The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 8, 2552

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Before calling anyone else about the creep, the twins walked back around the portal building, which they had named The Gatehouse. Angela wanted to call it The Iris, but Marie said that they weren’t allowed to. They stress-tested the structure, and found themselves unable to get in, which suggested that Bronach Oaksent would not be able to get out. They certainly didn’t design it to be that easy. But they had only just now built it, so they were paranoid that it wasn’t enough. Who knows what tricks this guy had up his giant sleeve? They returned to the doors where he was waiting to be let out, and urged him to go back where he came from. He didn’t leave, and he didn’t speak. He didn’t lift his hood either, so they weren’t even able to confirm that it was him. For all they knew, it could have been a troublemaking teen just playing a prank.

Once it looked like their opinions weren’t being respected, they relented, and called in everyone else. The Matics were not happy to be interrupted from what they were doing, but they understood the seriousness. Ramses was fortunately at a stopping point in his work, where the trillions of simulations he was running needed time to iterate and resolve. “I’ll handle this,” he said. He took the forge core back from Angela, and started working on something new, claiming that it would be complete by the time they returned to the timestream. He was right. When they came back a year later, it was impossible to even get close.

It was now surrounded by the largest pyramid they had ever seen. Ramses said that the perimeter was 20 kilometers in total length. He would have built it bigger than that, but that was all the space he had to work with outside of the capital dome. There was actually an entrance that went from the dome, into the pyramid. From there, a maze leading to the portal would make it virtually impossible to find your way through. Even if Bronach returned to where he came from, and flew back through the portal with a stealth bomber, he should not have been able to escape. He kind of went overboard with this one, but admitted to feeling bad for not addressing the issue before. Leona wanted to point out that it was Echo who made the portal in the first place, with no apparent way to shut it off, but that would have been insensitive of him.

“Is he still there?” Leona asked over Angela’s shoulder as Angela was studying the Gatehouse’s feed.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Well, his robes are anyway.” She cast the video to the big screen, and stepped through days and days of footage. “See? He doesn’t move. He’s literally frozen. I’m thinking he teleported out, and teleported a mannequin in to take his place.”

“I though you had the suppression field up.”

“Oh, that doesn’t just prevent people from getting in or out?” Angela asked.

“It should stop it altogether.”

“Oh, then I don’t know,” Angela said. He’s, uhh...a robot? I saw that in a show once. An evil android went too far back in time, so he made himself a little money, bought some infrastructure, then sealed himself up, and just went dormant for decades.”

“That’s absolutely not impossible.” Leona looked back at the screen for a few seconds. It made her shiver. “Ack, that’s so creepy. Turn it off, turn it off.”

Angela exited out, letting it revert to a wide shot of the pyramid from the outside. “I know this was all automated, but it still took a lot of energy for just one little person.”

“It’s not a waste. It’s good to have a pyramid anyway. It helps facilitate interstellar and intergalactic travel.”

“I’ve heard that,” Angela said, nodding. “I don’t understand why, or why it seems like we’ve never worried about it. Most people can’t jump that far anyway. Is it just for people like Maqsud and Aristotle Al-Amin?”

“The way I understand it, it’s specifically not for them. They were born with the ability to cross those distances on their own. There are a lot of things going on that we don’t hear about, from both salmon and choosing ones. They need to cover those distances too, for various reasons. I don’t think that pyramids hold special power. I think it’s more about the size.”

“Also the shape,” Ramses added, having returned at some point from his work on the moon. “It could be a cone instead, but those are harder to engineer, and I personally prefer the former, though I am Egyptian. It’s about funneling temporal energy from a large area to a fine point. But you’re right, the pyramid-builders in ancient days didn’t do anything special to the interior. Energy just concentrates well from this basic shape.”

“Right,” Angela said. She twisted her shoulders back and forth a couple of times between Leona and Ramses. “Am I the only one seeing an issue here?”

“What do you mean?” Ramses questioned.

“We built a megastructure to prevent someone from coming here from far away without our permission. And this new structure is particularly well-suited for helping people come from far away without our permission.”

“Don’t say that,” Leona urged, “because if you say that, something’s gonna happen, and we’re not gonna like it.”

Fearfully, all three looked back up at the live feed. Leona was seemingly correct. A beam of fiery blue light landed right on the tip of the pyramid, releasing a pressurized vhwm, loud enough to be heard by the far camera, but not from inside the dome.

“Everyone report to main control immediately,” Leona ordered into comms.

They all appeared nearly instantaneously, except for Romana.

“Romy!” Leona cried. “Romana, where are you!”

Mateo checked the locator. “She’s in the pool. She likes to float around in there when she’s meditating.”

“I guess that’s okay, as long as she’s not near the portal pyramid,” Leona decided. “We have an intruder. I don’t know who it is. Marie, you’re with me. Ramses, secure virtual systems. Angela, be an extra set of hands if he needs it. Mateo.... Mateo?”

“It looks like he’s at the pool now,” Olimpia notified her.

Mateo reappeared, wet from the waist down, carrying his daughter in his arms. She was breathing, but not opening her eyes, or stirring. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”

“I do,” Marie admitted. “She’s in VR. She’s been living a second life.”

“Ram...” Leona began, “deal with that too. Marie, we gotta go.”

They took each other’s hands, and teleported to the benbenet, where they found Bronach Oaksent, as well as some unknown person, who was wearing too much clothing and goggles to recognize. That second guy had some kind of apparatus attached to the balcony floor, and was doing something with a tablet.

“Whoa, hold on, ladies,” Bronach said, holding up his hands defensively. “We’re not here to hurt you. There’s a peace treaty, remember?”

“I remember we can’t trust you. How did you get out?” Leona demanded to know.

“I didn’t,” he answered. “I didn’t have to, because I was never in there.”

The other guy pushed his goggles to his forehead, and looked up. It too was Bronach, but the old version of him, who Mateo rescued from the afterlife simulation. The two of them had a weird relationship since they could both lay claim to the Goldilocks Corridor. “It’s nearly done, then it will need to calculate the return vector.”

“Make sure you make it two-way,” Young!Oaksent instructed. “I don’t want the two of us getting trapped in there too.”

“No, we wouldn’t want that,” Leona said sarcastically.

“Before you get any bright ideas,” Young!Oaksent responded, “there’s a reason we’re wearing these vests. They let us dig tunnels through suppression fields. All he’s doing now is calculating the trajectory so we get a straight shot into the Gatehouse. Without it, we would still be able to get free.”

“I don’t like how much you know about this place,” Marie spat.

“This is the most famous planet in the galaxy,” Young!Oaksent explained. “Or it will be anyway. I don’t have time to tell you everything—”

“I don’t care,” Leona contended. “I just need to know who the hell is down there, and what you want with him.”

Young!Oaksent winced. “It’s Key!Bronach, obviously. Your portal only goes to one place. He’s been searching for a way back here since the Sixth Key was created. He finally found a safe route with the portal that you so graciously created for him. We don’t want him here. We can’t have it. We’re already splitting power in the Corridor. He would only muddle things up.”

“Why is he all weird, and not showing his face?” Marie questioned.

He shrugged. “No clue. We don’t know that much about what he’s been through. We just see him as a threat. I promise, once we get him, we’ll shimmer back home, and not bother you. There’s no reason for us to stay on Ramosus.”

“Not yet,” Old!Oaksent quipped.

“Shut up,” Young!Oaksent scolded.

Leona laughed. “Wow, could you two be more having totally rehearsed that?”

“Huh?”

“Look, I don’t doubt that you have a problem with sharing the wealth, but I don’t believe that you’re going to leave us alone. I’m sure you already know that we’re formulating a plan to shave the top of this pyramid off so it can no longer access Shimmer.”

“That’s your prerogative,” Young!Oaksent agreed. “Either way, I’m getting my alt self, and taking him somewhere so far away, you’ll never see him again.”

“Let me guess, the distant future?”

“N—no,” he protested.

Old!Oaksent’s tablet beeped. “We’re good to go.”

Young!Oaksent put his goggles on. “All right, sweethearts, it was nice to catch up, but we gotta do a thing.” He clicked his tongue and pointed at the girls with both hands.

Before they could tunnel away, Olimpia and Angela appeared behind them with jet injectors, which they promptly stuck into the two Oaksents’ necks. They fell over unconscious immediately.

“Boom, asshole! Wait for her to shoot you!” Olimpia cried. She looked up when she realized her words weren’t landing. “Dredd, 2012. Anybody? Anybody? Whatever.”

A few hours later, they saw on the interior Gatehouse cameras as the two newest Oaksents were waking up in the Gatehouse with the third version of him. The creepy one was still just standing there frozen. “Welcome back,” Leona said into the microphone.

Young!Oaksent looked up at the camera. “You took our vests.”

“Ramses is already looking them over,” she told him. “What a thoughtful gift.”

“I underestimated how ruthless you were,” he said. “A chemical attack. It doesn’t sound like you.”

“I do what I must,” she replied.

“Are you gonna trap us here forever?” Old!Oaksent asked.

“There’s a way out, right behind ya, up the hill.”

They both looked over their shoulders at the portal. “We’ll find a way back. And anyway, our people know what to do in our absence.”

“We’ll be ready,” Leona claimed, not knowing if it was true.

Young!Oaksent shook his head indignantly. He snapped his fingers in front of the supposed Sixth Key version of them. “Simon says, unfreeze.”

The hooded figure slowly turned towards him, but didn’t react too dramatically.

Young!Oaksent took him by the upper arm, and began to walk up the hill. Old!Oaksent followed them both through the portal.

“We need to find a way to close it completely,” Leona determined. “I thought it would be a good idea to have that connection for our own use, but it’s too dangerous.”

“Yeah, I’ll look into it,” Ramses volunteered. “But right now, I’m trying to get Romana out of her virtual environment.”

Leona looked across the room, where Mateo was next to his daughter, stroking her hair gently. Leona breathed deeply. “Yes, that’s priority. Then the portal. Then the Outriders. Then...preparing for anything and everything else. And we thought this world would be boring.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 7, 2551

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While he was spending time with his son, Echo—when they weren’t going on missions with Leona—Ramses was also working on Operation Starframe. Echo offered to conquer the whole galaxy in the main sequence with a wave of his hand, but Senona said that they would not allow it. The Superintendent forced him and Clavia to leave Salmonverse for a reason, and it wasn’t to come back at will, making sweeping changes to the galactic starscape. Ramses felt like he agreed with this, instead wanting to complete the project on his own. Still, he let his son give him a few pointers. Ramses was glad that everything was ready to go, because there wasn’t much time. Senona dropped them back on this planet with only moments to spare. He teleported into outer space alone with his forge core, and dropped it on the smaller moon in orbit just before his jump into the future.

After the rest of the team returned to the timestream a minute later on September 7, 2551, they joined him up there to take a look at the massive shipyard that had been constructed in their absence. Hundreds of new ships had been built already, and the design was not unfamiliar to them. About 300 years ago, Leona was on Varkas Reflex with some of their friends, but she needed to get to Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, because that was where Mateo was going to end up. Hokusai Gimura designed the prototype for the reframe engine for her. The Radiant Lightning was only capable of traveling 22 times the speed of light, but that was faster than anything back then, except for certain time travelers. It was a tight fit. Both Leona and Sanaa were there, so it really only worked because Leona skipped over the entire trip due to her pattern. Ramses figured that the same basic design was perfect for this situation because the Outriders—as he was calling them—didn’t require life support. They just needed the ship itself, ancillary components, and a little standing room just in case someone had to get inside for maintenance.

Ramses picked the forge core back up. “You guys don’t need to be here. I just need to look through the logs, and make sure everything’s on schedule.”

“We were hoping to give you the fifty-cent tour of our new planet,” Angela told him. “The one that I named after you?”

Ramses patted his hips and chest. “I’m a little short.”

“So you’re not mad?” Angela asked him.

He took a deep breath. “I know better than to argue with you. If that’s what you wanna call it, I’ll accept.”

“I built a giant tree,” Mateo added. “That’s what the word means; branching. If you prefer, that’s what we’ll tell people. It’s just Latin, and has nothing to do with you. Nothing more than a coincidence.”

“I appreciate the exit clause,” Ramses said. He lifted his forge core a tad bit with his wrist. “I really do need to get back to work, and it’s going to be boring.”

“The tests,” Marie reminded him. “We need to know how small an establishment can be to work as a slingdrive target.” They had to be extra careful to not interfere with the galaxy’s natural development. The Outriders themselves were surely good enough to serve as the targets, but Ramses wanted to make them as small as possible. They still needed to find that threshold.

“I have that covered,” Ramses explains with a smile. “I’ll use the Outriders themselves. Different ones will be programmed to paint different sized targets, at different distances. No one else needs to do anything for that. It really wouldn’t work to make short testing slings ourselves, because I do think distance is a factor. Farther locations probably need bigger targets. But we’ll see. I appreciate the offer. Olimpia, Leona, you should go see how Ramosus has changed. This really will be super boring.”

“Call us if you need anything.” Mateo placed a hand on his friend’s back.

Hours later, after touring the other structures on the surface of the planet, they were back inside the capital dome, standing on top of a water tower. It was deliberately made smaller than the standard size of 83 kilometers. With a diameter of only 11 KM, The walls were still visible to the naked eye, rather than being obscured by the internal atmosphere, and the way light scattered. This was important, because the panes didn’t tessellate evenly like they did for the standard domes. They used what the dummies left behind to work on this discovered was known as a voronoi pattern. It showed up in nature all the time, particularly with certain insect wings, and the native trees which inspired it. It was random, beautiful, and more importantly, structurally sound. It made the capital dome look less rigidly constructed, and more naturally grown, even though it wasn’t. It was still made of diamond and metamaterials, like graphene. But instead of fading into the background, ignored in favor of holographic imagery, it could be seen in its full glory. At certain times of day, such as right now at sunrise, the light passing through the panes created criss-crossing rainbows that couldn’t be found anywhere else in the galaxy. It felt like they were in the fairy realm.

“This was a brilliant idea,” Leona noted as she admired the view. “You didn’t just take what was already in Ramses’ forge core. You built something new.”

“Well, the AI did it all,” Mateo admitted. “It already had templates for fractal branching. We just tweaked the details to fit our specifications.”

“That’s what Ram does,” Leona argued. “You think he writes the code line by line? He didn’t even make the AI himself. He took the base code from multiple AIs, and used them to write something new, but not original or unique. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a genius. We still need him for things like this most of the time, but look at Linwood Meyers. He’s not particularly smart, but he doesn’t have to be. He just needs to know what he wants, and how to ask for it. And if he doesn’t know what to ask for, he’ll ask what to ask. Anyone can build something like this, but it’s impressive that you did it in a couple of years with your level of education. No cerebral enhancements, no neuro-educational downloads. Just you and your imagination. You should be proud. I still don’t know what we’re gonna do with this world, but at least we have something that no one else does.”

“Thanks, my love.”

“I like the rainbows,” Romana said, pointing.

“Castlebourne has those too,” Leona explained. “You just can’t see them through the holograms. Missed opportunity, but good for us.”

“Welp,” Olimpia began, “I’m pretty tired. I think I’m gonna go to bed.”

“Okay,” Leona said.

“Are you a little tired, Leona? And Mateo?”

“No, it’s only been a couple days for me, remember?” he reminded her.

“Yeah, but I think maybe you’re a little tired,” Olimpia tried to claim.

Mateo wasn’t getting it.

“Just go,” Romana requested, “so I stop hearing the deafening subtext.”

“Oh. Okay,” Mateo said, realizing what they meant. The three of them disappeared to go be gross together.

“I think I’m gonna go meditate again,” Romana decided.

“You’ve been doing that a lot,” Marie noted. “Is there anything that we could do for you, or is it purely an internal issue?”

“No issue at all, just trying to stay centered. Call me if you need anything, but please don’t need anything unless you really need it.” Romana teleported away too.

“Well, now it’s just the two of us,” Angela said. “We can’t do what the Matics are doing, nor Ramses, and we don’t know what Romana is up to.”

“I know what she’s up to,” Marie contended.

“You do? What? How?”

“I was a superspy for four years, and she’s not hard to figure out, but I shouldn’t tell you. She is entitled to her privacy.”

“Okay,” Angela conceded, agreeing at least on that last point.

They stood in silence for a good amount of time, watching the sunrise twinkle the rainbows all over the land.

“Do you wanna build something?” Marie suggested. “We still have that extra forge core, with all the templates in it.”

“I think we need permission to make a lot of those things, like the space elevator, or the quarantine dorms.”

Marie shrugged. “Let’s do something small...just for fun. It won’t interfere with anything else we have here, or will have in the future.”

Angela squinted, and tried to look through the panes, to the outside of the dome. “That reality portal, which Echo used to come here. Is that still there?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Sounds like a vulnerability to me,” Angela decided. “Maybe that shouldn’t be out in the open where anyone we bring here could come along, and fall into it, or be attacked by an interdimensional alien.”

“It’s not under a dome,” Marie reasoned. “A normal human wouldn’t be able to breathe near it anyway.”

“Better safe than sorry. Most people have upgraded substrates, like ours.”

“True, and it shouldn’t be too hard. Okay, let’s go build a big door for the portal. If the others get mad, it will not be that hard to tear down.”

The Walton sisters snatched the forge core from its stand, then teleported back to the little hill where the reality portal was still swirling around. They were careful not to approach too close. Angela sat down with her tablet, and began to add components to their shopping cart. She selected a template that was specifically designed to sit on a raised surface. Marie walked around the entire thing, holding her sensor array out to scan the terrain. The hill was actually fairly even, making the template only need to add two minutes to the total estimate for complexity. This wasn’t only to keep people out, but also in if someone were to cross over who wasn’t supposed to, or expected. So they included a life support system, as well as enough rations to last a handful of people a full year. If even more than that showed up, the supplies were self-sustainable to a degree.

They knew they could add more to it later, like sharks with lasers on their heads, or a lava moat. For now, this was all they needed. Given the relatively minor complexities, it only took forty-two minutes to finish the whole thing. The nanites did all the work themselves, since it was a small job, instead of building larger automators to complete the work. They were nearly expended by the end, but that was fine. The core could be replenished with more. Ramses would have to build out his own lab however he wanted it, but they built him a barebones facility with just the basics, including nanotech fabrication.

It wasn’t an aesthetically pleasing facade, but a nice little cylinder with an asymmetrical dome on top. It looked a little like lipstick, with its black and red theme. After they both got a good look inside, Angela stepped out, and Marie stayed in. She tried her hardest to teleport out, but was unable to. Meanwhile, Angela fought to teleport back in, but was equally blocked. The teleportation suppression field was holding. The geothermal generators that it was drawing from couldn’t supply enough sustained power, though, so they switched it off. The field would only turn back on when someone attempted to break through it. Until then, this was just going to sit here and look pretty. They inspected the foundation together, walking all along the perimeter, until getting back to the main door.

They felt a jumpscare when they noticed someone staring at them from the door. They were wearing a creepy red cloak, their face concealed by darkness. They were shaking the door at the handle, trying to get out. The figure lifted their arm, keeping their hand in their sleeve. They drew it across their neck threateningly, but did not say a word.

“Who are you?” Marie asked.

The interloper reached into their collar, and pulled out a gargantuan knife. They stuck it into the opposite sleeve hole, and when they pulled it back out, it was covered in blood. They scratched into the window with the tip, sometimes going back to their own arm for more blood, until the simple message was complete.

“Bro?” Angela questioned. “You’re someone’s brother?”

“Nah, he means Broheim or Bro Montana,” Marie joked.

The creepy figure knocked hard next to the word with their still hidden fist.

“Sorry, we don’t know what you’re trying to say,” Angela responded.

Angrily, the figure slid their blood-soaked sleeve across the glass to draw a line right underneath the word they had written.

“Bro,” Angela repeated.

They immediately hit the glass again.

“Knock,” Marie said. “Oh.”

The Waltons exchanged a look.

“Oh, shit.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 6, 2550

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Things were a little awkward at first. Leona was a lot less powerful than Senona originally believed. They didn’t think to ask Echo or Clavia about it at some point, or the truth might have been clarified earlier. Senona lived in another universe, and their access to information about other universes had its limitations. They were aware that one Leona Matic was a time traveler in Salmonverse, but not that there were multiple people who went by the same name. They were thinking of an alternate version of her, who was far more powerful, and therefore better equipped to help with the effort at Origin.

This other Leona was from a different timeline, and only survived the transition because she was the one who went back to the past to save Mateo from torture, thereby creating the new timeline. She had a number of different time powers, which she managed to procure using organ transplants. The exact details of her exploits remained a mystery to this day. Senona didn’t realize the discrepancy. It wasn’t like they hadn’t heard of alternate selves before. It was simply an unknown unknown to them. The issue was that Alt!Leona never promised to aid in the efforts at Origin. To their knowledge, she had never even been there. Once discovering the difference between the two, Senona’s initial reaction was to let this Leona return to her life with the team, but she didn’t want to do that. After she asked for her own wish way back when, Senona mentioned that they would have to call someone for aid. When she pressed for clarification, they explained that that was how it worked. They couldn’t do much on their own, and could not leave Origin themselves, so they always recruited others. Leona volunteered to be one of these agents should the need ever arise. It now had.

For two years, Leona was the boots on the ground of the operation. Even though she couldn’t do as much as the other Leona, she wasn’t powerless either. Besides her normal teleportation, Senona provided her with temporary abilities. These included the means to travel all over the bulkverse on her own, do so invisibly, and with a certain knack for persuasion. She also had a number of ancillary abilities, like stamina and strength, which let her do the job without getting sleepy or fatigued. She did still sleep, and had time off. In fact, she had full permission to travel to any universe she wanted, and do whatever she wanted. But like professional chess, the clock only ran while she was working, and she didn’t want to delay her return to the team.

Meanwhile—if such a concept had any relevance outside the normal passage of time—Olimpia and Ramses were getting to know their son, Echo. They didn’t have to do any work for those two years, though they joined Leona on precisely two occasions, when the wish went beyond her scope alone. Today was the last mission. After this was done, the team members would go back to Salmonverse to be with their friends. Clavia would return here, and rejoin her brother. They weren’t slaves or anything, but they were not allowed to live in Salmonverse. That was something that I decided long ago, and while I gave them a pass on that for recent stories, it was never going to be a permanent thing. They are too powerful. Any problem which comes up here can be solved nearly instantaneously if they’re involved. They got to go.

“We understand,” Echo said, psychically, but also out loud. “But I demand periodic visits.”

That can be arranged. We’ll talk later.

“Oh, are you taking requests?” Sanaa Karimi interjected from wherever she was in the timestream. “I would like a real life pink pony. Sparkly fur. It has to cuss a lot.”

Sure, I’ll get right on that. Hold your breath and wait.

“I’m gonna tear out your eyeballs, and jam your thumbs into them so you can’t type anymore,” Meredarchos added.

You know where I live, asshole.

With the brief and unhealthy transuniversal psychic conversation over, Echo refocused on this last mission. He and his parents wanted to help make it a good one.

Leona was watching him. “Everything okay?”

“It’s fine,” he replied. “What do we got?”

“This is a funny one,” she answered. She had barely finished her last job, and was still wearing her adventure clothes. Since she couldn’t be seen, this wasn’t necessary, but it helped her get in character. “Not funny, ha-ha; more funny, oh God. A young man is playing a game called Scourge of the Valley, and his older sister has asked that we make sure he wins. The way it works, you and your competitors are summiting a mountain. In this world, death is more of a nuisance, and not final in most cases. If you reach the summit first, it’s yours, but only temporarily, unless you made it there without killing anyone. If you killed anyone on the way to get an edge, they will come back as ghosts, and fight you for the summit. If you lose that second round, you will die for good. Our man is not a skilled climber, but he won’t try to kill anyone. He wants to prove that it’s possible to win without violence. She doesn’t think he can do it.”

“This sounds too easy,” Ramses decided. “All we have to do is kill everyone so this man doesn’t have to. He’ll win by default. As long as they really will come back to life, and it’s fine...”

“Senona doesn’t think it works like that,” Leona explained. “If we serve as the man’s agents, invisible or no, he will be technically responsible for those deaths. They will become his enemy ghosts. We have to keep them from winning without killing them. We have to give him what he wants: a clean and bloodless win.”

“That’s impossible,” Olimpia thought. “If this guy’s sister doesn’t think he’s a fast enough climber, he’s probably not. The competition is probably fierce, and they will be killing each other for that top spot. As soon as even one of them makes it, he’ll have no chance. It will be over. We can protect him from attacks, but we can’t help him climb.”

“Wait, what are the physical laws of this universe?” Echo questioned. “Do they have temporal manipulation? Can we just teleport him there without raising eyebrows?”

“They don’t have anything like that. However, according to the sister, they will probably accept something weird. If he’s at the summit, and didn’t kill anyone, he’ll win. The culture is really weird like that. But that’s just the bloodthirsty audience. Apparently, a lot is riding on this. It could potentially change the world, because no one has ever done it nonviolently. But that won’t work if we use tricks. It has to look like he did it the way he claims he will. That’s what the sister is really asking for, not only a simple win.”

They went quiet, and started thinking through the dilemma individually. Every once in a while, one of them would think they had an idea, or even articulate it, but it wouldn’t work. Too many ideas relied on people noticing that it didn’t seem genuine. Finally, however, Olimpia thought that she had it. “Help me understand how this multiverse thing works. Every dream anyone has ever had, and every story that has ever been told, exists somewhere as a real, tangible, universe?”

“Yeah, essentially,” Echo agreed. “Some are more stable than others, though. Dreams don’t last very long. If their laws of physics are weird, they won’t survive past the duration of that dream. Even if they’re mundane, they’ll probably collapse anyway, because of how fleeting they’re being observed and utilized. Branes based on stories are generally more stable, but the less popular ones still don’t last long.”

“I think the one I’m thinking of is pretty popular, so likely stable, but it still might look weird,” Olimpia began. “If all of the other competitors suddenly act confused, and even fall asleep, it will look suspicious, won’t it? It’s not exactly violence, but they’ll assume he poisoned them, and the revolution part of his win might not succeed.”

“Ah, you’re thinking of the Honan Enchantment,” Ramses realized. “You’re probably right about the optics, but it’s still not a bad idea. We just can’t do it to all of the competitors. Fortunately, that would not be the only universe we have access to, and we have all the time in the worlds, right? We need to find out how many competitors there are. A ranking would be great for us, so we’ll know how to prioritize. Then we can come up with a list of ways of slowing people down. One or two of them fall under the Enchantment, another one goes temporarily white blind—we’ll make sure they don’t slip off the edge—and a third—I dunno—gets the runs, or something.”

“That’s pretty gross, father.”

“I’m just trying to get this done without hurting anyone,” Ramses defended. “Diarrhea is only temporary, and everyone gets it. We’ll pick the guy who ate a big breakfast.”

Leona thought about it for a moment. “This is going to take more time than I hoped, but as long as we get back home in 2550, I’m willing to at least produce these two lists, and see if we can come up with enough ideas to avoid violence. The rankings are a good idea. If the brother isn’t the absolute slowest contender, we could leave some of them alone, and let them lose naturally.”

And so, the agents got to work. They really rushed through it, zipping in and out of various branes, taking whatever they needed, even if it was only an ultra-strong laxative. Some of the ingredients were harder than others. For instance, for some reason, they were fully visible to the locals where they were trying to retrieve Honan Enchantment. It took a little time to convince them to give some of it up, but since they only needed a very tiny bit, it was okay, because it wasn’t enough to condemn a large population.

All told, they needed 24 ways to interfere with the brother’s competitors in Flipverse. Six of them were probably not going to win either way, so they were left alone. The competition was still pretty heated. The woman unfortunate enough to be saddled with diarrhea just powered through it, and didn’t let it stop her. It did slow her down, though, which was enough to get her killed by the guy whose ropes they lathered with glue. He accused her of sabotaging him, and freehanded his way up to her, cutting her rope in retaliation, and plummeting to his own death with her.

They severely underestimated one of the untouched competitors, but the interesting part was that he too felt no need to kill anyone. Though, to be fair, that was probably thanks to the agents, and not his convictions. They reached the top at about the same time, and the rule in that case was that they would have to fight to the death. In a twist, despite barely knowing each other, they pulled a Hunger Games, and tried to jump off the cliff at the same time. Normally, the judges wouldn’t care. Suicide wasn’t a big deal for them. But there were no other contenders at that point. Everyone else had failed or been killed. A ghost couldn’t win unless they had someone to best at the summit. They simply could not allow there to be no winner at all, so they were spared, and declared joint winners. A little derivative, but it was ultimately better than one of them winning alone. The world they were living in wasn’t ruthless, and the judges weren’t evil. But society had kind of turned to shit. Even though it was technically okay to die, it was unhealthy to be so casual about murder. Not even Castlebourne was so careless. They were more focused on pushing life to its limits, rather than making death itself feel the goalposts.

“It sounds like it went well,” Senona said once they were back on the platform on the waterworld where they lived.

“I would say so,” Leona agreed. “Our task was to help him win this one game, not the whole revolution. That’s up to the natives now, so I think we objectively succeeded, even if it was a tie.”

“Makes sense,” Senona said. They turned to Olimpia, Ramses, and Echo. “Have you three said your goodbyes? I was unable to procure a daypass for you, Echo. You will be staying right here, while they switch places with Clavia.”

“Yeah, we had a meal together in Moderaverse,” Echo responded. “We are prepared to part ways...for now.”

Now back to Leona. “Did you find some moments of joy during this job, or were you always just itching to leave?”

“No, it was a rewarding experience,” she answered honestly. It wasn’t that way every time, though. Some people asked for not-so-great things, predominantly for military purposes. Senona didn’t discriminate, and Leona tried not to judge. The simple rule was, if they figured out how to get to Origin, and their wish was feasible, it was granted to them.

They nodded tightly. “Perfect. Your commitment is hereby complete. I thank you for your service.” Senona whisked them away.

They found themselves in an unfamiliar place. They had no idea where the hell they were. A gargantuan tree trunk towered over them, and disappeared into the clouds. The rest of their team appeared before them after a few seconds. “Oh, hey,” Mateo said. “Welcome back...to Ramosus. This here is the Tree of Axis.”

“What?!” Ramses exclaimed.

« < » > Table of Contents

Microstory 2660: Now That is a Train

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It is the year 2542. Mandica lives in Party Central. It’s not a very common dome to live under permanently, but when you have 5,410 square kilometers to work with, you sprinkle in some regular habitats too, if only to space out the party venues. She doesn’t have to register. She doesn’t have to log her biometrics. Each time she needs a place to rest, be alone, or bed a new partner, she opens an unlocked door, and locks it behind her. She doesn’t have any belongings to leave behind during outings, and doesn’t need any either, so there’s nothing for anyone to get their grubby little hands on. The party crowd is shifting constantly. No one spends as much time here as she does, so no one notices that she never leaves. She doesn’t make friends. Every relationship is single-serving at most. She doesn’t go to many parties, choosing to spend most of her time watching old media, staring up at the stars, or enjoying the fireworks or drone shows. A healthy chunk of the holographic sky is kept in perpetual night so you never have to wait for a certain time to have whatever kind of event you want.

She would leave if she could, and find a more subdued simulation to hide in, but as soon as she stepped into the perimeter plaza, she would be spotted by the cameras. The internal sensors only care if people are doing something bad, but there are more than a few sex parties here, so they demand basic privacy. Despite her isolated lifestyle, she has kept up with the Castlebourne news. The attack was monumental, and partially covered up, but hopefully not too much. The reports didn’t say a thing about interdimensional portals. The belief is that the zombies and monsters were programmed to fill a bunch of vactrain cars and head out for a precisely timed coordinated attack. That’s all people were told, so that’s all they know. Any claims of the portals can be chalked up to holographic illusions. The lie seems to be working, though there are conspiracy communities, as there always have been. The reports also say that there were zero permanent deaths. Mandica is choosing to believe that that part is not a lie.

Today, she is at someone’s 600th birthday, which is absolutely insane. All her life, Mandica has been told that the first bicentennials had their birthdays in the year 2160. This woman surpasses that by eighteen years. She was evidently already quite old when the first genuine longevity treatments were being developed, and she participated in those very early trials. It didn’t work for most, but it managed to work for her, and she has survived this entire time. She still lives on Earth, but the majority of her millions of descendants moved to Castlebourne, so she agreed to cast here for a few weeks. Someone is eying her funny. Her first thought is that she’s not welcome here since she doesn’t know the birthday girl, but there’s literally a 100-meter banner that says ALL WELCOME. Mandica looks away, then looks back. Yeah, he’s definitely looking at her. Maybe he just wants to share a night. She walks over to him. “Like what you see?”

“From the day we met.” He takes a sip of his blueberry juice.

“And that wasn’t today?” Mandica is nervous. No one here should know her.

“It was about six years ago,” he begins, turning his head to watch some people play a game called Pin the Tail on the Donkey. “At a place called...Grayrock.”

Mandica tenses up. That was the first villain she saw when she entered Underbelly. It’s Jiminy, or rather Morgana, because she’s impersonating someone else.

“Relax,” he says. “I’m not who you think I am. After what went down, we all agreed to shed our substrate templates. We even gender-flipped ourselves to make it even harder to track us. We’ve been in hiding almost as long as you have, though we were better prepared, so we can move about the planet. I’ve been looking for you. A part of me is glad you still have that face, but I wish you had been more patient. You don’t have to jump to a new body to change your appearance. They can do it via surgery.”

“I’m not in hiding for whatever reasons you people had,” Mandica explains, still not knowing who she’s talking to. “I’m hiding because Jiminy needs me for something.”

He nods. “That much was obvious,” her reported friend says with a nod. “It wasn’t hard to put that puzzle together. It makes sense. He lured you here. He got you killed. He wasn’t surprised by your resurrection. This has all been a part of some big plan. We still don’t know how you were supposed to factor into it, but we know what he was after. Well, we don’t have specifics, but he was trying to break someone out of an extremely secure prison, and that stone had something to do with it. Even before your powers, you were always special. We’re not mad you left. We get it. But it’s time to come back in from the cold. Because after four and a half years, he’s finally been caught too. It’s over, Mandy. You don’t have to hide anymore.”

Mandica knows exactly what Jiminy wanted from her. Instead of being routed to a backup when she dies, she goes somewhere else. Each time she comes back from that place, she opens a door wider than usual. He needs access to that door, and there is no way to prove that this man right here isn’t him. Or hell, it could be a second accomplice. Everyone is a shapeshifter. She can’t trust anyone’s face. Yet that has always been true, even while she was in hiding. If this is a trap, it’s inevitable, because no matter what she chooses in this moment, her days of lying low are behind her. “Okay. Let’s go.”

He takes her to the station, where they get in a private vactrain pod. They return to Underbelly—Ravensgate, specifically—where it all began. In fact, they end up on the same block where Mandica first saw Blue Umbra and Wave Function fight Grayrock. The place is empty; totally devoid of activity. The news didn’t say that the simulation would be shut down. To her knowledge, they’ve moved on. It’s the one dome that benefited from the zombie invasion. Though to be fair, she has only watched global news, not in-simulation Entertainment News. “Do you know why I brought you here?”

She was right. It’s a trick. “To kill me?” She tugs her shirt off, and extends her wings. She hasn’t had her costume in a long time, but her bra will do.

“To start a revolution,” he whispers feverishly. “My friend has been wrongfully imprisoned for twenty years!” he complains. “All he wanted was to free the enslaved peoples of this world, and every other. You—even you—the nomad, the human, the self-reliant survivor; you had a slave to follow you around, and do your bidding. When Pinocchio first rose to power in my world, I went straight to him. He liked my name, and I liked his, but it was about our ideals. The simulation was broken, and he fixed it. He was happy there for a time. We were happy. The simulation was prospering. But all his hard work was undone in a day—a single fucking day! So he came here. He wasn’t trying to build an army. He just wanted to put things right once he realized that everything he hated in there was happening a thousand-fold in base reality.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, but I won’t apologize for my involvement. NPCs are a way of life. You should have lived before we had them.”

“I did. Now I’m back, and I see the evil. I brought you to this dimension so we could chat without anyone bothering us because I’ve been watching you for the last two months in Party Central. You do everything for yourself. You don’t rely on the systems anymore. You can’t, it would be too dangerous, or you would be discovered. But you figured it out, so I know you’ll understand when I tell you that our vision of a universe without enslavement is better than this, even if it’s harder. Castlebourne is a planet of hedonism and self-indulgence. It’s not necessary. There are plenty of ways to be entertained without NPCs. Let me show you that world.” He offers his hand. When she doesn’t budge, he adds, “Alternatively, you can fight or run away, but you’re never getting out of this dimension without me. I found it abandoned decades ago, and even after I opened all those portals, they have still not figured out how to access it.”

“Are you sure about that?” Blue Wave is walking up the steps of the subway.

Cardinal Virtue comes around the corner of a building behind Jiminy. “We managed to get here just fine. We know the way back.”

Seagate Savior flies in from down the street, along with a young blonde woman Mandica doesn’t know. “Andar ‘Jiminy’ Jeffries, we have been authorized to arrest you.”

“Hi!” the bubbly newcomer says. “I’m Small Miracle!” 

The Harrier flies down from the sky, lands next to Mandica, and opens his visor. “Cool action flick one-liner.”

Jiminy sighs. “I have killed every single one of you, and I’ll have no problem doing it again. Well, except for you...little girl. But you should know that you are cut off from your backups in this dimension. You’ll just die. Except for Miss Kolar. But she still feels pain, so I’ll have no problem torturing her until I get what I want. Still, I’m always up for a good fight, but to win, you’re gonna need a big Miracle.”

Small Miracle frowns. “I’m big where it counts.”

“Where? Your heart?” Jiminy spits.

“You know what I’m talkin’ ‘bout, perv.” She is a feisty one, this angel.

“Gross.” Jiminy forms some of his nanites into a sword. “Let’s get this done quickly so Mandica can see that there is no other way out of this.”

Before the fight can begin, they hear a booming horn coming from everywhere all at once. A multi-colored portal opens up a ways down the street, much taller than the ones that Jiminy used to send his distraction monsters, but narrower. A gargantuan train-like vehicle bursts out of it. Its horn continues as it slides down the road, towards them, and then past them. Car after car after car, until dozens of them have made it out of the portal, and it can make its stop. Small Miracle smiles. “I’m taking bets on who they’re here for.”

“Who are they?” Mandica asks them.

“Recruiters,” their newest team mate answers.

A woman comes out of the nearest car, and walks down the emerging ramp. “I’m looking for Mandica Kolar, Malika Turnbull, Elysia MacNeil, Miracle Brighton, and Andar Jeffries. You have all been asked to answer the call to join the Transit Army.”

“What about me?” Reagan asks. “Reagan Dorsey?”

The woman checks her tablet. “You’re already there. It must be in your future.”

“I’m still not done here,” Reagan says. “I have to kill The Oaksent, but if Miracle says it’s okay, we trust her.”

“If it takes Jiminy away from his goal, then so be it,” Mandica decides. “All right. Where do I sign?”

Microstory 2659: Nightmare Fuel

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Zombiedome is obviously full of zombies, but Malika has been here before, and it was never this bad. It feels like every square meter of the surface has a zombie in it, though it probably tapers off in the distance. A player would not be able to move around, let alone have any hope for survival. There also aren’t any buildings, which Malika says isn’t right either. It would obviously be a ridiculous setup. If there’s nowhere to run to or hide behind, it’s not really a game. There’s something very wrong here. If Jiminy spent a third of his time in this dome, how could he have dismantled all of the infrastructure without the Custodians, or the executive administrative authority, noticing? It really doesn’t matter, though. The undigitized organic humans are in trouble.

“What do the residences look like?” Mandica questions. “All we can do is split up and check every one in order. When you find the right one, holler.”

“No, that’s a poor use of time. When there are this many of them, the zombies aren’t enemies; they’re the weather,” Reagan argues. “We could never kill them all. Many of my people are posthumans. They will protect the others. We have to find a way to close the portals. Look at all of them. Something is keeping them open and stable.”

“Do you have some way of finding the power source, or the controls, or something that can help us put an end to this?” Jaidia asks him.

“Oh yeah, let me just take out my transdimensional window detector. Shit, I think I left it in my pure gold airplane.”

No one responds. They just keep hovering, watching the horror.

“I’m sorry. I’m just trying to think of how to fix this,” Reagan says.

“Can y—ear me?” Elysia asks. She’s speaking through comms, but it’s garbled.

“Yes, but barely,” Jaidia replies. “Are you still in Seagate? We’re in Zombiedome.”

“I see you, I’m on my way,” Elysia says. She starts out as a flying dot over the ground before getting bigger and bigger as she draws nearer. “Report.”

“We’re hoping to find the source of all this,” Mandica says. “It has to be some kind of machine. Maybe it’s integrated into the dome’s own power systems—”

“This isn’t Zombiedome,” Elysia interrupts.

“What? What other dome could have been filled up this much already?”

“Well, it is, but it’s not our Zombiedome. That’s why I could hardly reach you when I was near the portal, and why we can’t talk to the EAA from here. We’re in a...different reality, or something. That’s why Jiminy was able to accomplish all this without anyone noticing. It’s a different world, parallel to our own. Which means our only priority is shutting it down. Once we close the portals, the military will only have to deal with the attackers that are already on the other side. But there’s a problem.”

“That’s not the problem?” Malika questions.

“They’re not just coming from here. There are also portals linking to an alternate Bloodbourne, and even an alternate Botfarm full of crazed androids, as well as a number of simulations which were originally privately held intellectual property. We have to close every one of them. All nightmares have descended upon the real Castlebourne.”

“But bottom line,” Reagan begins, “the military has been deployed.”

“Yes,” Elysia confirms. “They’re prioritizing domes which have the most UDOs in them, like State of the Art, and the residences. Your people are being cared for. We are not alone in this. The villain opened portals in our domes first to keep us busy, but he underestimated how fiercely non-superheroes would protect the innocent. We mostly designed our bodies with the best powers, but transhumanism is perfectly legal anywhere else. So let go of your anxiety, and focus on our task. We’ve been given this assignment because of how fast we can move. Any ideas of where it would be?”

“I don’t think it would be here. It’s too random,” Jaidia decides. “If they’re drawing from multiple domes, and there is a central command center, we have to think like Jiminy, or maybe even Morgana. Would he be in this dimension, or the real one?”

“We have to understand what he wants,” Malika says. “If he just wants to destroy the world, as bad as this is, it’s not a good permanent solution. Most people will survive it. If you truly didn’t want them to, you would go after the backup terminals, and all consciousness maintenance infrastructure. You would do it quietly and meticulously. You wouldn’t just throw monsters at as many people as possible.”

“They’re only a distraction,” Jaidia agrees. “He’s banking on our drive to fight back. That’s why we all entered Underbelly in the first place. He obviously has a thing for Pinocchio. I say we look for him in Collodidome.”

“No, there’s a reason he dressed himself up as Morgana, and did it in two domes. He’s either in Ravensgate or Loegria,” Malika counters.

“He only did that to get under Mandica’s skin,” Jaidia argues.

“Why would he need to get under her skin?” Elysia jumps in. “He hasn’t gotten anything from her. I think he was just playing a part. I think that was a distraction too.”

“Well, he can’t be in Loegria anyway, because that’s where he died,” Jaidia adds.

Malika shakes her head. “That’s exactly why he would be there, because we left.”

“We left to go to Ravensgate, and you thought he could be there instead!”

Reagan flies between Malika and Jaidia. “Guys, he’s not in either of those places, or Collodidome, or if he is, then he’s on this side. It’s the safest place for him. There’s no authority, he controls everything, he can draw an ungodly amount of power. The portals are coming from here, so it stands to reason they’re being controlled from here too.”

“I’m the key,” Mandica utters quietly.

“What?” Elysia asks.

“When you were all dead, it was just me, Vanore, and Jiminy. He said that I was the key. He said it like that, he emphasized the word. He needs me to open something. I don’t know what, or why it has to be me, but he’s been keeping me alive for a reason.”

“He stabbed you with a sword in the jewelry store,” Elysia tries to remind her.

“Right next to the Philosopher’s Stone,” Mandica reminds her right back. “He knew it was real. He probably put it there. And that sword? That was a special sword too. He used it once, and then never again. None of this makes any sense unless you frame me as being the ultimate target. But why? What’s so special about me?”

“You were a UDO,” Reagan answers. “That’s pretty special these days.”

“You said it yourself,” Mandica responds. “There are others like me in the residences; your people who chose not to back themselves up. They were closer.”

“We’re not vonearthans,” Reagan explains solemnly. “We are descended from a generation of ancestors created in a lab under vastly different conditions. We all received special shots when we came to this region of space. Our biology is different. They’re not even sure if we can procreate together. They consider it unethical to test it.”

Mandica stares at him for a moment. Without saying a word, she leans backwards and dives towards the ground. She pushes herself to supersonic speeds, which is incredibly dangerous inside of a dome, but she needs to break away quickly. Her friends can’t know where he’s going. She doesn’t know where he’s going. It just needs to be away from here; away from this whole mess. Before she’s reached the ground, she collapses her wings into her body. She shuts her mouth and plugs her nose, then slams herself into a bunch of zombies as hard as she can, absolutely pulverizing their bodies, and leaving her covered in their undead viscera. Now that she smells like the other zombies, they begin to leave her alone. She blends in with them, making her way through the crowd to a more distant portal. It can’t be the one she landed near, because that is where they’re going to look for her. It takes hours to meander through, like a neutrino in a star.

After she walks through the portal, she doesn’t know where she is right away, but it’s a good thing she didn’t wait even one second longer, because it closes right behind her. In her absence, her friends managed to figure out how to shut them down. They may have found the controls for the interdimensional technology, but they didn’t likely find Jiminy, nor what he’s truly after. He’s not going to make it easy on them. She’s going to take a page out of his book, and do the same. She’s going to rob him of the one she does know he wants. She’s depriving him of her.

She discovers she’s in Party Central, which is a great target to send a bunch of zombies and monsters. It was on Trilby’s green dome list so she was free to come here back when she was just a boring and delicate human. She still needed to be careful of falling disco balls and spiked punch, but she has had to be worried about freak accidents her whole life. She finds a fur coat on the ground. It’s covered in blood and guts, but that’s okay, because she fits right in with all the party-goers who were just attacked. People with guns and other weapons are here, cleaning up the last of the monsters. They’re not dressed in military garb, but some of them match. Her guess is that they’re from Mêléedome or Shmupdome. Those were on the red list because their only point is violence. She ignores them, doesn’t talk to anyone, and goes on her way.

She finds a public water closet where she takes the opportunity to clean up, throwing all of her clothes into the trashbot, which she pats on the head in remembrance of the one who got her here. After the shower, she grabs one of the robes, and walks back out. No one is paying any attention to her. They’re all still reeling from the assault. She continues to walk until she finds a remote building that is currently under construction. There’s an incinerator here to dispose of unrecyclable materials, so she switches it on, sets a timer, then dives in. It’s agonizing, but she needs answers.

Unlike the other times she’s died, she comes back to life this time with some memory of what happened to her. She doesn’t have many details, but she knows enough to get by. Jiminy was the lieutenant for a dangerous man named Pinocchio, who was once in charge of wherever Mandica goes when she dies. After being stripped of power, he eventually downloaded himself into base reality, where he continued to carry out his nefarious plans, predominately in the Spydome Network, until he was caught and locked away. Mandica is sure that Jiminy wants to break his boss free, and this stone and Mandica are collectively the way he does that. She can’t let that happen. She has to stop fighting, and start hiding. So she crawls out of the furnace, gets cleaned up again, and then simply attends the nearest party. This is where she lives for the next five years.