The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 23, 1693

« < » > Table of Contents

They weren’t allowed to return to the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. A little side punishment for their insolence was that they would lose all modern convenience privileges. They were going to live in the past, as the past people lived. It was unclear what Anatol and Zeferino were going to do with their ship, but if even one access panel was out of place when they finally got back to it, Leona was going to flip out. Since it was necessary either way to blend in with the natives, they had to find new clothes to wear. They took a quick detour to sometime in the future at The Hub on Tribulation Island. There, Téa was able to provide them with the appropriate attire and accessories for life in the 17th century. They gave her a friendly greeting, and she greeted them back, but they didn’t talk about anything. They didn’t know which timeline this was, or how simpatico they were. It was best just to acknowledge that they knew each other, remain pleasant, and move on.

Once they were fitted, they went back to the past, but not as far as they were before. It was now 1693. It would seem as though they were no longer on any sort of predictable pattern. It was still possible—maybe the jump would always be 85 years—but the most likely explanation was that the time of patterns was over, and they would just go whenever and wherever they were needed. The antagonists would probably still send them ever forwards so they didn’t accidentally interfere with their own past work in the future. At this rate, they would be back to their general time period in only about a week. But again, they didn’t really know anything.

They spent one night here in realtime, so when they woke up, it was April 23, and about time for their next mission. Their breakfast wasn’t very good, but they weren’t allowed the status of noblemen here, so they took what they could get. They were only entitled to eat some bread and cornmeal. Mateo added it to his mental list of the things he hated about the past. Who would live like this? It just felt so strange to him, even though he knew that most people hadn’t heard of time travel, and they certainly didn’t have access to it. He hoped that Leona’s weeklong estimate was right, and they would be done with this before too long. He did not vocalize his feelings, and he figured everyone else was deliberately keeping their complaints to themselves too. If the antagonists realized quite how annoyed they were with this whole thing, they might make it worse. They assumed Angela would be the most comfortable here. It wasn’t her time period, but they were closer to it in terms of technology. She was actually the most uncomfortable, though. Because she already lived through it, and she knew how much it sucked. Mateo kept clocking her reaching for her handheld device in her back pocket. Not only was the device not there, but nor was a pocket. It was presumably illegal for a woman to have pockets, because that would make her life too easy.

They walked down the stone street to get to the other side of the city. It wasn’t that bad, except for the excrement all over that people just threw out their windows. They were worried that, even in these garments, the locals would be suspicious of them. They might not have been holding themselves up correctly, and not everyone on the team had the right skin color. Seven strangers walking together must have looked weird too. For the most part, however, people just left them alone, and focused on their own lives. Their minds were most likely preoccupied with how much they hated living like this as well, and wishing there was a faster way to get across town. Leona was frustrated for similar reasons. So much could go wrong here. It would be far safer if they just lived in The Parallel, and pulled people through like normal. Before he disappeared, Anatol hinted that they weren’t going to use transition windows in the same way that Jupiter and Nerakali had. He was still going to include that power as part of the program, but the rescues were too far back in the timeline to be able to handle such a thing. They were going to have to get creative.

Leona looked around to make sure no one was watching. Then she pulled her sleeve back, and checked her Cassidy cuff. It was still technically operational, but its functionality was severely limited. The screen only showed them where they were, and where they were supposed to go. No maps, no messages, no features. It didn’t even have a clock in the corner. “This is it,” she said, stopping in front of a door.

“It looks like it’s in that direction,” Jeremy pointed out as he was consulting his own cuff.

“It doesn’t show how far away our target is,” Leona began to explain, “but I’ve been keeping an eye on our pace. I’m guessing the person we’re looking for is up against the wall of this apartment. We need this door.”

Jeremy nodded in understanding, still looking at his cuff. “Target is on the move.”

“How do we handle this?” Mateo questioned. “What do we do?”

Not bothering to wait for a discussion, Olimpia pounded on the door.

The little target dot stopped, and started moving in the opposite direction, towards them. An oldish man opened the door. “Can I help you?”

They didn’t discuss what they were going to say to him, so it was awkward for a moment. Olimpia seemed sick of waiting for other people to make the decisions. “You need to come with us right now.”

“Okay, let me retrieve my bag,” the man said. He wasn’t expecting them, but he acted like this sort of thing happened all the time. He left the door open, and walked back down the hallway.

“We have a new target now,” Jeremy announced. “That’s probably where we’re supposed to take him.”

“How did you know we would take him anywhere?” Angela asked.

“Apartment’s not on fire,” Olimpia replied. “He’s just hanging out, enjoying the day. I’m sure he’s not in any immediate danger. The mission is somewhere else.”

“Do you require the leeches?” the man shouted from the back.

“He’s a doctor,” Mateo guessed, remembering that people used to use leeches to get poisoned blood out of the body.

“Yes, bring the leeches!” Olimpia shouted back.

“Doctor,” Leona said just for the group, using airquotes. “Anyway, they’re called physicians. You call him a doctor, he might be confused. His title is mister.”

The physician came back with what he needed for a medical emergency that didn’t exist. Or maybe it did exist. They didn’t know what the mission was, or what its purpose was. Maybe Anatol needed someone else’s life to be saved, and this was his way of accomplishing that without the aid of the two known time traveling doctors. The physicians followed them without question. He didn’t even ask people their names, and they didn’t ask for his. Jeremy took up the rear so he could keep an eye on the cuff screen without getting caught. It was only telling them whether they were heading in the right direction, or not. It couldn’t plot a course for them through the streets, so they had to be real careful with it. Finally, they were past the city limits, and into the edges of the countryside. Still, the physician didn’t seem perturbed. He patiently walked with them, down the dirt road, up the trail, and into the clearing.

“Uhh, we’re here,” Jeremy said.

They spread out a little to look for clues, but all they saw were plants, trees, and grass. “How are we on time?” Dalton asked.

“It doesn’t have a time,” Jeremy answered.

“Well, how long do we wait?” Dalton furthered.

“What are we waiting for?” the physician asked.

“We don’t know,” Leona said vaguely.

“It’s changed,” Jeremy said. “We have to go this way now.”

“What are you looking at?” The physician wasn’t freaking out, but he was growing concerned.

“That’s the direction we came from,” Siria noted. “Are they messing with us?”

“I don’t know,” Mateo said. “It doesn’t matter. They’re holding all the cards. Let’s just keep following it until we end up where we’re meant to be.”

And so the group got back on the trail. They took it all the way to the dirt road, which took them to the stone streets, which took them back through the city, and then right back to the physician’s apartment. It appeared to be some kind of exercise in futility.

“Morning, Mister Stroud,” said a young woman as they were standing at the door, confused. “Who are your friends?”

“Not friends of mine,” the physician said. “Friends of a patient.”

“Oh. Is that where you’ve been for the last week?”

“How do you mean?” Stroud asked.

“You have been gone for a week,” she contended. “We assumed you had business in Chaslow again.”

“I saw you just at dawn,” Stroud argued.

The woman shook her head. “That was very much a week ago, sir. You look tired. You should get some rest. Good day to you all.”

Many returned with things like “good day,” and “good day to you.”

“What did you do to me?” Stroud was upset now.

Leona stepped forward like she was going to give him an explanation. She stood there for a moment before saying, “run.”

Most of the team ran off, including the newbies. They all trusted her judgment. Only she and Mateo remained. “We’re sorry to have wasted your time,” he said.

The confounded physician stared back at the two of them. He didn’t have an explanation for his missing time, and he already understood that they weren’t going to give one to him. The three of them turned to watch the rest of the team disappear around the corner, then the Matics casually left the apartment, and followed them at a comfortable walking pace.

Jeremy managed to get them a single message through the cuff. It was nothing more than a question mark. Leona replied with a simple GO. Stroud wasn’t going to call the coppers on them, or something, but it was still best if the majority of them just quickly returned to the safehouse. Leona and Mateo, meanwhile, were just going to hold hands, and enjoy some time alone for a bit. Once they were back, they explained to the group that everything was fine. The theory was that Stroud was destined to die sometime in the past week, and that it was their job to help him skip over that death. They probably crossed in and out of a transition window in the woods without realizing it. Most importantly, he didn’t realize it. He would never be able to explain, but he wouldn’t want to lose his station, so he would keep quiet about it, and just move on with his life. Hopefully he was now destined to save more lives with medicine.

« < » > Table of Contents

Microstory 739: Credos, Convention Ten: Congeniality, Chapter Two

< > Table of Contents

What the town did not know was that their dealings were being watched by a visiting alien from another planet. This alien was intelligent, and powerful, and his morals were fundamentally unfathomable to the people in the town, or the rest of their planet. He felt that it was his obligation to teach this world how he believed they should behave. They needed to be punished for how they had treated the doctor. With a great sense of irony, he set upon the town, and its neighbors, an epidemic. Nearly everyone in the region was infected with the pathogen, for which there was no apparent cure. It discolored their blood, and saturated it with harmful fluids. They had not encountered anything like it before, and none of their home remedies was working. Fortunately, no one was dying from this, but they were still in such incredible pain. It was after two days when someone broke through their delirium to remember that the rude doctor actually specialized in infectiology, which meant if anyone could have figured out the cure, it would have been him. “O,” they cried, “how foolish we have been. This must be the fury of The Dying Light, here to end our world.” But this was not so, it was only a person, flesh and blood, who had done this to them. Feeling more resentful about some other entity receiving credit for his doings that he thought he would, the alien who had infected them stepped forward and made himself known. He removed his modifications that allowed him to look like them, and spoke to the crowd. “This is what you have done. You have brought this upon yourselves. Are you better than the man you shunned, and indirectly killed? Your hearts were filled with as much hate as his, and now you must accept the consequences. Now it is your hearts that will kill you.” He raised a device about the size of a pen. “With this, I will exact my final solution. For now, the pathogen causes painful symptoms, but not death. With the push of this button, that shall change.” Then what appeared to be a female counterpart to the alien stepped up onto the stage. She had been visiting another town during this whole ordeal, completely unbeknownst to the male alien. With one look, she caused him to doubt himself, and he dropped the death device. And she spoke to the crowd, and him, “what these people need is example. They cannot learn to be better if they’re dead, can they? What you people lack...is congeniality, and to understand this, I will show you what it looks like.” And they believed she would simply provide for them the cure for the alien disease, and she did, but that was not all. She also invited them to her ship, where she transported them to her homeworld. There they lived in peace in a society that had moved completely beyond negative traits, such as jealousy and discordancy. Everyone was loved.

Microstory 738: Credos, Convention Ten: Congeniality, Chapter One

< > Table of Contents

The small town had but one physician. This physician hated everybody, but put up with them, because he had a monopoly on the market. Since he was the only medical professional around, he knew he could do whatever he wanted with his patients. He could charge whatever he wanted, lazily prescribe medication, or even refuse to see them at all, if he just didn’t feel like it. Everyone hated him back, but of course, there was little they could do about it. Though there were other physicians in the region, they had struck secret deals with each other, to prevent any one of them from gaining an edge over the others. Plus, traveling to these other towns was often not worth the trouble. Though no one was outwardly racist, citizens of the other towns tended to be rather opposed to visitors. One day, the rude physician fell ill himself, but was unable to carry out his own treatment. He tried to self-medicate, but nothing was working. He would have to go far away to find a peer, but he was in no condition to operate a vehicle. He started stumbling around town, asking people for transport, but no one was nice enough to agree. He contacted other physicians, asking them to come to him instead, but they all rejected him. It was the rude physician’s idea to unethically keep prices high, and not compete with each other, and this was causing them their own problems. No one wanted to help, and the rude physician eventually wandered into the woods, and died.

Microstory 170: Cleveland Montana

Click here for the list of every Bellevue Profile.

Each anomaly grew up in a different scenario. Some parents knew of their children’s abilities, and feared or hated them for it. Others were completely clueless. But there were some anomalies who experienced happy childhoods and the full support of their family. One such family was that of Cleveland Montana. His were loving and devoted parents who made sure their one son had everything he needed.  They once asked him to clean his room. After he was finished, he asked for more things to clean, and so his parents continued to give him tasks. He would run back in a matter of seconds after each assignment, and so they assumed he was playing some kind of game with them. When he didn’t return from his latest project, they went upstairs and found him in the hall, playing with dolls he had found in a box in the attic. Wanting to know what other family heirlooms had been left there, the two of them climbed up and found the attic to be spotless. There was no sign of cleaning; just of being clean. When they asked him how that had happened, he shrugged his shoulders and said that he just used his purple mist. They pressed the subject, and so he demonstrated for them. A purplish-blue mist came out of his fingertips and spread throughout the hallway. The mist disappeared in a flash, leaving the baseboards and table completely dust free. Mr. Montana and Mrs. Thompsett simply smiled and embraced their child. They encouraged him to practice and learn about his ability, but to take care with it, and not reveal his secret to anyone he didn’t trust. They also helped foster a sense of pride in his community, and a desire to make the world a better place. Years later, he contact the man from his region who had run for president in 1980 but failed. Cleveland became one of Senator Carlton’s most precious confidant, along with the senator’s private physician. The three of them formulated plans for him to run again in the 1995 race. When it was the right time, Cleveland finally joined Bellevue, and later acted as the logical liaison between the organization and the Usonian government. Without his cool head, likable personality, and eloquence, Bellevue probably would have fallen quickly after revealing itself to the world.

Microstory 135: Don Colonomos

Click here for the list of every Bellevue Profile.

Spyridon ‘Don’ Colonomos was born in Greece as one of the earlier anomalies. His was similar to Jaklyn Simonds’ ability to teleport, and Starla Wakefield’s ability to possess others, but with many limitations. If he had a general idea of where someone was, he could send his consciousness to their location and witness the goings on from a third person perspective. That is, he could go somewhere when he knew someone there, but he couldn’t just travel the world whenever he felt like it. He could interact with people by sight and sound, but not by touch, taste, or smell. The default setting was that no one could see or hear him, so he would have to purposely open himself up to them. And this was true of every individual, meaning that he couldn’t theoretically show himself to an entire crowd at once. He would have to invite them one by one. While Starla’s ability caused her body to lose function from being separated from her consciousness too long and too often, Don’s body remained perfectly intact. While his spirit was gone, his body would go into a deep hibernation, and then return to normalcy once he went back to it. Don would use his ability to check in on his friends, but rarely chose to let them see him. He felt an urge to protect them, but had little interest in interacting with them. He received good grades in school, and later went on to become a doctor, starting a private practice with a modest number of clients. A patient of his whose foster family he had helped her escape from—since they thought her to be far younger than she really was—would later become a founding member of Bellevue. He discovered two other anomalies on his own, and took them in when they had no other family. Once the time was right, he pushed for them to join Bellevue with him. One of them, Valary Sela, fell into a leadership position, and made the majority of the decisions regarding its ultimate purpose. Her policies would remain well past her tenure, and were partly responsible for the salvation of the world decades later. The other, Hosanna Katz, would become the glue that held together disparate factions. Whenever an individual was hesitant to join, or when two groups began to disagree with each other, Hosanna was always there to provide them with necessary perspective. Don spent what little he had left of his life as the primary care physician for the organization while it was still in its major recruitment stages.