Microstory 2622: Sometimes You’re the Windshield, Sometimes You’re the Bug

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August 27, 2526. The ragtag group of survivors have almost made it. They can see the Chappa’ai Mountains up ahead. They will still want to get as far north as they possibly can, but according to the science, crossing that threshold will allow them to breathe a sigh of relief. The ground is more stable and solid. After all this, salvation is within their grasp. So of course something else has to get in the way. And it’s huge.

“Brake!” Breanna orders. “Brake, brake, brake!” she repeats.

“I see it!” Cash responds, matching her energy. She can’t brake any harder than this, though. It’s just a button, and it does what it does as fast as physics allows.

“Hold on!” Breanna shouts. Even though she’s magnetized to the floor, she reaches up and takes hold of the overhead oscilight for balance. They certainly don’t need it to see, and if anyone is on the tracks, the oncoming railcart is the least of their concerns. Before them, the ground is opening up. The mountains are sliding apart from each other. They can see the red glimmer of the vengeful lava below, even as the day side begins to overtake the shrinking breadth of the Terminator Line. “Be prepared to jump if I say so! It may be our only hope! Once we do, you’ll wanna start running in the opposite direction! But not yet! We’re still moving too fast!”

“Can we just parachute off!” someone asks.

“Too much turbulence!” Breanna cries back. “Just wait for my instructions!” 

They all scream into the comms. Even Tertius and Aeterna look worried, though that may be more from empathy than fear. The chasm is pulling the tracks ahead of them down now, along with the spine that led others up to the safety of the pole. Hopefully, no one is in them right now. The train stations have all become non-operational, but that doesn’t mean no one is trying to walk it. Breanna isn’t so sure about her instructions anymore. There may be nothing they can do. Even if they manage to stop, the ground is falling away, and they don’t know when that’s gonna stop. The fact is, they started this evacuation late, and got held up too many times. Survival was never guaranteed. They did their best.

“Okay, bad news!” Cash says seconds later. “The brake broke! I’ve lost control!”

Suddenly, as if in response to Cash’s problem, a large object flies in from the side, and slams into the front of the railcart. There is no time to figure out what it is. Two people are catapulted forward, one of them being Aeterna, and the other unknown with their IMS fully on. They arch over the object, and down into the bowels of the planet. Having finished saving the cart, the beetloid drone reopens its elytra, and reengages its rotowings. It dives down into the abyss. They hold their breaths and wait, too afraid to move on this precarious cart. It could tip over too at any second, and they want the beetloid free to rescue them again, so they’re gonna let it finish its latest mission. After a minute or two, it darts back into view, and lands safely on the tracks behind them.

Only one person is sitting on its head. They slide off, and appear to be hyperventilating, but otherwise alive. Tertius looks over at Breanna. “I missed out on 200 years with my daughter. I just got her back. I can’t abandon her again.” He leans back and lets himself fall into the chasm. Okay, he may have survived the pyrotornado somehow, but they’re not surviving that!

“We need to go,” Cash says.

Breanna doesn’t move. She’s looking out at the impassable new obstacle, thinking about the Valerians, and in general how deep of shit they’re in.

“Bre! We have to go!” Cash urges.

Breanna nods, then follows the group off the cart. They all stop and look back when they hear the sound of metal scraping against metal. The cart has finally slipped over the edge itself. “Go into a light jog, but slow down if the tracks start to feel unstable. We wanna get as far from that thing as possible, but not if that means falling over the edge anyway. Even away from that chasm, we’re pretty high up.

They go a little under a kilometer back southwards before finding a ladder to climb down to the surface, where they start walking westwards, trying to see where the new chasm ends. A young woman named Calypso rushes up to Breanna. She’s the one who fell over with Aeterna. “Why did it save me? Why did it save me and not her?”

Breanna looks over at the beetloid, which is walking alongside them like a loyal dog. It’s a specialized service drone. She’s not exactly an expert on them, but she wouldn’t have thought they programmed it with any sense of duty to rescue humans. But maybe they did, or maybe someone modified it aftermarket, or maybe it’s learning. “I can’t say for sure, but my guess is it calculated the likelihood of survival. Had it not caught you, and brought you back up, you would have fried in the toxic gases before your body could have hit the bottom. Aeterna was practically naked. It probably figured that she was already dead. There was no point in trying to rescue both of you, and losing the one person who might still stand a chance.”

“Is she? Is she dead?”

“If she’s not, I don’t know how she would get out of that. You don’t really sink in lava, but that’s because your body would be incinerated on the surface. But if she’s a god, and can survive that, she might not be able to get out anyway. I can’t imagine we’ll be seeing either of those two ever again.” That’s what they assumed last time, however.

“There,” Cash says, pointing. “That hill takes us high enough.”

“High enough for what?” Breanna asks.

“To parachute. We’ll glide across the ravine, and land on the other side. The plumes of gas actually help us. It won’t be easy, but it’ll get us there.”

“Well, you remember that the two of us don’t—” Breanna tries to begin.

“It will get us there,” Cash interrupts.

Brenna shakes her head, and looks at her wrist interface. “It’s already quite hot. The day side is drawing closer. We shouldn’t go that far west.”

“We won’t be there long,” Cash justifies. “We’re just gonna jump off and go, and then we’ll scramble back to the Terminator Line, and continue northwards.”

“Fine. Let’s take a vote,” Breanna says. “Fair warning, your parachutes might not make it. Those fumes are dangerous. We’ll have to teach you how to control them, you might need to change directions midflight, and you still might come up short. I will say,  there’s nothing for you on this side. The northern pole is the only option.”

And so the group heads for the hill in the middle distance. Breanna and Cash choose not to tell the others that there’s a problem.

“Wait, what about that thing?” Cash suggests.

“That?” Breanna looks at the Beetloid again. “That can only hold one person.”

“We could play Rock, Paper, Scissors for it?”

Microstory 2620: They May Call it an Unknown Unknown, But Many Will Say They Should Have Known

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August 25, 2526. In the year 2155, Earthan scientists dispatched a series of procession probes towards Proxima Centauri. These were not the first probes to visit the star system, but they were far superior. It took the procession over 28 years to arrive, most of them sacrificing themselves to the fury of the red dwarf. There was nothing there to slow them down, except local gravity. The first one used solar pressure to decelerate as much as physics allowed, and transformed the energy it was receiving into a laser beam, which pushed against the next probe, decelerating it even faster. One by one they came, each one pushing back against the next in line before falling into the sun, until the last one was moving slow enough to survive. It performed a gravity braking maneuver around Centauri, and then remained there to perform its duties.

The first thing the final probe did was prepare what they called a catcher’s mitt. This was an electromagnetic tube built into an asteroid, designed to slow down any other vessel set to arrive by creating drag, so there would have to be no more sacrifices. The probe’s primary function, however, was to survey Proxima Centauri b, which colonists would later deem Proxima Doma. It looked up and down the land, building a map, and charting its past. It captured the mass, density, and surface gravity. It labeled the canyons, lava tubes, craters, and mountains. It sent high resolution images back to Earth, and the rest of Sol. It prepared for the nanofactories in 2194, which were made to build everything else that the colonists would need to live and thrive on the surface.

The probe noticed two very interesting geological features, later to be named the Chappa’ai and the Annulus mountain ranges. The former was in the north, and the latter in the south. They circled the poles quite fantastically perfectly. They weren’t artificial, but they were surprisingly smooth, in geological terms, anyway. They separated the poles from the rest of the planet, along the Terminator Line, and on both planetary faces. The researchers who studied these fascinating walls interpreted them as evidence of severe crater impacts. The fact that they could be found at both poles was mysterious and noteworthy, but not wholly implausible. Space is a dangerous and chaotic place. Things are flying every which way all the time. Why, Earth only supports life because a smaller planet once crashed into it, and ultimately made the moon. That was implausible too but it obviously happened. They certainly didn’t think there was anything else going on here. They had no alternative explanation.

As it turns out, the rings were not created by two perfectly positioned bolide impacts. They are the result of a multi-millennia long cycle, precipitated by the instability of the host star. Proxima Centauri was already volatile prior to this, sending out solar flares, and even coronal mass ejections, constantly. The polarity reverses every several years. It’s commonplace. It’s predictable. It’s accounted for. Very occasionally—but reasonably predictably, given enough data—the poles flip so spectacularly that it spells catastrophe for the orbiting terrestrial planet. That is what is happening in the here and now. The poles snapped, and sent a massive CME towards the colony. The atmosphere swelled, the surface turned into soup, and the ants were sent running for the hills. But it is not over. The cataclysm is only beginning. Because those polar rings? They’re suture zones, and they’re beginning to rip apart at the seams. And not everyone will be on the correct side when that happens.

Microstory 2608: The Floor is Literally Lava

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August 19, 2526. Breanna and Cashmere are plummeting through the air. This high up, they’re going to be falling for about four minutes, which is enough time for a brief conversation. Breanna taps on her wrist interface to control her HUD. “Okay, Cashmere, I’m programming my parachute to deploy at 600 meters, just in case I pass out before then. You should do the same, but if something goes wrong—and you’re hopefully still awake—you’ll have to pull it manually. It is not safe to go below 200 meters, so if you reach 599, and it hasn’t opened, go ahead and pull. Don’t wait.”

“Hold on.” Cashmere taps on her own suit. “There. Now you have full control over my IMS. If I do pass out, and the chute does fail, please don’t let me die. And you can just call me Cash, if you want.”

Breanna gives Cash control over her suit as well. “Good idea...Cash.”

Neither one of them passes out, and neither one of their parachutes malfunctions, but by the time they stop falling, and start drifting, they notice a problem. The ground is no longer solid. It’s churning around like soup. Buildings have collapsed, and are sinking into the soil. Debris is floating every which way. If they try to land in this stuff, they’re gonna sink and die. “This is an extinction level event,” Cash points out. “What could cause something like this?”

“A coronal mass ejection. That’s what happened. It destroyed our ship, it expanded the atmosphere so it was closer than we thought, and it has turned the surface into melted butter. It’s called thixotropic liquefaction, and it probably didn’t happen to the whole planet—the equatorial regions are at most risk—but that doesn’t matter right now because this is where we are.”

“Where can we land?”

Breanna points. “That hunk of metal right there is probably a building. It’s still sticking up high enough for us to land on it.”

That’s gonna be tough. It’s pretty far away.”

“Then start navigating there now.”

“I am!”

They adjust their risers, combatting the unpredictable weather, trying to cover the distance to the only safe area that they are close enough to. Cash was right, it’s extremely difficult, especially since the wind is doing everything it can to keep them from it. Cash is a little bit lower than Breanna when they make it there, or rather when she almost does. Her feet hit the fallen down side of the building, but she doesn’t find purchase, and ends up tipping over to her back, into the soup.

While Breanna manages to land safely at first, the wind continues to try to pull her into the soup too. It’s even stronger than the retraction mechanism. Her only solution is to dump it. It breaks off, and flies away. She dives down to her stomach and reaches out for Cash. “You’re too far away, can you get closer?”

“I think the only thing keeping me from sinking is how evenly my weight is distributed. I don’t think I should move.”

Breanna inches closer, but if she goes too far, she’ll slip in, and they’ll both sink eventually. She’s agonizing over whether she should get up, and try to look for something to extend her reach, or to stay here and keep trying. She just needs a few more centimeters, and maybe she can at least touch the tip of Cashmere’s boot.

A man suddenly appears next to her, on his hands and knees. He’s not wearing a suit of any kind, but just regular clothes. The air is extremely toxic right now, he should be dead unless he specifically designed his substrate to survive just about every deadly gas and particulate known to man. He must be one hell of a posthuman. He slides back and takes hold of Breanna’s ankles, then he nods.

Breanna nods back, then lets herself slip into the soup. She grabs onto Cashmere’s ankles, and lets the man pull them both up to safety. She rolls over to her back and finds that the man is not alone. He’s with a woman who looks similar to him, and is also walking around completely unprotected. She helps Breanna up while the man handles Cashmere. After he smiles and gives them both the a-okay sign, Breanna takes off her first stage air filter. She’s not using it as her internal carbon scrubber is working optimally. It has this handy little feature where it remains tethered to her, though, so even though this guy apparently doesn’t need it, it’s the best way for them to communicate, like a tin-can telephone.

He accepts it, and places it against his mouth so the sound will travel through. “My name is Tertius Valerius. This is my daughter, Aeterna Valeria. We detected your arrival on the roof via a rectenna’s diagnostic alerts, and were making our way towards it when we saw you parachute down. What luck, we met in the middle.”

“How are you even alive?” Breanna consults her environmental readings again. “The glassified dust particles alone should be shredding your lungs.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Tertius replies. “We need to get you to safety. We were only still in Leviss to look for stragglers who refused to evacuate before. Breckenridge is still safe for now, but they’re in danger too. If this liquefaction spreads, they’ll need to continue northwards. You can join us in our...boat,” he adds as he’s looking over towards the other side of the pylon that they’re standing on. “Hm. It’s sinking too.”

With their only means of transport gone, they start looking around for options. There’s a hill jutting out from the soup, which Breanna’s sensors show is solid enough to stand on. If they can reach that, they will be four and a half meters closer to North Exit. Their IMS units come with smaller speed flying parachutes, which can launch and retract much faster than a primary chute. They’re designed to cross chasms and ravines, but they will work in this situation, as long as these islands are sufficiently close to each other. The problem is Tertius and Aeterna. They’re not wearing suits. Even if their bodies can survive this environment, they likely can’t fly.

“We have tandem straps,” Cash reminds Breanna.

“Those are designed to carry children, like a bjorn,” Breanna argues.

Cash shrugs. “They’re strong enough to hold an adult man.”

Breanna sighs. “Okay, we can try it.”

Tertius straps in against Breanna’s chest while Aeterna straps in with Cash. Despite the awkward configurations, they manage to get a short running start, and then jump. Their speedchutes pull them upwards just enough to fly forwards, and drop them on the hill. “Told ya,” Cash teases

“You were right,” Breanna admits. “This might actually work. Let’s go look for the next place to jump to. Hopefully it, uh...exists.”

Microstory 2607: You Ever Find Yourself Hanging off the Edge of a Building, You’re Gonna Wanna Do At Least One

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August 19, 2526. Breanna and Cashmere’s joint escape pod is dangling from the side of the dome, but they don’t know how long the parachute is going to last. It might tear or slip off any second now. Breanna finishes synthesizing their status, and coming up with a plan. “We’re too far in the center of this pane.”

“What does that prevent us from doing?” Cashmere asks.

“We can melt the frame of this dome using an overboosted impulsive burn, and break a pane off. If the pressure doesn’t suck us right through immediately, we can then slip in and jump to safety.”

“Why don’t we release the parachute, and use the remaining thruster fuel to glide down on the outside of the dome?”

“Because there’s not enough fuel.”

“We could supplement it with the back-up parachute.”

Breanna shakes her head, knowing that Cashmere can’t see her. “We can’t control our descent in this thing. Whatever expanded the atmosphere is causing unpredictable weather patterns. We could end up knocking against the dome over and over again, leading to severe blunt force trauma. It’s a miracle that the main chute didn’t snap. We can’t risk the back-up. If it fails, we’re done for. No, the safest way down is for us to use our own personal chutes, free from the confines of the pod, and as far from the dome structure as possible.”

“I’m not arguing with you,” Cashmere replies, “I just want to make sure you have all of your options. Sometimes really smart people like you don’t see the dumb obvious things that people like me can’t see beyond.”

“It’s not the worst idea, but something happened to this planet, and until we figure out what, I only want us taking minimal risks.”

“Okay,” Cashmere begins, “I’m in. But how do we get the thrusters to where they need to be?”

Breanna hesitates to answer, because this is the hard part. “I sent a flutterby drone to inspect our situation. The canopy is hanging off of a maintenance dock. There’s currently no repair beetle on charge, thank God, or it wouldn’t have been able to snag. Most of the suspension lines are hooked separately, however, on a rectenna. They’re holding us up higher. If those lines were to let go, the pod would drop down far enough for the thrusters to be kissing the frame below us.”

“So get your flutterby to cut the lines,” Cashmere suggests.

“They’re made out of a graphene-infused fiber. The flutterby isn’t nearly strong enough to cut through that. I’ll have to go out there, and use the emergency escape torch.”

“No, I’ll do it,” Cashmere volunteers.

“You don’t have the experience.”

“And you do? Hung off a lot of domes lately? I know how to use a torch, and it should be me, because I’m on top. I would have to move out of the way to let you get out instead. That just doesn’t make any sense.”

Breanna obviously already thought of that logic, but it’s not her place to delegate work. She has no rank, no authority. She was only on that ship as a passenger. To be fair, the same goes for Cashmere. Though, she is more of a nomadic tourist. “Okay, but you can’t cut them all at once. We want the pod to slip as slowly as possible so the drone dock still holds the canopy.”

“Got it,” Cashmere says as she’s shifting to prepare to leave. “One at a time. Red wire, green wire, blue wire. Give me yellow, I’ll paint you the world.”

“Okay, take my hand,” Breanna offers, reaching down. “When I open the hatch, it’s probably gonna break off, and you could go flying out after it.”

Cashmere obliges. “M’lady.”

“Ready. Four, three, two, one, mark.” She pops the hatch open. It does go flying off its hinges. Cashmere starts to slip out of the pod, but Breanna manages to hold onto her. “Mag, mag, mag!” she urges.

Cashmere magnetizes herself to the bottom of the pod, but doesn’t stay there long. She begins to climb, letting Breanna give her a boost, and taking the torch along.

“Keep shakin’ that bush,” Breanna shouts. “Let me know how you’re doing!”

“Almost through the first line!” She doesn’t have to announce it when she does make it through, because the pod violently drops down a little.

“Keep one eye on the canopy to make sure it’s holding!”

“Aye, captain!” Cashmere returns. She keeps working on the suspension lines, breaking through them one by one. Finally, with the last one, the thrusters are close enough to the frame.

“Okay, come back!”

“Just burn!”

“It’s safer in here!”

“There’s no door anymore!”

“Just get your ass back down here!” Brenna demands.

Without another word, Cashmere finally reappears. She carefully steps onto the floor of the pod, and remagnetizes. “I love it when you comment on my ass,” she says as she’s hugging Breanna for safety, and only for safety, right?

“Shut up. Is everything sexual to you?”

“Sex is everything,” she defends.

Breanna rolls her eyes. With the hatch gone, she has to use the manual controls on the side, which means she has to physically feel for how much fuel is being dispensed. No readouts here. She’s gonna burn fast and hard. If the fire goes out, and that frame hasn’t melted, they’re gonna have to take their chances out here, and hope the wind carries their gliders to safety. “Four, three, two, one, burn.” She pushes the flush lever to the side with her thumb. It hurts because it’s stiff, and doesn’t want to be moved. She only has to hold for a few seconds, though. The flutterby reports that the diamond pane has turned, revealing a small gap between it and the frame. Plus, the fuel has run out. The gauge was broken, having claimed higher levels.

“What do we do now?” Cashmere asks.

“Shit, I don’t know,” Breanna responds. “We might need to get out and kick it with our f—aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!”

Microstory 2592: Renata Jumps Out of the Emergency Exit, and Falls About One Story Down

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Renata jumps out of the emergency exit, and falls about one story down. She lands on her feet, bending them to absorb the shock, and stopping herself from hitting her face by holding her hands out at her sides. Quidel is clear at the back of the plane, still by the ramp. He runs over when he sees her do that. “Are you okay? What the hell were you thinking? Just because this thing was never in the air, doesn’t mean you weren’t high up.”

“I’m just testing my limits,” she answers casually as she’s brushing the dust off of her hands.

“Well, you’re not invincible, and you can still feel pain.”

“I can’t feel pain if I don’t want to, and just be glad I didn’t jump out of the crew door.”

He looks up at the cockpit, which is closer to three stories high. “You would break your legs. Even an android can’t survive that, unless it’s specifically designed to, which you’re not, because that would be a waste. This isn’t Underbelly.”

“I don’t know what that means.” She looks around at the desert. They are in a very remote region of Osman, miles and miles from the nearest city. They’re not trying to go anywhere in particular here. They’re just trying to keep this device far away from Libera. It’s not that she can’t get to this dome, but perhaps she won’t find them here if they’re well-hidden. That’s Spycraft 101. Lycander says that the dome has security cameras that allow beings on the outside to monitor progress, but the don’t cover everywhere. They don’t see everything. Even Ambients don’t permanently record what they see. That would be too much data to track and manage, especially since most of it is innocuous. So they should be safe enough running into a local, and not thinking that their coordinates are going to leak out. “Where is this MIS contact of yours?”

He looks over her shoulder, so she turns around to see a roofless off-roader heading their way. “She’s right on time, as per usual,” he says. She looks back at him. He’s smiling. He likes this girl. That could be dangerous. Relationships are always a risk, whether they work for the same agency, a different one, or if they’re a civilian. That’s Spycraft 101.

“She’s pretty,” Renata notes as the car draws nearer, but not near enough to make out enough detail for her to make that claim.

“For the last time, androids do not have telescopic vision. It’s not necessary. It just adds bulk and complexity to an already overengineered design. Why are you lying?”

“I’m a spy. It’s what we do,” Renata explains.

He sighs. “Since you were fishing, I’ll bite anyway. Yes, she’s beautiful. But you should know that we’re not supposed to be friends. Some spies are players, and some are not, and we’re not supposed to distinguish each other. We’re to treat everything as real, and not talk about the outside world.”

“Fair enough. I won’t mention anything about how my entire reality has just crumbled, and I don’t know what to believe anymore, and I’m having a massive internal existential crisis that I can’t talk to anyone about because I can’t trust anyone who knows the truth too, and I have never felt more alone.”

He gently tugs at her shoulder so she’s facing him again. “Is that true?”

Renata scoffs. “No. Take a joke.”

He knows she’s lying.

“What joke?” Lycander asks as he’s walking up from the plane, having secured it appropriately.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Hello, it’s nice to meet you,” Renata says as the Elbin agent pulls up. “My name is Renata Granger.”

The agent steps out of the car, and peers at her over her sunglasses, sizing her up. She chuckles at Quidel. “Found another one, huh? she asks him in a posh Elbin accent. Or maybe it’s actually British?”

“The first one, I think,” Quidel replies.

The Elbin woman smiles. “The one you’ve really been after this whole time.” She takes her sunglasses off completely, and gets a better look at Renata, like a vet examining a pregnant cow. “She understands where we are?”

Quidel notices Renata’s confusion. “That’s what I was trying to tell you, but had only gotten to the background info. You can be open and honest with Martina. She’s helped me move other conscious Exemplars and Ambients to safe places.”

“Call me Demuri, or just Demo,” she says, shaking Renata’s hand. “I chose to use a different name when I came to Spydome, but like he said, we’re all friends here now.”

Quidel nods approvingly. “She is not why we’re here, though. We need to secure a package. The person who’s after it has god-tier powers.”

Demo takes her glasses off again, and looks at him incredulously. “I don’t know what that means. Is that some kind of codeword that I was supposed to have memorized?”

“No, she has actual magic powers. According to these two, she disappeared before their eyes.”

Demo shrugs. “Holograms. Easy.”

“We were on a catwalk. They should have detected her footsteps. Before I killed my last substrate, she did show up suddenly, so I should have heard footsteps while I was still there with them.”

“Okay, well neither invisibility nor teleportation is a thing, in any dome. Not even Underbelly, which is designed to give you superhuman powers, can break the laws of physics, so I don’t know what they think they saw, but they didn’t see that.”

“I sure hope you’re right,” Quidel says, shaking his head. “I just wouldn’t bet on it. I trust them. I trust their perspectives.”

“I’ll accept that,” Demo acknowledges. “Regardless, we need to get to the safehouse. Fair warning, they are not luxury accommodations.”

“I’m a robot, so I can sleep anywhere,” Renata says.

“I wish I hadn’t ever said that to you,” Quidel complains.

“I’m glad you did,” Renata contends. “That’s when I finally started waking up.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 19, 2532

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It wasn’t really accurate to say that the slingdrive explosion sent the space station to somewhere else in the universe. They were actually not in the universe at all anymore, and in fact may not have even really moved, in the three-dimensional sense. The totality of the cosmos include a seemingly infinite bulk of universes called branes, floating around, occasionally colliding with each other. The stuff that the bulk was made out of was known as bulk energy, but it went by other names. When bulk energy would leak into a brane, it essentially created a tiny new pocket of space, and this phenomenon was once known as dark energy, because scientists couldn’t explain why it was a thing. After settling into a more stable quantum state, it became known as your average, everyday vacuum energy. Each of these leaks caused the universe to expand, which stretched the brane out, which caused it to thin, which caused more leaks. That was why the universe was not only expanding, but why this expansion was accelerating. But if the outside of a brane was bulk energy, and the inside was vacuum energy, and these two things were virtually the same, what was the difference? What was the barrier? What was the membrane part of the brane? Well, it used to be called dark matter, but it was now known to be quintessence. As the fifth fundamental force, quintessence was repulsive, and served as the mirror image to the attractive force of gravity.

Quintessence was there to hold everything together. It didn’t like to touch anything else, but it liked to touch other quintessence. So it naturally formed clumps, like two raindrops sliding down a window, ultimately coalescing into a single, larger drop. This was why 3D space existed, because it was being contained. Without it, matter and energy would just be floating around that bulk as formless blobs at best, inherently at its own equilibrium, and having no reason to make anything of itself. You owe your entire existence to quintessence. But was still dangerous and unforgiving, and despite being so repulsive to baryonic matter, it wasn’t a one-dimensional sheet, but a massive clump with thickness. This was how the slingdrives worked, not by escaping the universe, and then returning to it, but by only piercing one layer of the membrane, and sliding alongside it to a new destination. And if it was possible to get into it, and get out later, it was possible to succeed at the first thing, but fail at the second. It was possible to get stuck. Team Matic, and a few opposing individuals, were stuck. To make matters worse, they weren’t all stuck together. To make matters even worse, they weren’t all stuck with friends.

They were alive, and had been for about a year, but divided, and communication was difficult. The space station was supposed to be a sphere, but it wasn’t like that anymore. It had become unraveled, as if God herself had come by with a grapefruit peeler, and spiraled it out to slurp it up like linguine. Lots of metaphors here, but when there was nothing to do, they came up with such things to occupy their time. When this happened, all pocket dimensions, and other temporal anomalies, burst apart. Reserve water flooded the chambers, dayfruit smoothie spilled out, and slingdrive components broke apart. Everyone had the basics, like carbon scrubbers, food synthesizers, and the power to run them, but they weren’t left with ways to retain their sanity. No inter-sector talking, and no teleportation. Not even their team empathy could penetrate the barrier.

Romana and Franka were alone together in one sector, having to figure out how to be civil with each other, if not sisters. Mateo and A.F. were in another sector, and it took everything they had not to tear each other apart. Marie was all right as she was with Dutch. They met Dutch years ago in another universe. They didn’t really know how he ended up here, but in order to survive, he ended up having to go into stasis with Romana during the period where half the team was in the Goldilocks Corridor, and the other half was on Castlebourne, which had been physically moved to another region of space. Truthfully, they had kind of forgotten about him, and just sort of left him there in his pod. He didn’t seem upset, because no time had passed for him, and he was a pretty easygoing guy. The sector with the most number of people contained Ramses, Angela, and Octavia. They weren’t hostile with one another, but it was rather awkward, and the two members of Team Matic had to learn to get along with this stranger whose alternate selves they didn’t even know very well. Leona and Miracle were trapped in the fifth sector, and that was weird too, but unlike with Mateo and A.F., they weren’t too worried about killing each other. Fittingly, Olimpia was alone again in the final sector. When was this girl gonna catch a break?

The spirals of the space station were not uniform, which meant that some of them were able to see each other some of the time. They didn’t understand why at first, but there were some theories floating around about passing suns, which they tried to share with each other during optimal times. While it didn’t feel like they were moving, they maybe were. It was dark the majority of the time, so the windows showed them absolutely nothing but the black. Periodically, however, light from some unknown source would bounce off of them, allowing them to peak into other sectors. They would leave messages for each other by gluing pieces of paper together into shapes, mostly letters. If they were lucky, they would happen to be there at the right time, and could use hand gestures to convey information. There was no quantum communication, nor even radio signals. These brief moments of connection were the only way for them to know that everyone was still alive and well enough, albeit depressed and pessimistic. The smarties worked through the problem, though they couldn’t do it together, so it was slow-going. They finally thought they had a solution, but it would take coordination.

“Do you have any idea what the hell you’re doing?” A.F. questioned.

Mateo sighed. “My wife was clear on how to do it. I wrote it down.”

“You’re the worst person to be responsible for this.”

“Yes, well, Ramses is in the cargo bay, and Leona is basically in a bathroom.” That was the worst part of all of this. The other sectors had the means to access the sewage lines, but not officially or...pleasantly. Leona and Miracle weren’t actually in a bathroom either, but the stasis chamber was equipped with better access.

“I’m saying that I should do it,” A.F. reasoned.

“I’m not trusting you with it, and I’m taller.”

“Oh, by, like, a centimeter.”

They had done something similar to this before. When trying to escape the kasma—from A.F. and his army—the quintessence was trying to crush them too, or let them crash into it. Olimpia used her magical Sangster Canopy to create extra space in front of them, cutting through the membrane until they were free, and in the greater bulk again. They would come to realize now that she was channeling bulk energy. It wasn’t easy back then, but even harder now. Olimpia’s window appeared visibly the least often, and she reported issues with her umbrella. As it turned out, it needed some power. She had to tap into the fuel cells of the station, which was not something she knew how to do right away. All these little studies, experiments, and instructions were why it had taken months to solidify the plan. It was now finally time to implement it.

Olimpia’s would be the toughest job, but Mateo’s was not voluntary either. Right now, a magnetic field was the only thing preventing the quintessence from crushing them into what Leona was calling proton soup, and that was keeping Mateo up at night. While the field was great, it was also what was trapping them in the membrane. What they needed was to make it spit them out, and that was a delicate and nuanced procedure that he didn’t know if he was prepared for. The field couldn’t simply be switched off. It had to be oscillated and directed, matching progress with Olimpia’s work at creating an opening for them, because there was no way to steer. They still couldn’t talk, so Leona and Ramses came up with a very tight schedule, and taught it to both of them beforehand. If they both started at the right time, and followed the plan correctly, they shouldn’t need to communicate.

He was standing on a ladder, staring at his watch, waiting for the right moment. There was a very small margin of error here. He could start adjusting the field generator a few seconds early, or a few seconds late, but no more than that. He was breathing deliberately now; in through his nose, out through his mouth. He noticed A.F. copying him, but didn’t say anything. Six, five, four, three, two, one, go. Mateo reached up, and tried to connect the wires together. A paralyzing sensation spread throughout his whole body, and sent him flying backwards, onto the hard surface of the floor, but not before slamming his head against the edge of the counter.

Meanwhile, Olimpia was having her own troubles. The blasted umbrella wouldn’t open. There wasn’t a problem with the mechanism, it was just that her hands were sweaty, and she was incredibly nervous. Oh, no. She was late. She was too late! No, she had to just start. If she didn’t get on it, there was no going back. They couldn’t just wait until the next communication window, and try to coordinate again at a later date. There was no way for Mateo to know that she had given up. And if he made his adjustments thinking that she was creating space when she wasn’t, they would all die. Proton soup, she didn’t like the sound of that. Open, open, OPEN! It opened. NOW!

Mateo opened his eyes. Well, he opened them as much as he could. His eyelids were heavy, and were his lashes clinging together like Velcro? His head hurt and felt sticky. He lifted his hand and reached for his neck. Some kind of fluid. Was it blood? Red. Yeah, it was blood. He could surely live, in this superadvanced substrate that Ramses has cloned for him. There was something else wrong, though. He was meant to be doing something. It felt very urgent and important. What was it? He shot up at his waist. “Magnets!”

“Yeah, buddy, I got it,” A.F. replied.

Mateo looked over to see A.F. on his ladder, his arms buried in the ceiling access panel. He didn’t look back over his shoulder, but kept his focus on the wires. If he wasn’t fulfilling the plan, what else would he have been doing? “Are you doing it? Are you doing it right?”

“Yes, I’m not an idiot,” A.F. replied, sighing with annoyance.

“I didn’t know you were paying attention to Leona’s messages.”

“Again, not an idiot. If there were nine other people here with us, I would have expected them to learn the procedure too.”

“Well...I appreciate it.”

“Do you think I wanna die any more than you? You think I wanna kill you so bad that I would sacrifice my own life to do it? I’m not crazy either. I doubt there’s an afterlife simulation relay module anywhere near here.”

“No, probably not.” Mateo massaged the back of his head, knowing that he was risking getting an infection from all the touching, but confident that his body would survive that too. He paused awkwardly. “So...is it going okay?”

“I’m doing what we were told to do, and we’re still alive. Maybe you can look through the windshield to make sure we don’t accidentally pass our turn?”

“I’ll get on it,” Mateo joked back. A.F. wasn’t such a bad guy when he wasn’t trying to kill all of them. They obviously called a truce because it was profoundly irrational for them to try to reenact Hell in the Pacific, but Mateo didn’t know how long that would last after they got out of this mess.

“Right,” A.F. replied quietly.

Mateo suddenly started to hear something. It was a crunching, crackling sound, but only in one ear. He stuck his finger in it, and tried to scratch out the noise. He looked at the tip, worried that blood was pooling in his ear cavity, but it seemed to be okay. It didn’t even quite sound like it was in there, but more behind it. Oh, the comms disc. It had been so long since he had been able to use it. He tried to regulate that instead, standing up, and wobbling around as he searched for a better signal. Voices began to emerge, and become clearer. “Hello?”

“Mateo?” Ramses asked.

“Yes, it’s me.”

“That’s my dad, everybody, he’s here too!” Romana said jovially. 

“Is that the whole roster?” Marie asked.

“Yeah, the whole station is out of the membrane. We’re in realspace now.”

“How is Olimpia?” Mateo asked.

“I’m fine,” Olimpia answered. “I’m still using my umbrella. I’m afraid to let go. I still can’t see anything.”

“A little extra vacuum energy never hurt anybody,” Leona promised. “Nonetheless, you can indeed let go. I assure you, we’re free.”

“Are we still a spiral?” Angela questioned.

“Nothing to be done about that,” Franka said. “My station is a spiral now.” When did she get her own comms disc? She responded too quickly to not have heard it herself.

“I can help you seal up the damaged sectors so the bulkheads open again,” Ramses offered.

“I’m sure I can figure it out on my own,” Franka said.

“So, uh...” A.F. began. “Since you’re talking to people, can I stop futzing with these power crystals?”

“Oh, sorry,” Mateo said, embarrassed. “Can confirm, we’re safe now.”

A.F. let go, and climbed back down the ladder. He took a breath, and stared at his enemy for a moment. Finally, he reached out with a friendly hand.

Mateo looked down at his own. “It’s a little bloody.”

A.F. chuckled. “I’ve been trying to get your blood on my hands for decades. This will have to be good enough, I guess. Let’s call it a draw.” He shook Mateo’s hand.

“I would love to not have to run from you anymore.”

“This doesn’t make us friends.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” Mateo agreed. He took a beat. “What happens now?”

“Now...I leave you in her hands.”

“Whose?”

“Proserpina’s. Good luck.” And with that, A.F. disappeared.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 14, 2405

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Generated by Canva text-to-image AI software

Operating the Phoenix without an AI was difficult. It required the constant presence of a human intelligence, or it could be programmed to park somewhere, and wait until the team returned to the timestream a year later. They decided to leave it on an asteroid that used to orbit the planet of Violkomin as a minimoon. At one point, there was one universe, and everything in that universe belonged to its creator, Hogarth Pudeyonavic. She literally built her own brane, which was attached to Salmonverse. She designed it to her own specifications, making it apparently stronger and better than any universe that could form naturally. Unlike the natural ones, though, it was forever linked to their own, which allowed it to function on the same timeline. This made it easier to avoid paradoxes when traveling back and forth. That didn’t mean doing so would be simple or unregulated. That wasn’t what it was meant for. This was to be a sanctuary to protect against multiversal threats, like the Maramon, and the Ochivari. There was one way in, and one way out, and both sides of the border would need to be guarded to protect from these dangerous external forces.

After Dalton Hawke sent everyone away using his magic staff, Olimpia Sangster ended up in Hogarth’s universe, but not quite all the way in. She was trapped in an interstitial paradimensional space, which was barely large enough to accommodate her. Nanofissures allowed air molecules to pass freely from regular space, so that she didn’t suffocate while she was in there. Meanwhile, a few microfissures, which were smaller than a millimeter, allowed soundwaves to pass through one-way, which was just enough for her to communicate with Hogarth and Ramses. Either by Dalton’s intention, or some freak fluke of physics, Olimpia ended up tearing the whole universe in half, spreading the dimensional barrier out so that it ran through the middle, keeping the two halves separate from each other. One side was left with the physical laws that Hogarth had decided upon for her new haven. The other half was what they had been calling the Sixth Key this whole time, and was waiting for Kyra Torosia to transfer every inhabited celestial and subcelestial body in the main sequence, the Parallel, the Third Rail, the Fourth Quadrant, and the Fifth Division during the Reconvergence It wasn’t waiting very long, though. All of this happened on the same day.

Also on this day, Ellie Underhill downloaded every single consciousness in the afterlife simulation to new organic substrates in the new universe. They awoke in an absolutely gigantic lake on Violkomin that was about three times the size of the Caspian Sea. Upon arrival, the formerly dead experienced what was described as a unifying sense of profound calmness. Ellie was still coordinating new arrangements for her people, and the process would likely take decades, suggesting that she wouldn’t find herself at the Shortlist meeting regarding the Edge with Leona until her personal future. Or she left and returned in the blink of an eye. Lowell Benton was helping with this, but was also recently responsible for helping Hogarth liaise with representatives in the Sixth Key.

This was all very complicated and sounded incredibly overwhelming, but that sense of calmness that had washed over everyone in Lake Underhill had not completely dissipated, so they were not being uncooperative during this difficult period of transition. They also were not without help. The status levels from the simulation were impossible to maintain with no more prison, nor access limitations, but those in the higher ranks intuitively found themselves in leadership positions, especially the counselors class. They were helping keep everyone on track, and ready to begin their new lives on their new worlds.

Lowell was busy with his stuff for the last couple of years, but he promised to meet with the team again this year. He was going to try to authorize a return trip to the real main sequence, but Leona was working on a new plan in her head. For now, they were waiting in the hotel ballroom on the crest of Mount Hilde, which was currently the only point where the two halves of the universe met. If they were to open those doors on the other side of the room, they would cross the barrier. But they weren’t allowed.

“What are we gonna do when we get back?” Angela asked. “Any ideas?”

“That’s a good question,” Mateo noted.

Indeed. While it had come up often in the past, they never really had to answer it, because someone, or something, had always swooped in and forced their hands. Was that chapter in their lives finally over? Were they finally in control of their destiny? “We have to leave the Phoenix behind,” Leona decided.

“What?” Mateo questioned. “We just got it.”

Leona continued to stare straight forward. “Yeah, and now we have to give it away. Don’t worry, we won’t be completely out of luck.”

“But—” Marie tried to say before Lowell came in.

“Sorry about the wait, folks. Ellie’s coming too, but until then, how can I help?”

“We wanted to go home,” Mateo said. He caught his wife’s eye. She was giving him a look. “Or...no, we’re not. We’re...giving someone our ship?”

Leona stood up, and sighed. “We may want it back when you’re done with it. In the meantime, we can live in one of the three shuttles. It doesn’t have an FTL drive, but it has a reframe engine, and more than enough room for all of us.”

“Okay, but what do we need the big ship for?” Lowell questioned. “I don’t know how to fly.”

“Ellie does,” Leona revealed. “Right now, you have 120 billion people on your welcome planet, right? They all need homes, and the biggest hurdle to accomplishing that is transportation.” She stepped over toward the window, and regarded the docked Phoenix. “It doesn’t look it, but that thing can hold 10,000 people. That’s not enough to move everyone right away, but it should help. Unless Hogarth has helped with alternatives, such as her own fleet of ships, or perhaps a muster beacon?”

“I don’t know what that second thing is, but...no,” Lowell answered.

“I know it’s not much—”

“It’s more than we have now.” Ellie has walked into the room from the dimensional doors. “What brought this on?”

Leona looked back at her team, still sitting on the couches and chairs. “We prefer a smaller ship. I was excited when Ishida gave that to us, but it’s not practical.”

“The FTL engine, though,” Ellie pointed out. “Won’t you miss it? You haven’t even used it, have you?”

“We’ve lived through worse,” Leona replied.

They discussed some more ideas and details, and then everyone teleported to the bridge of the Phoenix, where a tour began. There was still a lot that the team didn’t know about it anyway, and they wanted to see it all too. She showed them the crew cabins above and behind the bridge, the engineering section below, and the transition space in the next section. Right behind that were the passenger access points, which opened to several dozen separate Ubiña pocket dimensions. That was how 10,000 people could live aboard at the same time, despite not having enough space in normal space. More than that could literally be on board simultaneously, but it would not be comfortable, and there would not be any privacy, because the majority of the vessel was taken up by the last two major components, which were the FTL engine, and the cargo hold. Though, thinking on it now, if the interstellar trips they were planning to take weren’t very long, keeping thousands of the passengers in cargo would probably be okay.

“And here are the shuttles,” Leona said near the end of the tour. “There’s enough seating for twenty-four people, however...” She ushered everyone into one of them, and closed the hatch behind them. Then she punched in a code, and reopened the hatch. “...each comes equipped with its own pocket dimension to give it even more room.” They were no longer looking at the shuttle bay, but an average-sized suburban yard with grass, but no other plant life yet, and no house.

“Hm. Yeah, I think we can work with this,” Olimpia determined. “I can see it now. What’s this one called?”

Leona smirked. “The Angela.”

The human Angela had not expected to hear her name. “What? Why?”

“It’s this whole thing. It’s not named after you, though. We can take one of the others, if you would prefer,” Leona promised. “There’s also the Dante, and the Bernice.”

“Dante would be great,” Angela replied. “Kind of better matches with the fire theme that I picture whenever anyone brings up the Phoenix proper.”

“There’s an issue,” Ellie began. “As of now, those doors in the Crest Hotel are the only way from the Sixth Key to the other universe, which has yet to be named. We can’t get the ship over there.”

“That’s the final stop,” Leona said with a smile. She reached out her hands. “If you’ll teleport us, I’ll navigate to the heart of the Phoenix.” They took hands, and jumped to the vault together, where Leona showed everyone the same thing that Ishida had shown her before.

Before Ellie finished closing up the case, they all put on vacuum suits, so they would be able to survive the unforgiving cold of outer space. Then they jumped back to the ballroom. Leona had already commanded the Dante to eject itself, so it wouldn’t be taken into the box along with everything else. It was currently piloting itself to one of the smaller spacedocks.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Ellie said appreciatively.

“Just help those people” Leona requested. “We would help too, but we’re only here for a day at a time anyway. We have to find a way to use that to our advantage.”

“You’ll need this.” It was Ramses again, carrying the kettlebell drive that he had taken from them a year ago. It turns out I didn’t need it, but I’m glad I had it.”

“Are you back?” Mateo asked.

“Sorry, not yet. That thing was just dead weight. Soon, though. Soon,” he repeated. “I think next year.”

“Should we stay in the area for you, errr...?” Marie trailed off.

“I’ll find ya.” Ramses disappeared for the upteenth time.

“All right. In that case...” Mateo said. “What now?”

Olimpia’s Cassidy cuff started to beep. “It’s a message.” She opened it.

“Hello? Is anyone there? This is Xerian Oyana of the Former Fifth Division. I’m looking for Team Matic. We need your help. I have your little ship. How does it work?”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: December 31, 2398

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It takes a second for them to realize that Treasure never actually said a word with her mouth. Instead, an invisible speaker in the tiara that she’s wearing outputs her voice. It does sound like what they would expect a woman of her looks to sound like, but they all independently decide to not ask her about it. Mateo steps back into the master sitting room to shake Treasure’s hand. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of Thack Natalie Collins via Amber Fossward this whole time. Did you just get my message?”

“Miss Collins didn’t pass along any message,” Treasure says. “I heard a scream. I thought it was just the Time Shriek at first, but I felt compelled to investigate.”

“That’s weird that you would hear that from the bulk,” Leona says from still inside the neuro-tampering chamber. “What is this room?”

“What was the message?” Treasure asks Mateo.

“Can you help us get out of here?” Mateo recites the psychic signal he was trying to send across the bulkverse.

“I can, yeah,” Treasure says politely.

“Is it okay if you take two trips?” Leona asks. “There are four of us.”

“No, five,” Mateo says. “Alyssa needs to come too.”

“She can’t,” Leona tells him with a shake of her head. “We’ve already seen her in the future. She’s destined to wait in a time bubble. If we hadn’t found her, we never would have known to come back here to get you.”

Treasure chuckles. “Four, five; I don’t need two trips. I can take you all.”

“Two people is usually the limit,” Leona points out.

“It’s not my limit,” Treasure contends, literally rolling up her sleeves. “Where would you like to go? I hear Schurverse is nice this time of Bearimy.”

“We actually just need to get to the future,” Marie clarifies. “Preferably November 26, 2398, but at least no sooner.”

“That’s four and a half billion years from now,” Leona adds.

“I can’t technically travel through time,” Treasure explains. “But what I can do is take you out of this brane, then back in at a different point in time.”

“That works for us,” Mateo says. “But actually she needs to go to a different point, and a different reality.” He points to Abigail.

“Then I will make two trips.” Treasure steps into the neuro-tampering room, and offers her hand. “I can’t read your mind, but my ability can. You navigate, and I’ll drive. We’ll get to where you need to be. Just concentrate on your target destination.”

While Abigail is on her way home, Mateo and Marie carry a sleeping Danica over to the couch. Leona starts to take the neuro-tampering device apart. She rips out its guts, and throws it into a pile. She places the innocuous pieces, like the casing and hardware, into a separate pile. That can all stay, because it’s not enough to rebuild the whole thing. Mateo and Marie come over to help, following her direction.

Just as they’re finishing up, Treasure returns. “It turned out to be a rather long trip. Something I should have said to your friend is that we can’t really talk while we’re in the bubble, but you can breathe just fine. Don’t try to hold your breath, it will only make the pressure worse. You can try to use hand signals but it’s also a bit hard to move. Otherwise, just enjoy the ride.”

Once they seal up the secret bookcase entrance, Treasure gathers them together and screams. As the sound intensifies, they feel themselves being jerked into the protective bubble she mentioned before with the same force as the start of a roller coaster. They’re then pulled into the bulk. Treasure was telling the truth when she said that they would be able to breathe, but not speak. They could hear each other’s muffled voices, but not make out any words. The bubble wasn’t this hollow object that they were inside of, but a dense gel that formed around each of them tightly. There wasn’t any seating per se, but they could bend their knees, and adjust their weight as they would if sitting down upon something.

They float in darkness mostly, but occasionally detect the vague outline of gargantuan objects in the distance when some kind of light ripples by. They look like knives, and Mateo gets the sense that each one is its own universe. When it’s over, they find themselves standing in the middle of a dense forest at twilight. “This is my homeworld, but I don’t think they want you spending much time here,” Treasure says apologetically.

“That’s okay,” Mateo says sincerely. “Perhaps one day.”

She nods and screams again, sending them all on the journey back. This leg is much shorter, suggesting that their respective timelines are closer in modern days, but Mateo doesn’t really understand the hyperdimensional physics going on here, and he doesn’t believe Leona does either. Despite it being her field of study, this goes far beyond her education and experience. It’s like the difference between knowing that an apple will fall down to your head from the tree, and truly understanding why and what causes that. The scream is complete when they land at their destination. At least that’s where they think they are; it’s where they’ve stopped.

“This doesn’t look familiar,” Marie notes. “Leona, what time is it?”

She looks at her watch, which always knows the exact time and date for when and where she is, no matter how much time traveling she’s gone through. “December 31st, 2398 at 15:02. Hm.”

“Sorry, I’m off,” Treasure says.

“No, I was meant to be the navigator,” Leona laments.

“No, it was me. I thought I overshot it. I’m still pretty new at this, to be honest. I should have been upfront about that.”

“It’s really fine,” Mateo tells her. This isn’t that long. I mean, it’s pretty long for me, but November 26 would have been a gap too.”

“Look at that architecture,” Marie says as she steps towards the skyline, towering up into the twilight sky. “We can’t be in the Third Rail. No where on Earth is like this; not yet, anyway.”

Leona looks down at her watch again. “Unless this thing is broken, it’s right. Maybe we’re in the wrong reality. I worked really hard to think about the right one, though. I purged all other thoughts from my brain.”

“Could your watch be broken? Did leaving the universe mess it up?” Mateo asks.

“I’ve done it before,” Leona notes. “It’s never been an issue.”

“This is definitely salmonverse,” Treasure assures them.

“Can we ask that person?” Mateo suggests. “Would it be weird?”

Leona shrugs her shoulders. “If he looks at us funny for asking what year it is, what’s the worst that could happen?” She leads the way towards the man who is walking his dog along the treeline. “Excuse me?”

“Yes?” He’s not perturbed that they’re interrupting him in the first place, which is a good start.

“Could you tell me...?” She can’t even say it.

“The date?” he just somehow assumes. “It’s New Year’s Eve, 2398.”

“Which calendar?” Mateo furthers.

“Clavical,” the man replies. He reads their expressions. “Are you from before the Clavical? I’ve never met travelers from that far in the past. Could I get a photo?” He raises a hand, fingers separated, thumb placed on the band of the ring on his index.

“Sorry,” Leona tells him. “Better not.”

“I understand, you wanna keep a low profile. I’ll always remember this, though.” He and the dog casually walk away.

“They do this in the main sequence,” Mateo says. “They get rid of the old calendar, and start a new one. It’s 2398, but not our 2398. This is where Cheyenne is from, but she wouldn’t say how far in the future.”

“That tracks with everything we know of her so far,” Leona determines.

“I saw something when I was here briefly with Danica,” Mateo reveals. “There was a sign. It was six keys, each had its own symbol on it.”

“That’s where the word clavicle comes from,” Marie says. “Key.”

“What were the symbols?” Leona asks her husband.

“It’s hard to remember. Like I said, it was so brief. We accidentally took Cheyenne with us, which is why she needed the Insulator of Life; to get back to her future. One of them was, like, two vertical lines next to each other, complete with the arrows at each end. Another was three lines, but no arrows. Oh, there was one that was squarish...two lines intersecting each other. The bottom right was filled in.”

“Oh my God, that’s a quadrant, Mateo.”

“Let me guess, the fourth quadrant,” Marie figures.

“The Parallel, the Third Rail, and the Fourth Quadrant,” Leona lists. “Did you see the Fifth Division symbol? It had arches, we saw it while we were there.”

“I think so, yeah, and that would make sense. The symbol on one of the other two keys was a circle, and then several crescents to the above it.”

“The main sequence,” Leona realizes. “We’ve been moving through time with bad information. Everyone has only ever talked about there being five parallel realities in total, but they’re wrong. There are six.”

“That’s why we call it The Sixth Key.” They were so deep in discussion, they didn’t even notice someone approaching them. As he steps into the dying light, they get a better look at his face. It’s Ramses. Well, it’s a Ramses.

“Report,” Leona requests.

“The report is that you’re not where you’re supposed to be. You gotta go.”

“Wait, just answer one question,” Leona begs.

“No.” Alt!Ramses holds his palm towards them, and gently pushes air forward. They can feel themselves being flung backwards in time, but just the three of them. Treasure doesn’t come with. When the streaks of speeding light around them give way to discernible form, they realize that they’ve landed in the Crown Center parking lot. But then time has to move the opposite direction for a little bit. The cars drive off, and a large tent is erected. Soldiers are aiming guns on them. “Hold!” one of them orders. The leader steps forward. “It’s them! Welcome back, Agent Matic.”