The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 12, 2433

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Leona peered at the viewscreen. “A shipyard, you say?”

“A shipyard, and a ship graveyard. A sizable portion of the surface is riddled with old ships, new ships,” Ramses explained. He looked more excited than a child on Christmas day. “All shapes and sizes.”

“You wanna take one?” she asked.

“Noooo,” he insisted. “I mean, if the shoe fits, I guess... But it has everything we need to build our own. The place looks abandoned.”

“You don’t have a life signs detector, though, so you don’t know that. All we can do is search for radio waves.”

“Yeah, but look at it down there, there’s no activity.”

“They could be lying in wait,” Mateo suggested. “This feels like a trap. We’re going in a straight line. They’ll always know where we’ll end up next.”

“They couldn’t have set all this up in just a few years,” Ramses contended. “Trust me, it’s fine. But...”

“But what?” Leona questioned.

“But we’ll need to land this little vessel down there to get to them. We can’t teleport to the surface without it.”

Leona was suspicious now. “Why not?”

Ramses breathed out through his nose, worried about how he’ll be received. “Okay, you know how most ships in our little underworld of time travelers have a teleportation field, right? Instead of just letting micrometeoroids hit the hull, we teleport the objects away as they pass through the field.”

“Right...” Leona encouraged.

“Well, the Exins apparently use that technology too, and...all of those ships down there are...passively active.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” She shook her head, getting kind of annoyed with him. “Passively active?”

“The fields are in standby mode. They’re not constantly using power, but if you try to make a jump anywhere down there, sufficiently close to the materials I need to build us a real ship, the generators will react, just as they would to any other celestial object. They’ll activate briefly, and then close back up again.”

“How do you know this?” Leona asked incredulously. “Have you seen this phenomenon before, a giant collection of ships with teleportation field generators?”

“No,” Ramses assured her, “I tested it with a probe.”

“What probe? We never talked about any probes.”

Ramses acted almost offended. “I built a probe. I thought it made sense to start using them to scout ahead. It’s designed to search for Vitalie too, so no one will ever need to go on that mission again. At least, not at first. As soon as it finds the pod, someone can jump there to wake her up, and greet her. And that will continue to work, just not here.”

Leona sighed. “Ramses, what happened to the probe? Was it sent back like a slingshot?”

He seemed afraid to answer, but he did. “There’s a game that you people used to play in the before-fore times? There’s a metal ball, and you hit it with these little things, and it bounces around...”

“Pinball,” Mateo realized.

“Yeah, it was like that.” Ramses nodded. He started pointing at the screen. “The probe was here, and then here, and then here, and then somewhere over there, and then I lost contact, because I think it was ripped apart by the tidal forces of overlapping teleportation fields.”

“Sounds like a wild ride,” Leona said sarcastically. “We could sell tickets.”

“Well, that’s why I want to land the ship, so that doesn’t happen!” Ramses argued.

Leona’s eyes widened in frustration. “The field isn’t teleporting teleporting objects, Ramses. It’s teleporting anything that falls into the field. Why would our ship survive that where the probe didn’t?”

Now he smiled. “Because our ship also has a teleportation field, which we can use to counteract the effects. We can force them to cancel each other out, and make it all the way through. I’m sure of it.”

“I assume we don’t have these fields ourselves?” Olimpia asked.

“No,” Ramses answered. “That’s not a bad idea—we would basically be bulletproof and punch-proof—but no.”

“I say we leave,” Leona voted. “It looks great down there. A real smorgasbord of amazing technology that we could salvage, but it’s not worth risking being ripped apart inside the Roche limit of two conflicting teleportation fields.”

“It’s usually more than two,” Ramses corrected.

“Oh, well, in that case...”

“Leona, I can do this. I’ve done the math already.”

“When did you do the math? We just freakin’ got here.”

Ramses put on a pompous face. “I’m fast, because I’m just that smart.” He reverted back to normal. “You can check it yourself, if you want. We have a little time, but I do want to get started. I’m sick of these cramped quarters. Pocket dimensions just don’t feel real to me. The AOC was designed to get you and your friends to the next planet over. It was never meant to house a full crew for the long-term. We made-do, but technology has progressed since then, and I want to create something better now. This world gives me that chance, and I don’t want to pass it up. We’ll survive, because we always do. That’s our job.”

Leona sighed again, but more patiently this time. “Okay, I’ll trust you, and won’t check the math. But I’m not making the decision for everyone. We vote, and it has to be unanimous.” She looked over at the rest of the team. “You all understand what’s at stake here if we do this?”

Everyone nodded, including the dummies, Mateo and Olimpia, because they were indeed able to follow the conversation. When Captain Matic called for an official vote, they all raised their hands, except for Vitalie, who seemed distracted by her thoughts.

“What is it?” Ramses asked.

“If she’s voting no, I won’t let you bully her,” Leona argued.

“You didn’t ask for nays yet,” Ramses reasoned. She’s not voted at all. She could be abstaining.”

“I’m not—” Vitalie was stammering. “It has nothing to with—” She huffed, and raised her hand. “Never mind, let’s go. I vote yea, or aye, or whatever.”

“Vitalie, you’re a part of us now,” Leona told her. “You have every right to express your opinion. We should have made this a blind vote,” she added when Vitalie didn’t respond.

“No, it’s not that,” Vitalie continued to stammer. “I agree, we should risk it. It’s just that I’ve realized that there is no hope for us finding Vitalie!741 down there. The only way we’ve ever done it is by triangulating it with your makeshift stasis pod communicator. If we can’t even teleport.”

“It’s not impossible,” Ramses began to explain to her. It would just take longer. When you get close enough to the pod with the locator, it will detect that there’s a pod somewhere nearby. When you jump again, if you get another ping, that tells you that you’re going in the right direction, or at least that you’re not farther from it. With enough jumps, you can eventually determine its position. But you don’t have to jump. You could take a car. You could even walk.”

“Then I’ll do that,” Vitalie decided. “I’ll walk.”

Ramses chuckled, a bit rudely. “I meant that you could technically, possibly do it. But not in practical terms. You could potentially have to walk across the entire surface. We can’t stay here that long.”

“You don’t have to stay here,” Vitalie said. “Just leave me with a locator, and I’ll work on it as long as it takes. Just promise me you’ll build another locator, and keep using it on the other planets, assuming this teleportation field mess doesn’t continue.”

“I already have multiple locators. That’s not the problem.”

“The problem is we can’t leave you here alone,” Leona said to her.

“And also that you still can’t be expected to walk the entire surface,” Marie added.

“Well, I could build her a car,” Ramses declared. “Hell, I’m sure one of those ships down there works well enough.”

“We’re not leaving her alone!” Leona insisted.

“It’s my choice,” Vitalie fought. “We voted on going down to the surface. But all of the sudden, you want to make an executive decision?”

“We could vote,” Leona began, “but it’s never gonna be unanimous, because I’ll always be a nay.”

Mateo placed a hand on her arm. “Lee-Lee. You’re the Captain; not the King.”

“Well, she—”

Mateo stopped her from continuing to argue with a simple jerk of his head. “Captain,” he whispered.

Leona looked back over at Vitalie with puppy dog eyes, hoping that she would change her mind, or maybe just show some sign of reluctance, but Vitalie was steadfast. Leona hung her head. “Okay. But we’re staying here for two days at least. Right, Ramses? You need that long to build something good?”

“It’s true,” Ramses confirmed. “I didn’t mention that before, but the construction will last beyond today. Vitalie, you’ll probably want to go into stasis, since we won’t be traveling at maximum fractional speeds. You don’t have to be awake for the locator to start trying to triangulate Vitalie!741’s pod. I can program it to wake you up if it finds her during that time. If it does, you’ll both be able to leave with us, no problem.”

They discussed the details a little more, and then made the jump. Instead of leaving their ship in orbit like they usually would, the whole thing dropped down. It was impossible for Ramses to predict what would happen with certainty, but they did survive the ordeal. They were sent teleporting all over the place before they found and island of stability, but once they did, everything was fine, and they were all in one piece, which was what they were really worried about. Their own teleportation field protected them without issue, or excessive power drain. They climbed out of their little ship manually one at a time, which made them feel like animals, but it worked. The industrial atmosphere wasn’t pleasant, but it was breathable. Vitalie wore a filter mask for added safety, but the rest of their substrates handled the task on their own. 

“All right,” Leona said, “get what you need. We’ll help with whatever, I guess.”

Ramses pulled out his tablet. “I have a list.”

“Do you guys hear that?” Angela asked. Their hearing was heightened, but they couldn’t hear everything on the entire planet, so they all tilted their respective heads to get a better angle on the soundwaves. Something was definitely sounding off in the distance, and it seemed to be getting closer. It was a sort of screaming noise. Angela took a couple steps forward. “What is that?”

Leona reached into her bag, and pulled out a pair of digital binoculars. She started to scan the sky. “Run.” She dropped her arms down, but kept looking in that direction. “Run!” she cried louder. She took off, and so did everyone else.

“Remember, you can’t teleport!” Ramses reminded them. “The field generators actually do react to each other! That’s why they’re kind of evenly spaced!”

They ran as fast as they could, the ones in front looking over their shoulders to make sure the ones in back were still coming. They could move pretty fast, but they were still within range of the blast when the missile crashed down, and exploded on impact. Mateo could see a piece of shrapnel flying towards him, but didn’t know what to do. Before he could try to escape, someone’s arms were wrapping themselves around his body. They teleported away, but they didn’t just make one jump. The teleportation field generators all around them started pinballing them every which way several times, until one of them managed to throw them clear of any other vessel. They fell from several meters up, and crashed onto the ground, just like the missile, but with no explosion.

Only then did Mateo see that it was Vitalie who had rescued him. “I’m sorry. I know we weren’t supposed to do that.”

“No, no, no, thank you. Leona, can you hear me?” Mateo half-expected the trauma to have fried his communicator, but it was still working.

“Yeah,” she replied. “We’re all fine. You and Vita?”

“We’re okay. I don’t know how far away we are.”

“We have locators, remember? You’re only a few kilometers away. You see that giant blue crane?”

“Yes.”

“Jog towards that. We’ll meet in the middle.”

“The ship? Our ship, that is?”

“Gone. You were right. It was a trap.”

Just as they were starting to run towards each other, the ground began to shake. It shook, and it shook, and it didn’t stop shaking. Gargantuan explosions began to rage in the distance. The blue crane that Mateo and Vitalie were using as a reference point suddenly sank below the horizon. Cracks were forming in the ground.

“A really good trap!” Marie shouted into the comms.

“Leona, everyone, jump.”

“We can’t!” Ramses complained.

“You can! Just come to our location. There’s a reason we finally stopped moving in this spot. This spot is safe!”

The group appeared in scattered formation around them. Mateo and Leona hugged and kissed each other. They all began to huddle together instinctively as the tremors and explosions intensified. “If there’s any antimatter in those ships, it will be devastating. Ramses, do you remember where the biggest open area was?”

“That might not be good enough either.” Ramses slipped Angela’s bag off of her shoulders. “Thanks for carrying this for me.” He reached in, and pulled out a dimensional generator, but it wasn’t the same one they used in the ship. That one would still have been in there when the missile struck. That one was destroyed. “This one is smaller, barely enough room to walk past each other, but it’s stocked with supplies, and it’s all we got.”

“Then what?” Marie asked.

“Once all of you are inside, I’ll jump into space, and join you,” Ramses explained.

“I’m the Captain, I’ll do it,” Leona volunteered.

“That’s why you shouldn’t.” Mateo stole the generator for himself. He pointed it at Vitalie first, because she was the only one not equipped to survive in space, so she absolutely had to be inside. Then he started to shoot everyone else as well. 

No one argued, except for the last one, Leona. “Stop!” She breathed deeply, and looked around at the planet as it was being ripped apart. She laid hands on the generator. “We’ll go together.”

“Were I you.”

“Were I you.”

They jumped.

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Microstory 1935: Insurrection Detection

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Special Investigator: Are you sure?

Scientist: No, I’m not sure. We’ve never done anything like this before. We were just running a test on the new satellite software. We didn’t think we would get a ping. I mean, maybe it blows our whole hypothesis up, and it turns out the equipment just happened to detect a specific instance of something that happens all the time.

Special Investigator: It happened twice. Your equipment registered both arrivals.

Scientist: That’s proof of nothing. We still don’t understand this data. This was new technology when I installed it in Kansas City in the first place. Perhaps it’s good at detecting—I don’t know—long-distance nanoquakes. Sure, your alien arrivals cause them, but so does fluid moving through rocks. It’s a very common phenomenon.

Special Investigator: Okay, but your tech isn’t detecting other nanoquakes. It’s only picked up three events, and two of them were travelers from other universes.

Scientist: It’s allegedly picked up two alleged interdimensional visitors. And the nanoquake thing was just an example. It could have just as easily been caused by unusual temperature fluctuations. Again, we still don’t understand this data. It’s all very complicated. I see nothing here that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that anything special happened in the Wyoming desert.

Special Investigator: I don’t need undeniable proof. I need you to tell me whether it’s worth it for me to send a team.

Scientist: To Wyoming? How much would a mission like that cost?

Special Investigator: An elite recon trio runs about $15,000 a day, though that can easily double for special necessities.

Scientist: So, like, nothing? I say go for it. Just don’t cite my science as a reason for greenlighting the operation. Like I said, we picked it up during a test.

Special Investigator: Don’t worry, I won’t blame you if it turns out to be a false positive. And I wouldn’t call 30-grand nothing. Maybe I’ll just send one, and maybe he doesn’t have to be elite...

Scientist: That’s not my department.

Special Investigator: Thank you, Scientist. I appreciate the insight. *leaves*

Agent Reese Parsons: Sir, I know you said it wasn’t time yet, but I would really like to see Parole Officer Miazga.

Special Investigator: This isn’t about that, son. I need you for a mission.

Reese: Sir, this is the mission. I’ve been trying—

Special Investigator: Don’t worry about the P.O. There has been a new development. I need you in Wyoming as soon as possible. We got a ping.

Reese: A ping, sir? I really would like to revisit—

Special Investigator: We’re not going to discuss you talking to the prisoner again, Agent Parsons. You can either do your job, or lose it. We think more intruders arrived in the Red Desert. I need you to go look into it for me. You’ll have limited resources—

Reese: Then I want to take a confidential informant as backup. We’ll split the cost.

Special Investigator: *shakes his head* No, I know what you’re thinking, but we—

Reese: Let Leonard Miazga out of his stupid cell right now, or I walk.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 22, 2398

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Mateo, Winona, and Tarboda arrived on Rapa Nui yesterday, but they were required to wait in a facility during a 24-hour quarantine period. They came out with a clean bill of health, and are presently arriving at the volcano on the southern end of Easter Island, Ranu Kao. The last time Mateo was here, it was in the main sequence, and things were a lot different. For him, this island is famous for the mysterious humanoid sculptures that are located in a different region. For the people of The Third Rail, this is a nice resort with a rich history that the people who visit here don’t care all that much about. The island has beautiful landscapes, unique flora, and tame fauna, and is considered one of the best places to go if you want to get away from civilization, since it’s so far from the mainland. The statues Mateo remembers were never built here, though. He can’t recall exactly what they’re called, and since they don’t exist, no one can tell him. Perhaps this island doesn’t have any special temporal properties here. It would explain why the crater lake that’s meant to be here is completely dry.

“Is that bad?” Winona asks. “What does that mean?”

“I have no idea,” Mateo answers. “Leona should be here.”

“She’s quite busy.”

“Because your father is trying to take over the world with fusion power!” he argues, but he knows that he shouldn’t be too mad about it. Of course the government would want to mass produce the greatest breakthrough in energy production thus far. Leona knew it would happen, she just didn’t realize how little they cared about the rocket they built, which started it all.

“You said there was a secret passageway under the water,” Winona says, taking no offense to his words. “Maybe it’s still down there.”

He just frowns and kicks at the dirt.

“Come on. Let’s go on down. Tarboda, stay up here and keep a lookout.” The pilot nods respectfully. He’s been pretty cool about all this. He doesn’t seem to have ever belonged in that amoral group of mercenaries they met in Bermuda.

They carefully climb down the steep sides of the crater, and head for the bottom. As it was indeed underwater, and pretty dark, Mateo can’t remember exactly where the cave was, but it was somewhere on the opposite side as the ocean. His instinct is that it’s precisely the opposite, so that’s where they start looking. At a quick glance, there is no opening, which makes sense, or someone would have found it forever ago. Still, it can’t require a key, or a map, or an incantation. He also won’t accept the possibility that, like the moai—oh yeah, that’s what they’re called—it just doesn’t exist at all. It has to be here somewhere. All of the other significant places they’ve been to have been at least a little significant in this reality too. He starts running his hands along the walls, looking for anything unusual. “Go that way, please,” he asks her.

She does as he asks, but her heart’s not in it. Neither is his, but even so, they keep working at it. She has one little collapsible shovel, and one machete. She gives him the former to look for unstable spots. There’s so much ground to cover, and they don’t know where it might be on the z-axis, so Tarboda drops ropes down, and manages them from the top of the crater. No one comes to find them doing this. It’s apparently not that popular of a tourist destination, probably because it’s dried up, and they’re approaching the off-season. They work at this for hours. Ramses sent a bottle of Existence water in case he needed to do an emergency teleport, but it’s probably not going to come up, so he just drinks it once his regular canteen runs out. Once that container runs out, he decides that there is no point in going on. “Stop, just stop. There’s nothing here.”

“I know,” Winona agrees. “I’m sorry that this was such a disappointing trip.”

“What’s that you say!” Tarboda asks from above.

“We’re calling it quits!” Mateo explains.

“Oh, okay! I’ll pull you up!”

“No! I’m gonna do one more thing!” He removes his harness, and drops a meter down to the ground. Then he runs over to as close to the center of the crater as he can find. Here, while flipping off the world beyond, he pees. “Now who’s too dry?” he asks the island. Once he’s finished, he turns around, and gives the other two a thumbs up.

“Real classy!” Winona shouts at him.

He pumps his fist in the air. “Yeah!” Yeah, is right, assuming the question is if he’s tired, hungry, and closer to dehydration than he probably should be for as much as he drank. He tries to start walking back towards his rope when the ground trembles; just a little, but enough to throw him off balance.

“You better come on back!” Winona advises.

“I’ll get right on it!” Mateo replies. He starts again, but the ground shakes again, this time much harder. Each time he stops, the shaking stops, and each time he tries to move again, it moves too. Either it’s a coincidence, or some wibbly-wobbly shit is going on down here.

“Run!” Winona yells at him.

He takes her advice, but doesn’t get very far. The ground caves in under him, starting from the center, and expanding out, but not uniformly. It becomes impossible for him to stay ahead of it when the ground between him and Winona disappears early. Before he can see if enough of the Existence water is still in his system for him to teleport, he falls, and loses consciousness.

He awakens in the tall grass, wet from the morning dew. He’s not aching anywhere, but he’s dizzy and confused, and he can’t see well. His short term memory is gone at first, and has to come back to him in waves as he’s looking around and blinking, trying to fix his vision. The fuzziness subsides, and reveals an open grassy area, and some nearby trees. Winona and Tarboda are both lying there too. He crawls over to confirm their pulses and steady breaths. This is enough to wake them up, and they seem to be experiencing the same symptoms as they work to wake themselves up more.

“Where are we?” Tarboda asks.

“Unknown,” Mateo answers. We fell down into a cave, though, and now we’re back on the surface. Either someone moved us, or...”

“Or what?”

“Or we traveled. Can you both walk?” Mateo asks.

“Yes,” they answer simultaneously.

The three of them struggle to their feet, then struggle some more, like a newborn calf. Once they feel comfortable enough, they pick a random direction, and begin walking. It’s not long before they come upon something that Mateo recognizes. “Whoa.”

“What the hell is that?” Winona asks.

“That is Stonehenge, and these...are the missing British Isles.”

“The whatnow?”

Microstory 1861: The Tarmides of Tasmania

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In the late sixteenth century, a certain famous playwright wrote what would become perhaps his most obscure works. He was two years from death, and didn’t even get to see his final piece performed on stage. Once Tarmides of Egypt finally did make it to the theatre, opening night was riddled with such bad luck that it ruined the show’s future indefinitely. The lead forgot many of his lines, his co-star had to give birth halfway through, forcing them to switch to an understudy. The man who played the grandfather died of a heart attack near the end, and another was impaled when the stage collapsed due to all the weight of the people who ran up to tend to the old man. The injury resulted in death a day later. It was for these reasons that all further showings were cancelled. Years later, a different troupe tried to put on another production, but it went badly too. No one else died on the night, but set pieces fell apart, multiple actors flubbed their lines, and historians believe this to be the probable ground zero for what came to be known as the relatively shortlived Lurch Plague. The play was cursed, according to the superstitious majority of the time, and no one else so much as attempted to produce it again for at least a century. Since then, rumors of further unfortunate events have spread about more recent attempts, but most of these claims remain unsubstantiated. The fact of the matter is that the play has almost certainly been produced dozens of times without any issue, but that’s not a very good story, so most students are taught the melodramatically stretched truth that the curse always takes them in the end. The mystique of this whole thing is only fueled by the subject matter of the play itself.

Tarmides was born in Greece, but the narrative is about him immigrating to Egypt to escape his past, only to find himself at the center of one disaster after another. The playwright was probably trying to demonstrate the futility of life, having become more nihilistic in his latter years, but this depressing lesson is lost to the more sensational idea that he was a prophet, who wrote it in order to prompt destruction in the real world. When I was a young man, a tyrant rose to power, and waged a war against the rural parts of my country. Villages were demolished under the weight of his superior technology. I probably wasn’t truly the only survivor, but again, that’s not sensational enough, so the media billed it that way. I became famous, and an international effort formed in order to relocate me to a safer region of the world. Most of the time, developed world nations fight over who has to take in refugees, but in my case, they fought for the honor. Tasmania won, so that’s where I moved. Shortly thereafter, an undersea earthquake in the Southern Ocean sent a tidal wave to the island, killing thousands of people, and destroying a great deal of the infrastructure. Once again, in order to sell papers, journalists began drawing connections between my arrival, and the completely unrelated and unpredictable natural disaster. Like most regular people, I hadn’t even heard of the play myself at the time, but I soon came to be known as The Tarmides of Tasmania. This nickname followed me for the rest of my life. Whenever an item fell off of the shelf at the grocery store, or I was around when it began to rain, I was blamed for it. There was always someone around who enjoyed pointing it out, especially if something even moderately inconvenient happened to someone else. I lived the rest of my life with this mark, and as much as I don’t want to die, I won’t miss it.

Microstory 1602: New House

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In 1981, after Japan House was finished being built, the Bicker Institute started trying to think of other ways to allow the human race to survive. Eight full bunkers were already up and ready to go, with another House in New Zealand, which was designed to maintain its population mostly above ground. Jumping off of that idea, they decided that keeping people underground wasn’t necessarily the only way to survive the end of the world. In fact, it may not even be the best way. The organization was not founded upon the basis of some specific disaster. If they had those answers, they probably would have channeled all of their efforts into stopping it. They wanted to prepare for anything, and massive global earthquakes, for instance, might just bury all of their bunkers, so they wanted to come up with new strategies. People in the ocean could conceivably survive such a thing. It wasn’t guaranteed, but nothing was, and again, this was all about preparation. They needed a ship. They needed the best ship in the world. And they needed it to potentially endure a tidal wave or tsunami. Their next interim deadline was in seven years, which was important, because the hope was to support a certain percentage of a growing population. The project leads started looking around, hoping to find something that would meet their requirements. It didn’t have to be perfect, they had time to modify it, and bolster its features, but after a few months, things were getting ridiculous. Nothing fit the bill. Nothing was good enough for them. All ships were made to weather storms to some certain degree, but none of them could last through the worst storm in history, should it occur. Before wasting any more time, they decided their only solution was to build their own vessel from scratch, which they did over the course of the next eight years. They went about a year past their deadline, but that was okay, because the actual end of the world wouldn’t start happening until around 2021, and even then, things weren’t bad enough to warrant populating the Houses. This latest project made them better with their time management, and before it was finished, they ended up getting to work on the next plan for survival, which was a submarine. As for the ship, it was a magnificent beauty, far beyond anything else 1989 had to offer, and probably even superior to the ships built in 2021. I won’t tell you whether it, or its Inheritors, survived what came to it.

Microstory 1465: Deathspring Forward

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Millions, or perhaps billions, of years ago, when an ancient Durus was ejected from its star system, it started flying through interstellar space. Though it initially moved in a fairly straight line, it was consistently being impacted by gravitational perturbations from other systems. This made its journey relatively unpredictable, even if people back then could track its progress throughout the galaxy. In more recent times, the rogue world’s course was adjusted so much that started heading directly towards Sol. Some even claimed that it would one day crash into Earth, but there was no proof of that, because no one possessed the necessary data, or equipment, to study their hypotheses. One of the reasons Earth was so suitable for evolved life was the presence of the gas giants; most notably, Jupiter. It served as the inner planets’ sweeper. Any wayward celestial body that threatened to damage the less massive worlds had more of a chance of being pulled in by Jupiter before they could get there. Of course, it didn’t have every single time—in fact, Earth wouldn’t have a moon if it did—but it happened enough to protect it long enough to promote extended periods of peace. Durus threatened all of that, because no one was sure when exactly it would arrive in the system, or whether the other planets would have enough of an affect on it to keep Earth safe. It was for these reasons that the Aljabaran Republican government denied that there was any danger, even though that didn’t make any sense. While there was a strong chance that Earth would be safe, there was an even stronger chance that there was nothing to keep Durus safe. It was probably going to collide with something, be it Earth, or anything else, and even a small impact from a comet could destroy civilization. Something had to be done about this, which was where Hokusai Gimura came in. She used time technology to steer Durus through the solar system, and avoid impacts from everything in its path, including Earth. Unfortunately, in some ways, it was too little too late, because even though everyone survived, two terrestrial planets brushing up against each other had consequences.

They called it the Deathspring, modeled upon the event that brought the first major population of humans here. But it was not just a seasonal play on words. The Deathfall did happen in autumn, and the Deathspring did happen in spring, but it was more than that. Survivors of the Deathfall reported vertigo, and a feeling of falling into the portal, while the Deathspring survivors were actually flung up into the air, and onto the corresponding world. Earth and Durus exchanged people, objects, buildings, and even some lingering monsters. People with time powers or patterns seemed especially susceptible to this exchange, though no one was safe, and who it happened to proved to ultimately be rather random. Aside from this, there was a lot of other devastation. The event caused quakes on all planets involved—which was all of them, since it happened during a particular celestial event called Syzygy, where all planets were aligned—fires, and other disruptions. Still, despite some backlash from the Republicans, who were trying desperately to hold onto what power they had left, people recognized that Hokusai Gimura just saved billions of lives, including theirs. Now, any normal civilization would have worshiped her as a hero, but done nothing to change whatever system they had in place, or perhaps only done little. But Aljabara had a fixation on gender. Everything they experienced was tinted in either misogyny, or some kind inexplicable example of why women could indeed be trusted. They didn’t do much without considering the ramifications of gender. So when Hokusai, a woman, showed up, and saved two planets with her bare hands, they felt the need to change everything about their way of life. They quickly dismantled the Republic, and prepared to replace it with something else. They didn’t know exactly what that would be, but they knew it needed to be democratic, and inclusive. But first, they formed the provisional government, in order to preserve continuity, and move forward.

Microstory 1105: Wayne Crawford

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Long before Wayne Crawford was born, the wedding industry was a dying one. It wasn’t that people weren’t getting married, but it had transformed. First of all, same-sex marriage eventually, and finally, became ubiquitous worldwide. What few people who had a problem with it were expected to keep their mouths shut. Group marriages also became common, but they were built on equality, and love, rather than child rape, indoctrination, and coercion, like a certain religion known for polygamy. The biggest change, however, was in the world’s attitude towards the institution itself, and its beginning. Weddings were still performed, though they were lower key than before. They mostly involved partying and dancing, with little emphasis on decorations and traditions. Some even opted to have no wedding at all, and there was much less stigma attached to this decision than in prior decades. Couples and grouples started realizing that the point of a wedding is to get married, and the point of getting married is to be married. Marriage is a dynamic; not an event. Once the majority of people recognized that, ceremony lost its value. Still, the planet had not suffered from mass amnesia. Some liked to do things the old fashioned way, just for their historical and artistic value. A big wedding was no longer obligatory, nor a burden, but something some people did for fun. Since money wasn’t a thing anymore, it didn’t put a strain on resources either. Wayne Crawford, and his husband-to-be, Raphael Neville were two of those people. They decided they wanted to have a real wedding ceremony, with a full audience, an authorized officiant, and all the little frills and arbitrary features. Some aspects of the traditional wedding were removed. Nobody was giving anybody away, like property, and nobody was wearing virginal white. Unfortunately, it would seem that their special day would be ruined regardless of how they chose to handle it. On May 19, 2161, the rogue planet of Durus made an uncomfortably close pass by Earth. This caused a number of earthquakes, fires, and other disasters, the likes of which the planet hadn’t seen since safety and redundancy took a front seat in the car of life. It also had the unfortunate side effect of plucking people off the surface of both worlds, and pulling them up to the other one. People with temporal abilities and patterns, such as choosing ones and salmon, were at particularly high risk of this, but the majority of refugees were standard humans. Which ones were taken, and which ones were left alone, seemed to be largely unpredictable. You would only possibly be safe indoors, though not even that was a guarantee. Raphael was sadly chosen to be thrown up to Durus, but Wayne did not accept that. The idea was, after the end of the ceremony, they would ride off the cliff together on a two person jet platform to start their new lives, so it was all ready to go for them. Wayne didn’t understand what was happening when Raphael started essentially falling up in the air, but he wasn’t going to waste time studying the phenomenon. He jumped onto the platform, and zoomed up to save the love of his life. He was moving at a pretty good clip, but Raphael was moving much faster. Luckily, aircraft were at fairly high risk of being caught up in what would later be called the Deathspring, so just by sending himself so high up in the air, Wayne ended up being taken to Durus as well, whereas he wouldn’t have, had he stayed put. It would take over twenty years, but Wayne finally did manage to rescue Raphael, and return them both to Earth, and they did so...with a daughter.

Void: Falling Skies (Part II)

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Saga and Camden lived together for years, starting in 2157. They both continued to try their powers to return to 2102 every once in awhile, but it never worked. Camden could only ever jump forward to 2257, or back to 2057. Saga couldn’t use her powers at all, though. She kept arbitrarily opening doors, picturing her destination in her head, but never succeeding. It was always just a door. Several months into this, a much older Xearea showed up during one of her floating holidays. Unlike most previous Saviors, she wasn’t expected to be on the clock 24/7. Life wasn’t as dangerous or difficult as it once was. There just weren’t as many accidents to save people from. Even when people were hurt, medical science had progressed enough to treat them successfully for pretty much anything. There just wasn’t much need for the position anymore, and since the powers that be could see the future, they always knew this was coming, and had come up with an endgame. Come Xearea’s death, they would choose one last Savior to serve Earth, and then completely shutter the program. At that point, if someone’s life was in danger, they would have to call upon the Kingmaker, the Runners, or some other traveler.

Xearea assured Camden that there was nothing he could do to get back home. She had already experienced 2102, and 2103, and so on. He never went back home, nor did she. At best, he could have had a few days with her before she had to go off on her own job, and they could enjoy those days together now instead. Sure, it wasn’t the same, and it certainly wasn’t fair, but it was also hopeless. All this had already happened, and going back in time would alter history too much, according to her. She was perfectly happy with how her life had turned out, and counter herself lucky to be seeing him now. As the Centurion, working primarily in the 20th century, Camden was never allowed to undergo longevity treatments in his original present, so he would have likely died by this point in history. What happened, happened, and could not have happened any other way, for they were all still alive. At least now he had broken his connection to the powers that be.

Over the years, there was a hint that there could be something romantic between Saga and Camden, but nothing came of it. Though she could never be as close to anyone as she had been to her one and only true partner, Vearden, Saga saw Camden as her new partner. They got to know each other well enough to develop a shorthand, and an unbreakable friendship. Today was May 18, 2161. They were walking back from the natural human grocery store when a van pulled up next to them, and matched their speed. The sliding door opened up, and a girl called out, “your ride’s here!”

Saga tensed up. “What?”

“Saga! It’s me!”

Saga got a better look, not having recognized the voice at first. “Paige? Paige Turner, is that you?”

“It is,” Paige replied. “Get in.”

“Where are we going?”

“The future. Tomorrow’s a bad day for salmon and choosers. Everybody needs to skip it.”

“What’s so bad about it?” Camden asked.

“We weren’t told that,” Paige answered.

“We think it has to do with syzygy,” a voice from inside the van said.

“We don’t all think that,” Paige argued.

“What’s Ssssssiiiiii—” began to ask, not even sure how to pronounce what the other one had said.

Another girl peeked her head out the door. “Syzygy. It’s when celestial bodies line up. Tomorrow’s Syzygy is important, though. All eight planets are going to line up, on the same side of the sun.” She stuck her arm out. “Hi, I’m Dar’cy.”

“Nice to meet you, Darcy,” Saga said, shaking her hand.

“No, it’s Dar’cy. My mother, Marcy is weird. I was named after her and my father, Darko Matic.”

“You’re Darko’s kid?” Saga asked.

“Yes. I was born on Tribulation Island...after you were torn out of time.”

“Oh,” Saga said quietly. Years ago, she was kidnapped by a very powerful choosing one, and forced to live on an island on another planet, along with all her friends. It was meant as a punishment for Leona Matic, who she held responsible for two of her siblings’ deaths. Every few years, she would remove one of Leona’s loved ones from the timeline, only keeping Leona’s memory of them intact. She would have to complete challenges to get them back, calling upon the aid of everyone who was still left, even though they literally didn’t know who they were fighting for. Once they were all finally returned to the timeline, very few people had any memory of the ordeal. To the ones without it, they believed they had lived on the island almost completely carefree the entire time. Saga had been removed from the timeline once before, though, which she assumed was why she knew the whole truth about that corrupted timeline. She came back to find Vearden had died while she was gone, so she immediately opened a portal to 1947 Bangladesh, and dedicated her life to helping people. This was why she had never had the pleasure of meeting this Dar’cy.

“What do you keep going on about?” Paige asked as one of the lucky ones, who couldn’t remember anything about the corrupted timeline.

A third girl showed her face. “And my name is Missy Atterberry. I don’t have anything to add to the conversation otherwise.”

“I’m Camden Voss,” he chimed in.

Missy nodded her head. “Xearea’s infamous brother. She didn’t tell us how hot you were.”

“Same for you,” he said, like he had known Missy’s inappropriate remark was coming.

Paige smiled. “You’re not on the list, but you’re salmon, so someone was likely scheduled to pick you up too, but you should get in, just in case you were missed.”

“I likely was. Missed, that is. I don’t know that I’m salmon anymore. I fell off my pattern.”

“Believe me,” Paige began, “they will find a way to get you back on it. Leona has fallen off hers many, many times.”

“Yeah, and we need to get going,” Dar’cy said. “We’ve yet to pick up Ulinthra.”

“Where have I heard that name before?” Saga wondered. “I associate it with...Harrison. Harrison the android, yes. He was on Tribulation Island long before any of us, I believe.”

Awkward silence since there was no reason to reply to that.

“Well, we should go,” Missy said.

Saga and Camden gave each other one look. “No, thanks,” she said politely.

“What?”

“We won’t be joining you. Safe travels.”

“I don’t think you understand,” Paige said. “You’re in danger here. It’s only for one day, though. You’ll blink, and it’ll be May 20th. Maybe the 21st.”

“That’s okay,” Camden said. “We’re fine here.”

“But you don’t know what’s gonna happen.”

“Ya know, people who can’t see the future do that all the time,” Camden told them. “That’s just...life, for them.”

“You’re not one of them,” Dar’cy pointed out. “Is it a pride thing? No one’s going to think less of you for avoiding something dangerous.”

“No,” Saga said, “we just don’t find it necessary.”

“Saga, it would be like me telling you there’s a cliff ahead, and you just continuing to walk towards it anyway. That’s not rational.”

Saga shrugged.

“Well, we’re not in charge of you, but we strongly urge you to get the eff out.”

“We appreciate the concern,” Camden said. “If something bad is coming, we’re gonna wanna be here. My sister certainly is.”

Another silence, but this time not so awkward, just reverent.

Paige frowned.

Dar’cy didn’t seem to care one way, or the other.

“Kay, byeeeeeee,” Missy said.

They left Saga and Camden to continue their errands.

The next day, they started feeling a strong vibration all over their house. It intensified, gradually becoming a full-on earthquake. This was it. This was what their friends had been talking about. Why would they need to skip over the day, though? Earthquakes don’t happen all over the planet at the same time. They really just needed to travel somewhere else, if even that. This wasn’t so bad. They had the impulse to go outside and look around, though. As soon as they stepped out, they could feel a warmth bearing down on them from the sky. They looked up.

“Do you see that?” Camden asked.

“What is that?” The sky was rolling like waves, floating from one direction, to the other. No, it wasn’t waves, nor was it the sky itself. It was just the shape of an object, coming towards them. An invisible object. An invisible, massive object.

“Is that, like, the fraking moon, or something?” he asked in shock.

“I have no frelling idea,” she responded. “It’s almost like the sky is falling.”

“What’s happening to you?” he now asked of her.

“What?” She looked down at him. His body was rolling and waving also, like an invisible force was warping all around him. She looked down at her own body, which was doing the exact same thing.

“I think this is what the ladies were talking about,” he guessed.

Pretty soon, they could feel themselves being pulled from the ground. The object in the sky was luring them to it, like a magnet. They flew through the air, completely helpless to it, and moving faster with each passing second.

In moments, they were standing safely on the surface of a different planet, watching the Earth fly past them now. This wasn’t the first time Saga had traveled to another world, so there was no need to panic. But somebody needed to tell Camden that, because he was currently freaking the freak out, having never experienced anything like this in his life. He was looking around like a paranoid chicken in a slaughterhouse.

“Calm down,” she tried to tell him.

“What is this? Where are we?”

“Somewhere new.”

“You’ve never been here before?”

She took a deep breath. “No, I don’t think so, but it’ll be okay. Feel that? That’s air. We can breathe, check. Vegetation, check. We’ll have something to eat. Water? There’s vegetation, so probably. Probably somewhere.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s safe! We have no idea what’s going on, or what’s going to happen!” he cried. “And where’s Xearea? Did she come here too? Is she back on Earth? What if a bridge fell on top of her?”

She took him by his trembling upper arms. “Camden. You were a secret agent...in a secret agency...protecting humans...who didn’t know you existed. You can handle this.” She started the patterned breathing techniques she had taught oh so many mothers in labor when she was a time traveling nurse.

He mirrored her breathing. “All right. You’re right. This is nothing.” They could hear footsteps approach them from the side, moving quickly. Camden tensed up again, and sent his body into the fight stress response. “Why didn’t I bring my weapon?”

“Because you didn’t know you were coming here,” Saga reminded him, knowing it wasn’t a real question. She prepared for a fight as well.

A man stopped a few meters in front of them. “Did you see something fall?” He started searching the ground. “I was on my way to Watershed when I swear I saw a bright twinkling object, coming straight from Earth. I must have horribly misjudged where it landed.”

“Uhh...no, I believe that was us,” Saga said tentatively.

“You’re from Earth?” he asked them.

“Yeah, you’ve heard of it.”

“Of course. From the histories. What are your names?”

“Saga Einarsson. Camden Voss.”

He shook their hands. “Ludvig. Now that we apparently didn’t crash into Earth, I believe I can take you to your friend.”

“Our friend?”

“Yeah. Hokusai Gimura. You don’t know her?”

No.

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The Advancement of Leona Matic: August 15, 2161

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Things were always a little different every time Leona and Serif returned to the timestream after having missed an entire interim year. Children looked much older, spring cleaning led to rearranged households, and small shops were torn down to make room for something newer. That just came with the territory for people who lived like this, but never had they experienced such a dramatic shift. It was horrifying to at one second be looking at a perfectly normal town, and the next at that town having been leveled. Not a single building remained standing after whatever had come through was done with its job. If Leona had to guess, she would say this was the work of one of the worst earthquakes in history.

It must have happened recently, but not too recently, because nothing was left smoldering. One of the dangers with an earthquake is that it starts fires that can cause residual damage for days, maybe even weeks. As the two of them were carefully crawling over the debris, they noticed this fire damage, but in its aftermath stage. Why, after all this time, the technologically superadvanced people of the day had not cleaned this up yet? Was it worse than they could see now? How many other towns had been affected? Once near the edge of the former town, they squinted in the distance, and could see the megastructure still standing strong, having been designed to withstand the worst of the worst, so that was something. Though that didn’t explain why they had not yet raced over here and taken care of this.

“Now that we’re out, we need to find a way to communicate with our people,” Leona said.

“Agreed,” Serif replied. “I suppose our only hope is to walk all the way to the arcology.”

Just then, they heard a kind of cackling sound. Or clicking. They weren’t quite sure, but they looked around to find a blur zipping behind piles of rubble. Whatever it was, it was stalking them. They tried to run away, but it continued to follow them. It knocked Leona down to her stomach, but then flipped her over. On top of her was a creature she hadn’t seen before, and could not exist. It had skinny arms and legs, and a formicated face, with curved horns on the back of its neck. It kept disappearing and reappearing. Leona turned her head to the side to see it hunched over Serif as well. It was dashing between them, never staying too long on top of one, so it could dash back to the other at incredible speed. And it was definitely cackling, in a way that made it appear to have some kind of sentience. Leona didn’t know what it was planning on doing, or why it was waiting to do it, but they fortunately never had a chance to find out. Something reached down and pulled the creature off of her. Dar’cy was there, wielding a bo staff. The beast maintained its concentration on her, knowing her to be the greatest threat. They battled it out for a good few minutes, the beast using its superspeed to try and throw Dar’cy off guard, but Dar’cy was always ready for it. Finally, she managed to knock it to the ground where she bombarded it with blow after blow before taking a knife from a sheath, and slitting its throat.

“What in the world was that!” Serif cried scrambling to her feet.

“A speedstriker,” Dar’cy answered. She started cleaning the blood from her blade on the grass. “Sorry I didn’t get here sooner. I miscalculated the ingress thread. I’m still not as good at object threading as my father is.”

“That’s just fine,” Leona said. “We’re more worried about what happened here, and where that thing came from.”

“Was he some kind of genetically engineered transgenic supersoldier gone wrong?” Serif imagined.

Dar’cy laughed. “No, it’s from another world; one that passed into our solar system nearly three months ago. It got so close to Earth and Mars that it caused massive quakes on all three worlds. As it passed over, some Earthans were pulled onto it—at least, so we believe, since they’re missing—and some Durune were dropped here, including the speedstrikers. We think they came on purpose, though, since they’re fast enough to control where they are.”

“That’s impossible,” Leona said. “For an object to be large enough to cause gravitational disturbances, we would have to see it coming...years in advance.”

“It’s...” Dar’cy stammered. “A weird planet; full of temporal anomalies. There was apparently once a town called Springfield, Kansas that was sucked into a giant portal many years ago. Some of the residents survived and built a civilization there, and at some point, accidentally sent their planet flying towards ours, much faster than normal physics allows. Actually, from what I gather, Durus would have eventually collided with Earth anyway, but someone made it happen faster, and someone ultimately prevented it.”

“So the town...” Leona began.

“Is one of many,” Dar’cy finished. “It tore apart anything on this hemisphere that wasn’t built to survive an apocalypse. We’re lucky it didn’t happen a century ago, or the human race would probably be nearing extinction levels.”

“Where’s everybody else? Are they okay? Were they here when it happened?”

“We did not stay here,” Dar’cy held back a giggle. “It’s nice and all, but nothing interesting happened in towns like this, ya know...until the last thing that ever happened to them. We didn’t really go our separate ways, but we did have our own lives, keeping in touch only as possible. Paige has been in charge of a small group of present-day shapers, which is weird because you generally think of them as living in the past, but for them, this is the past. Brooke is a ferry pilot between Earth and Mars, but is considering transferring to the Ceres route. Missy was an engineer where she comes from, but that was a long time ago, so she’s studying to catch up on today’s technology. And me? I’ve just been meditating and practicing. I don’t even thread objects that much. I’m not only not as good as my father, but I also don’t have the same passion for it. What have you two been up to?” she joked.

“Living on the island,” Serif started, “I forgot what it was like to come back to such dramatic changes. Back then, the biggest thing to happen in the year was Lita finding a new edible plant, or Aura finishing a quilt.”

“I’m sure this is quite daunting, and disheartening,” Dar’cy said, nodding. “I wish there was something I could do.”

“It’s fine,” Serif promised. “These is our lives now.”

“Well, we should probably get going,” Dar’cy said. “It’s taken some time for the Earthans to figure out what they’re going to do about the speedstriker problem, but I believe they’re ready to take this all away.”

They boarded an aircraft and flew away from Ireland to return to Kansas City for the first time in two decades/three weeks. It looked about the same as it had back then, but much greener. The only major man made structure in the area was another arcology; one of the largest in the world, according to Dar’cy. They met Missy for lunch at her place, along with her roommate, Curtis, one of the teleporters from Leona’s tribulations in the other timeline. They served a dish of crickets, which was the first and last time Leona would ever eat that. Paige showed up later, and couldn’t stay long. She couldn’t talk about what her shaper team was doing, because it gave away too much about the future, which was ridiculous, because there were plenty of ways to find out what the future held.

Though they did not know Missy very well, and Curtis even less, they were invited to stay with them the night, in a room usually used for exercise. “One night a year to accommodate two new friends is not anywhere close to being an inconvenience,” Missy said about it. “Consider this your home, from now unto eternity.”

Leona and Serif lay in bed next to each other as midnight approached, unable to sleep, even under all this modern comfort. “You’re still a wake.”

Serif just grunted.

“Are you as worried as I am?” Leona asked.

“Every time we get comfortable and confident, something comes in to rob us of our delusion.”

“That’s true.”

“We took care of Reaver, then he came back as our friend, Horace. The Cleanser died, then he returned briefly as regular ol’ immortal, Zeferino. But he’s all dead now. For his death, his sister, Nerakali came after us. She’s dead too, and never came back. But because of time travel, she could show up at any point. Now you tell me they had a sister named Arcadia who tortured us for weeks, but she was torn out of time, which...is probably permanent, but hell I know?”

“Decent summary of our lives.”

“You mean to ask me what my point is?”

“I know what you’re point is. Do the Prestons have some other sibling we never knew about? Is some fourth version of Horace Reaver gonna turn out to be the most evilest of them all? Is there some new danger lurking in the shadows? Are we rapidly approaching a time period of great strife and death, that we have to somehow defeat? What’s this Durus place, and are the speedstrikers the worst it has to offer, or are they just the tip of the iceberg?”

“Decent summary of my point.” They held the silence for a good long while. Serif continued, “aren’t you going to assure me that everything’s gonna be okay?”

“Why would I lie?”

“You wouldn’t.”

They fell asleep before midnight hit, and woke up with everything as it was before. Missy and Curtis were waiting for them in the living room when they came out. They reported no problems over the course of the interim year. Dar’cy arrived during breakfast with similar unexceptional news. A couple of hours later, though, a much older Xearea Voss teleported in.

She let them hug her real quick before getting down to business. “I’m here to remind you that I am not going to live forever. The powers that be have discovered where the next, and last ever, Savior will be born.”

“Where?” Leona asked.

“And what does that have to do with us?” Serif furthered.

“You are being tasked with retrieving the young one from her homeworld,” Xearea said, “Durus.”

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