupt the timeline, which places all of your lives at risk. If Totle and I never end up on Gatewood, we never find any help getting back here, let alone with Vaska, who we needed to study the—what did you call it?—timogramen? Things have to play out exactly as they did until I finally close my loop. The human chain it is.”

They take Vaska’s proposal to the rest of the group. They have some questions, and they’re just as skeptical about the efficacy of the plan, but they too recognize that the downsides are minimal. One of the biggest issues is just convincing them that they should indeed return to the main dimension. Some of them were brought into this project specifically because their absence from Extremus would not be noticed, like Bartel. Others left families on board, who signed confidentiality agreements. They want to get back to them, which they were promised would be done regularly with the time mirror. So their side of the argument eventually won out.

Vaska takes a team out to harvest more of the timogramen. They crush the grass up, and lather everyone’s arms with it. It’s apparently meant to act as some sort of natural conduit of temporal energy, which will pass from Past!Tinaya and Past!Aristotle, all the way to the mess hall. Eagan was right. After they all line up, Future!Aristotle on one end, and Future!Tinaya on the other, they do find themselves short. Eagan adds himself as an extra link between Aristotle and Chef Webster. They complete the chain just in time for the special event. Tinaya places her hand on the shadow of her younger self just as she and Aristotle make the jump, which will ultimately send them to Gatewood. The power surges through her, and then down the line of survivors until it reaches the mess hall. Then it passes back again. It goes back and forth a few times before bursting out in a blinding light. When it recedes, the chain has been broken as most of them have fallen to the ground, but it is not yet clear whether it worked.

“Tinaya?” Spirit asks. “That was fast. Did it work? Hold on, did you end up going to Extremus after all? Are all these people from there?”

« < » > Table of Contents

Extremus: Year 79

« < » > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2, and by Pixlr AI image editor

It took a long time for the medical staff in the Gatewood Collective to realize that there must be something quite unusual about the planet that Tinaya and Aristotle were living on, and even longer to realize that Tinaya’s whole glass skin condition was making things worse. As it happens, Verdemus emits an unusual form of radiation, which sticks with everyone who steps foot on it. It doesn’t appear to be harmful, but the Gatewooders—is that what they’re called?—didn’t want to take a chance, so they needed time to remedy the issue. It appears that it will happen on its own given enough time away from the environment, but in the interest of expediency, they found a way to dissipate it quickly, but still safely. The primary physician postulates that it’s the result of a form of communication. The plant and animal life on Verdemus have indeed been noted to enjoy some level of harmony. It’s nothing quite as dramatic as Pandora from that one franchise, but it does seem to be there to support its idea of homeostasis. If true, it’s the Gaia Hypothesis made real, just not for Earth. The doctor is fascinated by this possibility, and is very interested in visiting Verdemus to study it.

Captain Kestral McBride is not okay with that. “Doctor, the deadline to apply for passage on the Extremus was weeks ago. You’re not getting on that ship.” It’s July of 2270, and the TGS Extremus is days from launch.

“What are you talking about?” Dr. Norling questions. “I’m not asking to get on the ship. I want to go to the planet, and I have to do that seventy-eight years from now. I have to go back with Miss Leithe and Mr. Al-Amin.”

“That’s not how I’ve made the new recall device work, Vaska,” Lieutenant Ishida Caldwell tries to explain. “It will send the two of them back to where they were before they traveled through time. They can’t take someone with them.”

“Well, then modify it so it can,” Vaska suggests.

“That would be a supertemporal transporter,” Ishida argues. “That’s so much harder, if not impossible given the parameters. Now, you give me a collapsar, and I’ll send you into the next galaxy, but—” She interrupts herself to stare into the corner as if she’s just given herself a new idea.

“You don’t have to worry about all that,” Maqsud contends. “I tried telling you, I’m just having trouble with accuracy, but the power is in me. All you have to do is devise a device that taps into my temporal energy. I certainly can take people with me.”

“That will not be necessary,” Kestral insists. “Dr. Norling will not be going anywhere.” She faces the doctor. “We need you here.”

“Oh, don’t give me that. I’m not the only doctor here. But I am the foremost expert in Verdemusian radiation.”

“Oh, you are, are you?” Kestral asks sarcastically.

“Name one other.” Expert is a definite exaggeration in this case, but she is indeed the closest thing they have. The problem is that Keshida doesn’t care. They don’t need to know how the planet works, so they’re not properly incentivized to sign off on this mission. Vaska has to come up with a good reason why anyone should go, not just that she should be the one. That’s probably going to be a pretty tall order.

“I’m sorry,” Kestral says simply.

Vaska steps over to gaze out of the nearest viewport. Many stars can be seen from this angle, but they fade away closer to the edge where just a hint of the sunshine from Barnard’s Star peeks out from behind the hull. “Do you remember what your lives were like before we came to this universe as refugees...before every moment—waking or unwaking—was consumed by your responsibility to our health and safety? Do you remember what you were doing, and why? Do you remember your dreams? Why are you such brilliant scientists?” She turns back around. “Did you study because it was easy? Because you were bored? Or did you do it because you wanted to learn, to discover? In the last couple of centuries, humanity has encountered a handful of exoplanets. We’ve gone right to them. Each one is special in its own right. Proxima Doma is the closest. Bida is the most Earth-like, albeit naturally a deathtrap for all Earth-born organisms. Hell, even this system right here, with no fully coalesced planets, is interesting enough. But Verdemus sounds like a paradise. It’s like nothing we’ve seen before. And you just...couldn’t give a shit? What would Past!Kestral and Past!Ishida have to say about your attitudes?”

For Tinaya’s part, that’s a pretty decent argument, but it doesn’t have to resonate with her. It has to change Team Keshida’s mind. The two of them exchange a look, and then they gently press their foreheads together. It looks like more than just a familial bond, but a genuine means of communicating with each other without other people hearing, or having to leave the room. This is all but proven when they separate, and suddenly agree to Vaska’s request. Ishida retires to her lab where she modifies the recall device. It was originally designed to send Tinaya and Maqsud back to a place where they had already been, but since Vaska has never been there, that plan will no longer work.

Six days later, they reconvene to explain the new situation, and give them a chance to back out. Ishida holds up the device. Unlike the first one she created, which was only a relatively small sphere, this is three hoops connected to each other by a larger sphere. “Interstellar teleportation is very difficult to accomplish. It’s hard to do it at large scales, and it’s hard to do it at smaller scales. Recall technology, like homestones, get around this using a branch of mathematics that even I don’t understand. But basically if your quantum signature has already been to a place, it’s easier for it to get back there. Going somewhere new that’s so far away is a whole different ball game. I think I’ve figured it out for a one time trip, but I cannot guarantee the results. It’s still based on your recall point,” she explains to the Verdemusians. “And Vaska is still a hanger-on. Most of the time, when something goes wrong, navigation is what gets thrown off, rather than, say, coherence. This is actually a good thing, because while you may end up in the wrong place, at least you end up in one piece. Or three, as it were.”

“What’s the margin of error?” Tinaya asks.

“A few years, plus or minus. Though, from where I’m standing, due to the added mass of Vaska’s presence, my guess is that you’ll be late instead of early. It’s up to you to decide which is preferable.”

Tinaya looks over for Vaska’s guidance.

“No, no, no,” Kestral says. “She doesn’t get to decide this for you. Since this affects all three of you, it must be a unanimous decision. She’s not the only one taking a risk here. If even one of you doesn’t want to take that risk, we go back to the original plan, and Dr. Norling will have no choice but to return to her pathetic job as the Primary Physician for billions of people.”

“I’m in,” Tinaya agrees with no hesitation.

“For what it’s worth, so am I,” Vaska confirms sheepishly.

They all turn their eyes to Maqsud, who waits a moment. “I still think I can do this myself.” He doesn’t look as confident as he wishes. Verdemus is 16,000 light years away, and they’re trying to get there eight decades in the future. Those numbers do not match up with each other. A Trotter can travel through time given the right conditions, and these aren’t them. It’s clearly possible for him, since he’s the one who got them here in the first place, but that doesn’t mean he’s ready to transport them in that way intentionally, and accurately. “But this sounds like a safer bet. Let’s do it.”

Ishida holds the sphere and hoops in front of her. She presses four buttons on the sphere, which release a single leg that extends to the floor, holding it up. “It’ll be here when you’re ready. Its range is unpredictable, so I’ll activate it remotely. Take the suits on your back, and one carry-on. That’s all it can handle. Any questions?”

“We’re ready now,” Tinaya decides, seeing Vaska with her carry-on. She’s the only one with any belongings.

“All right. Give us a minute to get out of here,” Kestral says. “Goodspeed.”

As Team Keshida are leaving, the three passengers get in place. The hoops open, and allow them to step inside to wrap around their torsos. Since they’re not perfect circles, the only way to fit into them is to either face the center, or the outside. The former seems more awkward, so they all end up looking away from each other. A couple of minutes later, they feel the power vibrating through the metal. They instinctively grab onto their respective hoops as the leg retracts itself. A translucent bubble forms, and expands around them, then a few meters beyond. But its borders are undefined. The Captain and Lieutenant were right to bug out.

Once the power reaches critical mass, the bubble suddenly collapses again, and zaps them with a painful—but not overly painful—electrical shock. The room they were standing in disappears, transplanting them to a different one. Tinaya recognizes it immediately, even though she only saw it for a second years ago. This is the mess hall on Verdemus, which exploded when Tinaya unwittingly triggered it by teleporting Ilias away from the hostages that he had taken. Ishida was wrong. They didn’t show up a little too late, but way too early. They’re at risk of changing the timeline. Then again, maybe they should. Then again, how could they have any hope of doing that? This isn’t a few days prior to the tragedy. This is that very moment. Ilias is here, as are his hostages. He’s holding onto one of them tightly. That’s as much as Future!Tinaya is able to garner before Past!Tinaya appears out of nowhere, and takes hold of him. She teleports him out of here, and into the woods.

In one more second, the deadman’s switch is going to obliterate this entire settlement. Dozens of people are going to die, leaving only one survivor who was graced with phoenix resurrection powers. There is not even enough time for Future!Tinaya to remove her suit’s gauntlet to reach her watch, which is the only way she can teleport out of here herself. Even if she did, at best, she can save the other two travelers. Everyone else is still going to die. They’re going to die all over again, and she’s going to have to relive that pain, that loss.

Something is happening. An energy is surging through her again. A bright light is breaking through her suit, melting it along the way. Time appears to slow around her. Only Maqsud and Vaska are moving at a normal rate. The hostages are standing up to run away, but have barely made it to standing positions. The suit slips all the way off of her, leaving only her shining naked glass body. The light expands faster than the bomb explodes, and they begin to battle each other. The glass light wins out, and fades away. Everyone is alive. She has just successfully changed the past. Or has she?

« < » > Table of Contents

Extremus: Year 78

« < » > Table of Contents

Generated by Pixlr AI image generator

Tinaya and Aristotle are wearing their Integrated Multipurpose Suits. He’s been transporting himself, and sometimes his mother, to other celestial objects in the solar system, which is a power that his own father did not even have. Maqsud Al-Amin was a long-range teleporter. He could jump from one star system to another, but very imprecisely, and he couldn’t jump to different parts of the planet that he had landed on, or to neighboring orbitals. Aristotle, it seems, is much more powerful than his dad was in a lot of ways, but he still has his limitations. Some teleporters can, for instance, make a jump to the other side of a locked door, but that’s impossible for him. In fact, he has to be outside in order for it to work properly. He once blew the ceiling and roof off of a building when he was overcome with emotion, and uncontrollably transported himself and everyone else in the room light years away. That’s his main issue. He has very little control over it, and Lilac believes this to be a psychological problem. This means that he can learn to move past it.

Aristotle’s dream of sending everyone on Verdemus back to Extremus is loftier than it might sound. It’s certainly far enough away, but precision is non-negotiable in this case. Since the ship is currently traveling at maximum reframe speed, there is no close; only right on target. Even if they were to be all wearing suits, it could prove fatal. Perhaps they end up in the path of the ship, or halfway through a bulkhead. They can’t afford to—pardon the pun—jump hastily into this endeavor. Aristotle believes that he’s ready, but Tinaya isn’t so sure. He’s been spending a lot of time making his jumps, and coming right back, and so far, he hasn’t experienced any issues. He even went to a meteor in the next solar system over, and managed to return unscathed. And that’s all well and good, but she needs to see it for herself first. There are too many variables here, so unless Aristotle can be a lot more specific about what he’s done in his past to practice this power, he’s only going to work on her timeline. He still won’t even tell them exactly how old he is, or what he was doing before he finally found Niobe in the Goldilocks Corridor. That could be the key to solving everything.

One other major problem with Trotting, as it’s called, is the time issue. Teleportation is inherently time travel. In a vacuum, light moves at a constant speed. Temporal manipulators regularly break this speed, whether the result is that they end up backwards or forwards in time, or not. The reason a light year is called that is because that is the distance a photon of light will travel in the span of a year. So when one looks up at a star, they are not seeing it as it is in the moment, but as it was in the past. The light that is hitting their eyes first left its point of origin exactly as long ago as the distance to that origin in light years. When a Trotter pinpoints a destination in the stars, he can choose to tie himself to the original photons, or to the new ones. If a star is, say, five light years away, he can go five years backwards in time, or he can land there only moments later from when he started. But this is not a simple intuitive trick. Maqsud evidently took years to learn to master this skill. Sure, he was a free spirit with no roots keeping him from leaving, so he wasn’t deliberately trying to figure out how to do anything perfectly, but it still isn’t a simple matter. Aristotle is a long way off from achieving this as well, and even longer from proving it to Tinaya.

Today, they’re leaving their friends behind, and going on a test run. According to data that they managed to pull from a galactic mapping program called Project Topdown, there is a star within Aristotle’s range that hosts a planet with a possible breathable atmosphere. Even if the readings aren’t accurate, it’s certainly a terrestrial world. For now, Aristotle either has to see where he’s going, or know where he’s going, based on other information. In this case, he has both, because they specifically chose it for its relative proximity to their current location. It’s not in the direction of Extremus, but it’s not in the direction of the Goldilocks Corridor either, and that’s important right now, because they have no interest in running into any trouble. Again, this is just a test. Tinaya wants to see what he’s made of, and if he fails, only their own lives are in danger. Everyone else will be able to live on, even if they die of old age of Verdemus.

“Are you ready?” he asks.

“I am.”

“Am I ready?” he pushes, realizing what she means by that.

Tinaya looks over at Lilac, who nods, confident in her son’s ability. She’s already given her approval for this mission. He’s an adult now, but he still relies on her. Tinaya thinks it over for a moment. “Okay, you have a go.”

“We have a go,” he corrects. For the most part, starting in a body of water makes it easier to activate the power, but he’s been practicing without this crutch, because if he can manage without, then he can definitely manage with. He spreads his arms out before him to welcome the light from his destination star, kept in focus by the heads-up display on his helmet. “Yalla.”

They fly into the air, and then out of the air. They soar out of the Verdemusian solar system, and past dozens of stars. Their visors turn opaque as the doppler glow attempts to blind them. There’s no turning back now. He saw where he wanted to go, but now he can’t see anything, so he has either succeeded, or already failed. Either way, they’re going somewhere. A couple minutes pass, which is highly concerning. The target star is only 78 light years away, and it shouldn’t take this long to get there. Then again, they’ve not had too much time to calculate travel time for his other jumps. They don’t have a lot of data and experience yet, and neither Aristotle nor Lilac is a notable mathematician. Finally, the glow recedes, and they see the star coming at them. There’s something wrong here, though. This far out in the galaxy, it should be uninhabited. But they’re headed for what looks like a ship. Shit, the Exin Empire must have spread farther than they realized. They’re going to be landing in enemy territory, and there is nothing they can do about it.

They crash through a giant glass window, fall through the cylindrical habitat that they’ve found themselves in, and splash into what’s either a lake or a pool. No chlorine, it’s probably a lake. A crowd forms around them as robots begin to repair the damage from above. A few people hop into the water, and help them out. They ask if the two of them are okay, but they’re not surprised to see them, nor upset. That’s a good sign. Maybe not all Exins are bad. Some of them look like they’re using communication devices, probably to contact the authorities.

One of them steps forward. “Get them towels, and escort them to guest quarters.” He looks upon Tinaya and Aristotle. “There will be showers there. I’m sure that Team Keshida will want to speak with you soon, so do not waste time.”

“Of course,” Tinaya answers before Aristotle can question what the man just said to them. This is not a good place to be. Well, it’s fine, but it could be dangerous. They don’t even know what year it is.

They follow their escorts to the train, which transports them down to the far end of the cylinder. After their showers, they find new clothes waiting for them on the bed, and a note on the smartmirror that their suits have been taken in for service. When they open the door to leave, lights guide them down the hallway where they find an airlock. A small pod flies them thousands of kilometers away, to a different cylinder. When the hatch opens, none other than Captain Kestral McBride, and Lieutenant Ishida Caldwell are waiting for them. These are two of the most famous people in Extremusian history. Everyone knows Team Matic, and they’ve learned about the violent exploits of Anatol Klugman. They’re aware of the Preston family, and the powers that be. But Team Keshida is directly responsible for the successful launch of the Extremus mission in the first place. No two people are more important to it. They’re in Gatewood Collective, which is thousands of light years off course.

“Report,” Captain McBride says.

“Could you tell us the date first?”

“It’s August 24, 2269,” the Lieutenant answers.

“We’re Extremusians, from 78 years in the future,” Tinaya answers.

“Did you use the recall device to return? How come it’s just the two of you?”

“I am Aristotle Al-Amin,” he replies before Tinaya can stop him this time.

“I see,” the Captain says. “There is probably a lot that you should not tell us.”

“There is only one thing that maybe you can tell us?” Tinaya asks hopefully.

“We might be able to send you back to the ship,” Lieutenant Caldwell says, assuming this to be the question they were going to ask.

“That’s a problem,” Tinaya begins. “We weren’t on the ship. We’ve...found planets along the way. We do indeed want to return to Extremus one day, but it’s complicated. There are those we left behind on our outpost. We would have to retrieve them first, and would rather never see Extremus again if it’s the only way to reunite them.”

Captain McBride nods. “I may be able to rig up a sort of homestone that takes you back to the place you last left, rather than the place you were when you first time traveled. It will take us some time to figure out how to do that, though.”

“We would be eternally grateful,” Tinaya tells her. “In return, we would be willing to brief you on matters of the mission for the last eight decades.”

“That would not be wise,” the Lieutenant contends. “Extremus has not even launched yet from our temporal perspective.”

“Perhaps we can brief the archives, with a temporal firewall in place, which will only unlock a file once it becomes the present day for you.”

“Hmm,” Captain McBride says, considering it. “We would have to invent that too, but it would be acceptable.”

“It would be nice to be able to keep up on your progress,” the Lieutenant agrees, “even if there is nothing we can do to help you while you’re out there.”

The Captain nods. “In the meantime, you will report to the medical wing for a physical, and an adaptive quarantine.”

“Adaptive quarantine, sir?” Aristotle asks.

“It starts with eleven hours,” Lieutenant Caldwell begins to explain. “At that point, the medical staff will reassess. If the sensors detect an issue, and you need longer, it will jump up to twenty-four hours total. Then forty-two, then fifty-six, and then eighty-three. After that, we start measuring it in days, starting with eleven again. Let’s hope it doesn’t get that far.”

They end up staying in quarantine for eleven months.

« < » > Table of Contents

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 242,398

« < » > Table of Contents

Danica checks her watch. They should be here by now. There must be something wrong with this damn thing. Or maybe she just doesn’t know how to use it. Tamerlane was right about that. She wasn’t chosen for this job because of her technology skills. She was chosen by fate. Or destiny, or just arbitrarily. Who knows? As she’s shaking her head out of frustration, the machine turns itself on. In a flash, Mateo and Curtis appear from the past. “I’m sending you back. Bhulan isn’t here,” she lies to them. Technically, she is here, but not because this is where Tamerlane sent her. It’s because she returned 10,000 years ago, and now she’s still here, currently hanging out with Abigail, Cheyenne, and Curtis in one of the stasis chambers.

“So we’ve already lost,” Past!Curtis questions.

“Not yet. I have another trick up my sleeve.” Danica double checks the temporal coordinates on the time machine, set to send them back to ten seconds after they left 20,000 years ago.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Past!Mateo asks.

“You’ve done more than enough,” Present!Mateo replies.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Past!Mateo argues with his future self.

“Everything’s gonna be okay,” Danica assures him. “Just say you didn’t find her here, because that’s the truth. Safe travels.” She pulls the switch, and sends them home.

“The loop is closed,” Present!Mateo declares with an exhalation that sounds like he’s been holding it in the whole time.

“The issue remains.” Danica starts tapping on her watch, remotely unlocking Tamerlane’s special stasis pod, the hatch to his private stasis chamber, and the gate to his cell. “I need you to get something for me.”

“What?”

“Tamerlane Pryce. I don’t feel like walking all the way down there, and all the way back. We may as well get some use out of your teleportation powers.”

“What are you gonna do to him?” Mateo darts his gaze over to the machine. “Or rather, when and where will you send him?”

“I’m going to send him where he wants to go,” Danica answers. Keeping him locked up was the wrong play, and crueler than she ever wanted to be. It’s messing him up, and it will only get worse. There’s one option left to fix this, but he’s not gonna like it, and she definitely won’t. Mateo will probably be displeased too. If Tamerlane wants to disappear, then she’ll help, but to different ends. After Mateo zips away, she starts to set new temporal coordinates, this time 60,000 years from now. He thinks that this will set the Omega Gyroscope free, but there’s something about it that not even he knows.

Mateo returns with the prisoner in hand. “I need to know that you’re not going to hurt him. I can’t be party to that.”

Danica takes Tamerlane by the shoulder, and escorts him into the time chamber. “He’ll be back in the year 302,398, just as he wanted.”

“Why are you doing this?” Tamerlane asks, a little worried about looking a gift horse in the mouth, but too curious to keep quiet.

“It’s clear that I can’t control you,” she explains as she’s stepping out of the blast zone. She frowns at Mateo. “But I think I can control Leona.” She pulls the switch again.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 232,398

« < » > Table of Contents

It’s the Year of our Danica 172,398. That’s what Tamerlane always likes to call it. Bhulan went back in time to destroy the hundemarke, the Omega Gyroscope, and the Insulator of Life. She had a purpose. She always has purpose. She gets an objective in her head, and she can’t let go of it until she reaches it. Danica is under an immense amount of pressure. Even before any other guests arrived, she was worried about screwing up her job. That can consume her. They’re both so stressed. He was there to lighten the mood, and despite his own past—and all the very questionable things that his alternate selves did—they were glad he was on their side. Team Triple Threat, he called them jokingly. It had a nice ring to it. They only abandoned it entirely because Team Quadruple Threat didn’t have the same ring to it when Asier showed up.

“Why are you doing this?” Bhulan questions. “I mean, I know why, you’ve just told me, but what do you think it’s going to accomplish, in the long run? Do you not trust me to be a good possessor of the Gyroscope?”

“I do not. I trust no one with that power. Believe me I more than anyone know what power does to someone. It destroys you. It turns you into something you never wanted to be. I never wanted that for any of you.”

“This isn’t the way.”

He chuckles.

“You think what I said was funny?”

“No, it wasn’t that. I was laughing at myself. I was going to respond that you’ll thank me one day, but I know better. I know that this is going to ruin my relationships with you two. I’ve decided that I have to be okay with that. For the greater good. So instead I’ll just see your claim that this isn’t the way, and raise you a yes, it is.” He leads her into the time machine, and programs her cuffs to proximate the time chamber.

She doesn’t even try to leave, she knows how much it will hurt to break that proximity barrier. But she does take one step towards him for emphasis. “Please, don’t.”

“It’ll be fine,” he promises. “You won’t feel a thing, and barely any time will pass.”

“Danica will come for me. There is no way you get 50,000 years before she finds a way. She’ll trace my point in time, and retrieve me.”

Tamerlane chuckles again. “I’m sorry, but you two don’t understand this place like I do. For instance, this is not a time machine, at least not in the sense that you’re used to hearing. It’s a transtemporal relocator.”

“That just sounds like a fancy way of saying time machine.”

“To you. But to me, I see so much more. Enjoy your trip.” He flips the switch.

Bhulan feels herself being pulled away from her initial moment in time, but she doesn’t just jump to the future, or the past. She keeps moving. It’s more like she’s sliding along the timestream, just outside of it, and never landing. She can see all of time and space from here, but not like Lincoln Rutherford can, or Danica will one day, or even as herself. It’s a garbled mess of distant images that don’t look like anything at all. She’s gaining no insight into the timeline, and she can’t control what she sees, or where she goes. She’s just along for the ride. Then suddenly, something becomes clear. Amidst all the vague light and shapes, an image forms. With it comes familiarity. Thousands of people are witnessing something. It’s the Colosseum, and this is the day that Mateo Matic defeats Zeferino Preston, a.k.a. The Cleanser, and most powerful man in the universe. This is an important moment, but it’s not something that Bhulan has ever personally cared about. The scene comes closer and closer, faster and faster, until she’s right in the middle of it all, and collides with something.

She stops. Everything stops, and all she sees is darkness, plus the faceless silhouette of another person a few meters from her. They ran into each other, and have ended up here in this void. Can she even speak? “Hey, are you okay?” Apparently so.

“I’m all right,” the other person replies. The silhouette moves a little, then starts to stand up. It’s still too dark to see who it is.

“Bhulan Cargill.”

“I know who you are,” she says.

“Do you know where we are?”

The figure looks all around at the nothingness. “A psychic bridge...a very boring one, at that. You don’t have a very creative mind, do you?”

“Who are you? I’ve never heard of a psychic bridge, and I’ve been around the block.”

She giggles. “Which block?”

“What is your name, please?”

“Some call me Frida, but I don’t think I like that anymore. A few know me as Aquila Bellamy, but I’m still not used to that either. Most just think of me as—”

“The Mass,” Bhulan realizes. The Artist, Athanaric Fury once lived in the Gallery Dimension, where he and hundreds others helped protect the timeline from time travelers. They didn’t stop them from traveling, but if any of their actions caused damage to their arbitrary idea of what the timeline should be, they corrected it. One day, they all went on strike, and quit. Due to the nature of the dimension, it was impossible to return them to work, so Athanaric used his powers to build the Preston children to compensate. They too failed eventually, and he decided to entrust all that power into a single individual, which he called The Mass. Zeferino Preston stole the body before it could be activated, and in the scuffle, Aquila found herself forced into the responsibility of protecting that timeline instead. Funny enough, she’s Mateo’s half sister.

“Yeah,” Aquila says after Bhulan’s summary. “That’s me, that’s what happened.”

“What is the purpose of this...bridge thing, Aquila?”

“I died, and my consciousness was on its way to wherever we go after we die. Not even I know that, but it would appear that you intercepted the signal, and now we’re sharing a body. This place is like the lobby of your mind. Theoretically, you have a choice to make. You can either let me stay, or force me out.”

“That would be a dick move.”

Aquila shrugs. “You’re the boss, it’s your body.”

No, she’s not going to do that. They won’t need to share for long. When she figures out how to get them back to the Third Rail, Aquila can be transferred to Tamerlane’s body, and it doesn’t really matter what happens to his consciousness. Not anymore. He’s lost the right to autonomy. As she’s preparing to say yes, she feels the energy build up again. This is just a pitstop, and she’s about to be sent back down the timestream.

“You better choose fast, or fate might choose for you, and you could be stuck with me until we find a replacement, if that’s even a viable option where you’re going.”

“You can stay,” Bhulan says quickly, and just in time. The river of time grabs hold of them both, and pulls them away. Even though there’s no up or down in this dimension, or whatever, she gets the sense that they’re going in the opposite direction now. Perhaps she’s on her way back, 50,000 years too late, no doubt. Tamerlane is going to get what he wants, and due to their moratorium on time travel, there’s nothing that she and Danica can do to reverse the damage. This will have to become the Sacred Timeline; the world according to Tamerlane Pryce. Something has to be done about that, but it can wait.

The ride ends, and she finds herself back in the machine. Nice place, Aquila notes, not saying anything out loud.

“Let me do the talking,” Bhulan whispers to her.

I was going to, she whispers back.

“I just mean, I don’t know if we should tell people about you yet.”

Okay.

“Constance, report.”

“Day 216 of Year 232,398.” Sixty-thousand years, okay.

“Please list all current residents of the Constant.”

“Danica Matic, Bhulan Cargill, Tamerlane Pryce, Asier Mendoza, Mateo Matic, Abigail Siskin, Cheyenne [last name unknown], Curtis Duvall, and Aquila Bellamy,” Constance answers.

“What the hell, you can tell that Aquila is in my head?’

“Affirmative.”

Do I still have to let you do the talking? Aquila asks.

Bhulan sighs. “Is anyone awake?”

“Everyone but Tamerlane.”

“Please wake him up. Convene a meeting in the master sitting room. Don’t tell anyone why.”

“Understood.” Bhulan has always had the better relationship with the AI, even though Danica is technically meant to be in charge around here.

While the group is gathering, Bhulan heads for the nearest bathroom to look at herself in the mirror. She feels physically dirty after having gone through all that, but she looks exactly as she did before. She doesn’t need a shower, or anything. She just needs to go out there and not waste time.

You’ll do great, Aquila encourages.

“Thanks.” Bhulan leaves the room and heads to the main area. She can hear the people talking to each other as she approaches the door. None of them knows who called this meeting or why. It’s not that she wants to make a grand entrance, but she wants to go over what happened, and what Tamerlane did, and she only wants to have to do it once. It’s best if they’re all here together. She clears her throat quietly, and walks inside.

Danica smiles at her sadly. She stands, and gives her a hug. “Glad you’re back.”

Bhulan hugs Asier as well, but none of the others, because she doesn’t know most of them, except by reputation, and she doesn’t have that kind of relationship with Mateo. She walks over to Tamerlane, sitting in the corner. He looks upset, but not guilty. He’s gone through some stuff too, she can tell. He kind of looks like he’s been tortured.

“I wasn’t trying to hurt you, I hope you know that.”

She breathes deep, and opens her arms. “I forgive you.”