The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 31, 2399

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There should be no one on the moon but the three of them. How the man outside is surviving the vacuum of space is a nonissue. Leona can think of a number of ways for him to accomplish such a feat. The problem is that there is nothing out here. They scanned the entire surface several times while they were still in orbit. They found no structures, no power signatures, no nothin’. They’ve also not detected any new arrivals since they’ve come. Best guess, he’s an android who lay dormant in a hole somewhere, and woke up when Mangrove Zero showed up. That wouldn’t explain who he is, or exactly what he wants, but either he’s crazy, and he thinks he’s asking someone who isn’t here, or Cedar is a thing that Leona should know. Here for Cedar. What does that mean? Is it a band? A place? A tree? Does he think Cedar is on this ship, or is Cedar the person who asked him to come here, and he is the one who actually wants something?

Regardless of what’s going on here, the guy is a creepy moonwalker, so no way in hell is he getting in. She’ll fight him to the death to protect the children. She’s chosen not to say anything to Mateo and Ramses, as they have enough on their minds, and their mission is more important than ever. If this is a sign of a conspiracy, their leechcraft array could be the thing that saves them. Instead, she has tried to contact Aldona, who is not answering. One would think she would want to keep apprised of the situation up here, but who knows what she’s dealing with at the moment?

Leona checked on the boys once to make sure they were okay, but has not returned to reclamation since. She has to stay out here, so she can keep an eye on the would-be intruder, and look out for any accomplices. He or they may just be waiting for enough alone time to break through. Aldona built this thing to be a stronghold, but it is not impenetrable. Nothing is impenetrable. If brute force isn’t working, you’re just not using enough of it. It’s been a day, and this is all she’s been doing. They have spent the last hour literally staring at each other through a viewport, as if in a contest. If he really is an android, there’s no reason for him to blink. She’s all right for now, but she’s no longer wearing the upgraded body that Ramses built for her, so she’s going to need to sleep at some point. That’s most likely what he’s waiting for.

Carlin comes up to her.

“I told you to stay put,” Leona scolds.

“Can he hear us?”

Leona glares at the stranger. “Possibly.” He can probably read lips, and he may be able to eavesdrop in more creative ways, like measuring vibrations, or even reading minds. Though, if it’s that second one, there’s nothing they can do to stop it anyway.

“Let’s go somewhere where he can’t.”

“I have to keep an eye on him.”

“Use the cameras. We have to talk.”

Leona exhales through her nose, then leads Carlin to the nearest bathroom, which is away from any exterior wall, but close enough to get back on the defensive if need be. “What is it?”

“We met someone.”

“What do you mean, you met someone?”

“His name is Cedar. He’s in a secret room behind the place where Moray and I were sleeping on the floor. He let us in.”

Now everything makes more sense. Mateo must have found out about him when he first came here, and he was trying to protect him by not saying anything. He hopefully didn’t know about this stranger, though, or it would have been irresponsible to leave, and leave her in the dark. “I see. Is he nice?”

“Yeah, he’s very nice. He’s Aldona’s nephew.”

“I see,” she repeats.

“What do we do?”

Leona looks at the camera feed on her handheld device. The stranger is still where he was when they left, staring into that viewport. Maybe he’s on standby mode. Goddamn, if Leona only had her real body, she would just teleport him to the South Pole, and build a new propulsion system with the nanites, scheduled to be completed before he had the time to get back. “If he’s Aldona’s nephew, he must have a way to contact her.”

“He did. She told him to stay inside, and go radio silent,” Carlin explains. “That’s literally all she said apparently.”

“Yeah, that thing out there might be able to intercept the signal.” She looks away to think. “Go back and follow those directions. Stay there, and stay radio silent.”

“What are you gonna do?” he asks.

“I’m gonna try to talk to him,” she replies.

“Is that safe?”

“Nope.”

Carlin goes back to reclamation, and Leona heads for the airlock. The stranger is still standing on the other side of the building, biding his time, no doubt. She puts her vacuum suit back on, and prepares to exit. She grabs the golf club at the last second for a modicum of protection. She seals the hatch with a code known only to her, then walks around to meet the man. She stands to the side of him for a while, waiting for him to react in any way. When he finally does, he acts like he’s just realized that she was there. He really was in standby mode, wasn’t he? She taps her helmet where her ear would be if the helmet were her head. Then she points to herself, and then to him with an inquisitive face. “Can you hear me?” she asks at the same time.

He taps his thumb with his index and middle finger at her. He then holds his head out, palm forward and down, and slowly moves towards her helmet. He’s sporting an inquisitive face too. He seems to be asking whether he can touch her helmet.

She cautiously makes a fist, and taps the air twice to indicate a yes.

He raises his hand up, and places it upon her helmet. “I can hear you now,” he says. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes.” He’s sending intelligible vibrations down his arm, and then into her helmet space, which is atmospheric, and can propagate sound, unlike the space outside. “Are you an android?”

He tilts his head. “I’m using an android body. Saying that I am an android is a bit...how do I put this? Opprobrious.”

Opprobrious. What a douche.

He may or may not be reacting to her thoughts.

If you don’t remove your hand from my helmet, I’m going to rip both of your arms off, and set you on fire, she thinks.

No reaction. So either he can’t read her thoughts, or he’s pretending not to.

“State your business.”

“I’ve told you. I’m here for Cedar.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Say I did. Why should I help you?”

“Because I’ll kill your sons in front of you if you don’t.”

Hmm. If he thinks that Carlin and Moray are her sons, then he doesn’t know who she is. That’s good. “What do you want with this Cedar?”

“That’s not your problem.”

“You threatened my kids. It is indeed my problem.”

“That’s only if you don’t comply.”

“Doesn’t matter. You’ve said it, which means you’ve established yourself as an enemy. I don’t like having enemies. I always get rid of them.”

“How do you usually do that?”

“If they refuse to become my friend, I either kill them...or I erase their entire existence, past and future.” She’s not lying.

“You’re more than someone who was simply hired to protect the boy.”

“What has the boy done that makes you hate him so?”

“It’s not what he’s done. It’s what he will do.”

“This reality has no time travel. You can’t know the future.”

“We obviously both know that it’s more complicated than that.”

“What is your issue? What does he do? Why shouldn’t he do it?”

He looks away for a second, seemingly not wanting to clarify. “This is not what I intended when I founded Operation Free Will. This universe is too messy now. These parallel realities, and these people who are capable of reaching backwards to collapsed timelines; they’re too much. I was just trying to give people choice. I didn’t know that the elite few would use their choices to control everyone else. That is not free will.”

“What is Operation Free Will?” She doesn’t get the chance to hear the response. Something behind Leona catches his eye. She turns around to see what it is. An object is falling towards them rapidly from space. It’s this close to them when she realizes that it’s a missile. It’s heading for them; not the rocket, but the two of them, specifically. It’s very precise. At the last millisecond, she feels a pair of arms wrap around her shoulders, and spirit her away.

She’s in the hallway now of the flightworthy part of the rocket, looking into the control room. Ramses is at the radio. “Mangrove One, this is Mangrove Zero. All lives accounted for. I repeat, all of our people have been rescued.”

“Thank you, Mangrove Zero,” Aldona’s voice replies.

Leona turns around to find her husband. “Cut it a little close, don’t you think?”

“You were unwittingly distracting him,” Mateo replies.

“Who is he? Or was he, rather?”

He sighs. Aldona didn’t say much when we asked for help, but he is a bit of an inaccurate pronoun. It’s more of an it. There’s more than one parallel reality, which means there’s more than one Constant...”

Leona nods, finally getting it. “Which means there’s more than one version of Constance. Constance!Five was just the beginning.”

“We were so wrong. The AI doesn’t work for Danica. Danica works for the AI. This is who Tamerlane kept calling the boss.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 23, 2398

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Leona has been at a retreat for the last five days since she was forced to accidentally kill Solomon Powers, the star of the hit talk show, Balance of Power. She didn’t technically have to kill him, but she lost control, and hit him too hard against the side of the head during their fight, and that was that. Now she’s in control of a broadcast program that she doesn’t want. They have reportedly been running repeats until she comes back out the woodwork, and gives them direction, which she’s not interested in doing. She certainly doesn’t want to host it. She just wants to go back to the way things were before, whatever that means. Winona has her tucked away on a special patch of land that serves both as the training grounds for intelligence department recruits, and a safe haven for furloughed and retired operatives, officers, and agents.

It’s been nice, but it’s time to leave. Her people need her, especially Mateo and Ramses, who will be returning from the Facsimile dimension in a couple of days. “Wait,” Winona says after Leona explains as much.

“Wait for what?” Leona asks.

“Ugh, I was hoping you would stay at least one more day, so we could clean it up for you. It’s ready to fly, though, and I suppose that’s what counts.”

“What’s ready to fly?”

“Come with me.” Winona leads her across the ranch, into one of the hangars. There’s only one aircraft there at the moment. It looks strikingly similar to The Olimpia.

A man is looking it over, and tapping on his tablet. “Oh, I thought we had until tomorrow. I’m so sorry, sir, I must have screwed up somewhere.”

“You didn’t,” Winona assures him. “She’s decided to leave early. I had to move up the presentation. Agent Matic, this is yours. We heard what happened to your last one.”

The engineer nods. “Same overall dimensions as your old model, but it sports a more streamlined and accommodating interior. More private lofts, no cubbies. Less room in the cockpit to leave more space for everything else, but that’s okay, because more systems are automated than ever before.” He pauses while Leona takes a quick look at the inside. “It’s also vacuum compliant.”

“It can launch into space?” Leona questions.

“It can self-propel from a fusion reactor,” the engineer clarifies. “It has to be launched as a payload on something else, though. Apparently you have your own special engine too? Mr. Abdulrashid left us in the dark for that part of the design.”

“Ramses knows about this?”

“He asked for an upgrade,” Winona reveals. “He’s been planning this for a while.

He always has a lot of irons in the fire. Leona nods at it. All she can think is how much Heath would like this. She didn’t kill him, but she is responsible for it. She feels responsible for everything. Being the captain is great until you count up all the pain it’s caused. She should step down and disappear. Wouldn’t everyone be happier?

“What do you think?” the engineer asks, proud of his work. “We still need to clean it, but it’s sky-worthy, and space-worthy. And subaquatic-worthy, and—”

“I love it. Thank you.”

“What are you gonna name it?” Winona asks. “Not the Olimpia again, right?”

“That’s not my call. My team needs to become more of a democracy.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 7, 2398

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Mateo is startled awake. He’s nervous at first, because he assumes the person who’s shaking him by the shoulders in the pitch black is a friendly, but he doesn’t know that for sure. “Who is that?” he asks.

“Shh. It’s Heath,” he says in a whisper.

Leona turns over in her sleep.

Mateo drops down into a whisper too. “What is happening?”

“I wanna show you something.”

“Can it wait until morning?”

“It is morning. Come on.” He gets his hands further along Mateo’s shoulder blades, and pulls him out of the bed.

“Can I put on pants first?”

“Probably should.”

Mateo hastily pulls on some clothes, and follows Heath out of the room. He slips his shoes on too, and they leave the condo. They walk down the hallway, down the elevator, and down the hill. He rubs the sand out of his eyes as they continue walking for another couple of kilometers. He complains a little, but feels he needs to respect his host’s decisions, as bizarre as they seem right now. Finally they make it to a parking garage. There’s something different about it, but Mateo can’t place his finger on it, because he’s still so sleepy. As they walk through it, though, he realizes that the ceilings are very high. Some garages can’t even accommodate a heavy duty pickup truck, but this could handle semi-truck trailers. He yawns. “What are we doing here?”

“I got the notification that my present arrived, and just couldn’t wait.”

“Present for me?” Mateo asks.

Heath stops at a...plane? He extends his arms to present it. “Present for us.”

“Is that an airplane?”

“It’s a flying carboat.”

“What?”

Heath runs his hand along the curve of what looks like a turned up wing. “It can float in the sea, drive on the roads, and fly through the sky.”

“What, couldn’t spring for the one that’s also a spaceship?” Mateo jokes.

“No,” he answers genuinely. He continues to admire the vehicle.

“Where are the wings?” Mateo questions.

“It’s a lifting body, it doesn’t need wings.” He points to the vertical wing thing. “Or that’s what those things are. I don’t know. All I know is it works, and it cost me a fortune.”

“Do we need all of this? Could we not just take regular commercial jets where we need to go, and then rent cars?”

“Well, sure, if you wanna be basic.”

“Far be it.”

“Isn’t it beautiful? Come on, let’s check out the inside.”

It has to be really narrow, so it can fit in the standard road lane—and those weird wings do stick out a little—but it’s pretty long, and sufficiently tall. That’s why it needs this high ceiling parking garage, but it should be able to fit under any bridge just fine. The controls are in the cockpit, where you would expect, for a pilot and co-pilot. Behind it are four little cubbies; two on each side, separated by seats. By the door is a little kitchenette, then a lav, a toilet, and steps up to a loft. It feels like too much. It feels like too much. It all feels too extravagant.

“These cubby seats recline into flat beds, while these two are just for sitting .” He pulls down one of the three jumpseats along the wall by the door. “You could technically fit eleven people, though these three of them wouldn’t have anywhere to sleep.” He continues the tour, pointing around as necessary. Cargo is stored behind the shower, to leave space underneath for mechanical. Retractable floats allow water takeoff and landing. Of course, the wheels retract as well. Back there is a powerful boat motor, but you could opt out of that in favor of just using the jet engines. Distributed propulsion, obviously more fuel efficient. Solar panels mostly provide power for internal systems and land travel operation, but they can support flight in a pinch. Well, they can support an emergency landing.”

“This is...” Mateo doesn’t want to repeat himself. Heath knows it’s a lot. He knows what he bought. “When did you have time to buy this? Was it on your wishlist before we got here?”

He laughs, “no. I ordered it as soon as we first started talking about the mission five days ago.”

“Quick delivery time,” Mateo notes.

“Was it?” It must be pretty typical in this reality.

“I really appreciate everything you’ve done, including this, but not excluding everything else. You’ve been a great help to us, and I thank you for helping Marie when she had no one.”

“You speak as if you’re about to leave alone.”

“I know this thing is yours, and I’m not saying you should give it to me—I would find another way—but I assume it runs itself, because no one has mentioned you having a pilot’s license. I’m just reminding you that I’m fine doing this by myself. You don’t have to spend time away from your wife. I know you two are going through something profound.”

“Yeah, we’ve been talking about that,” Heath says, nodding his head. “You need to add another destination to your list, which we’ll be going to first. Marie needs a real abortion.”

“Where is it?”

“Croatia.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 31, 2389

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Mithridates couldn’t stop laughing when twelve-year-old lookin’ Leona reached out to him from the Suadona to prove that she had gone through with her promise. She just sat there with her emotionless face, waiting patiently for him to get ahold of himself. Finally, he was able to stop and apologize, explaining that it was just so funny, this little girl being so serious and jaded. He then reiterated his own promise to become an agent of peace in this reality. He was the fifth Preston she had met. One stayed an antagonist, though became a little more understated than he was in the beginning. The next ended up one of their greatest friends. The third’s true motivations were never clear, and if Leona was a therapist, she might have diagnosed her with bipolar disorder. The fourth was a much more obvious villain, who literally no one mourned after he was murdered twice.

Mithri appeared to be a villain from the beginning, but other than this body changing bargain, they didn’t really have any proof of anything he had ever done. His lonely planet was where some kind of automated transporter sent them once they entered the galaxy, but that didn’t necessarily mean that he was in charge, or really anything else about him. There was more than one original member of The Fifth Division, and in all this confusion, she had forgotten to ask after them. He smiled, and pretended like he was going to give her an answer, but then just didn’t. He wouldn’t even say anything more about how he grew up while he was in The Gallery dimension, or what his job there was, if anything. He simply thanked her for her cooperation, and ended the call.

Leona placed the Suadona in orbit, and just left it there for the next year. It was unlikely that Mithri would do anything to it, and he would surely protect it in his own way. Trust the devil you know, and all that. Come the next year, she logged herself into the simulation to check on her friends.

“Leona, why do you look like that?” Mateo asked.

“What are you talking about? It’s just...” She looked down at herself. “Oh.”

“Did you do what the Preston guy asked?” Ramses questioned.

This was a mistake. She thought the system would just use her normal avatar, but for some reason, it scanned her current substrate, and drew from that instead. “I had to. Unless he lied, he’s going to help end the conflict and hostility. I think it was worth it.”

“That’s not what we discussed,” Mateo insisted.

“My body, my choice.”

He sighed. “That’s an unfair spin.”

“I get it, you don’t wanna be married to a twelve-year-old.”

“You’re not twelve, you just look like you are. But yeah, it’s weird.”

“Well, it would have been weird if I were married to someone who looked fifteen!” she volleyed.

“Well,” Mateo began, stammering as he tried to continue, “yeah, that...makes sense! Ramses, did you figure out how to do it from your end?”

“Do what?” Leona asked.

“Yes, I have control over my own systems,” Ramses said.

“You’re gonna transfer your minds anyway? The whole point of me doing it is so you don’t have to,” Leona complained.

“We’re not going to let you look like this on your own,” Olimpia reasoned.

“As I’ve already explained, this was my choice.”

“And we respect that,” Marie said, “so respect ours. We’re tired of being in this simulation. It’s boring. Ramses was only allotted so much memory to construct with.”

“I can get you more memory,” Leona said.

“We want to be out in base reality,” Angela clarified. “That’s not something you can argue against.”

She was right. If they wanted to take on new bodies, it was their right to go through with the download. This wasn’t forever for any of them. They could always build even newer substrates, or find a proverter back in the main sequence to fix these ones. She had to concede to their wishes, and help them complete this task. “Fine. Just let me make sure that everything looks good on my end.” Before she could log out, she felt something jerk her whole body. There were different ways to connect to a virtual construct, but the best way to do it was to suppress the user’s physical movements, so that neural commands were sent to the avatar instead. That way one’s real legs didn’t start flailing about when they were really just supposed to be running inside of the program. Still, there was a failsafe to this technology, which allowed that user to feel someone trying to shake them awake, or stabbing them with a knife, or something. Something was what was happening to the ship in base reality, and Leona had to investigate.

“Computer, report!”

“Lightyear engine is offline. Fractional reactors are offline. Low impulse drives are offline. Maneuvering thrusters are offline.”

“I get it, everything’s offline!”

“Interior artificial gravity online. Life support online. Lights are online.” So sassy.

“Are we being attacked!”

“Not anymore.”

“Who was it, and what are they doing now?”

“The Warmaker Training Detachment is presently matching our orbit, and has done nothing since targeting and destroying our propulsion systems.”

“The lightyear engine is offline, but what about the standard teleporter?”

“The teleporter is located in a deep interior section of the ship, and is currently still operational.”

“Make a jump to the surface.”

“Hull integrity is at—”

“It doesn’t matter, we’ll be in the atmosphere by the time it’s ripped apart.”

And ripped apart it was. Though the detachment was obviously only trying to prevent them from escaping, damaging all means of propulsion necessarily meant causing destruction all over the vessel. The Suadona would have survived enough to be towed into the Warmaker, but will never go anywhere on its own without extensive repairs. The fact of the matter is that it was over, and it was time to abandon ship. Fortunately, they had no strong feelings for the cruiseliner.

Leona spun around, hoping to quickly explain the situation to the team, but they were already coming out of their pods. Ramses had transferred their consciousnesses to their replacement substrates. It was pretty creepy, this group of naked minors standing around together. They all sensed the awkwardness. “You’ll get dressed later. Let’s get to the AOC first.”

“Wait!” Ramses ordered.

“We don’t have any time,” Leona argued.

“Exactly,” he agreed. “You can teleport with your mind now. Let’s go.” He disappeared. Apparently, there was no learning curve to their new temporal abilities. They deliberately built Ramses’ lab far from the hull so as to protect it from an attack like this, and they did the same with the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, though they kept them far from each other for similar reasons.

It was a rush, transporting themselves from where they were, right to where they wanted to go. Obviously they had teleported before, but never by sheer force of will. Until now, they had always relied on technology, or other people, but now they were in control. Now they had the power. Ramses had done did good, even if they had to start using these bodies a little too early.

“Hey, we ended up taking some extra power resources, right?” Marie asked.

“Yeah, they’re in storage down in engineering,” Leona answered. “We have more than we ever have before. We won’t need to refuel for a long time now.” She looked up. “Computer!”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Execute escape program Leona-nine-one-one.”

“Initializing decoys,” the computer responded. The central hologram popped up to show them their progress. While Leona was alone in base reality, she didn’t spend that entire time doing nothing. She was busy preparing for this very eventuality. The Suadona was a beautiful thing. It was capable of getting them anywhere in the supercluster in only a few years—or from their perspective, three days. But alongside that, it was big and threatening, and while nowhere near as powerful as the detachments, it could competently hold its own against an enemy. This was why the Warmaker essentially destroyed it without any warning, and why they were far safer just leaving it behind, and returning to their true home. The AOC was small, inconsequential to these people, and easily underestimated. It was not undetectable, however, and the best way to avoid such detection was to confuse all sensors from being able to distinguish it from other things.

Leona designed and built decoys. They were watermelon-sized drones that only served one purpose: emit a hologram that made each one look like a copy of the AOC, and transmit a false signature that also made each appear to be the real AOC. The reframe engine was slow compared to the types of propulsion people in the Fifth Division were used to using, but these decoys should still distract the Warmaker long enough for the team to make their escape, and not be followed.

They watched on their own hologram as the drones teleported themselves to various points in the space surrounding the planet. At random intervals, they then darkbursted in all directions, shutting off their holograms and transmitters at the same time to make it harder for them to be found. While they were doing that, the real AOC was escaping at reframe speed, its crew hoping their opponents never figured out which one they ought to follow.

“Captain Matic?” the computer asked.

“Yes? Are they following us?”

“No, sir, but we picked up a data transmission. It’s a message from the Warmaker.”

“Can they detect us this way?”

“No. Anyone in the area with an antenna would have received it. It’s unencrypted.”

“Play it.”

The battleground hologram disappeared to be replaced with an image of Xerian Oyana. “Crew of the Suadona. I’m sorry it has come to this. In your absence, power has reverted back to us. Against my advice, the others have decided to launch a full scale attack against the Denseterium, and the Fifth Division proper. We detected your presence in orbit over Earth, and I was unable to prevent them from including you in the first shots of this new war. I hope you find a way to survive, and I regret that our relationship deteriorated to a state of hostility. I’ve always admired you, and I appreciate all you did, and tried to do, for the supercluster. If we ever cross paths again, I promise not to be a driving force of opposition, but I can make no such promise when it comes to the other leaders, and their decisions. Please. Be careful, and just go away. Stay safe, and stay out of it. We are not your problem anymore.”

“Did he just say this is Earth?” Angela asked.

“Are we going to do that?” Marie asked at around the same time, barely registering that her alternate was also speaking. “Are we going to heed his advice?”

“Well,” Mateo began, “we’re going to be careful and safe, and we’re going to do our level best to stay out of it, but we can’t go away without getting back in it first. The only way out is through. As far as we know, Dilara Cassano, a.k.a. The Arborist is still on the SWD. If we want to go home, we have to retrieve her.”

“Can we even get to the other detachments?” Olimpia asked. “We’re so far away now, and we’ve lost our lightyear engine.”

Mateo looked over to his wife, who closed her eyes and sighed. “Computer, go back to the site of the attack. Once you’re there...initiate Pilot Fish protocol.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 24, 2382

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According to the AOC’s sensors, there was no life support in the hangar bay. It even detected a little bit of dust, suggesting that this entire section had been abandoned for years. One would think that an army of automated systems could maintain it even if it wasn’t in use, but perhaps that demanded too many resources. While they were apparently using a whole star to power what added up to a massive spaceship, they wanted to make every ounce of it count. They wouldn’t be able to leave their little ship unless they wanted to use their suits, and wander around until they figured out where they were going. Since they didn’t want to do that, they chose to spend the day strategizing and resting.

Once the alternate version of Angela—who seemed perfectly fine with going by her middle name, Marie—understood everything the team had been through in the last five days, she began to plot a diplomatic course for the two of them. She had received extensive training in the afterlife simulation to become a counselor. It was her job to help recently uploaded guests understand and appreciate their new circumstances. Her education went far beyond that, though, and her skills would be incredibly useful for Mateo’s goal of fixing this issue without violence. The people of this matrioshka brain detachment were smart enough to build this thing, purportedly among others, so they had to listen to reason, right? That sounded right. No species existed that was too tame to fight for its survival. Any individual exhibiting such traits would die before taking their species down that path. Yet civilization will not form if individuals aren’t capable of cooperation. Someone had to be willing to hear them out before shooting them on sight.

They set their alarm to go off an hour before midnight central, so they could get ready, and used the last of the ship’s main power reserves to force it to jump to the future with them. Come the next year, they returned to the timestream, booted up auxiliary systems to make themselves known, and sent a basic radio signal in all directions. Obviously their ship was capable of it, but it wasn’t likely something ever used before. They just didn’t want to waste what little power they had left on something more sophisticated. “This is Mateo Matic of the stateless private vessel Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, reaching out to anyone responsible for the Security Watchhouse Detachment. We seek to begin diplomatic discussions. Please respond.”

After a moment, the static morphed as someone struggled to respond, “www-where are you?”

“We’re in a hangar bay,” Mateo answered.

“Say again?” The signal wasn’t very clear.

“We are in some kind of seemingly abandoned hangar bay.”

The voice laughed as the sound was becoming easier to hear. “How did you get past their defenses?” Their defenses?

“It’s a long story. Where are you?”

“I’m in the breakroom, on my lunch break.”

“I meant, are you not on the SWD?”

“No, I am. No one’s gonna respond to you but me. They don’t use this kind of technology anymore. At its worst, signal lag can be nearly half an hour using regular radios like this. Quantum communication is the only reasonable means of doing it. This hangar bay you’re in must be relatively close to my position.”

“Oh, so you’re...”

“Not anyone of importance?” she laughed. “No. I specialize in antiquated technology. They figured someone ought to know how this stuff works in case we come across a sufficiently unadvanced culture somewhere. I’m about as abandoned as your hanger bay. If you need to speak with a diplomat, I can’t help you.”

Marie took the microphone from him. “We’re an enemy of the SWD. How do you feel about that?”

“I don’t really care. It’s not my fight. I just work here.”

“You’re sure no one’s listening to this?” Angela prompted.

“They don’t have the equipment, and wouldn’t know how to work it if they did.”

“Even though you work with outdated tech, you still have your own personal quantum sequence, correct?”

“I do, yes, of course.”

“Would you mind sending that to us, and consenting to a face-to-face?”

“Get a pen and paper.”

Marie entered the sequence into her cuff, and then used that to lock onto the voice’s physical location. They used this to teleport to her office. Most of the objects they could see lining the walls were unfamiliar, but still recognizable. This was a different reality, after all, with a wildly different history. At some point, they came up with radio receivers, vacuum tube television sets, fax machines, and the like, but they didn’t design such things the exact same way people did in Mateo’s world. He could name a lot of the artifacts in here, but not everything.

The owner of the voice was sitting in one corner of the room. Behind her on the counter sat what was probably a microwave, and under it was probably a mini refrigerator. It was a sorry excuse for a breakroom, as the only thing separating it from the rest of the room was a patch of tiles instead of carpet. They really had abandoned her. She set her sandwich down, dusted her hands off, and presented one to them. “Hi, and welcome to the island of things no one cares about. My name is Dilara Cassano, and that is a football.”

Mateo looked down at his feet, where he found what she was pointing to. It looked exactly like the usual ones from his reality, with those black and white hexagons. Oh, wait, no. Some of them are pentagons. Hm, he hadn’t noticed that before. “I’ve heard of it.”

“You have?” Dilara questioned. “I can find no references to the damn thing. I know what it’s called, but the sport it’s presumably played with never existed.”

“Maybe not in this reality,” Marie figured.

“Fascinating theory.” She got lost in her own thoughts.

“You’re The Arborist,” Mateo realized. He recalled her face from a memory of Leona’s which was implanted in his mind upon his return to the timestream after having been nonexistent for a while.

“I don’t know what that is,” Dilara said. She must not have become that yet.

It was best to say nothing further. “It’s just kind of an idiomatic greeting from my homeworld,” Mateo lied, hoping it wouldn’t prompt more questions.

“I see. How can I help you? I can’t imagine there’s anything I can do.”

“How much space is there between your office, and anyone else who lives on this mechacelestial object?” Marie asked her.

“Hmm,” Dilara thought about it. “Maybe a kilometer, I guess?”

“Interesting.”

“Hold on,” she said. “I meant a hundred. More like a hundred kilometers, sorry.”

“Oh, wow.”

“Was it always like this?” Mateo asked. There could be some fishy timey-wimey thing going on.

“Ya know, I don’t exactly have a map of this world in my head, but I think they used to use that hangar bay you were talking about. Uh, I don’t know why they stopped, they might have just wanted a change of scenery. This has never been a hub of activity. These things are so goddamn big, we do not need this much space, it’s ridiculous.”

“So it’s probably pretty easy to hide here, isn’t it?” Marie pressed.

“I would sure think so,” Dilara agreed. “I mean, getting inside in the first place would be an impossible task. I would love to hear how you did it, just out of pure curiosity. Every square centimeter of the outer surface is wired. Every dust particle is tracked. Every teleport is logged. So yeah, you can hide, but only if you’re already here.”

“That’s good to know,” Marie said to Mateo. “It could be necessary to have a place to escape to if something goes wrong.”

“You’re welcome here,” Dilara told them. “Before you, I hadn’t seen another sentient entity in over ten years.”

“We’re glad to hear that,” Marie said graciously.

“Thank you,” Mateo added. “That’s very kind since you don’t even know us.”

“Anyone who uses a radio transceiver is someone I want to be friends with,” Dilara explained.

“You said that you wouldn’t be able to help with a diplomatic issue, but do you happen to know who could? Who could we reach out to who wouldn’t immediately kill an enemy combatant, and be open to discussion?”

“Asylum sector,” Dilara answered confidently. “That’s where they take Andromedans who aren’t prisoners of war, but which haven’t necessarily defected either. Theoretically, they would listen to you, and then let you go if you wished. There must be some kind of policy that states how much of a headstart they have to give you before the more aggressive departments pursue you afterwards.”

“That sounds like a good place to visit,” Marie decided.

“I don’t know where it is,” Dilara admitted. “It’s not part of my job description to know. I don’t have access to a map, either. You’ll want to stop at the nearest library for that, which puts you at risk of not being able to make it to Asylum before someone else catches you. I don’t know if you’re persons of interest, or what.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Mateo assured her.

“Thank you again, this was really helpful,” Marie said.

“Okay, here are the coordinates to the library.” Dilara bumped her device against Marie’s cuff to transfer the data wirelessly. “Good luck.”

Leona walked into Ramses’ new lab. “How’s it coming?”

“Slow. The beacon is finished, but your replacement cuff is taking me forever. The last time I did this, I had some examples to work with. I’m having to recreate it from memory, and I’m on our pattern now, so...”

“Not criticizing you, Ramses, just checking up.”

“Sorry, I get agitated when I’m stressed.”

“Mateo is going to do what he’s going to do, and he’s going to be smart and cautious about it. You have time. We have to get it right. We could handle this with just the beacon, but I want to be able to control Mateo’s cuff as well.”

“I understand,” Ramses said. “Any luck finding them via other means?”

“Not yet, but Xerian says he’s close.”

Ramses scoffed. “He’s said that before.”

“He has me now,” Leona said “We’ll find them. We’ll get my husband back.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 23, 2381

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They told Xerian everything—well, not everything—about who they were. They just told him enough for him to understand why they were going to disappear at the end of the day, and not return for another original Earthan year. They also told him about the reframe engine, which is significantly slower than the standard light year engine that these people were used to, but also not a useless waste of hydrogen. They explained as little about the cuffs as they could to get by, but after some probing questions, Xerian learned that their pattern wasn’t technically necessary. They ought to be able to switch it off whenever they pleased, and presumably forever. That made the team uncomfortable. They had to come to terms with the fact that everyone they met would always find it strange that they would elect to live this lifestyle. The way they looked at it, though, asking them to suppress the pattern would be exactly the same as asking a normal person to do it in reverse. This was how they perceived time, and even the newbies were used to it by now. It wasn’t out of the question, but perhaps it ought to be. Ramses figured he could modify the cuffs physically to remove the power/pattern suppression function. That would still leave them with the other useful features, like associated teleportation, and a handy computer they always had on them. Unfortunately, it was more complicated than it sounded. Olimpia would always need her time illness to be suppressed.

Xerian was patient, so he could stand to wait for the team to spend the rest of the day recovering from their ordeal, and then not be able to return to work for a year. The Denseterium was still decades away from realizing their dream of building a light year engine capable of traversing a whole galaxy across the observable universe in three thousand years or less. Theoretically, they could do it now, and in fact could have always done it. Their goal was to collect every star in the Milky Way, but they didn’t actually need to in order to demonstrate their might. Why, the whole reason they were at war with Andromeda was because they were so technologically advanced already. The Hyperdense galaxy was simultaneously already complete, and would never be complete. They could use it now, or continue to add at will They too were patient, because they had an objective in mind, and didn’t see Xerian as enough of a threat to alter those plans. Hell, they could have light year engined every star into place almost immediately, but they were using regular Class E stellar engines, because they required less energy.

“Is that true?” Ramses asked. “Why couldn’t they just use a lot of little light year engines to consolidate the stars first? Sure, this uses a lot of energy all at once, but the stellar engines lose a lot of mass for thrust. I don’t think they’re saving themselves anything.”

“They are,” Xerian contended. “The stellar material expelled as thrust is collected and recycled afterwards. A light year engine disperses the material that it leaves behind so much that it’s pretty much actually wasted.”

“Who told you that?” Leona asked.

“Uhh, I dunno, that’s just the science.”

“I’m not convinced that it is,” Ramses disagreed. “A light year engine is incredibly efficient. Otherwise, our colleagues back home wouldn’t bother using it.”

“They’re just using it for a ship, though, right?” Xerian reminded him. “Entire star systems are different. They’re open, making it harder to contain waste.”

“I guess,” Ramses said, “but I can’t imagine the Shkadov thrusters are any less wasteful. I mean, it takes energy to collect that too. I would need to see the math.”

“A what thruster?” Xerian asked.

“That’s what we call them where we’re from.” What the team chose not to explain was that they were from a different reality. They instead said that they came to this part of the universe from a distant galaxy which Leona called 3C 295. It was five billion light years away, which would take a light year engine a century and a half to cross. This fabrication had the added benefit of justifying their fondness for their temporal pattern. For them, the fictional trip only took five months. They didn’t explain what happened to their capital ship after arriving, or who else came with them.

Xerian nodded in understanding.

They could sense his eagerness to finish breakfast, and get started. Ramses wiped his mouth with his napkin, and took out the reset button. “If everyone’s ready...”

“Hold on.” Leona tapped on her Cassidy cuff, and suddenly everyone else’s cuff fell off of their respective wrists. “Okay, now we’re ready.”

“Why did you just do that?” Mateo questioned.

“Oh, did we not tell you?” Leona asked. She looked around the room. No one knew what she was talking about, except apparently Xerian. “New plan. Once Ramses reconstitutes the AOC inside the matrioshka detachment, I will associate teleport there alone. I will then make my way to a different part of the detachment, drop one of the extra cuffs there, and hopefully get out in time, before Xerian integrates one of the other cuffs with the Suadona, using it to associate teleport his entire ship to that new location, basically blowing up that section of the detachment.”

No one responded for a moment. “What!” Mateo questioned.

“We’re turning the cruiseliner into a bomb,” Leona reiterated. “At that point, he’ll use whatever tactic he needs to wrest control of the detachment as a whole.”

“And what exactly are we doing during this time?” Olimpia asked.

“You’ll be safe on a lifeboat,” Leona answered. “This will all be done remotely. Only one of us needs to actually transport inside the matrioshka brain to physically move the extra cuff, so it can be a beacon for the bomb.”

They just stared at her.

“This makes the most sense,” Leona defended. “Why would we all go there? That’s stupid and pointless. Xerian has already told me the best place to plant the cuff beacon. It will do a significant amount of damage to cause panic and chaos, but not enough to blow the whole thing up, which would defeat the whole purpose of the mission to take over.”

“Are people going to die?” Mateo asked her.

“Maybe. I won’t be able to evacuate people from that section, because then they’ll know something’s about to happen.”

“You forget, love,” he said as he was replacing his cuff. “I’m still the one in charge here.” She may have had the ability to remove their cuffs without their permission, but his remained primary. This was going to have to happen fast. He tapped on the screen, dropping Leona’s cuff too. He then magnetized all of the cuffs into his lap. He stole Ramses’ reset button, and pressed it as he was literally running away with all of the devices. As he ran down the corridors, he kept his eye on the progress bar that illustrated how much of the AOC had been restored on the matrioshka detachment.

Ramses was upon him before the bar had reached a hundred percent. “Wait! I’m all right with you being the one to do this in Leona’s stead, but...we need one of those cuffs. The matrioshka brain has ways of blocking anyone from teleporting into their borders without authorization, but our technology is incompatible with theirs. They don’t know how to block the signal. So just give me one of them, and you can go off and execute the plan.”

“New new plan,” Mateo said cryptically. “Nobody’s teleporting anywhere...except for me, I guess. But nobody’s killing anybody, period. There’s a peaceful way to do this, and I’m gonna find it. I’ll let you know where I am when it’s time.”

“What if you get caught before you can send us your location?” Ramses asked.

“If I get caught, and I’m not able to send a message, then it’s not time. Pretty simple.” Ramses’ reset device beeped. One hundred percent. They had their ship back.

“Wait!”

“Tell my wife, were I you.” Mateo locked onto the signal of one of the Cassidy cuffs that were being stored on the AOC, and transported himself right to it.

He looked around carefully, worried that it didn’t work, and he wasn’t where he expected to be. Everything appeared to be in working order, though, with the ship powered down, currently operating on dormant lighting. He was standing in engineering, which was a section he didn’t spend a lot of time in, since he didn’t know how anything worked down here. Even so, he knew where the cuffs were stored. He unlocked the secret safe, and counted. They were all here and accounted for; the four he brought with him, the one on his wrist, and the five extras. Leona and Xerian wanted to destroy one of these for the sake of the mission, but as far as they could tell, these here were the only ten such devices ever created, except for the one in Kestral’s possession. Half of them were designed by an unknown party—likely some version of Holly Blue—while the rest Ramses made after reverse engineering one. So he could probably make more, but it was still best to treasure them. Besides, there had to be a diplomatic solution to this. Mateo was no diplomat himself, so he—

“Hello?”

He jumped up, startled. This wasn’t super surprising, though, was it? A mysterious baby ship that disappeared five years ago suddenly reappearing right where it was  before? That was bound to raise some eyebrows. Winging it had gotten him this far so far, so he might as well try to ride that wave until it crashed down upon him. He quietly spun the safe back into the recess. Then he echoed the question, “hello?”

“Mateo?” Wait, was that Angela?

He ran through the numbers again. He definitely just left nine cuffs in that safe, and he was still wearing the primary. How had Angela come with him? “Angie?”

“Report!” she whispered back loudly.

“Uhh...report!”

“I asked you first!”

“I asked you second!”

She growled. Giving up, she climbed down the steps. “I came back in because I forgot to grab my multitool. As I was heading back for the upper level, the dormant lights turned on, but that seemed normal, and the hangar bay had plenty of lighting. And I could hear a flurry of activity outside. When I made it back up to the airlock, and looked outside, it was still lit up, and still noisy. Until it wasn’t. The lights all switched off at once, and the bay was completely empty. It felt just like it does when we jump to the future. I figured it was best not to open the outer door.”

“What is the date, according to the main sequence timeline, at least?”

She sighed. “March 18, 2376.”

Mateo checked his cuff. That wasn’t what it showed, and it should have adjusted accordingly if he had jumped back in time either way. “You jumped five years.”

“It felt like a blip.”

There wasn’t much seating in engineering, because it wasn’t necessary. There was one chair at an interface terminal, and a bench that was a tight fit for two. He sat down on one end, and tapped his hand on the other. She squeezed in next to him, and he placed his arm around her shoulders. “You’re a duplicate. You see, Ramses installed something that he didn’t tell us about. It was a reset button. Basically, he made a copy of the AOC, but sort of left it in the aether, so that if the real one was ever destroyed, we could get it back. I think the temporal battery has been drained.”

“The AOC was destroyed?” Angela guessed.

He nodded. “Huge antimatter-matter annihilation. Took out part of a city hundreds of kilometers away. Don’t worry, everyone who lived there was either already dead, or evacuated.”

“When does this happen?”

“It doesn’t matter, we can’t undo it. All we wanted was our ship back. I don’t know what went wrong exactly. I imagine the backup process had already begun when you slipped back in to retrieve your tool, and you were backed up as well. Way he tells it, that should not have occurred.”

“So I died?”

“Oh no,” Mateo assured her. “That’s what I mean, you’re a duplicate. The other Angela is safely on another ship, as is everyone else. It could be thousands of light years away, but I haven’t calculated our coordinates yet. I came here to retrieve the copy of our ship without putting the team at risk, and maybe—I dunno—end a war or two?”

“I see. This could get awkward.”

“Yeah.”

“No, you don’t understand. Olimpia...”

“We know.”

“Oh.”

“Angela, we’re gonna figure this out. You have every right to be in this timeline, and the next. It’ll be fine. In fact, I could certainly use your help. You used to be a counselor, after all. I mean, that is, if you want to. There’s a reason I tried to keep the other Angela out of it in the first place.”

“Why don’t you call me Marie, to distinguish us. And of course I’ll help you. Tell me everything you’ve learned in the last five days.”

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