The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 29, 2542

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During the team’s interim year, the pocket dimension generator belts they left behind explored the galaxy on their own. They did so while holographically invisible, in case the next encounter was with someone less kind than Renata and Quidel. The belt stack was able to visit nearly one new spot a day, for a total of 360 slings. When the stack arrived somewhere new, it had to wait for the coherence gauges to return to the violet. In the meantime, it took that opportunity to scan the region, providing Ramses with the data that he needed to rule out Spiral Station. The majority of the dots on the map were crabitats, but not all. Obviously, they started with the most remote since those were most likely to be what they were looking for. Besides Extremus, there was Verdemus, which created its own outpost around nearby stars. Some people from the Sixth Key had established a presence in this reality, and it didn’t look like they were hurting anyone, so the team decided to leave them be.

Every day, the belts would chip away at the map, gathering enough information to check each dot off. Now that they were back in the timestream, they elected to give the belts a break since the chances of being present when they found their target were low, and they really didn’t feel like going on another adventure. Ramses built them such a nice multidimensional home to live in, they decided to simply relax. The search was probably going to take years, so what was the rush?

Romana slammed her palm on the couch. “Downbeat!”

Everyone giggled. They actually weren’t even playing Downbeat, but trying to contrive the rules to another fictional game called Hassle the Fishmonger.

“No? I didn’t just win?” Romana questioned.

“Not unless you’re holding Mateo’s hand,” Marie suggested.

“Oh, good idea. I’m writing that down as a new rule,” Mateo said before taking his daughter’s hand in his.

They looked at each other before saying, “downbeat!” simultaneously. And then, as if it had been the magic words, the proximity alarm went off. A security feed appeared in front of the doors that led to the simulated backyard. A giant object had appeared before them, the technicolor webbing still fading away.

“Spiral Station,” Leona said, standing up.

“They must have been looking for us while we were looking for them,” Olimpia figured.

Without doing or saying a single thing, the station wrapped itself in bulk energy, and slung away.

“What the hell was the point of that?” Mateo questioned.

“They left something behind.” Ramses was tapping on his tablet. “It could be a bomb. Executing emergency teleportation.”

For about thirty minutes, they waited thousands of kilometers away, but nothing happened. Ramses had dropped a sensor buoy near the gift. It needed time to assess the threat level, but he was quickly confident that it contained no explosive materials. His best guess was that it was some kind of communication device, so they pulled it inside. He set it on the table and pressed the blinking red button. A hologram of Franka appeared behind the table. The sphere itself turned invisible to declutter the image. “Greetings, Team Matic. Word around the membrane is that you’ve been looking for us.”

Mateo stepped forward. “We have.”

“To what end?” Franka asked.

“Our slingdrive system,” Ramses began. “Someone pointed out that it can’t take us absolutely anywhere. It can only travel to a technological establishment, however remote. We were hoping you could fix that.”

“So you used the limitation to build a map of the galaxy, which pinpointed our location, albeit in an unlabeled manner. That’s clever,” Franka acknowledged.

Ramses looked awkwardly at Romana. “I’m not the one who came up with that either.”

“We’re guessing that you don’t have the same restrictions,” Leona said.

“We do not,” Franka admitted.

Dutch suddenly appeared behind her. He waved at the camera. “Hi, guys!”

“Hi, Dutch,” a few of them replied.

“Hi,” Romana said too, but in a very different tone. Not again.

“Okay, I’m talking here,” Franka said to Dutch, shooing him away without too much anger. She looked back at the team. “I’m afraid that bulk tech was my brother’s responsibility. I don’t know if you heard, but he kind of died?”

“We could have mourned together,” Leona argued, “but you abandoned us in the middle of nowhere.”

“You threatened me!” Franka volleyed. “I don’t like to be threatened!”

“Well, I’m sorry, I regret it!” Leona explained. “Which I would have said earlier, but we couldn’t find you!”

“Well, I’m sorry too!” Franka shouted back. “When you have this much power, it’s hard to remember how much normal people matter!”

“Well, okay!” Leona caught her breath. “I’m done with this sphere. You need to come back so we can have a real conversation.”

“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” Franka argued. She then tried to continue.

“We’re busy,” Dutch interrupted again.

“Thanks, Dutch, I got this.” Franka rolled her eyes in a way that suggested she liked having him around to keep the mood light, but it could be a bit much at times. “I brought you this intergalactic communicator so we could stay in contact, but Dutch wasn’t lying. We really are busy. I promise, it’s nothing you wouldn’t approve of, but you have your own destinies to fulfill. You are more boots on the ground, hands-on, street level people. And you...ya know, don’t exist most of the time? We have to stay out of the Milky Way galaxy, because it might cause a severe shift in the balance of power. The people there need to develop as they are for the most part. Project Starseed can’t have—forgive me for using this word—gods saving them all the time. They need people like you...with your limitations, your restrictions...your rules. I bet you’ve been trying to decide where to go. My advice? Go anywhere. Someone there will need you.”

“What about the Oaksent?” Mateo asked her.

“We’ve been monitoring the situation,” Franka told him. “It seems that you were...” She trailed off, and mumbled inaudibly.

“What was that?” Leona pressed. “We can’t hear you. There must be dark matter interference.”

“You were right!” Franka admitted. “The situation was a lot more nuanced than just the hypothetical assassination of one man. They are evidently fixing their own problems. A faction has broken off, and is on its way to go to war with Castlebourne, but it will take them long to get there and find it, and by the time they do, the balance of power will make their efforts fruitless. But instead of it being unfair and easy, the Castlebourners will have done it themselves. Thanks to people like you who made little changes, instead of sweeping decisions. The truth is, mom and dad, I admire you. And we can get to know each other better, but we can’t spend time. Our paths diverged before any of us were even born. One day, we might be able to team up again. I can see the Vellani Ambassador reuniting with the Iman Vellani. I see them working with The Jameela Jamil and Spiral Station. And I see Team Matic at the center of it. But for now, please stay in your corner. They need you, even if they don’t know it.”

“Wait,” Ramses said, worried that Franka was about to log off. “Is there anything you can do about my slingdrives? I know you didn’t design it, but surely Séarlas left behind operator’s manuals.”

“Why would you wanna go where there isn’t anyone else around?” Franka posed.

“I would like the option,” Ramses contended.

Franka sighed, and seemingly considered it. “When you return to the timestream next year, open your little map, and take note of a ping that you didn’t see before. That will be a beacon that I left in a remote region of the galaxy. You can go there for respite. But I’m not granting you access to all of time and space. This is the best I can do.”

“Well...thank you then,” Ramses said, having been hoping for a lot more.

“I better be going,” Franka said.

“Bye!” Dutch jumped back in. “You should go to Be—”

The call was disconnected.

“Well, that was weird,” Mateo said.

“We should try not to think of her as our daughter...because she isn’t,” Leona said to her husband. “She had different parents, who looked like us, and would make a lot of the same decisions as us, but were not us. We didn’t experience that, and we don’t have the right to treat her as family.”

There was an awkward silence, which Olimpia decided to break. “I think I’m gonna take a nap.”

“Yeah, me too,” Angela agreed. “Let’s all take an hour to do whatever we need to do, be that a nap, a talk, or a nice bath.”

Half an hour later, Mateo and Leona were in the former’s room, exhausted from having been talking about their feelings, when the slingdrives powered up. They ran out of their unit, and back into Marie’s. Most of their teammates were doing the same. Angela was fully naked, dripping wet from her shoulders down, and trying to dry herself off with a hand towel. Ramses came out last from his lab. “Who did that?”

“I did.” Romana was walking up the steps from Marie’s basement.

“Where did you bring us?” Leona questioned.

“The only logical place,” Romana answered enigmatically.

“Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida,” Ramses announced, looking at his device.

“Is this because of what Dutch said at the end of the call?” Mateo asked.

“This is obviously what he meant. Trust me, I looked through the colony catalogs, looking for an alternative, and this was the only place he could have possibly been trying to say before he was so rudely cut off.”

“Yeah, that’s probably true,” Leona agreed, “but that doesn’t mean we had to come here, or that you could make that decision without our input.”

Romana brushed it off. “Ugh, I’m so bored. I can’t take another game of Cones of Dunshire. It’s too thinky thinky.”

“The people who live here...” Leona began, trailing off, not knowing how to word it. “They’re not—oh my God. I don’t know how to put it. From the outside, they basically look like hermits, but instead of crabitats, they live in small pockets on the land and sea. Some do live in rotating cylinders, coins, and hammers, but up in orbit, because they don’t see their relative proximity to be any less isolating on a daily basis. No, that’s not right. They participate in community, but they technically live separately. They utilize technology efficiently, to make it so they don’t have to work. They otherwise worship nature, which makes sense given that this world is a miracle. I’m being really general here, but that’s to give you an idea of how they live. They don’t reject technology, and they don’t hate outsiders, but we probably shouldn’t meddle in their affairs.”

“Hold up,” Marie said. “Romy, you’re the one who sent us to Proxima Doma too. Is this the same thing? Did someone tell you to bring us here?”

“Yeah, Dutch,” Romana reminded them.

“I mean someone other than that. Did you meet a seer, or...?”

“It’s nothing like that,” Romana defended. “No more secrets. This is just our next stop. You don’t have to read anything into it. It’s just...we’re just...Doctor Who.”

“Doctor Who?” Leona asked. “How’s that now?”

“The Doctor doesn’t have to do anything,” Romana reasoned. “Everytime he goes somewhere, he pretty much always knows all the stuff. He’s not seeking out new life and new civilizations. He’s just flying around, and whenever he shows up, he helps whoever happens to be there. The writers gave up on contriving reasons for him to do that. It’s just the premise, and that’s enough. Let’s make that our premise. Let’s check out Bida for a little bit, and when we’re done, we’ll pick somewhere else to go. You don’t have to wait for someone to hand you a mission, should you choose to accept it. That’s what my sister was trying to tell us. She’s not my favorite sister, but it makes sense to me now, and I think I agree with her.”

Leona nodded. “It’s not a bad idea. The problem is that Bida has become almost entirely decentralized. That’s the consequence of extreme advancement in a post-scarcity economy. It’s why people like Linwood Meyers exist. Most aren’t misanthropic, but they lost their reasons to work together. Basically, everything that needed to be done is done. Some people will continue to look for new adventures, and new knowledge, but for a lot, a cabin in the woods is enough. They stand upon Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs alone because there is not much room at the top of a pyramid. So the people here probably don’t need us, and even if someone does, the chances of you landing us exactly at that settlement, instead of any of the other twenty million plots, are incredibly low.”

Romana held out her hand, but not in friendship. “I’ll take that bet.”

Leona smiled. “What are we betting?”

“If I win—if we’re where we’re supposed to be, helping the right person or people—you make me your navigator. As Captain, you reserve the right to veto, as I trust your judgment and wisdom, but as navigator, I initially choose our mission, every time.”

“And if I win?” Leona asked.

“If you win...you get infinite favors.” Romana seemed confident that she wouldn’t have to worry about the gravity of that offer.

Leona smiled wider now. “Okay.” She shook her daughter’s hand.

By the end of the day, Romana was the team’s navigator. It wasn’t even that hard. She cheated.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 27, 2540

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Angela inspired Ramses to alter his plans for their new pocket dimension habitat. He was still using a belt as a form factor, but instead of only having one central location where they would all live, they would have seven total. This helped a little with power management, which was important, even though they already had an advantage that not everyone trying something like this would. A temporal battery this small would not be good enough for most people’s use, but they only ever needed the pocket dimension to be active while they were in the timestream. During their interim year, it could be recharging simply by the passage of time. And if one of them lost power, the others might still be okay, and available. Each one of them would wear their own belt, which housed its own independent pocket. These would be connected to one another, though, allowing them to cross back and forth between each other’s territories seamlessly. And of course, each individual would be able to control access to their own pocket. They were in the middle of a tour to learn more about it.

“So, whose pocket is this?” Olimpia asked. “If it’s a common area, does one of us wear two belts?”

“No, this is just mine,” Marie revealed. “I figured, since I don’t have a love interest, or a laboratory, I might as well serve as the main hub.”

“Your personal quarters does lock, though,” Ramses explained, pointing to one of the doors. This was a room of mostly doors. “So you do have some privacy.”

“Well, thank you for doing that,” Leona said to Marie. “And thank you, Ramses, for building this. It’s quite lovely. Do the other pockets look like this, architecturally speaking?”

Ramses nodded. “Yes, same aesthetic, but it can be redecorated, or even remodeled, if you have your own vision. I designed them with forty-two square meters of space, though if you’re feeling claustrophobic, we can talk about expanding. It would just take a little more power...”

“That’s more than enough in the modern era,” Mateo noted. “The three of us are gonna be sharing our spaces.” He wrapped an arm around each of his wives.

“Uh, slow down there, cowpoke,” Leona said, brushing him off of her shoulder. “You’re gonna need to buy me dinner first, and it better be fancy. I’m talking laminated menus with multiple pages, and lighting so dim, you can’t read it.”

“Well, all right then. And you?” he posed to Olimpia.

“I’m easy. Just slap my ass and call me sweetheart.” They kissed.

“Gross,” Romana said.

Ramses laughed a little. “Like Marie said, this is the common area, but everyone has an antechamber like this one, but with only six doors, and smaller. You can enter each other’s domains directly, instead of going through the common area. So, Matics, you could just leave your doors open all the time, and it will feel like the same big house. Now,” he began as he was walking towards a door that was separate from the others. When he opened it, they saw a staircase. “This goes down to the basement where your respective tandem slingdrives are, along with other necessary equipment, like life support and power control. Don’t...” he hesitated. “Don’t come down here unless I ask you to, or if you really think there’s a reason. I don’t know what that reason might be, but you’re all adults, so I don’t want to make a blanket statement that it’s off-limits, or straight up lock you out. I just want you to be careful. In the past, you have not had physical access to the machinery, and I never heard any complaints, so even though you technically have access now, you really shouldn’t need it. I have direct doors to all of them, and you cannot lock those from your side, so fair warning.”

“Yeah, you’re our little basement troll.” Mateo put Ramses in a headlock and mussed up his hair. “Who’s our little basement troll?”

“I am,” Ramses admitted. He pulled himself out of the headlock, and straightened back up. “So, that’s about all I’m gonna show you. You can explore on your own. I mostly only put the basic amenities in there, like Alaskan king beds, VR connectors, stasis pods, emergency supplies. You can synthesize more, if you want. Everyone does have a giant hot tub, though. No amount of transhumanistic enhancement can replicate the relaxing feeling of hot water jets on your bare skin, lemme tell ya.”

“Gross,” Romana repeated.

“Oh, I almost forgot. One more thing,” Ramses said, leading them towards the back. He drew the curtains apart to reveal a glass sliding door. On the other side was what looked like the outside. It wasn’t just an illusion. He opened the door, and walked right out. The ground before them was only soil, but it was a sizable backyard. The landscape stretched for miles and miles, though that probably was all just holographic. At present, the sun was setting, so they stood there to watch it. “I didn’t plant anything, because I thought we might turn this into a little community garden. Wherever we go, we’ll be able to bring nature with us, even in the emptiness of intergalactic space.”

“This is really nice, Ramses,” Leona said again. “You did a great job.”

“You didn’t help?” Angela asked her.

“Not much,” Leona replied. “I ran some calculations, but the design was all him.”

“I needed a win,” Ramses told her. “I needed it to be my win, if that doesn’t sound too selfish and rude.”

“I understand,” she assured him. “It really is great. We finally have a home.”

“Is there a name for it?” Marie asked. “Like Willow Heights or Paradiso?”

Ramses started to look a little bashful now. “Well, we can come up with a different name, if you’d like, but in the base coding, I’ve just been calling it Silhefa. It’s kind of hard to pronounce in Egyptian Arabic, so that’s an anglicized approximation.

“What does it mean?” Mateo asked him.

“Turtle,” Ramses answered.

They all smiled. “It’s perfect.”

Mateo looked over, though, and noticed that there was a hint of sadness in Romana’s eyes. She was still going through a rough time, and she probably wasn’t talking to anybody about it. He slid over to her, and took her hand. She was a little surprised, but didn’t think of it as an opening to a conversation. She just smiled at him wider, and looked back at the scenery. He gently pulled her away.

“What is it?”

“Let’s talk,” he requested. He unlocked the door to his private pocket, and pulled her into it.

“About what?”

“Lie down with me.” He plopped down on the bed.

“That’s a little weird, dad.”

“You’re still my little girl. Lie down, come on.”

She sighed and lay down beside him.

“When you were just a tiny baby—I don’t know if your mother told you this—the Dardieti had built us this special bed.” He scooted over so there was more space between them that he could point to. “There was this hole in the bed which was just big enough for you. Your mom and I weren’t together, obviously, but for that brief period of time, we both slept in that bed with you. We felt like a family. It was in that bed that I made a commitment to protect you, which I was only able to do by letting you go.”

“We just talked about this on that scout ship. I’m not leaving the team.”

“I’m not asking you to. There are things I know you need that a father can’t give to his daughter. That would actually be weird. All I can do is be there for you while you figure it out. There’s something I might be able to give you, though. It won’t be easy, nor safe, but I can promise to try. I think it might help, though you would have to decide how you feel about it. The truth is, even though I didn’t know her well, I miss her a little, and would not hate seeing her again.” He drew from his memory of over a hundred realtime years ago, and used it to generate a hologram of Karla Nieman above them.

Romana teared up, and quickly started crying at the sight of her mom.

“We are time travelers. Let’s take advantage of that. Let’s go see your mother.”

“Getting into the Third Rail is not easy. Mom didn’t say anything about the baby bed, but she told me how hard it was to find refuge.”

“Then you know what to do.”

“Not exactly. She didn’t give me a map.”

“She gave you a way out, didn’t she? You made your way to Castlebourne somehow.”

“That was after the Reconvergence. I got out of the Sixth Key.”

“Well. We’ll find a way. Would you like that? Would you like to see her again?”

“Yes.”

“Come here. Come on,” he urged when she didn’t accept the hug right away.

She did lay her head upon his chest and cried into his shirt. “I have to admit something. I’ve been trying to Weird Science myself a boyfriend, using the Varkas Reflex computers. They know how to create characters, ya know. It’s not working, though. I keep trying to set very vague parameters, so he feels more like a real person that I didn’t come up with myself, but then he’s always a weirdo who I don’t really like. I thought maybe it was fate, because I thought of the idea, and then Ramses navigated us here, and it just made sense, but it’s not working out, and I feel like such a loser. I shouldn’t need an AI boyfriend. I’m just...desperate.”

Mateo sighed, not entirely sure what to say. “You had a boyfriend...once.”

“You mean Boyd?”

“Yeah.”

“You hated Boyd.”

“Well, he was an antagonist.”

She sighed.

“Until he wasn’t,” Mateo acknowledged.

“Why are you bringing that up?”

“Well. If we’re going to go back to the past to visit your mother, I don’t see why we can’t visit your ex too.”

“Really? You would do that?”

“You are my little girl. I don’t know how long it’s going to take for us to reach either destination.”

“I’m gonna need to print out a new bra.”

“Don’t push it.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 11, 2524

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It wasn’t until the next year when Mateo, Leona, and Angela could safely reactivate their tandem slingdrives. They technically could have left shortly before midnight, but they decided it was for the best. They left a message with the Vitalie who lived on Vitalemus, to relay to the Vellani Ambassador if she ever heard from again. She hadn’t, but had kept apprised of Goldilocks Corridor news, and no one had reported seeing them lately, so no one knew where they were at this point. With nothing left for them here, they made the jump, and returned to the beacon floating around in the space where Castlebourne once was. They weren’t alone. They quickly picked up comms from Ramses, Marie, Olimpia, and Romana. They only had to make a few jumps to rendezvous with each other.

“Gang’s all here,” Mateo mused.

“How did you get back here?” Angela asked the other half of their team.

“You were taking too long,” Ramses began to explain. “We decided to come back here to see if you were stranded after failing to track Castlebourne’s new location. The rest is obvious. We were just about to come find you on Vitalemus.”

“Did you put a pocket dimension in the buoy thinking Romana would be able to use it?” Leona asked.

“No, that didn’t occur to me,” Ramses replied. “It was just a failsafe if something went wrong. With no other habitable structure around here, there needed to be some way to survive, like if you had a stranger in tow with a less advanced vacuum suit, or no suit at all. As it turns out,” he went on while tapping a piece of the buoy that he had separated from the rest, “it was necessary.”

“Is someone in there?” Leona questioned.

“You’ll see.” That was a weird way to put it.

“Can we all go back to Castlebourne together now?” Mateo asked.

Ramses shook his head. “I’m afraid this was a one-way trip. Hrockas scrambled the tracker from his end. Where they are by now is a mystery. I could probably write an algorithm that could predict their movements using their last known location. The choosing one he’s using to push the host star around is powerful, but she has her limits. They can’t be all the way to the outer arm of the Milky Way, or something. But we would have to leave something behind to keep trying to track them...”

“Or I could do it again,” Romana volunteered.

“No,” Mateo countered decisively. “I don’t want you breaking your pattern ever again.”

“Do we really need to find Castlebourne at all?” Marie asked the group. “We were trying to leave it at one point.”

“That’s true, I remember that now,” Mateo affirms. It was the closest thing to home they had ever had, but it was always going to end eventually. It was supposed to end a long time ago, but they got sidetracked with all that Pacey-Underburg stuff, which kept them tied to Castlebourne for a bit longer.

“Do you want to try another aimless jump?” Romana offered.

“And end up back in that hellhole?” Leona added. “No, thanks.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Romana reminded them. “I liked the outfits.”

“You could always wear that kind of outfit, whenever you want,” Leona said.

“True,” Romana replied. She shed her suit, and shifted her nanites to a 1950s-esque dress, not exactly like the kind she wore when they were oblivious and trapped in Underburg, but similar.

“Put your suit back on,” Mateo shouted.

Romana couldn’t reply in the vacuum, but she could still hear via conduction, yet she pushed the back of her ear forward as if she couldn’t even do that. After her father pointed at her with stern determination, she switched her suit back on. “Geeze, Papa Bear,” she joked. “Rambo’s got me covered. That man knows his way around a woman’s body.”

“Goddammit!” Mateo complained. “Don’t say things like that!”

“Okay, okay,” Leona jumped in, as she usually had to do when those two were at it. Romana knew how to push her dad’s buttons, and Leona knew how to put a stop to it, which was to change the subject as quickly as possible. “Let’s just go back to Earth. I’m feeling a little homesick. And it was home for all of us at some point, though not technically the same version of it.”

“That’s a good idea,” Marie concluded.

Ramses looked at his forearm readout. “My coherence gauge is in the Orange, where are you?”

“We just arrived, so it’s still Red,” Leona answered. “We won’t be ready to jump until nearly the end of the day, probably.”

“I’m doin’ a bottle episode!” Olimpia suddenly shouted.

“I was just thinking about that,” Angela said. “Not the bottle episode thing, that’s nonsense. “We should call it slinging. Why are we calling it jumping?”

“Seconded,” Romana agreed.

“All in favor,” Mateo posed. They raised their hands. “Motion passes. New lingo established.” He paused for a moment. “Great, that entertained us for all of ten seconds. What do we do in the meantime? And don’t say RPS-101 Plus. I don’t like playing in my suit. I can’t control my objects right.”

“You just say that because you consistently lose!” Olimpia teased.

“Mah-ri?” Angela began, “why are you looking around?”

“Oh, we just made a decision to go to Earth,” Marie replied. “That’s usually when God laughs and intervenes.

That was true. Everyone started to look around too, but found only space. The sudden intervention she was talking about didn’t usually happen when they were actively looking for it...kind of a watched pot never boils sort of thing, but it was still prudent to check.

“Do you guys realize there are three wars?” Angela offered. She opened the floor up to anyone, but no one responded. “The Exin Empire, the Sixth Key conflict, and those dragonfly aliens. I don’t know if you’ve realized this, but we’ve been switching between them. Once we close one chapter of one book, we start the next chapter of one of the other two books.”

Ramses glanced down at the piece of the buoy he attached to his chest. Only Mateo noticed, and he chose not to address it.

“Yeah, you’re right about that, aren’t you?” Leona asked rhetorically. “We just closed one of the books, but we don’t know which one we’re about to open, if either of the others.”

“I am curious about what’s going on with the Sixth Key,” Marie admitted. “It’s been a long time. I spent some years in one of those worlds.”

“So did I,” Romana said, referring to having grown up in ancient Third Rail.

“But the Ochivari are so fascinating,” Angela insisted. “We could end up in any universe, dealing with any new, unfamiliar culture.”

“Well, we might be able to trigger the Transit to show up if one of us makes a declaration that we want to fight in a cosmic war, or join the military,” Marie suggested.

“Let’s not do that,” Leona volleyed.

“Then the Sixth Key it is,” Angela responded. “Raise the sails! Navigate us to the aperture!” She pointed in a random direction. It was a little funny, but nobody laughed. They just fell silent for a time.

“That lasted us another five minutes. How’s everybody’s coherence? Mine’s still in the Red. Do we all have to be Green, or...”

“Maybe not,” Ramses explained. “I would feel safer if we were, though. I would feel even safer with Violet.”

“If you’re bored, we could just go into stasis for a few hours. It’s not bad in here. I found it easy to wake back up when they found me.”

“Well, yeah, Rambo knows his way around a woman’s body,” Olimpia echoed Romana from earlier.

“I want a divorce,” Mateo said, joking, but...clearly not happy for real.

The seven of them continued to hang out there while they waited for their coherence gauges to rise up to acceptable levels. They mostly held onto the buoy to stay close to one another, but occasionally, one of them would push off and float around. They could always return by utilizing their maneuvering thrusters, or just teleporting back. That was what gave Romana the idea to play hide-and-seek. It was a dangerous version of the game, which not everyone in the galaxy would be able to play. Because space was empty and black, the chances of finding someone just by the naked eye were incredibly low. They could use their heat signatures instead, but then detection would be incredibly easy. The only way to do it was for each hider to shut off their own life support systems, and stay in one place for long enough for the seeker to find everyone else first. They could still use their comms, but they would be untraceable. Some of them could withstand the cold for longer, and were better at hiding. Others were caught when they just couldn’t take it anymore. At this point, they could try to teleport away, but the seeker could always jump right to them wherever they ended up.

They played the game for a couple of hours before noticing that the same people were winning each time. It was always either Mateo or Ramses, which made this whole thing feel very unfeministic. Even though Ramses supposedly built their superstrates equally, it seemed as though the women got colder faster, just as they would if they were simply wearing business clothes in an office. The coherence gauges still weren’t Green for everybody, but they were sick of playing around, so most of them just took naps. They floated aimlessly there in the black, mostly apart, though Mateo and Olimpia held together like the two lovers they were. Leona was working on the self-destruct sequence for the buoy. Instead of bringing it with them, they were just gonna blow it up, so no one could have any hope of finding any information on it. It took a lot of time and work to engage the explosives. This was by design, so it couldn’t be switched on incidentally, or when the user wasn’t thinking rationally.

Finally, the last of them turned Green, and it was time to leave. Ramses woke everyone up with a calm, but crescendoing, song. They teleported back into a group, and magnetized their suits so they could watch the explosion together. It was a bit anticlimactic because of how fast and efficient it was, but still something worth seeing. They synced up their slingdrives, and with one final goodbye to the Castlebourne that was no longer there, they slung away.

They landed on the surface of what they assumed was Earth. They quickly detected a breathable atmosphere, and were able to recede their nanites into regular clothes. This did look like Earth, but perhaps one from long ago. Earth didn’t really have any cities anymore. They just lived in arcological megastructures, and some seasteads, if they weren’t just orbiting from space. They were on a street, though. The buildings were sleek and advanced, but just too dense for Earth in this time period. People were staring at them, including parents trying to hold their children close. A man approached them cautiously. “Do you mean us harm?” he asked.

Leona stepped forward. “Absolutely not. We’re travelers, attempting to return to Earth.”

The man looked over his shoulder at the crowd, and then back at Leona. “Never heard of it. How did you do that thing with your clothes?”

“Have you heard of other...” Leona trailed off. She slowly darted her eyes side to side, looking for the right way to word this. Unfortunately, the beginning of her sentence might have painted her into a corner. No, she could figure this out. The Prime Directive applied here until she determined otherwise. “...other cities.”

“You mean on the other side of the tunnels?” the man guessed. “Yes. We don’t interact with them, except to exchange some technologies sometimes.”

Tunnels. Leona looked up at the sky, or what appeared to be a sky anyway. She pulled a small swarm of nanites over her eyes, and used them as sensors. “Yeah, that was definitely a hologram, and they were under a dome. Goddammit, they were back on Castlebourne, and in some kind of simulation. Wait.

The man looked up at the sky too, trying to figure out what she was so baffled by.

The dimensions were off. This wasn’t one of the Castlebourne domes. It was too small. Not by much, but other than the ocean caps, and a few rare exceptions, all Castlebourne domes were pretty much the exact same skeletal design. Where would they be where people would be living under a dome, but alarmed by their use of nanite technology. She looked back at the stranger and breathed. “Have you heard of Proxima Doma?”

“Yes,” he replied. “We don’t know what it means.”

Leona looked back at the rest of the team. She just regarded them for a moment, trying to decide the best course of action. There was really only one. They couldn’t teleport, and they couldn’t explain their odd behavior. The locals wouldn’t understand, and it would break their worldview. “Run.”

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The Fourth Quadrant: Hard as a Rock (Part I)

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In the beginning, there was one gargoyle named Oliver Spout. But then his pattern spread to three others. For the four of them, every day at sunrise, their bodies would slip into a stasis bubble, which essentially sent them forwards in time however long was necessary to reach sunset. For the rest of the world, hours would pass, but for them, only seconds. The length of daylight shifted throughout the year, so they always hated winter more than summer. Things got a bit wonky when their, Kansas City, was copied into the Fourth Quadrant parallel reality, leaving two of them on the original nighttime schedule, while the other two ended up only experiencing daytime. They eventually became the Presidents and Vice Presidents of this new world, sharing responsibilities across the diurnal cycle. Half a century ago, a team of heroes came to their reality, and gave them the technology they would need to break out of their patterns. Their consciousnesses were transferred to new clone bodies, freeing them to live at all times of the day. It was after this that Andrei was born to Skyler Spout and Kostya Orlov.

They all assumed that Andrei would be born completely normal. After all, he was the product of two clones whose pattern had been supposedly successfully stripped of them after they were downloaded into new bodies. Unfortunately, some of his mother’s gargoyleness seems to have been hardcoded into her DNA. While she never fell back onto her old pattern, Andrei grew up to experience one of his own. He has some choice in the matter, but not always. While his family’s perceptions of time were being slowed down to a fraction of a fraction of a percentage of what it should be, his perception is altered by a very minute amount. It only slows him down to about 99% of realtime. But during this time, Andrei is as hard as a rock. He can’t move, he can’t be moved, and if he’s not lying down when it happens, he’ll become incredibly fatigued while he’s waiting to return to the fray. Unless someone is there to help him out.

Selma Eriksen is the Vice President of the Fourth Quadrant Earth. After Princess Honeypea transports them from their neighbor’s penthouse on a planet called Hockstep, she looks over to find that Andrei has become stuck in one of his bubbles again. This can happen when he travels to a new world, but not always. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to predict when he’ll get stuck, or for how long. They’re standing on the manicured grass next to a fast-moving stream or river. Boats are tied to the bank, but she doesn’t know what kind they are. They kind of look like old, wooden motorboats, except there’s no motor. They’re surrounded by flowering plants, non-flowering plants, shrubs, and short trees. From what they’ve been told, this is a nature preserve of some kind, so this whole place could be designed with intentional obsolescence to protect the wildlife. “Nuadu, can you help me?” Selma requests.

“What’s wrong with him?” Nuadu asks.

“He’s stuck in a bubble. It’s not good for him to be standing up like this.”

“Put him in one of the broads,” Honeypea offers. “I thought you might like to take the scenic route to the Citrus Inn. I didn’t know this would happen to him.”

“Why would we go to an inn?” Cosette questions. “We’re not staying.” 

“You’re not speaking with the Magnolia until he’s ready...and he’s not ready,” Honeypea explains. “Everyone into the broadfloats. Four per. One on each needs to steer the rudder in the back. It’s pretty intuitive.”

Selma and Nuadu lay Andrei down on the floor of the boat. Since he can’t sit up, no one else joins them. Selma keeps an eye on him while Naudu steers. The steering section is raised up a little, so he can see where they’re going while still seated on his little perch. The river takes them in the right direction, but he has to navigate around rocks, limbs, and little whirlpools. The two rows of seats before him could probably fit six additional people total, but there may be a weight issue. If this thing has a rudder, it can’t sit too deep in the water.

The inn is wooden and rustic, with no electricity, but it at least has running water. It has no apparent means of climate control, but no one feels that this is necessary. The whole world seems to be sitting at the perfect temperature. The beds are simple in design too, but the mattresses are modern and comfortable. They’re not animals. Princess Honeypea tells everyone to get settled, because it could be a while. The Pryce Tree is a unique lifeform, the origins of which no one here knows much about. Trying to understand his motivations and sense of time would be a waste of their time. Fortunately, they have been assured that they are not wasting it just by being here. The garden is located, not only in another spatial dimension, but also temporal. They should be able to pick up right where they left off when they return to the Sixth Key.

Selma wishes they could have just spent a few nights here before, back when they were being isolated to protect the timeline, and then gone back several months later after the danger had passed. No one else is bringing that up, though, so she’s not going to rock the boat. Something strange is going on here. The magical tree’s power is awe-inspiring, and if there’s some other entity out there that rivals its might, that could be a real bad thing, and they could be in real big trouble, as could all of reality. They just have to hope that something can be done about it.

They reluctantly retire to their respective new rooms, and try to get some sleep. Selma is sharing one with Andrei. He doesn’t like to come out of his time bubble alone. It’s not typically she who has to wait on him, but she’s all he has right now. His relationship with Ayata is still too new for them to spend the night together, even though there’s nothing romantic going on here at any rate as Selma chose this particular room for its two beds. When she wakes up to use the restroom, she passes by him again, and sees that the bubble popped at some point, but he’s still asleep. If he’s in the right position, he can sleep while he’s in there, but it’s reportedly agitating, and he prefers to be able to change positions, and get comfortable. She takes care of business, then goes back to bed, waking up with the eastern sun a few hours later.

Andrei is hovering over her with a cup of tea. “Get any rest?”

She’s still groggy. “I should be asking you that.”

“The answer’s yes. Thanks for taking care of me. I should have liked to see the sights on the way down the river, though.”

“I’ll remember that next time,” Selma replies. They have a decent rapport, but they actually don’t know each other all that well. In the Fourth Quadrant, the President and Vice President run for office separately, and once the election is over, they operate independently, living and working on distant islands. This is done for practical reasons. If something should happen to the President, the VP shouldn’t be there to suffer the same fate. The whole point is that she’s the backup. This is the most time they’ve ever spent together.

Andrei takes a sip. “The princess thinks that the tree’s about to talk. Best get dressed, and grab something to eat. They have citrus here.” Citrus didn’t exist in their reality, and that’s because it didn’t start out as a full-fledged reality of its own. It was a pocket dimension at first, and citrus fruits can’t travel between the dimensions. All the lemons, limes, and oranges exploded every time a new region was expelled to it, both on the trees, and elsewhere. Grocery stores were a mess. That was their biggest concern when they were negotiating for their interests during the Rock Meetings. The other civilizations had citrus because they were really just from another timeline that ran concurrently with the main sequence. Selma and Andrei were not super satisfied with the results, but they had little to offer their opponents. But if there’s a way to get what they need from here, without the help of the rest of the Sixth Key, they might end up in a better position moving forward.

Selma gets up and dressed in a tunic that she found in one of the dresser drawers. Wearing it isn’t a requirement, but most everyone else in the group made the same decision, because they’re soft and convenient. General Medley is still wearing his IMS. He says it’s versatile, but it looks restricting and itchy. She’s never worn one before. Again, the Fourth Quadrant was once only a collection of pocket dimensions. By the time it was upgraded to full reality status, space travel was too much trouble with no projected rewards.

While Selma and Andrei, and a few others, are still eating breakfast, Princess Honeypea walks into the communal area. “The Magnolia will see you now. I will escort you upriver to the Confluence.”

“Can those broadfloat things do that?” Kalea Akopa of the Parallel asks.

“We’ll take the airboats,” the princess clarifies.

They climb in, and speed back up the river, past where they first appeared, and into what has to be what Honeypea was talking about. It’s this big open area of water, where even from their low vantage point, they can see other rivers moving off in other directions. In the center is an island of roots underneath a giant tree. They really weren’t kidding when they kept calling him that. They have only ever seen him in his human form. Mysterious blue glowing fruits are hanging down from the blue leafed branches. At the base is a gravestone where monarch butterflies are fluttering about. They stop by a flat and level part of the arboreal island, and step out one by one.

As soon as the last person gets out, the boat drives away on its own, and the human form of the Magnolia appears. Tamerlane Pryce wasn’t a good guy when he was just a regular person, but this is just what the tree chooses to look like, for whatever reason. It’s not really him, though...not anymore. They were never given a whole lot of details. He steps forward. “I apologize for the delay, but I was seeking information. I know what our issue is now, but I don’t know how to solve it.”

“Is season two of our unauthorized reality show moving forward?” Andrei asks.

“I hope not,” Pryce replies, “but as it stands, I can’t stop it.”

“Who’s doing this to us?” Cosette demands to know.

“She calls herself The First Explorer. She claims to have witnessed the big bang, and while she did so through some form of time travel, I believe that she sees herself as the first being to exist in the whole universe. This universe, that is; not Fort Underhill.”

“What does she want?” Selma presses.

Pryce Tree takes a moment to respond. “She’s convinced that she’s at war with Fort Underhill and the Sixth Key. She perceives you as a threat. She’s more powerful than I am, I’ll admit that...but she’s not more powerful than me and The Nucleus.”

“The Nucleus is a place, not a person,” Nuadu insists.

“That’s what you think.” Pryce sighs. “Still, we won’t be able to do this alone. We need human agents to accomplish some of our goals. Any volunteers?”

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The Third Rail: Rocked Back on One’s Heels (Part III)

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Today is the day. It’s the final episode of the Rock Meetings. Once it’s over, the rest of the universe will be up-to-date on everything that happened to the reality representatives months ago. It’s been a frustrating experience, having to stay on a prison planet this whole time, but they’ve not been alone. Not only did a few of them forge new bonds with each other, across the proverbial aisle, but the whole group has stuck together. They’ve formed a support structure which will solidify their positive diplomatic relations moving forward, even more than the official discussions on the Vellani Ambassador ever could. There, they were coming at it from a sense of antagonism. Here, they’ve been free to be themselves, and just regular people. Cosette and Nuadu’s relationship has blossomed, as have Ayata’s with Andrei Orlov. No one’s getting married anytime soon, but things are going well. There’s a lingering question of how these relationships will hold up once they’re back where they belong. They’re literally from two different worlds. Will society allow them to be happy?

They’re all in one room now, in Andrei’s penthouse, just because it happens to be on top of the central tower of the building. If they need to meet at all, the typically choose here, and mostly only for this reason. This time, it’s for a watch party. It surprises them that it’s the finale, since the discussions were technically over in the last episode. The only part that the broadcast hasn’t shown yet are their goodbyes to each other. It was the whole thing. Everyone on that ship was required to shake hands with, or hug, everyone else. Which one a pair chose was at their discretion, but they had to do something to express cordiality and gratitude. Something along these lines had to be uttered as well, like thank you, or I respect your position. This finalization ceremony involved not only the handful of delegates with stake in the matter, but also the other related representatives, the crew of the host ship, and the mediators. It added up to 24 people in total, which resulted in 276 farewells. This alone would have made for a boring final episode, so that’s not all that’s happening on screen. While the farewells are going on in the background, final thoughts from the reps have been sprinkled in, through a mix of off-screen narration, and testimonial footage.

As the seek bar marker inches closer and closer to the end, it becomes apparent that Cosette’s words will be the ones to conclude the series. Ellie Underhill says one last bit about how happy she is to share her universe with the residents of the Sixth Key, and then the video transitions to Cosette sitting in the booth. The farewells are over, and it’s just her, smiling regally at the camera. The Cosette from the present day who is watching the playback doesn’t even recall what she is about to say here. “I think what we learned from these discussions is, not that we all have competing interests, but that our interests actually align. While each delegate came here to represent the interests of their own people, I believe we all realized that there is really no such thing. Each former reality was made up of a collection of individuals within communities within subcultures within larger cultures within worlds. No one has the right, nor the fundamental ability, to advocate on the behalf of everyone they care about, and only them. The only way to get anything done is to make the determination that all peoples deserve happiness and prosperity. When you only value what you have in comparison, or from the loss, of what others have, you end up with nothing of use, because you’ve lost the importance of working towards the greater good. There is nothing greater than all-inclusivity.

“I’ve heard a lot of people, in Delegation Hall, and from the public responses, saying that we’ve made progress, or sometimes that we’ve not made enough. But the truth is that the latter is closer to the truth, because we’ve not truly done anything yet. The true test will be in the implementation of our ideas, and the consequences that come from the social changes that we envision. It’s easy to talk about our ideals from a round table, and through interactive polls, but far more difficult to put in the work day in and day out. This is going to take time, and it’s an ongoing process, which will require tweaks, revisions, and a changing of the guard. I, for one, am excited about what comes next, but I’m not ready to call us a success. Maybe I never will.”

No one has ever heard these words before, except whoever was involved in the editing. As the cast and credits for this reality show roll, the delegates nod at Cosette. Nuadu pats her on the back. She doesn’t think that it’s that big of a deal In hindsight, she would have rather been given time to craft a more succinct answer to the Magnolia’s last question, but what’s done is done, and now it’s all done, and they can finally go home. Something else is happening, though. After the playback chevron marker reaches the far right end, it begins to spin. At first, it stays in place, rotating forwards, but then it begins to rotate backwards while moving back to the beginning of the seek bar. This is usually the graphic that runs when autoplay is on, and there’s another episode. But this shouldn’t be this case, as this is the finale. Or is it?

The Magical Memory Magnolia Tree that has taken the form of a man named Tamerlane Pryce appears on screen. He was part of the discussions, and responsible for recording and broadcasting them to the public, but he didn’t make very many appearances in the show. He wasn’t too involved in the negotiations either, since he considered himself an interested third party, and the supervisor. This must be some kind of bonus clip. It’s only a couple of minutes long. “That concludes season one of The Rock Talks. And now I present to you a sneak peak...of season two.”

“What the shit?” General Medley of the Seventh Stage exclaims.

A trailer for the second season begins to play, with the Magnolia as the narrator. “On a world...built for criminals and protected witnesses, a group of nine diplomats will find themselves trapped together in a prison of their own making. To protect the cosmos from a temporal paradox, they’ll sacrifice their normal daily lives as civilization moves on without them. They’ll have to learn to live together in paradise, unable to leave, but given all the tools they’ll need to live safely and insulated from outside influence while the greater population fights to protect their future from decisions made by the delegates in the past.”

This is all intercut with b-roll—including shots of the various worlds now crammed together in this half of the new universe—and quick out-of-context bits of dialogue. “I know how to raise an army,” Ingrid Alvarado of the Fifth Division says.

“You don’t know a damn thing,” General Medley says, making it look like he’s responding to Ingrid, even though those two comments were made weeks apart, and not even in each other’s company.

“I think I might possibly, in at least some ways, be falling for you,” Cosette says. While Nuadu’s back is to the camera, viewers can probably guess who she’s talking to.

More completely unfair, and highly edited, remarks are put on display for people to make assumptions about before the tree comes back. “Drama... Intrigue... Romance. Nothing will ever be the same. Season Two of The Rock Talks, coming September of 2449, only on MagnoliaTV.” The last thing is a live shot of the delegates. They’re all staring at the screen in shock. Andrei’s second-in-command, Selma Eriksen lifts her hand up, and begins to wave it around to make sure that—yep, this is definitely live.

Cosette stands up, and points to the invisible camera hidden somewhere by the screen. “Turn it off, now. End the feed.”

Maybe as a coincidence, or maybe out of obedience, the trailer ends, and the screen goes black. Ayata grabs the remote, and escapes from fullscreen. Comments from other viewers are flooding in. Everyone wants to know what’s going on, and whether this was planned, and if the subjects of this docuseries consented to more scrutiny. They did not. Cosette certainly doesn’t need her experiences on Hockstep to be broadcast for everyone to see. It is an invasion of privacy. They were all very personal, and she had no idea that she was being recorded. No one is above the law, not even a magical tree.

Cosette steps away from the group, and begins to talk into the aether. “I demand immediate audience with the Memory Magnolia. We need to talk about this season two bullshit right this instant.” She waits, but there’s no response. They don’t know if he’s listening to them right now, but probably. There’s a chance that he severed the connection, or it could be that he only turned it off for the nine of them. The rest of the universe could still be seeing all this happen in realtime for all they know. That’s why it’s such a violation. They have the right to know when they’re being watched, and when they’re safe and alone. Everyone has that right. It’s inalienable. “Answer me. Right now!” she insists.

No one else is trying the help, not because they’re apathetic to the situation, but because they trust her to handle it for them. The tree is mysterious and powerful. If he doesn’t want to respond, he’s not gonna respond, no matter how many people express their outrage at this travesty. Cosette continues to speak out, but nothing is happening.

“Maybe we should go to your pocket dimension?” Andrei suggests. He has spent a lot of time in Cosette and Ayata’s penthouse, in order to get to know the latter. “Do you think we’re safer there?”

“It’s not a bad guess,” Cosette replies, “but it’s probably pointless. I bet he can see us anywhere. He lives in another dimension himself. And he’s...a sentient tree. How do we argue with that? How do we fight it?”

“You don’t,” comes a voice from the entrance. It’s the Magnolia’s cohort, Princess Honeypea. “You also don’t need too.”

“Explain,” Cosette urges.

“That may have looked like the Pryce Tree, but it wasn’t him,” Princess Honeypea insisted. “We didn’t record you nine on this planet. It’s none of our business, and we wouldn’t dare risk the security of you, and everyone else living here. Another force is at play, and I promise to do everything in my power to get to the bottom of it.” She’s usually quite bubbly and delightful, but she’s very serious right now, and a bit unsettlingly stoic.

“What can we do?” Cosette asks. “How do we protect ourselves, and our pasts? Can we get this show cancelled?”

“At the moment, what you can all do is come with me,” Princess Honeypea offers. “Whoever is responsible for this, I assure you that they cannot reach you in the Garden Dimension. The tree will protect you.”

Cosette looks around the room to gauge everyone’s reactions. They don’t know what to make of this, but they seem to feel that Princess Honeypea’s idea is the only viable option. Cosette would have to agree. She looks back. “Okay, let’s go.”

They’re overwhelmed by technicolor lights, and spirited away to the Garden.

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