The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 17, 2530

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Séarlas and Franka were not Mateo and Leona’s children, but Mateo and Leona were their once-parents, and no one knew how to feel about that. A version of the two of them had twins in another timeline, but neither of them had memories of that. This Leona lost her babies in a terrible tragedy on an interplanetary ship that was breaking apart. They didn’t talk about it anymore, and she never said it out loud, but those were her kids, and the only way for her to get through the sadness was to believe that. The living Séarlas and Franka were some of the first people they saw when they started traveling through time, and had anticipated their births for years, only to have that dream pulled away from them. Them being here right now wasn’t some way of getting it back. It was just confusing and uncomfortable. That was why Mateo never pushed for a relationship with Aura or Mario. Neither of them raised him, nor even conceived him. To them, it had never happened, and trying to force a connection was worse than pretending there was nothing there at all, and just trying to be decent friends. The question was, what did these two think? Did they see it the same way?

“We don’t expect hugs from you,” Franka went on after letting the shock of the development run its course for a few moments.

“Hold on.” Ramses materialized some kind of little tool in his hand. “Do you mind?” he asked vaguely, holding it between him and the twins.

“Do what you must,” Franka agreed, pulling up her sleeve, and nodding for her brother to do the same.

Ramses used the tool to extract small samples from them. “I already have your DNA on file,” he said to Mateo and Leona while they waited for about fifteen seconds. It beeped. “I’m seeing a 92% familial match. That would be low confidence for today’s technology, but substrate variance would account for the difference. You two still have the core DNA that you were born with, but I spliced in some extra code.”

“So, they are our genetic children,” Mateo asked to confirm.

“Their bodies are,” Ramses clarified. “I have no idea about their minds. I never did figure out how to build a simpatico detector, not that that’s exactly what we’re after.”

“I see that our tactics have bred distrust between us,” Franka acknowledged.

“Ya think?” Olimpia asked. If these two could be categorized as Mateo and Leona’s kids, she would be their stepmother.

“Why do you think we took so long to introduce ourselves to you?” Pacey—no, Séarlas prompted.

“I’m guessing that you tried to do it earlier in other timelines, but it always went poorly,” Leona figured.

Franka smirked. “Yeah, you definitely get your intelligence from her.”

Mateo looked at Franka. “And you? You got my stupidity?”

Séarlas shook his head disapprovingly. “Your instincts. She got your instincts and intuition. You may not be as educated, and you may not have much interest in improving that, but you are the one who steers the team; not as a leader, but as a compass. Not only can you see a threat a mile away, but you can gauge how much of a threat it will be, and can adjust accordingly. You treated me and Boyd differently than you did Zeferino and Erlendr. You saw goodness in Arcadia when no one else did. Mateo, after Horace Reaver captured you and Leona, and kept you separate, he finally explained why he hated you so much. Do you remember how you reacted?”

“That was so long ago,” Mateo replied.

“You’re being modest,” Séarlas judged, “of course you remember. He told you that an alternate version of you in another timeline made a mistake, which got his wife killed. You have no recollection of that, because you didn’t do it. Yet after his story was over, you apologized. Do you know how few people would respond like that? So no, father, she didn’t get your stupidity. She got your heart.”

“Yes, so much love,” Olimpia jumped in again. “This is a living Rockwell painting.”

“We know things that you don’t,” Franka volleyed. “We’ve seen things.”

“I’ve seen a lot too,” Olimpia defended.

“I mean, our abilities allow us to try out timelines, and choose the best one,” Franka began. “This is not regular time travel where we have to go back to the point of divergence and try again. Time is a crossroads, and we have binoculars.”

“You’re seers?” Angela questioned. Seers were fairly common in their world, but none of them had actually met one in person, or even heard a name. People will just show up unexpectedly and it will be because a seer told them to be there.

Séarlas shook his head again. “Seers typically see one possible future, and if they don’t like it, they find a better one. We can see them all at once, but only from wherever we are when we’re looking. It’s not perfect, before you ask why we’re not all living in a utopia. The metaphorical binoculars only show us so much before things get fuzzy. We can walk down a given road to see further in the future, but once we do, we can’t walk backwards and try a different road. We have to pick the best choice from our perspective, and hope things don’t get worse. Then we end up at a new crossroads, and it starts all over.”

They were all just staring at him. “It’s not a perfect metaphor either,” Franka contended. “None of them really is. Time is a road, time is a river. Time is just all the things that happen.”

“This is a great lesson on temporal mechanics,” Leona said sarcastically, “but I have more questions. When were you gonna introduce yourselves to us, and honestly so, instead of with aliases. Franka, why didn’t you show up pretending to be someone else?”

“It’s like my brother said,” Franka replied, “I’m not intelligent, I’m intuitive. In this day and age, when you meet someone new, you expect them to be smart, and have something to give you. He gave you the slingdrive. I have nothing like that to offer. My job was to tell him what to do, and truthfully, to cultivate our assets.”

“Octavia and Miracle,” Mateo said, nodding. “Anyone else? You got Bhulan in your back pocket? What about my third grade teacher? She on your payroll too?”

“Well...The Overseers,” Séarlas admitted. “That’s thanks to you. We didn’t know where either of them was before.”

“Yeah, we guessed that they were with you,” Marie said, “and the Arborist.”

“It’s not like how Arcadia did it, though,” Franka insisted. “We don’t force or trick people. We don’t...tell them everything either, but they make their own choices.”

“My little intelligence officers,” Leona snarked.

Séarlas tensed up, so Franka placed a hand on his shoulder, and spoke before he could say something that he regretted. “We knew there would be hostility. This is the tough part, and it was always going to be like that because of one mistake we made long ago. I told you about the crossroads. At a real crossroads, you could walk back, and take a different path, but for us, we can’t. We had one single good opportunity to show ourselves to you. It was after our alternate versions died, and some of the initial sting from that had worn off, but before you went off to...be king of Dardius.”

“I wasn’t king.”

Franka went on without responding to that, because it wasn’t the point. “We didn’t know that the babies were going to die. Space is more difficult to see into. It’s hard to explain, but it’s easier with an atmosphere. The point is, it was a tight window, and we missed it. We wanted to know when you were going to come back to the stellar neighborhood from Dardius, and unfortunately, by the time we saw that happen, we had passed our turn. From there, too much was going on, and showing up would have only made things worse. Gatewood, Varkas Reflex, Mateo dies, the rest of the team dies, you disappear into the past, you jump to the Fifth Division, and the Third Rail. I don’t know if you can believe us, but we kept looking for opportunities, and each one was worse than the last. Eventually, we decided that the only way we could have a relationship with our parents was to...”

“Be antagonists,” Leona finished for her.

“We don’t like that word,” Franka said, “but we appreciate your perspective on that. We prefer to see ourselves as tough-love mentors.”

“You’ve been trying to get us to murder someone!” Leona shouted.

“The Oaksent’s future is profoundly clear to us,” Séarlas maintained. “With him, we don’t have binoculars, we have a planet-sized telescope. He has..to die. That’s the only solution. If you’re worried about him becoming a martyr, don’t. His loyalists see him as a god-king. His death alone will shift allegiances for millions. Gods can’t die.”

“Neither can Bronach,” Ramses reasoned, “so what does that make him?”

“The man behind the curtain,” Franka suggested.

“Learning who you are has not changed our position one iota,” Mateo tried to tell his once-children. “If you find a team who is willing and able to do it, we won’t get in your way, but we won’t help either.”

“What if it’s Team Kadiar?” Franka put forth.

It was not a good idea to say that. The twins had hardly looked at Romana since she showed up. It was between them and the parents. She had to respond to this, though. “It won’t be. I don’t care what my mom and dad say, we will interfere if you approach my sisters.” She all but growled.

“Okay, okay,” Marie stepped in. She hadn’t talked much either, but she and her sister were the diplomats. “Romana is right. Team Kadiar is also off limits. They literally crew a diplomacy ship. I won’t have you corrupting them, or even trying to. This has been a tough day. One thing I’ve learned as a counselor is that the breaks are just as important as the talks. We would like a place to retire, and will reconvene in a year. I understand that the anticipation might be difficult for you, but we will only experience less than a day. That time apart will make things easier. I promise you. We have learned a lot—maybe too much already. The human brain, even one designed by Mister Abdulrashid here, needs time to consolidate new information. Does this sound okay to everyone?”

They all agreed to take a break. Mateo had to reframe his thoughts on all this. He hadn’t raised any of his other kids, and in fact, Kivi was born in an entirely different reality, so he didn’t really even conceive her. He still saw her as his child, though admittedly, in a different way than he saw Romana, or even Dubravka. Franka and Séarlas weren’t nothing to him. He didn’t know what they were, but he already knew that they weren’t going to be strangers who he didn’t care about. A good night’s sleep would hopefully help with this. Thank God Marie was here.

There was an Alaskan king bed for Mateo, Leona, and Olimpia to share. The others each had their own rooms with regular king beds. When they woke up the next day, the twins had reportedly skipped over the interim year as well. It could have been a lie to endear them to the team, but even if it was true, it wasn’t exceptionally impactful. It didn’t solve their problems. Probably only one thing could do that, and that was a common enemy. Annoyingly enough, he was right on time. The angry Fifth Divisioner, also known as A.F. had finally found the location of this secret base, having evidently been searching for it since he discovered that Séarlas-slash-Pacey-slash-his nameless engineer had betrayed him. He had a fleet at his fingertips now, and had the space station surrounded. He remotely managed to shut down all systems besides life support and artificial gravity. It was more than that, though, the team’s slingdrive array wasn’t working either. Mateo might have been able to get them out with his dark particles, but he still needed more time to recuperate.

Séarlas sighed. “Goddamn, I wish I hadn’t given that man quintessence technology.”

“Why did you?” Mateo asked.

“You asked us to move on to Plan B for the assassination of Bronach Oaksent? You are Plan B.” He scoffed and shook his head. “A.F. was Plan A.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 15, 2528

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The tree light receded. They were now standing outside. The ground beneath them was yellowish, there was no apparent atmosphere, and they felt very light. It was probably an uninhabitable moon. There was a massive structure before them, maybe four or five kilometers away. Leona checked her watch interface. “August 15, 2528.”

Ramses knelt down, and scanned the surface with his sensor suite. “Sulfur and sulfur dioxide, also silica. We got some pyroxene and feldspar. That explains the yellow.” He stood back up. “I believe that we are on the rogue moon of Jaunemus.”

They didn’t know much about this world. It once orbited the planet of Verdemus, but was transported to the Goldilocks Corridor, and used as a staging ground for the Verdemusian Corps. They lived and trained here when they weren’t on the Anatol Klugman warship. The team looked around, and couldn’t find Miracle Brighton anywhere, nor Adult!Dilara. They were dispatched, not ferried, or perhaps the other two had just moved on, since it had been a full two years since the team was last in the present day.

The Jaunemusians seemed like all right people. They were warmongers, sure, but not Klingons. They didn’t want to fight simply for the sake of it. They felt a duty to protect their home planet from the Exin Empire, and decided to take an offensive strategy, instead of a defensive one, since Verdemus was still in hiding, much like Castlebourne now. According to their military mandate, the fighters on this moon didn’t have much interest in fixing the Goldilocks Corridor. They just calculated that the only way to prevent the Exins from spreading beyond it were to put an end to it altogether. It was unclear how they felt about Earth, the rest of the closer regions, or Team Matic. According to Core World conventions, this whole part of the galaxy belonged to what they called the Borderworlds. It was technically too specific of a term to use for it, however. It was only called that because it covered all systems between 14,000 and 28,000 light years from Earth. On the other side of the Milky Way, that referred to systems that were literally on the edge. In this direction, though, they were still in the middle.

“Drive check!” Olimpia announced as she looked down at her wrist band. “Whew, I’m in the red. Anyone else have a better gauge?”

They all shook their heads. It took an enormous amount of power for them to send the entire Oblivion tower to another reality in the past. That wasn’t even that long ago for them. It would be a while until their slingdrives recharged. They might as well pop in to see how the Jaunemusians were doing lately. They teleported to an airlock that appeared welcoming enough, and knocked on the door. There was a doorbell, but it looked like it was only meant for emergencies. Hopefully the sound would travel through the structure well enough for someone to hear. They stood there for a few minutes before a face appeared in the viewport. Hm. No cameras? Or were there, and he just wanted to get a look for himself? They waved at him with smiles.

The man went away, and then the airlock door opened. They let their suits collapse before the airlock was fully pressurized again. The man was still watching them, from the observation chamber now. Another man entered the room behind him with an air of authority, so the first one opened the next door for him. “Greetings, Team Matic. My name is Anatol Klugman.”

“No, it isn’t,” Mateo said, being unable to stop himself.

The man winced. “I may not have been born with the name, but I earned it.”

“Forgive him,” Leona mediated. “It’s just that we know the man who serves as the namesake for your warship. You’re obviously not him, it’s just a little jarring to hear.”

“Ah, yes.” Fake!Anatol nodded. “It’s easy to forget that the ship was named after a man. I am named after the ship. And when I retire, a new Anatol will be selected to take my place. There are others like me even now.”

“Are you connected to your vessel?” Ramses asked him, fascinated. “Do you control it with your mind?”

Fake!Anatol considered the words. “It’s more like I instruct it with my mind. The crew has to carry out the orders, and could theoretically refuse them. Right now, my second has the reins. The human brain cannot handle the interface for too long, so the link changes hands regularly.” His gaze shifted to Romana. “I’m guessing that you’re here in search of your sister? I can take you to her.”

“That is not my sister,” Romana said, her blood boiling. “She is an impostor.”

“Oh. She said her name was Miracle Brighton.”

“Oh, well that’s her name,” Mateo explained, “but she stole my daughter’s body. Well, she stole one of them. The extra one.”

Fake!Anatol lifted his chin as he absorbed the information. “I see. We might be able to help with that. We are...pretty good at cloning here.” That was how this army began. Omega Strong cloned himself thousands of times, but he didn’t use the exact same code. Each clone was slightly different than the one before it. Despite ultimately being born of a single source, the population was almost as diverse as any other of comparable magnitude, thanks to this intentional genetic drift. That was a long time ago. This man would be a descendant of the original generation, now many generations removed.

“It wasn’t technically theft,” Romana explained, “but more of a con. She has legal claim to that substrate. If we were to move her to a different one, she would have to consent.”

“If she does, we can arrange that,” Fake!Anatol offered. “Do you still want me to take you to her?”

“Yes, please,” Mateo confirmed.

They followed him down the corridors until they reached a common area of couches, tables, and other basic amenities, like you would find in a hipster apartment complex. Fake!Anatol stopped when he noticed Miracle sitting in a comfy chair with a good book, and a cup of tea. She, of course, knew when they would be returning to the timestream, so she was not surprised to see them. She dogeared the page she was on, and snapped it shut. “Thank you all for coming. And thank you, Mister Klugman, for bringing them to me. You can go now.”

Fake!Anatol looked awkwardly at the team, not sure if he should do what she said, or accept their guidance, or do whatever the hell he wanted.

“Please, sir, could you show me your neural interface?” Ramses requested. “I would much like to learn about it, if at all possible. This conversation is going to become uncomfortable, and I don’t need to be here.”

Romana stepped forward, between the team and the antagonist after Ramses and Fake!Anatol departed. “Thank you for not using my name,” she said to her doppelgänger

“I prefer mine.”

“I wouldn’t,” Romana mumbled.

“What was that?”

“I am as appreciative as my daughter,” Mateo said, also now stepping forward. “We would like to ask you, what is your plan here? What do you think we’re going to do for you?”

“You’re going to find a way to kill the unkillable,” Miracle answered plainly.

“If you want him dead, why don’t you just do it? You, Pacey, and Octavia seem intelligent enough. Why are you trying to make us do your dirty work?”

Miracle bit her lip.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Olimpia posed. “She thinks we’re untouchable. If his sycophants come after us for it, not only will it keep their hands clean, but she thinks we’ll survive it anyway...because we always do.”

“Or she’s counting on us not surviving this time,” Marie countered. “Because if the Exin loyalists interrogate us, we’ll be able to link her to it.”

“Lots of people know I’m here,” Miracle argued. “Word will get out that I’m involved, I don’t care.”

Mateo shook his head. “Word might get out that a woman who looks like Romana, and goes by the ridiculously made-up name of Miracle, is involved. Not very strong evidence that it has anything to do with Pacey. I’m not even sure if anyone besides us, and his sycophants, knows that he exists. We’re the only ones who have interacted with him, to our knowledge. He’s Snuffleupagus.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Miracle said.

Their armbands beeped at the same time, alerting them that their slingdrives had charged up to Orange. “We won’t do what you ask,” she contended. “We won’t kill him, and we will no longer interfere with these people’s lives unless we decide that it’s necessary, and we will also decide when that is, and what that means.”

“Those things can’t save you,” Miracle claimed. “We’re like Arcadia Preston. We can just keep bringing you back here. You have to remember that Pacey is the one who invented the—what do you call it—slingdrive technology, not your precious little Gyppo.”

Mateo tensed up, and leaned in closer. “Do not..ever say that.”

“Sorry, that was too far, I’m just trying to remind you that you took quintessence from Pacey. He has every right to dictate what you do with it.”

She wasn’t getting it. It was irrelevant how long they had to wait to sling again. This was a perfect example of you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. If she kept dropping them here, they would keep escaping, or just doing nothing. Even if their slingdrives weren’t ready to go again, they didn’t have to do anything they didn’t want to. She only had the power to move them places, not control their actions. If she could do that, why would she need them at all? “It doesn’t matter, we’re not doing it,” Angela reiterated.

Miracle finally stood. She sighed. “Miss Nieman is the youngest in your group, and for that reason, she will be spared. The Oaksent doesn’t see her as a threat, and I think he may have a little thing for her. He has instructed his minions to spare her, should they encounter Team Matic, and find a way to end the rest of you without hurting her. If you don’t kill him, Romana will be the one to do it, if you get my meaning. She won’t be safe anymore. She will be the primary target.”

Leona smiled.

Miracle was confused. “What? What just happened? Why are you so excited?”

The others weren’t excited, it was just Leona. She reached out, and took hold of both of Miracle’s wrists. She instructed her nanites to construct handcuffs around them. “You just gave me permission to remove you from that substrate.”

“How’s that now?” Miracle questioned.

“You just admitted to making plans to commit a crime using a substrate that will implicate a different individual of said crime. That gives me everything I need to get you out of it, and reclaim the substrate to protect the world from you who would abuse her power in it.”

“I was just speaking in hypotheticals, I didn’t say anything,” Miracle insisted. “Plus, I was so vague.”

“We all heard what we heard, and I’m sure that camera caught it too.” Leona pointed up at the security cam. “Besides, at worst, it places us in a stalemate. You can’t actually commit the crime any more than you can admit to the conspiracy of it. If you go through with the plan, we’ll show that footage to the Exins. They have similar cloning laws internally. Harsher ones, in fact. Your safest course of action is to leave that body, and move on with your life without it. Romana is damaged goods.”

Miracle was flustered. She backed up a little, and tried to pull the cuffs apart through brute force. “I have an exit strategy. These can’t keep me here.”

“We can track you wherever you go. Their friends can, anyway,” Leona added, referring to the nanites that she was still using herself.

Their armbands beeped. They were now in the Yellow.

“Not if I figure out how to get them off first!” Miracle shouted. A black hole appeared underneath her feet, and she fell right through it.

“What if she does it?” Angela asked. “What if she just goes off to kill Bronach before we have the chance to find her, and remove her from that substrate?”

“She doesn’t know how,” Leona believed. “She was bluffing entirely. She called him unkillable, because they also need us to find the killswitch that will prevent him from coming back to life, however exactly he does it. We’re known for finding loopholes, and Team Pacey is betting on us finding this one too. There’s more than one reason they chose us.”

“What do we do?” Mateo asked her.

“Today, we rest. I don’t think we’re gonna be able to sling again until next year.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 25, 2477

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Mateo couldn’t move as he was staring up at this young woman who was standing over him, claiming to be his daughter. She looked like a cross between himself and someone in the Nieman family, but he couldn’t run a DNA test just with his eyes. This could be anyone pretending to be a relative for some personal agenda. A cabal may have cast her for the role specifically because she resembled what Romana was expected to grow up to look like. Trust, but verify was the first thing running through his head.

She seemed to be figuring what he was thinking. “You don’t have to believe me. We’ll know soon enough, but first, warm up by the fire. I would like to spend some time alone with my father before we involve the rest of the team.”

Mateo stood up, walked a couple meters away, and sat back down on the rocks to let the heat begin to dry his clothes. He watched the waves splash against the shore, always just out of reach, even with the wind. He wanted to stand yet again, and take her into a big hug, but assuming she was telling the truth, she still didn’t know this man. He was a famous person to her, but more of an idea than a real person. Her impressions would have been built from anecdotes and rumors. Like all his other children, he never got the chance to raise her. Who would he father but fail next?

“You’re not a failure,” Romana assured him.

“Can you turn it off, the mind-reading?”

“Yes, I just...couldn’t help myself. I’ve been waiting for this day for a very long time.” She shakes her head. “So long.”

“Why wait? Were you stuck in a time bubble, or the past?”

“I was in the past,” she began to explain, “but I wasn’t stuck. We went there on purpose. Well, I didn’t have any say; I was only a baby. That’s just where I grew up.”

“Karla left us a message on the mirror,” Mateo said. “She told us to not contact her; to maintain radio silence until things were safe. We respected that. We didn’t even talk about it amongst ourselves. I don’t think I ever mentioned it to Marie.”

“It’s because we were unreachable,” Romana clarified. “Those mirrors couldn’t bridge two points in time, only space.”

“I’ve been at this for several years. If I hadn’t gotten stuck in those time bubbles, and fallen out of my pattern occasionally, it would not have even been two years. If you’ve grown up like this, just as Dubra did, you’ve been doing it for longer than me.”

“Thousands of real years,” Romana confirmed. I was there, in the cemetery. I saw your first jump. I even saw you come back a year later.”

“Wouldn’t we have jumped at the same time?” Mateo asked.

“I can adjust the departure time by a few minutes, like if I’m in the middle of a conversation, or if I’m ready to leave early.”

“How were you there at any rate? It was the wrong timeline.”

“I’ve mostly been living in the Third Rail, which allowed me to enter any timeline I wanted whenever I went back to the main sequence.”

“How is that possible? The Third Rail suppressed powers and patterns.”

“Not for me. I’m a lot like you, but not completely. My temporal metabolism is slightly different. Half of my genes are from the Niemans, and I was carried by many mothers. We call it a mutation.”

“Where’s your real mother, Karla?”

“I’m not ready to talk about her yet. I can tell you about my grandmother, though, Tyra. You met her when she was old. In a different cemetery?”

Mateo thought back to what she might have been talking about. If it was in the Third Rail, then she must be referring to the time when Mateo needed to get away from the group, and decided to take a drive back towards that reality’s version of Topeka. “She said her name was Tallulah, but it always seemed like a lie.”

Romana smiled. “Yeah, she didn’t want to mess with your future. She was visiting her husband, and had no clue that you would show up. Both of them took the serum to be on my pattern. Then they both died, and I left the reality to...visit my past; see where I came from. I’ve watched you a lot, from the shadows, across multiple timelines.”

“I’m not proud of everything I’ve done.”

“Neither am I,” she replied.

They were silent for a few moments, both watching the wrathful ocean crash into the distant cliffs. “I would love to know your intentions,” he finally mustered the courage to say. “Are you staying, or is this just...a gift that you’re about to take away so you can live your own life?”

“I thought about coming to you sooner, like right after you met Baby!Me. But there are people who don’t need to know what happened during my first year on Dardius. I decided to end up here a bit early, so I could make a home for us all. Here’s a hint, it’s not under Castledome. It’s much prettier, and it’s not on the map. I was hoping that...that you could—I know you’ve missed so much, and maybe you just wanna...”

“I don’t wanna let you go. We’ve never really had a home, especially not me after I accidentally erased myself from history. I just keep running around the multiverse. I did wonder if this could be a place where we could put down roots when I first saw these domes. I didn’t know what was going on, or who was in charge, but it felt like we belonged here. Now that we have the slingdrive, we can commute anywhere we want, but return home at the end of the day. I don’t know that I want you going out there, even though I’m sure you’ve seen some stuff already, but...”

She placed a hand on his. “We can make up for lost time. We don’t have to make any decisions right away. I don’t need to join the team if you don’t want me to. I just want a family. I haven’t been alone my whole life, but it’s been lonely in recent days.”

“I’m sorry, I left. I don’t know what they told you—”

“I don’t blame you for that. I know that you had to protect me...from yourselves. That was the bravest choice I’ve ever heard of anyone making. I don’t know that I could have done it. I waited this long because I wanted you to be able to take me seriously. I would have waited longer, until I was an actual adult, but paradoxically, I also want you to still see me as a child. Does that make sense?”

“It makes perfect sense,” he promised. He spread his arms open, letting the blanket fall down behind him as he pulled her into a bear hug. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I thought we would have more time. I thought the threats would have disappeared in a few hundred years, and you would still be a wee baby girl.”

“It’s okay. It’s no one’s fault,” she said as she was gently separating herself. “Except for Oaksent. He started to look for me. He dismantled the LIR Towers piece by piece during our interim year so my mother, Auntie Constance, and I wouldn’t have a safe place to land.”

Mateo stopped himself from getting too worked up about that. “What of Silenus?”

“Silenus made the same sacrifice that you did. He drew them away.”

Mateo nodded reverently, but didn’t press the issue. He instead changed the subject. “Well, could I see this dome that you apparently built for us?”

“It’s not quite ready yet,” she answered, equal parts embarrassed and excited. “The automators are still putting on the finishing touches. I was going to wait a year to introduce myself, but then you teleported to the North Pole Ocean, and I felt like I needed to help. You could have called for anyone, but they’re busy, and...”

“I appreciate it,” he said. “I’m glad for this extra time.”

“Matt, where are you?” Leona asked through comms.

“I’m alone for the day. I’ll see you tomorrow,” he responded to her.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“I’m in Ancient Rome,” he lied. “All these white pillars and shit.”

Leona took a beat. “Fair enough.”

Romana smiled, then placed her hand on his shoulder. They were suddenly sitting on a stone staircase. All around them looked like Ancient Rome, with all these white pillars and shit. “Now you’re not lying.”

“You can teleport? Is that innate, or was your substrate upgraded?”

Her smile grew twice as big. “I didn’t teleport. I just made you do it.”

“So you’re a metachooser.”

“No. I’m just Romana.” She stood up, and stole his hand from him before running down the steps. “Come on!”

They ran down to the street, and between the buildings. They winded through the alleyways, Mateo having no clue where they were going, until he saw it. It was a replica of the Colosseum, just like the one Saga and Vearden were forced to build on Tribulation Island. Romana led him through the entrance, and onto the main grounds. “Maybe you could do it here. For the symmetry.”

“Do what here?” he asked.

“Get remarried?”

“To who?” He was offended.

“To Leona, silly. You were forced to do it last time. You should do it again, but for yourselves.”

“If we ever renew our vows,” Mateo began, “this is the last place we would do it.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

She teleported them away, or rather she made him do it. They were now standing on Ayers Rock, or this world’s version of it, anyway. Could every geographical and cultural location on Earth be found here somewhere? “What about here?” she offered.

“Do you know my personal history with this place?”

“Good point again,” Romana said. She took him to several other domes, each one either designed to resemble an important spot from Mateo’s past, or which incidentally reminded him of somewhere important. They settled on a desert, which boasted the most magical of starry holograms above. They slept out under the stars that night, and jumped forward together come midnight central. Only then was she ready to meet the rest of the group.

“Who’s this?” Leona asked upon seeing her.

Mateo could not read his wife’s mind, but he did feel a hint of jealousy from her, and it triggered painful flashbacks to his history with Cassidy Long. He met her in much a similar way, alone and on a world that everyone believed to be otherwise uninhabited, yet ready for a population. He needed to clarify the truth right away. “Gang, please allow me to introduce you to my daughter, Romana Nieman.”

Leona’s eyes lit up at the revelation. “Oh. Oh, dear.” She reached over and wrapped her arms around Romana’s shoulders. “I am so happy to meet you.”

“They grow up so fast,” Ramses joked.

The rest of the team began to exchange hugs with her as well, and welcome her to the party. She caught them up on her life between being a baby on Dardius, and her arrival to Castledome, but she left out some of the less fun developments, such as the deaths and sacrifices. Mateo still didn’t know everything himself, but now they had time to get to know each other. Once the pleasantries were dying down, Ramses clapped his hands together. “Well, I was going to announce that we were ready to establish our spatio-temporal tethers, but the machine will need to be recalibrated for the additional member. I wouldn’t exactly call this a one time thing, but if someone new needs to be added later, we would have to sever the original links, and start all over again. Which is fine, so if, Romana, you’re not quite ready to commit...”

“I’m ready. What does it entail, though? Can we never be apart from each other?”

“No, we can,” Ramses clarified. “Here are the properties. We will always know two things about each other. We will always be aware of where we are at this very moment, and we will know where we are according to our shared time gaps. To put it another way, if one of us uses the slingdrive to travel to the Andromeda Galaxy, we’ll all be aware that they’re there right now. If someone instead jumps back to the year 1845, we’ll sense them there based on how long it’s been for us, and for them. So if they stay in 1845 for three days, and then travel to, say, 2024, we’ll know that, but it will take us three of our own days to find out, even though both are in the past anyway. Make sense?”

They all nodded.

“Will we be able to reunite with each other in such a case?” Olimpia pressed.

“Possibly,” Ramses admitted. “The tether keeps us in lock-step, but it’s not powerful enough on its own to allow cross-travel. We would need some other way. We would need a second slingdrive, or a sufficiently powerful traveler. But would still be the navigators.”

“Got it,” Angela decided. “Anything else we should know?”

He waited an uncomfortably long time to respond. “There’s a chance that something will be screwy when the machine is activated. I’m confident that it will work, but in order to power the Livewire in the first place, I had to tap into our quintessence reserves. There’s a chance that we’ll be scattered to the winds, and our first mission will involve finding each other again. Someone will have to use the Ambassador to do that, and I might not be the one closest to it.”

“Why would anyone necessarily be close to it,” Marie questioned. “What if we all end up distant from it?”

“The ship is part of the link,” Ramses said. “At least one of us will experience a strong tether to it.” He presented some e-paper. “You’ll all need a copy of the operator’s manual. It’s obviously mostly automated, but you’ll still need to handle some things.”

They continued to discuss the dangers associated with the Livewire tether, but ultimately decided that it was worth the risk to never be truly parted from each other ever again. Ramses activated the linking machine. Nearly everyone managed to stay right on this ship; all except Romana. And for some reason, they couldn’t sense her.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 2 EXT

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For a year, the Ambassador stayed in a relatively low orbit around Ex-001, monitoring its developments on the surface. It occasionally flew off to expel its waste heat from the hot pocket on the other side of the host star to avoid detection, but then it flew right back to continue collecting data. There was no indication that either Bronach or Elder was aware of its presence overhead, so the invisibility protocols were holding. It didn’t hurt that it automatically relaxed them while it was on the other side of the planet, and that the ground inhabitants hadn’t bothered deploying any sort of satellite of their own. Oaksent probably believed that there was basically no way that anyone else could be around this far out in the galaxy, this far back in time. Which was ridiculous, because if they were able to travel here from the future, so could anyone else.

When the team came back, Leona and Ramses started skimming the data. The forefathers of this budding civilization were doing exactly what could be reasonably expected of them, but also a few unexpected things. They were staying within the confines of the geodesic dome despite the fact that the planet was habitable, evidently out of an abundance of caution, and so that their business could be taken care of in a controlled environment. They may have gotten the idea to do this from Dubai on Earth, which adopted this lifestyle back in the late 21st century. It became an isolate, determined to maintain its outdated and violent societal norms against a backdrop of global progress. The population dwindled over time, but the dome was still there the last time anyone checked. Here, in the seed of civilization for the Exin Empire, the population was expected to survive, and eventually expand. Should they let it happen?

The two of them had selected 147 people for the first generation, gestating each one about thirty times faster than normal until they were all in their teens. Not being the fatherly type, they used androids to raise these rapidly grown individuals from then on. They taught them everything a good group of indoctrinated slaves needed to know. Math, Science, Language, Physical Fitness; these were all on the schedule, but at their most basic levels, and history was nowhere to be found. They didn’t teach them anything about where they came from, and they steered clear of philosophy and ethics. It was no one’s job to question authority. There was only Bronach’s word, and their obedience.

Elder was reportedly under duress the entire time, though he seemingly grew tired of feeling the defiance in his heart so strongly. He fell into a routine, and just did whatever he was told, like it wasn’t even him anymore, but an automaton with no free will. If Team Matic was going to put a stop to this, rescuing the one person who Bronach needed to keep his plans moving forward was likely their best option. Elder didn’t want any of this, but Bronach wasn’t smart enough to do it on his own. If they were to take that tool away, what would he be left with? Then again, what would the consequences be for the team interfering in any form, let alone in such a monumental way? This wasn’t the first time they had changed the past, but it would probably be the biggest, and the hardest to predict. But also, what did it really matter at this point? Things already had changed, just by them coming here in the first place. The timeline was already new. There was no going back to the old one, unless maybe if they happened to run into Dilara. This was the earliest in the timeline they had ever been to, except when they were in The Constant during its early days. Was that the solution? Contacting Danica?

“Danica and the Constant are 16,000 light years away,” Leona reminded Olimpia.

“That’s nothing,” Olimpia replied. “We could just take the slingdrive there.”

“The slingdrive?” Ramses questioned, having not been listening to the conversation too hard until now. “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”

“Yeah, because it’s like a slingshot,” Olimpia explained. “You can pull back, and let go, and it will generally go in the direction you’re aiming, but precise targeting is difficult at best, especially when you’re first learning. You’re bound to miss the mark on the first few attempts.”

Ramses frowned.

“No one’s mad at you,” Leona told him for the umpteenth time. “I think we’re supposed to be here anyway. I mean, we could have ended up landing in the timeline a thousand years ago, which wouldn’t have done us any good. Yet we happen to wind up just when the Goldilocks Corridor is getting interesting? That’s no coincidence.”

“Well, anyway,” Ramses began, “if that’s how we’re framing the quintessence drive, then trying to get to Danica would be foolish. I obviously don’t know how to aim this thing. We may indeed find ourselves a thousand years off course or worse.”

“That’s not what she’s saying,” Mateo decided. “There’s a learning curve with this new technology. It might not even be you, per se. Maybe the ship just can’t handle the quintessence yet, and needs to learn. Right now, we have a single point of data, which is our arrival two years ago. You need more data, which means you need more jumps.”

“Hold on,” Marie interjected. “Aren’t we trying to do something here? Shouldn’t we be saving Elder, or—I dunno—assassinating the Oaksent?”

“They were just saying, it would be too dangerous,” her sister insisted. “I don’t think we should be messing with the past any more than we already have. Ramses, aim for the future, and if we go to the wrong place, then try again. Keep trying until we get there. Every time we show up in the wrong point in spacetime, we should do as little as possible until that next jump.”

“Maybe we wouldn’t be changing time,” Mateo offered. “Maybe we always did come here to save Elder. We don’t know that that’s not what always happened. No one in the Corridor in the future ever mentioned him. Perhaps he’s but a footnote in history because we took him out of the equation at the right time. That’s the thing about changing history; if you don’t know that you’re doing it, you can’t be at fault. You might just be fulfilling your destiny; closing your loop.”

“He’s right,” Leona confirmed. “Getting him out of there could be our only purpose here. Society is incredibly advanced three thousand years from now. If we don’t take Oaksent’s toy away, maybe they turn out even more advanced. Maybe that would be changing the timeline.”

“I think that’s a weak justification,” Angela contended. “I still say we do nothing.”

“Hon, I think this may be one of those times that calls for a vote, even though we’re not a democracy,” Mateo said.

“Not yet,” Angela said, raising her voice too much. “I need time to build my case.”

“You’ll have the time,” Leona promised with a hand upon her friend’s. “We have all day to make a decision. Pia can jump down there and grab him in a matter of seconds if that’s what we decide to do. They’ll literally never see it coming.”

“I would like to do it,” Mateo volunteered. “If we agree to it, that is.”

“Why?” Leona asked him.

“I wanna help. And I don’t think I need to be invisible, though I do think I can pull that off for a limited time.”

“We’ll vote on that too,” Ramses suggested.

Marie shook her head. “Whoever goes can’t be invisible. We keep calling it a rescue, but we don’t know for sure that he’ll want to leave. That’s just what the satellite images imply. He may want to be there, or he may have his own plan. Either way, if he doesn’t want to come with us, he should have the right to refuse. I’ll agree to a rescue mission, but not an abduction. I won’t be party to that.”

“Good point,” Leona agreed. “Angie, you want time to formulate your argument? Tell us when you’re ready, and we’ll listen to it. I can’t tell you that the decision has to be unanimous, but we’ll consider every option carefully.”

“Do I get a vote?” It was Bronach Oakset. He was lounging on the couch. Except he wasn’t really there. Looking closely at the way he was sprawled out there, it was clear that he was on a different couch, and was merely projecting his image into the ship, just like he did on Welrios. Which was good, it meant their defenses were holding. But it also meant that they needed better defenses. No one should be able to come up here to spy.

Even so, just to be sure, Mateo stepped over, and attempted to smack him in the face. Yes, his hand went right through.

“Yes, daddy,” Bronach replied grossly.

“Goddammit,” Leona lamented.

“Oh, no, did I ruin your plans?” Bronach joked. “Look, I’ve told you in the past, and I’ve told you in the future. I can’t be beat. I know everything. I know where you’ve been, what you’ve done...where you’ll go, and what you’ll do. You want Elder, go ahead and take him.”

Without hesitating, Mateo disappeared. After a long detour, he reached the surface, where he grabbed Elder, and attempted to teleport back up to the ship. “Guys, I’m stuck,” he said through comms.

“Did I forget to mention the teleporter trap?” Bronach asked with a maniacal laugh. “Why do you think we’re in that dome, you idiots?”

“Shut it off,” Leona demanded.

“I’m not doing that,” Bronach replied. “The stopping and starting process is a major pain in the ass. But I’m having one of our people escort the two of them to the exit, where they’ll be free from the spatial field. I wasn’t kidding; you want ‘im, you got ‘im. But don’t think for a second that any of that matters. I scanned that man’s quantum state years ago. I can always bring him back. You’ll be taking a clone, and that will have zero impact on what I accomplish.” He sighed, and stood up to look around the room. “You will always fail. Best get used to it.”

Mateo and Elder appeared on the other side of the room.

“Welcome back!” Bronach exclaimed in a terrible approximation of sincerity.

“Let’s try this again,” Mateo growled. He steadily, but not too quickly, approached Bronach’s hologram, and swung a punch at him. To everyone’s surprise, it worked. Bronach fell back, tripped over his couch, and tumbled back behind it.

“How did you do that?” Leona questioned. “Is Oaksent just playing around?”

“No, he’s not.” Bronach stood up, and wiped the blood from his lip. “I second that question, how the fuck did you just do that!”

Mateo lifted his leg, and slammed it into Bronach’s chest, making contact once more, and forcing him down hard to his back. “I thought you knew everything. Now get the hell off my ship, and erase every single copy of Elder’s brain scan!”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 1 EXT

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Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 3

Since it was too risky to even attempt to use the quintessence drive again, Ramses engaged a short reframe burst to the planet where the signal was coming from. Once they arrived in orbit, they found there to be no lifesigns aboard the other ship. This wasn’t surprising as the design suggested it to be completely automated, meant to prepare the surface for habitation at a later date. It deployed dropships to begin construction on geodesic diamond domes, which was funny, because the atmosphere was fairly comparable to Earth’s. With only a minimal amount of bioengineering, any organic human should be able to survive unaided by external technologies. Leona posited that the onboard systems were not smart enough to realize this. They were programmed to build domes, and fill them with oxygenated air generated via electrolysis, so that was precisely what they were doing. It didn’t even seem to detect the Vellani Ambassador’s presence at all. So they just stayed out of its way.

Curious, the team hung out for the rest of the day until midnight central hit, staying invisible so they wouldn’t be seen by anyone else. The domes were completed by the time they returned to the timestream, and a second ship had arrived in the meantime. There could be people here now. “I’ll go down,” Olimpia volunteered.

“Just you?” Leona asked.

“Well, I wouldn’t dare go alone,” Olimpia clarified. “Perhaps Mateo could come with me for support? I believe that I can keep him invisible too, but taking any more may be too difficult.”

Leona sighed. “No one’s going down right now. Rambo, just keep an eye on the surface. Send an invisible probe, and gather some recon data for us. Pia, could I speak with you for a moment?”

When they were alone in the second pocket dimension, Olimpia spoke up rather defensively. “I know what you’re going to say, but this is how I contribute. I can’t dispatch and control probes, and I can’t mediate diplomatic discussions. I happen to be good at invisibility, so let me use that.”

“I don’t have a problem with you leaning on your strengths. I don’t have a problem at all. But I did want to speak with you about you and my husband.”

“What about us?”

“He told me what happened in the simulation.”

“I don’t know what he said—”

“He told me the truth,” Leona interrupted. “He told me that the two of you have been inching towards each other ever since you met, like a derelict satellite caught in a decaying orbit.”

“Okay, well I don’t know that I would describe it like that...”

“You’re right, because the satellite would just burn up in the atmosphere. And I don’t want that. The metaphor doesn’t work anyway, because it doesn’t account for me.”

“What are you saying?” Olimpia asked.

“Do you know who Serif is?”

“Yeah, she was a clay woman who came to life while you were living on Tribulation Island. She left to go save the multiverse from the Ochivari’s virus, or something.”

“She was carved from stone, not clay. She was more than only another member of our crew at the time. I was in love with her. I still am, to an extent. My brain contains memories of her that never took place. Mateo didn’t even have those fake memories, though, and when he disappeared from the timeline altogether, she and I only grew closer, because I couldn’t remember him either. When he came back...it was like falling in love with him all over again. And Serif was...sort of left out in the cold. Our three-person relationship didn’t work, because it was uneven.”

“I’m still not following.”

“There are six of us here, and we all love each other, in various ways. Angela and Marie are sisters who were once the same person. Mateo and Ramses are best friends. He and I are married. And you? You’re falling in love with him, if you haven’t already. I believe that he’s experiencing the same thing, at his own pace.”

“I’m not a homewrecker,” Olimpia argued.

“I know, and I don’t want you to be. None of us does. That’s why it’s a problem. Even if you push through it, ignore your feelings, and find someone else, this connection between you two will never go away. Instead of letting it be the way that it is, I propose a—shall we call it—an unconventional response. As I said, we all love each other, so I don’t think it’s completely impossible for you and me to...”

Olimpia shook her head slightly as Leona trailed off. “To what, fall in love with each other too? To save your marriage, and the team, you want to force a polyamory triangle?”

“Well, I don’t see it as being forced.”

“Are you even attracted to me?”

“Have you even seen a mirror before?”

Olimpia blushed a little. “This is weird.”

“I know, and it may blow up in our faces, but if we don’t try something, it definitely will. I don’t want one of us to become the next Serif. Nothing has happened between you two yet, so let’s go on this journey together. Let’s not keep secrets, and hide our true selves. You don’t have to come up with an excuse to spend time with him. You and I would be better suited for the ground mission. You have the invisibility, I have the brains. I didn’t mean to say it like that, I’m sorry. I know that sounds mean.”

“It’s fine,” Olimpia assured her. “I know I’m not stupid. I’m just uneducated, because whenever my teacher tried to ask me to respond to a query, I would give the answer several times in a row.”

Olimpia was the only one still wearing a Cassidy cuff, but still Leona would forget that this was because of her sonic echoing time affliction. She had a pretty good reason for her lack of life experiences. “Right, I get that.” She paused for a moment. “So. Are you willing to try this weird thing? It’s unusual, to say the least, but I don’t just want to be the jealous, resentful wife who denies my man’s desires because society has told me that only two people are allowed to be together at any one time.”

Olimpia reached up, and took a lock of Leona’s hair out from behind her ear to let it fall in front of it.

“What was that for?”

“So I could do this...” She reached up again, and tucked the hair back behind Leona’s ear, placing their faces close together as well. “Gut reaction, how did that feel? Uncomfortable? Awkward? Breathtaking?”

“Both B and C maybe,” Leona answered.

Olimpia giggled. “I suppose that people date each other all the time without knowing where it’s going. That’s the whole point of the dates. All we’re doing is agreeing that true love is the end goal, and admitting that if we don’t reach that goal, I’m gonna die alone. I’m a time traveler, and my options are limited. So if you and I can’t make it work, it probably means that the only reason I fell in love with Mateo is because, to me, he may as well be the last man on Earth.”

“So, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll take it slow, start with a first date; no sex.”

“No sex,” Olimpia agreed. “No sex...at all. If you really want to give this a shot, I think you two need to pretend like you’re not already together, just for a time.”

Leona nodded, considering the parameters. “I think that makes sense. Polyamory doesn’t work unless there’s mutuality. Without that, it just devolves into polygamy.”

“Yeah. So it’s settled. You and I will go down to check out the dome while Mateo sets up a romantic date for us.”

“Is that what we settled on, that he does all the work?”

“You and I had the hard conversation,” Olimpia reasoned. “Let him do something.”

The two of them called Mateo into the pocket to essentially have the same conversation all over again until he came to the same conclusion. It was definitely weird until he looked at it from the correct angle. They had to be active participants in this situation, rather than trying to let the chips fall where they may, and hoping that none of them flew up to hit someone in the eye. He had no problem with staying home to set up their first three-person date together while the womenfolk went off to figure out what was going on with the planet below.

Ramses agreed to help once he was clued into the new dynamic. “Dude, that’s great, man. Two ladies, I hear that’s kinda the dream.”

“It’s not like that,” Mateo argued.

“Bullshit. Ya know, you can appreciate someone for their mind, and their body at the same time.”

“What would you know about it?” Mateo asked.

“I still have sexual needs, I just choose to fulfill them on my own.”

“So, you’re not annoyed that I’ve found two special people, and you’ve not even found one?”

“Nah, it’s cool. Really. I’ve always been ultra-focused on my work. Creating something that does exactly what I want it to do is the closest thing to a relationship that I’ve ever needed. I might have thought twice about turning myself into a time traveler if I felt the compulsion to seek out a mate.” He stopped setting the plates down. “Ugh. This dimension is so bland. I can’t work with this. I think you need to have your date in a simulation.”

“No, it has to be a real place with real food,” Mateo contended. “If I just ask the computer to make something perfect, I’ll have done nothing.”

“Let me help.” Angela was in the doorway.

Mateo was worried. “Angie, I didn’t know you were in this pocket.”

“I was bored. And you forgot to switch off your comm disc again. We all heard everything.”

Mateo widened his eyes in horror. “Leona?”

“It’s fine, love. Just locker room talk. It’s perfectly normal to have a conversation with your friends about someone you haven’t had sex with yet.”

“Huh?” Ramses was as confused as Angela.

“We’re starting from scratch,” Mateo explained. He turned away to speak into his disc again. “Okay, I’ll see you two tonight. I won’t say I love you, because I don’t know you very well yet. Okay, love you, bye.” He tapped it off. “Dammit.”

“Aww,” Angela feigned fawning.

“Did you say you could help with something?” Mateo asked her, embarrassed.

“This new girl you’re seeing,” Angela joked, “called it four-dimensional holography. We all appear to have our own specialties, and mine is being able to generate images that last across time without me having to be focused on them. I can just set something up, and walk away, so I’m confident that I can make this room look like anything,” she said, looking around, and taking mental notes of a few ideas.

“Wow. That’s very exciting, and not the least bit concerning since I seem to be the only one who’s not particularly good at creating holograms in any special sort of way.”

“I don’t have a specialty either,” Ramses claimed.

“Are you kidding me?” Mateo asked. “You take our power, and replicate it in technology. This ship is invisible.”

“Yeah, well, I guess.”

“So, what were we thinking?” Angela asked, putting the conversation back on track. “Grand banquet hall? Kitschy theme restaurant? Low stakes fast-casual joint?”

Mateo thought through his options, which were apparently limitless. “Um. Let’s go with quaint small town bar and grill that used to be City Hall before they built the new one ten years ago.”

“I think I can make that work.” Angela began to throw up some holograms, adjusting bits and pieces here and there, taking in input from the two guys and her sister, until they had something as original as possible while still channeling photons from real places elsewhere in spacetime.

After Leona and Olimpia came back from their little mission, they showered, and showed up for the date. Marie served as their waiter, because she wanted to be a part of it too. She has a hypertime food synthesizer to make the food, but she elected to sit and wait to make it feel more real. The dinner was nice. They didn’t hold onto the ruse about being strangers on a blind date. They discussed their real lives, acknowledging that they were quite familiar with each other already. The whole team was there, with Ramses and Marie having their own meal together as friends. So they were able to hear the mission debrief too. A very young Bronach Oaksent was in the dome with none other than Elder Caverness. They were seemingly the only two people on the planet, besides the secret spies. They were currently calling it Ex-001, which Leona once mistakenly believed to be the seat of power for the Exin Empire. So it did exist, but instead of being the most important world, it was simply the first one to be settled. It made Mateo wonder, what would become of it thousands of years from now? Would it end up holding secrets that were just waiting to be exploited?

The meal was a success, which wasn’t surprising, because they were all friends, and there was nothing to fight about at the moment. As promised, it did not end in sex. In fact, Mateo retired to his own room in the second pocket dimension, as he would if this really were his first evening with a new prospect. They chose not to worry too much about what was happening on Ex-001, or how they would involve themselves. They couldn’t be sure how much would change during their interim year. As it turned out, quite a lot. There were now 147 new people living there.

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