Microstory 2458: Diamond Dome

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Would you believe it, centuries ago, diamonds were considered a precious commodity? They’re still precious, but they’re not nearly as rare and luxurious as they once were. Our ancestors would cut them up into pretty shapes, and fashion them into pretty jewelry. We don’t care about that. We care about function over form. Carbon is one of the most versatile elements in the universe, and as it turns out, its diamond form is actually extremely commonplace. It was hard to find on Earth when people were digging it out of the ground with shovels and pickaxes, but when you have the automation and power to manipulate entire planets, you start to see how abundant things are. We use diamonds because the stuff is durable and reliable. It’s also clear, making it a perfect, semi-natural alternative to glass. There are lab-grown polycarbonates out there that we can use instead, and to be sure, those are here on Castlebourne too, but nothing beats the OG super-material. We could also grow diamonds in a lab, but there’s plenty of it in this world, so why not take what the Lord giveth. Now, what exactly is it used for? Well, it’s the primary material for the domes. Most of the domes here aren’t perfectly smooth. They’re geodesic, which means they’re made up of a skeleton called a space frame. Traditionally, these were metallic, but these days, we use metamaterials; particularly graphene. Between the struts for the space frame, they affix transparent triangular panels, which allow you to see the other side. Why do they do this? Most of the domes use holographic skies anyway, so you’re seeing whatever the image is programmed to be. Well, I don’t really know. The tour didn’t explain that. It wouldn’t really be better if the entire dome were opaque with no hope of seeing the outside for real. Using a framework with clear panels is the most common way to design these things, and I just think they look nicer. You can turn the hologram off, and see the true Castlebournian sky, but if they weren’t made this way, that would not be possible. I guess it just gives us more options. A lot of people are afraid, believing that clear equals unsafe, but obviously that’s ridiculous. They think some meteorite could crash through, and suck out all the air, but that’s not really possible. Like I said, it’s made of diamonds, and even if it weren’t, your concern is unwarranted. Even if one panel does falter, these things are so gigantic that it would take days for all the air to escape, at worst. If it’s only one panel, it would take years. At any rate, there would be plenty of time for a drone team to fly up there and replace the panel, or panels. If there is so much damage that the dome rapidly becomes unbreathable, well, whatever caused that damage probably killed everyone on the surface anyway, so the air would be the least of their worries. Okay, I’ll end this on that happy note. Safe travels!

Microstory 2251: Happened Only After They’ve Happened

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The surgeon has decided that going ahead with the surgeries still makes sense, even after my poisoning. The specific poison that my attacker used didn’t have any direct impact on my bone marrow, or my index. They were probably just trying to kill me as fast as possible, so the medical examiner would determine that there was nothing worth salvaging. I dunno, that’s for the district attorney, or whatever, to decide, I guess. I’m not going to busy myself with worrying about them too much. I need to move on, and live my life. We’re still taking precautions. I’m not going to tell you when my surgeries will be, and I certainly won’t be telling you where. You’ll know that they’ve happened only after they’ve happened. In the meantime, my posts will sound like everything’s normal. The move-in is going well. The house is mostly furnished now, but we discovered that we have to do some renovations/repairs in the downstairs full bathroom, so the security people are sharing Dutch’s in the basement. He says he’s cool with it, and I believe him. That’s pretty much it for today since I apparently can’t say much about my life anymore without raising the alarms. In my free time, I’m trying to commune with my alternate self, asking him to send help. He’s definitely getting my messages, because he’s him, but I’m not getting his yet. Maybe he’s just toying with me.

Orthogradient: The Cormanu Crew (Part IV)

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Carbrey Genovese woke up. A quick look around told him that he was in the infirmary. No one else was there at first until Landis Tipton walked in. After he turned the lights on, he thought better, and dimmed them back down. He checked Carbrey’s pupillary response, and his vitals. “You have taken a long time to recover. I’m ashamed to say that I was unable to heal you myself. The theory is that my ability works on atmospheric medical conditions. You suffered complications due to temporary exposure to the vacuum of outer space, which I’ve never had to heal before, therefore my ability did not know how. Still, that doesn’t explain why I can’t repair the nerve damage you suffered due to likely traumatic injury.” He shook his head in shame. “I’ll keep trying.”

“What happened?” Carbrey asked.

“It’s not my place to say.” Landis paused before going on, “I mean, it’s not that I’m not authorized. I’m not qualified to understand it. Khuweka, could you get in here please?” he asked through his comms device.

She appeared out of nowhere. “Mister Genovese, I’m glad to see that you’re awake. How are you feeling?”

“Confused,” Carbrey answered.

“That’s understandable, given your recent medical issues.”

“He asked for the story,” Landis relayed.

“Right.” Khuweka cleared her throat. “For reasons we still haven’t been able to piece together entirely, the Project Stargate probe was flying in the wrong direction. We successfully teleported around it, but instead of matching its vector, it just tore right through the back of the ship.”

“Casualties?” Cabrey asked.

She took a moment to respond. “Freya and Limerick didn’t make it. They shouldn’t have been standing so close.”

“You’re blaming them? This was my fault.”

“We do not believe that it was,” she said.

“It was my job to calculate the vector. I must have made a figure negative when it should have been positive, or something. Going the wrong way? Who does that?”

“We recorded three temporal energy signatures,” Khuweka began to explain. “It’s impossible to assign them to any particular temporal manipulation event, but we were only expecting one. Diamond Zek teleporting us to the probe was the only thing that we were going for, so what could the other two have been? My guess is that the probe was also altered, by some other party. We did detect that we were being followed. That was always a risk. If the Ochivari ever found out what we were trying to do, they could have gone to any extreme to stop it.”

“It wasn’t the Ochivari.” Another woman was in the room, who Carbrey did not recognize. Judging by the expression on Landis and Khuweka’s faces, neither did they.

“Who the hell are you?” Khuweka questioned, all tensed up.

“Sanaa Karimi. Who the hell are you?” she snapped back.

Khuweka relaxed. “Oh, you’re fine. How long have you been here, though?”

“Longer than you.” Sanaa had a bit of an attitude.

“Care to elaborate?”

“Not really.”

“She was in stasis.” Eliana walked in as well. “Diamond Zek finally picked her up when the primary power source on her pod faltered from the crash, and it reverted to the secondary. That split second power distribution anomaly tipped us off. Otherwise, we never would have found her.”

“Actually, it is I who found you,” Sanaa claimed. “Where do you think the ship came from in the first place? It was randomly shifting through time and space to escape the clutches of an evil trio from the future. They were tracking it the entire time, and it was running out of power. Its only hope was for me to fake its destruction, and command it to make one final jump. Unfortunately, the only jump that I was able to trigger was back to its underground hangar of origin, where you happened to be. Everything was fine there until you decided to take it out for a joyride, putting it back on the trio’s radar, allowing them to catch up to it. To you. To us.”

“I’ve never heard of an evil trio from the future,” Khuweka contended.

“You’ve not heard of everything,” Sanaa reasoned.

“What can we do now?” Eliana asked. “I assume they’re still after us.”

“They don’t care about you,” Sanaa explained. “They want this ship. It’s important to them, and they won’t stop looking for it. There’s only one place where it can survive, but if you take it there, there’s no coming back.”

“Unacceptable,” Khuweka determined, shaking her head, not even bothering to ask for specifics. “We have to stop the Ochivari. That is the only mission that matters.”

Sanaa sighed. “I’ve been reading your ethicist’s mind. She knows more about this than you believe. You expected to be able to pose any problem to her, and have her vomit a response, but you didn’t think she would do her due diligence? She’s been studying just as hard as Freya has with her engineering courses.”

“How long have you been out of stasis?” Khuweka questioned.

“You can read minds?” Carbrey asked, still lying back in his recovery bed.

Sanaa ignored them both. “The Ochivari are bulk travelers, and as you know, each brane operates on its own timestream. They have absolutely nothing to do with each other. You can leave 2337, and when you end up in the neighboring brane, it might be 2024. You didn’t travel back in time, you simply pierced the membrane at the spot where 2024 exists, because for the membrane, time is a spatial dimension.”

“Yes, I know all this,” Khuweka asserted.

“Then why were you under the impression that you could stop the Ochivari? They’re bulk travelers!” she reiterated. “Once you leave the universe you were born in, your existence becomes inherently locked in. You cannot be erased from the past. The best anyone could hope for would be to erase the timeline where you were from, but at worst, if you ever go back to your home universe, you’ll just end up in the new timeline. It’s irrelevant that you were never born there, because you were born there at one point. That cannot be undone anymore.”

Khuweka grimaced. Or she was horny. It was really hard to tell what a Maramon’s facial expressions meant. “Yeah, I was afraid of that.”

“This mission was never about stopping the Ochivari,” Sanaa said.

“What was it about?”

“It was about how great I am at timing big reveals,” Sanaa said cryptically. She stepped over to the smartwall, and masterfully transitioned it into a hull camera feed, making it appear as though it simply turned into a large viewport. A tiny ship appeared out of nowhere. “It was about making her.”

Khuweka went over to the wall, and opened a channel. “Unidentified vessel, please identify yourself.”

“Cormanu, this is the Strongbox. Please open an airlock for boarding. We come in peace. We have some mutual friends.”

Khuweka looked over at Sanaa, who nodded approvingly. Khuweka hesitated. “Zek, mauve alert. I don’t know if we should be trusting whoever the hell that is.”

They all teleported to the airlock, even Carbrey, who was placed in the future’s version of a wheelchair, though it had no wheels. It was electromagnetic, which allowed it to hover around thirty centimeters from the floor. He could steer it with a simple and intuitive joystick. The seat was soft and comfortable, and the cushions could conform to suit his needs as they changed. He was still in a lot of pain, and he couldn’t move his lower body, though he could still feel down there, particularly the pain. The autodoctor’s initial diagnosis was an incomplete spinal cord injury. He was immobilized, but not fully paralyzed. The prognosis was not yet available, but he may never walk again.

The mysterious little ship entered its side of the airlock, and waited for it to be pressurized. Once that was done, three people stepped out of it, and patiently waited for the hatch to open, which Khuweka was still reluctant to do. Sanaa rolled her eyes, and just opened it instead. “How did you know the co—oh, right; psychic.”

The three new strangers stepped through. One of them was a teenage girl. “My name is Treasure Hawthorne.” She didn’t say it with her mouth. A voice came out of a tiara-looking thing on her head. “I am Freya and Limerick Hawthorne’s daughter. This is my friend Rosalinda James, and my lover, Quina Velsteran.” She was horrified at herself. “I shouldn’t’ve said it like that. I’m sorry,” she said to him.

“It’s fine,” he replied.

“It’s just that we never really defined the relationship.”

“Really, Treasure, it’s fine. Let’s get back to business.”

“Right. Here’s the thing. I have my father’s ability, and each time I use it, I end up somewhere that has recently experienced its own bulk traveling event. At least that’s our theory. I think my body is seeking sources of bulk energy. I can’t figure out how to get home, even though I know for a fact that the Transit recently showed up there—”

“The Transit?” Khuweka asked, hope and excitement in her eyes. Or she was bored. Again, it was hard to tell. “Who’s piloting the Transit?”

“Azura.”

Khuweka’s eyes widened now. That had to be surprise. “She survived. Ho-ho-oh my God.” She stepped away to pace. “Azura is the founder of the Transit Army.”

“Uh, no, my mother is,” Treasure clarified.

“Right,” Khuweka accepted. “Because she’s alive. What happened to her?”

“I don’t have time for the full story,” Treasure said. “I need to get back to Voldisilaverse, and I think you can help, and I think that my power sent me here for a reason, because maybe there’s some sort of separate sentience to it. I’m rambling again, but the point is that I need to link up to your power-boosting platform.”

“Uh, power is limited,” Eliana chimed in. “This thing can barely hold life support online. We’re dead in the water, so nobody’s using the platform right now.”

“I can make it work,” Carbrey informed them.

“You are in no condition to do anything,” Landis countered.

“My brain is fine,” Carbrey argued. “I just need to be sitting while I do it.”

“I’m good with my hands,” Quino said. “You tell me what to do, and I’ll do it in your stead. Will that work?”

They all looked to Khuweka. “I am not a doctor,” she began, “nor Carbey himself. If you’re feeling up to it, you can go ahead, but Landis is in charge of your health, and he can override any decision you try to make in regards to the work that you perform. He has the power to bench you, which may mean getting some rest back in the infirmary. We’re time travelers, people. There is no such thing as urgency. Doctor Spellmeyer, please accompany them, and make sure that everyone is happy and safe. Treasure, Sanaa...you’re with me.” She walked off.

Diamond Zek teleported everyone to their stations. The three ladies were in Captain Kadrioza’s Strategy Room, which was just a fancy thing to call her office. She sat at her desk while the other two sat in the two opposing chairs. Eliana teleported in soon thereafter. “You are not needed here,” Khuweka told her.

“Yes...I am,” Eliana insisted. She stood by the door like a bodyguard. Back in her home universe, she underwent the same basic combat training that everyone in her agency received, but was never on the operative’s track, so there was only so much she would be able to do in the event of some kind of attack or altercation. Though with Limerick gone—and besides Khuweka herself, who was a nigh invincible alien—Eliana was the probably best fit for ad hoc ship security.

“Very well.” Khuweka cleared her throat. “I know you by reputation, Miss Karimi. Treasure, if you are who you say you are, I’m sure you’ll do great things. But trust is not something that I can just give away freely. This is a very delicate situation, and—”

“Captain, an unidentified ship approaches,” Kivi’s voice came in through the intercom. “It’s not responding to calls. We’ve begun evasive maneuvers.”

“That would be the trio,” Sanaa said confidently.

“Is that bad? That sounds bad,” Treasure guessed.

“Yes, it does, but as I was saying, you two arrived here unexpectedly. Maybe they too are friends, not foes.”

“They’re def foes,” Sanaa insisted. “You have to get out of here fast.”

“Zektene, do you have the power you need?” she asked, but the response was not vocal. They only enjoyed a psychic connection to Diamond Zek.

The two who had not yet formed a bond with her sat in silence, Treasure having no clue what was going on, since she could only recall so much of what her mother taught her about this ship, and her long-lost friends.

“No,” Khuweka shouted with her voice, but it was too late.

Zek transported Treasure next to the booster platform.

“Uhh, it’s only been a minute,” Quino told her. “Mister Genovese here hasn’t even finished explaining to me what it is exactly. We need to divert power first—”

“There’s no time for that.” She stepped onto the platform just as everyone else was appearing in the room.

“Don’t do this,” Khuweka ordered. “Zek, listen to me. Get her out of here.”

“I’m gonna get us all out of here,” Treasure contended. She placed her hands upon the handles, and closed her eyes tightly. She let the ship’s remaining power surge through her body, mixing with the bulk energy that was already metabolizing in there. Then she screamed the whole vessel into a different universe, hopefully leaving their pursuers behind.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 23, 2444

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Now that they had tested the refurbished reframe engine from a safe distance, it was time to test it while on board. They would continue to monitor the machine to make sure it held up, but that was something that they did every time they used it. They were just paying extra close attention in case there was a temporal component to the repairs. Perhaps ongoing stress would cause the nanofractures to reopen. They would never be completely safe, but then again, they never were at all in this line of business.

The speed of a ship equipped with this kind of technology was limited to roughly 707 times the speed of light, which means that they would always be able to travel a distance of 707 light years during their interim year. Making it back to the stellar neighborhood would take them 23 years, which for the team, was about three weeks. That was doable, but they were too busy for that. For one, they had to find a place to drop off Korali, and the rest of the staff of Ex-467, who nearly died due to their interference, and would have without their intervention. They needed a new place to live. It had to be nice and safe, but also had the chance of returning them to whatever worlds they originally came from, or just wanted to go to now. Korali said that the space station had a manifest, but she didn’t have a copy of it, because why would she? Perhaps someone in the Subdimensional Crucible happened to have it on them, but they could not interact with those people yet. Not until they were released would that be possible.

“Well, I’m not sure if I should say,” Korali began cryptically.

“Why wouldn’t you say it?”

“It’s dangerous,” Korali answered. “Well, I don’t mean there are monsters running around, or something, but as enemies of the state, you would not be welcomed there.”

“They don’t know who we are,” Ramses reminded them. He transformed himself into the likeness of 20th and 21st century actor, Misha Collins.

“That’s true,” Korali admitted, but she was still reluctant.

“It’s just an idea,” Leona said encouragingly. “We don’t have to take it, but we need to know what it is, so we have our options.”

“It’s Ex-18118,” Korali said.

“That’s not on my list,” Ramses said, pulling his handheld device out to check. “Plus, it breaks the three-digit convention.”

“You probably don’t have Ex-403 or Ex-404 on your list either,” Korali explained. “Wherever you got your intel it was probably from an ordinary citizen. Loyalists like I was have special knowledge. Ex-18118 is for Rest and Relaxation. On the occasion that we’re given leave from our duties, like between assignments, we can take it on Ex-18118. Regular people live there to support our needs, like vendors and sex workers, but the majority of the population are people like me who need a little time off to recharge.”

“So everyone there would hate us if they found out who we were,” Mateo figured.

“Then it’s the perfect place,” Leona decided. “No one will be looking for us. Everyone will literally have their guards down, and if it’s a hub for loyalists, they probably come from all over the Corridor, which means that we shouldn’t have to worry about people wondering why they don’t recognize us.”

“They still may ask you where you’re from,” Korali clarified. “You’ll need to know how to answer that question.” She sighed. “I would recommend Ex-420 or Ex-69. No one will ask any more questions if you say that, not even people who have worked at either of those places. It’s just not something you talk about. You’ll need to know what to wear, and how to act, though.”

Korali showed Ramses where Ex-18118 was. It actually wasn’t too far from Ex-42, which again, no longer mattered. They could cross the span of the entire Goldilocks Corridor in a day from their perspective. Still, they were considering going there next. Before they engaged reframe speeds, she described the Ex-420 uniforms, which literally had an image of a marijuana leaf on them, so that was fun to program into the industrial synthesizers. While those were working, she taught them how 420 staff members behaved, which was odd, to say the least. They were hardened and imposing, but also high all the time, because they were around so much smoke? It was confusing to learn, but it sounded easier than figuring out how to pretend to be Ex-69ers, who were also overserious, but at the same time, too horny to be professional.

While the smart people were discussing the plan with the dimensional box, Mateo pulled Korali aside for a personal conversation. “How do you feel?”

“I’m okay,” Korali answered. “I don’t have any problems with stasis. Some people do, but you use better technology anyway.”

“I don’t mean that, though that is nice to hear. I mean, you’ve been behind enemy lines for a while now. Going down to this planet is your chance to return to your life, but it’s also a chance to...screw us over. If you were planning on doing that, I wouldn’t expect you to warn me, but I feel I would be remiss if I didn’t attempt to ask.”

She smiled softly, and kept looking forward. “In December of 1943, during what your people refer to as World War II, two enemy pilots named Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler encountered each other on the battlefield. Brown’s aircraft was too damaged to continue fighting, but instead of destroying him, Stigler escorted him to safety. Decades later, long after the animosities from the war had passed, the two of them reunited, and became true friends. I don’t know if you and I are going to reunite in 47 years, but I know that I’m going to show you compassion now. You saved those people on the space station when you didn’t have to. I still believe that the Oaksent is a good man, but I no longer believe that you’re not. For now, that’s just going to have to be enough.”

Mateo smiled back. “I understand, and appreciate it.”

Leona came up to them. “We’re ready. Korali, you need to get in your stasis pod. It’s going to be longer than half a day for you this time, and you won’t be allowed out until we let you.”

“I get it,” Korali replied respectfully.

Once the Vellani Ambassador arrived at the outer edge of the system, it turned invisible, and parked itself on a long-period comet. Ramses had programmed the exterior hologram to make them look like a standard recreational shuttle from Ex-420, but they didn’t want anyone to find it during their interim year, regardless of what it looked like. When they returned to the timestream in 2444, they released Korali from her stasis pod to go over the plan one more time, and then they got dressed, and began to cover the rest of the distance at subfractional speeds.

Their reputation preceded them, even though no one knew who they were. Just dropping down to the surface of the planet with those three big numbers on the side of their hull practically parted the sea for them. No one asked them for verification, or to register with an intake officer. They could presumably do whatever they wanted here, and no one would try to stop them. One thing they apparently weren’t allowed to do, however, was land in a remote area of the planet. There were satellites and ground stations positioned all around the globe. This was to ensure that no one tried to stay here for the rest of the lives when they were supposed to go back to their work eventually. Besides, that wouldn’t do them any good, because the whole point was to help the survivors of Ex-467 return to those lives. The team was just going to be really far away when that happened. So they did need to be away from the population centers, just not too far away. They couldn’t teleport, though, because that could be tracked.

They stopped at the hotel to check in, which basically involved them showing those three special numbers on the shoulders of their uniforms, and providing the clerk with false names. They spent a couple hours in their suite before claiming to be going on a leisurely stroll in the arboretum. That’s exactly what they did, except that there was nothing leisurely about it. They walked as fast as they could, and even ran a little, though Korali found it difficult to keep up, since her body was not enhanced. Mateo actually carried her part of the way, because they wanted to get really far from anyone else. The survivors would eventually make their way back, but not too quickly.

Several hours later, they were roughly forty kilometers away. They were far enough away, in fact, that no one who suddenly woke up here would have any particular reason to suspect that their best hope of finding civilization lay in the east. This was a good place to drop them off, even though they could have gone farther. The weather was calm here, and the environment felt safe. A beautiful clear pond provided them with a source of freshwater, and Korali said that a lot of these plants were edible. They were looking for a cave to sort of maybe encourage the survivors to dig in for the night, but they were liable to do that either way, which was why they chose to land the Vellani on this side of the planet, because night was falling soon anyway.

“Do you have your story straight?” Leona asked Korali.

“Yes. I managed to get into an escape pod as soon as I heard the alarm go off in the warehouse. I left so quickly that I didn’t even hear the announcement to head for the mess hall. The blastwave of a secondary explosion that the Lucius bomb triggered struck my pod, and knocked me unconscious. I’ve been surviving in stasis ever since until the Oaksent dispatched a rescue team to search for survivors. They ordered me to come here to Ex-18118 to give the survivors one year to rest and recuperate. I then decided that it was best to let them out of the Subdimensional Crucible away from the nearest hotel to avoid inundating them with questions right after they were released.”

“Are you okay with lying?” Marie asked.

“It won’t be my first time,” Korali acknowledged, obviously never intending to elaborate. She carefully took the Crucible from Ramses. It was still in the giant suitcase that they used to conceal it from others. She set it on the ground and opened it up to use the microscope. “They’re all right. They’ll be all right.” She stood back up. “Who knows what’s happened to them, though? They’ve had years to form a new society. Your supply drops have surely helped, but they could be anybody.”

“You know how to contact us,” Leona reminded her.

Korali tapped the comms device secretly implanted behind her ear.

“We’ll see each other again, Mateo said confidently.” He took her in a hug. “Hopefully we won’t have to wait a whole 47 years for it.”

“Agreed. I’ll probably be dead by then.”

They left her alone, and made their way towards the hotel. Running at full speed this time, they were back in less than four hours. They relaunched just before midnight.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 22, 2443

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With their advanced substrates, the team was capable of surviving any number of harsh environments, but that wasn’t something that they were going to seek out on purpose. It was really only something they should use when they had no other choice, and this wasn’t such a case; it was a test. The reframe engine was ready, but there was still a chance that it would vaporize the whole ship upon initiation of reframe speeds. So they didn’t want to be anywhere near it when they first turned it on. Ramses created an interfacing computer, which would allow him to operate the Vellani Ambassador from Ex-382, where it was safer. It wasn’t safe, per se, because the world itself was dangerous in its own special way, but it was manageable for a period of time since they were staying within the self-contained atmosphere of their pocket dimension, and because they had vacuum suits for excursions.

The entire surface of Ex-382 was a toxic wasteland. No one lived here, and hopefully they never did. They at least didn’t detect any signs of civilization here, except for the piles and piles of garbage. It was all over the place, randomly strewn about. The smell was unbearable, even here at the South Pole, where there wasn’t as much as there was elsewhere. This wasn’t just a planet-wide landfill. They dumped truly dangerous materials here, namely radioactive waste. By the time the ship Extremus was built, fusion power was ubiquitous and unremarkable, which meant that Bronach Oaksent would have been able to utilize it as soon as he went back in time, and began to build his empire in the Goldilocks Corridor. There should be no real reason for him to make any plans that included nuclear fission power plants. It was a perfectly fine alternative for Earth during its developmental years, but when one was starting from scratch, it just didn’t make much sense.

One of the hardest obstacles to overcome when pursuing fusion and antimatter solutions to energy needs was manufacturing the stuff. It didn’t exactly grow on trees. That was why it took so long for these both to be adopted, even when power generation techniques were perfected. Mining fissile elements was not easy, but it was relatively straightforward. Hydrogen was the lightest element in the universe, which was why it literally floated away, making it difficult to capture, and even to store. Still, Oaksent was an immortal who came from the future, and had untold time to formulate his new civilization. Using resources to maintain the infrastructure for nuclear fission production was probably only done as yet another form of control over his people. He didn’t have to use it, but making people labor away in the mines, in the plants, and on the ships that brought all the waste here, was keeping everyone reliant on him, and not letting them be too happy. He didn’t like happy people. That much was clear from whatever psychological profile they could cook up in their collective headcanons. He wasn’t dumping the waste on the planets where people lived at least. That should also be in his profile, that he didn’t want his people to die; not prematurely anyway.

“Ugh, I can still smell it,” Marie noted.

“Switch off your olfactory receptors,” Ramses instructed. He was tweaking the interface system, making sure that he was linked to every single system on board the Ambassador, no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential.

“That...what? That’s something we can do?” she questioned.

“Did no one read the manual?” Ramses asked with a sigh.

“Be careful,” Leona warned Marie, and the rest of the team currently present. Smell is highly linked to breathing, and also serves the evolutionary purpose of alerting you to smells that could lead to death. Don’t keep it off all the time. You may still get sick, and just not know it.”

“So...” Marie pressed.

“You can shut it off right now because of the smell,” Leona allowed. “I would lock up our suits, but we have to keep them close and accessible in case of emergency. Just remember to turn it back on once we live. I’ll remember to clean and disinfect the suits thoroughly later.”

“I’ll do that,” Mateo volunteered. “You have more important concerns to worry over, Captain.”

“Did you guys know that Earth is 70% water? I’ve never seen that much water in my life.” Korali was still reading about Earth from the central archives, and had come to the conclusion that all of these simple facts were not likely to be lies that the team made up in order to brainwash her, but that it was the other way around. They were trying to show her what the galaxy was really like, and even though she had by no means switched sides already, she was starting to accept that some of the things that she was brought up to believe were not entirely—or maybe not at all—accurate.

“Hmm. You’re right,” Mateo realized. “The worlds that we’ve gone to have been mostly barren, with fairly little water. The resort world had the most, but they were nowhere near the levels of Earth from the orbital images that I’m remembering.”

“More control,” Leona guessed. She was spraying an air purifier on their suits to mask some of the terrible smell until they could be fully detailed.

“I’m ready,” Ramses announced. “What about the backup?” Leona asked him.

“It’s been coded, and will only take a year to manufacture,” he answered.”

“The pod is fueled?”

Ramses laughed. “It’s fine. It’ll get us into space. I wouldn’t let us go into this half-prepared.” The dimensional generator was attached to one of the personal pods. These were capable of traveling through a star system in a matter of months, and landing on an orbital, maybe to refuel hydrogen levels, or to manufacture other structures, or just to wait for rescue. They weren’t really designed to launch from the surface of a massive terrestrial planet, but they were technically capable of it. It would use nearly its entire reserve of isotopes to make it happen, but it was better than staying here if the Vellani Ambassador was destroyed during the test. Ramses planned to install teleporters on them, but that would also require temporal batteries or something, because they didn’t use any less fusion power than the rocket equation demanded for a regular launch, so it wasn’t like that solved the problem. Hopefully, the test of the reframe engine would go perfectly, and none of this would matter.

“I appreciate all of your hard work,” Leona told him. “It does not go unnoticed. Go ahead and start the countdown.”

Ramses switched on all of the camera feeds, including the satellite that they had dropped out to watch the event from the outside. He started counting down from eleven, hovering his hand over the button. Everyone held their breath, including Korali, who managed to peel herself away from her studies long enough to bear witness. “Three, two, one, max.”

The ship disappeared in a flash of light. They all looked at the other views now, which were coming in from the interior. The bridge looked perfectly normal, and was completely intact. The corridors and rooms were all still fine. The camera from the engine room was a problem at first, which prevented everyone from exhaling. It was showing them snow for the first several seconds until the spatio-temporal distortion resettled, and the image returned to normal. The engine was holding as it was meant to. It was vibrating at an incredibly high frequency; so high, in fact, that it was imperceptible to human vision, even with these advanced eyes that they had. If the ship was going to vaporize, it should have done it by now due to the immense stress that these intense oscillations were causing the machine to experience. Still, they wanted to be sure that the nanosealant was permanent, and not merely holding temporarily.

For the next three hours, the Ambassador flew away from them, managing to make it out about 15,000 astronomical units. The engine then shut off for an hour while an army of microbots spread all over the engine to check for nanofractures. Leona knew exactly where the original ruptures were. If the bots found these to have returned, the smart ones here would know that the sealant hadn’t fully worked. If they found new ruptures, that would tell them that there was some kind of systemic issue that might not be repairable by what they had, or by any efforts at all. By this time, most of the group had begun to breathe again. Mateo and Marie occupied their time teaching Korali how to play RPS 101 Plus. Ramses worked on other projects while he kept an eye on the quantum data coming through from the diagnostics. Leona proverbially held her breath the whole time as she focused on nothing but the data. It was her only concern. If this wasn’t successful, they could build a new ship, but their plan to free the people of the Corridor from its despot would have to be placed on hold indefinitely until they regathered resources.

“How’s it lookin’?” Marie asked after their game was over, and Mateo’s sponge was finally too bigged by her wall.

“I think we’ll be safe. We’ll know in another four hours,” Leona answered. The ship would make the three-hour trip back here, and then go through the whole diagnostic process all over again. Only then could they leave for their next stop.

“Good,” Mateo decided, still bitter about losing the game. “I’m ready to go.”

“Did y’all know that something called a cow has four stomachs?” Korali asked.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 21, 2442

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Half a day into the trip that the Vellani Ambassador was programmed to go on, getaway driver Mateo returned to the timestream in 2441 to find the guard who recognized their charade awake, and sitting patiently in hock. “Report,” she said.

“We’ve been on a relativistic journey,” Mateo explained. “It’s been about twelve hours for us, but a whole year for everyone else.”

“Why?”

“It’s all part of the plan,” he answered cryptically.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

Mateo nodded, and prepared himself for the role of a couple lifetimes. He was still wearing his disguise, and hoping that she wouldn’t recognize him as the famous Mateo Matic of Team Matic. Some of the intel that Vitalie!613 gathered was paramount to their mission, while some of it was just anecdotal. She wasn’t interrogating the people on the resort world. She was simply getting to know them, and secretly logging everything that they said in case the team needed it later. One vacationer had a story to tell about how lucky she felt to end up at the resort after everything that happened to the rest of her family. Mateo recalled this story, and reworked it for this lie, embellishing certain parts for dramatic effect. “When I was a very young child, my parents were taken by the Empire. They wore uniforms much like yours. I remember the smell. I think they had just been involved in a fire, because they were sort of woody and rusty. I don’t know how else to explain it. I still don’t know what my parents did to deserve that, because no one will tell me. No one cares.

“For a long time, it was just me and my brother. We took care of each other. Honestly, I couldn’t even tell you which one of us was older. We didn’t really keep track of those kinds of things on my planet. Our cousin was around too, but he had all these responsibilities, so we rarely saw him. When my brother was still pretty young, he was killed in a factory accident. This could have been prevented if again, anyone cared about such petty worries as working conditions. If there’s one thing I’ve learned living under the loving Exin Empire it’s that life is profoundly undervalued. I grew angry. I stopped going to my own job, and started to steal what I needed; never from people who didn’t deserve it. I mean people like you. For years, they couldn’t catch me, until they did. I ended up 666, and that’s when my eyes were opened. I was a criminal. I broke society’s rules; the ones that ought to indeed be rules. For most people there, though, their only crime was disagreeing with the state. Your messiah, Bronach Oaksent, he’s a liar. Everything he’s ever said is just a misdirect. If he says he loves you, he hates you. If he says he wants to help people, he wants to hurt them. I don’t know what made him like this, but his reign of terror is over. Ex-666 has been freed...and we’re comin’ for him.”

The guard stood up from her bunk, and approached the bars. She wrapped her fingers around two of them, two at a time, like it was an intimidating dance. “How will you ever hope to defeat him, sir,” she began before a long pause for her own dramatic effect that ended with, “when you only exist for one day every year?”

Goddammit, that whole speech was a waste of time. Maybe he could save it? “What are you talking about?”

“Drop the act, Mister Delaney. I figured out who you were while I was knocked unconscious. Thanks for that, by the way. I was just telling my partner the other day how I wished for a little more brain damage.”

“There will be no permanent damage. We have medical treatment here.”

She stuck her face between the bars now, as far as she could go, stretching the skin on her face like a botched cosmetic surgery patient. “I’m going to be alone in here for the rest of my life. You’ve killed people, but you don’t execute them. You can’t let me go, because I know who you are, and I’ll tell anyone I meet that you have illusion powers now. A lifetime for me will be a couple of months for you.”

“If you knew that we might do that,” Mateo began, “why didn’t you lean into the lie? Why did you admit that you recognized me?”

“Because unlike you, I don’t like to lie. Maybe you and my messiah aren’t so different after all?”

Mateo wrapped his own hands around the same bars, just above hers, and placed his face a centimeter away from hers. “Maybe we’re not. The difference is that I only live for one day a year, and he’s been around for thousands of years. My ability to rule over you would be severely limited. So which is the lesser of two evils? And if immortality is possible, why are you so scared of death?”

She pulled her head back a little, so she could move her eyelids enough to narrow them at him. “What would society look like if no one ever died?”

“Why don’t you ask Earth? They figured it out, as did everyone in The Parallel.”

“Mateo, we’re gonna have to teleport!” Leona cried through comms. “Stop darklurking, and spark a flare! Don’t dock with the station! Just stay within range!”

He tilted his head away, and tapped his comms disc to indicate that he wasn’t talking to the guard anymore. “Understood.” He reached over to the button that would drop the blast door over the bars so no one else would know that he abducted a hostage.

“Wait,” she said. “The Oaksent isn’t the only one who can be immortal?”

A year later, after the whole team, and nearly everyone else, was rescued from the now completely vaporized Ex-467, the Vellani Ambassador was in the middle of another bottle episode. The next planet was within a light year away, but they were holding off on it so that Leona and Ramses could see if they could fix the reframe engine with something that they stole from the tech warehouse. “How come you don’t already have something like this?” Olimpia asked. She was twirling the topological modulating umbrella. “No offense.”

While Ramses ran simulations, Leona was scanning the nanofractures in the reframe engine, making sure that she had them all cataloged, so they didn’t miss a one. She didn’t want to apply the sealant until she knew exactly where it needed to go. The machine was built out of a metal-metamaterial composite that was practically indestructible. Obviously it wasn’t actually indestructible, though, or they wouldn’t be in this mess. This was always a possibility, however unlikely. And this antintropic nanosealant was going to help them fix it, as long as every spot was addressed. Missing even one could spell disaster for them. She didn’t pry her eyes from her work. “We never anticipated it, and until now, I had never heard of a solution to a problem such as this. The nanosealant, as long as it’s not a hoax, shouldn’t just fill in the fractures. A regular nanosealant would mimic the molecular structure of the target material to fill in the gaps that formed, but that would come with risk, because of possible imperfections that develop during the process, as well as impurities. The original molecules have since been lost when the structure was first damaged. What this sealant apparently does is summon those molecules from wherever they are in spacetime, and place them back where they belong. A normal human scientist would call that impossible, but of course we know better.”

“Well, why wouldn’t you at least have had the regular sealant?” Olimpia pressed.

“I don’t know. It’s not my ship, we took it from someone else. We had something useful in the AOC, but we ran out of it a long time ago. The reframe engine is one of the strongest objects out there so it can survive the stress of full operation. It was obviously well ahead of time when Hokusai designed it. It can also be protected by the overlying structure of its vessel, because it’s not a propulsive drive, so it requires minimal contact with the exterior. What this all means is that if the reframe engine is damaged, so is probably everything else, rendering repairs essentially pointless to attempt. It’s also important to note that I’m not in love with the design of this ship. It’s not as protected as it should be, which we might be able to fix given enough time. I think that Mirage just wanted to create more living space for its passengers, which is not a problem for us, since we prefer to live in pocket dimensions anyway.”

“You think that you can actually rebuild this thing with a new design?”

“Maybe,” Leona said. This was when she took a break, and looked at her conversation partner. “Are you playing with that?”

“It’s fine, it’s not even open,” Olimpia defended.

“Are you sure that that’s how it works, it has to be open? Rather, are you sure that it doesn’t do anything while it’s closed?”

Olimpia cautiously set the umbrella on the table. “Yeah, you’re right. Ram should study it first. I don’t even know what I’m still doing with it.”

“Well, it’s yours,” Leona reasoned.

“How do you figure? I stole it from the vault.”

“Yeah, that makes it yours,” Leona insisted. “We’re certainly not going to try to give it back any more than I’m gonna give this sealant back.”

“I know we weren’t going to do that, but...mine? Really?”

“Absolutely! We’ll even name it after you. Let me think on that.”

Ramses walked into the room. “I already have. It’s the Sangster Canopy.”

“You can’t name it after me,” Olimpia contended. “Like I said, I just stole it. You’re acting like it’s the HG Goggles, or the Rothko Torch.”

“Not all temporal objects are named after the people who created them,” Ramses explained. “Jayde Novak stole the Jayde Spyglass too.”

Olimpia frowned just a little, embarrassed at the thought of being happy that her name and reputation may one day precede her. She didn’t want to seem so egotistical. “I dunno...”

Ramses shrugged. “I’m thinking about calling the thing that I stole the Motherbox.”

“No,” Leona and Olimpia rejected in unison, as did Marie who happened to be passing by in the hallway.

He smirked, having hoped to get a rise out of them for that. “I came in here for a reason. Take a break, there’s something you should see.

Leona followed him to the security room, and then went to find Mateo, who just so happened to be exactly where she needed to talk to him. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

“Um. Your hair looks nice. Did you go to the salon this morning?”

“Matty.”

“You were right, I was wrong, I’m sorry,” he recited.

“Matt. Say it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She pursed her lips, deciding that she was going to have to drive the conversation. “Why are the hock blast doors down?” She looked over at them.

“These are doors? Huh, interesting. And we have a hock?”

“This is a diplomatic detachment, originally designed to serve the needs of two competing parties. Yes, there’s a hock. You know that, and you put someone in there. And you thought I wouldn’t find out, because of the blast doors, and because I don’t have much reason to come back here. But you forgot one thing...do you know what it is, Mateo?”

“Did Ramses figure out how to make us psychic?”

“The security cameras still run.”

“Oh. Right.”

“It’s been a year, and we weren’t traveling at relativistic speeds. I hope you programmed a stasis pod for her, or she’s gonna be dead when we open it. I didn’t watch enough of the footage to find out.”

“I’m not a total idiot,” Mateo replied. “Yes, she was in stasis for the year.”

“Why did you put her in there?” Leona questioned.

“Well, I couldn’t hide her on the station, could I?” Mateo argued. “She would be found by the time we finished the heist, and the whole plan would fall apart.”

“It wouldn’t have,” she contended. “They could have spent months looking for us, and would never find anything, because we weren’t in the timestream anymore. A year later, we would have come back, but they would not have expected anything. Their guard would be lowered.”

“Not true. She knows who we are. She knows that we are Team Matic. She’s really smart, you’d like her.”

“Well, I didn’t know that she would figure that part out.”

“I think you meant to say, thank you, husband. You made the right call.”

Leona rolled her eyes, and walked past him to punch in the code for the blast doors. The guard was sitting on her bunk, leaning against the wall behind her, and staring at the one in front of her. “Report.”

“May 21, 2442,” Leona answered. How are you feeling?”

“Physically fine, socially unstimulated, emotionally scattered, and psychologically disturbed. How are you?”

Leona took a couple beats. “I’m fine.”

“Great,” the guard sarcasticated.

“I’m sorry this happened to you. This was not our intention. We didn’t want anyone to get hurt. I don’t think I’ll ever convince you that Oaksent is not the savior that you’ve been indoctrinated to believe him to be. I could try to tell you my side of the story, like how he destroyed a gas giant from light years away just so he could kill everyone living on the moon orbiting it, but I’m sure you would just argue that they were heathens who deserved it. I could show you footage from the world that kept people as slaves, or the one whose only purpose it is to suffer countless attacks from the military outpost. I could show you the numbers from Ex-811, where all food is grown and raised, which proves that resources are being distributed unfairly, and according to Bronach’s own personal whims. He starves people on purpose to keep them dependent on him. But none of this is going to resonate with you, because he’s taught you that he knows the way, and there is no other. There are, of course; many other ways, but you’ll never see them, because they don’t match your impression of reality as he has forced you to trust without question.”

“Prove it,” the guard spit.

“I’ll try,” Leona agreed. “I’ll get you a tablet with a copy of the central archives, so you can start learning what he’s been lying to you about. But first, what’s your name?”

“Korali.”

“It was nice to meet you, Korali.”

“Was it?”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 18, 2439

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It took a little time, but Olimpia managed to find where Vitalie!811’s stasis pod was buried. It wasn’t hard to convince her to play the role of a new executive hire for this world. Before she started sending her alternate selves to all the inhabited planets in the universe, she underwent extensive training to learn how to blend in with any culture. She could become whatever type of person she needed to be to complete the mission, like a foreign spy on Earth. She even knew how to make disguises to keep from blowing her cover, which was good, because no one on the team knew how to give their illusion powers to others through new temporal objects. It was a thing, they knew this much, but it was a skill that they would have to learn later, and find someone to practice on.

In the meantime, Ramses figured out how to reverse engineer the comms discs, so they could give one to Vitalie!811. They were probably going to keep doing this on each world. The network was as complex as any, and far more secure. The various Vitalies could stay in contact with each other too if they wanted, leaving the team out of it altogether. If they met other people in the future who could be trusted, they could join the network as well. They would have to be kept separate, though. Members of the team should always be able to tap into their respective conversations, without these hypothetical people being able to do it to the team. The team network, the Vitalie network, and the trusted outsider network: same same, but different. Ramses would have to work on that, along with the million other projects he had on his plate right now.

Today, they were on a break. The nearest system to Ex-811 was nearly two light years away, which meant their relativistic ship had not yet arrived. They were just flying through space, with not much to do yet. It was going to be a bottle episode.

“That’s not true,” Angela contended. “We know where we’re going; we know what’s there, so let’s prepare for it. Let’s make a real plan for once.”

“Or we could stop,” Marie countered.

“If we were to stop,” Angela replied, “we would still have time to do what I said, because we’re still in the middle of nowhere.”

“There’s something else that needs to be done,” Marie insisted, which we may be able to assist with. Leona?”

Leona was preoccupied with something, and not paying them any attention. “Huh? What’s that?”

“What was that thing we were talking about this morning, which needed to be fixed, but we can’t do it while we’re at fractional speeds?” Marie pressed.

“Oh, the reframe engine, yeah, it’s cracked.” Leona held up her tablet, but didn’t bother showing them the screen. “I’m running simulations on it now.”

“So maybe we can stop and do that?” Marie suggested.

“Oh, no, not here,” Leona clarified. “No, we don’t have what we need. Besides, that’s not what requires being at drifting speeds or lower. The testing is what demands it, but we can’t test it unless we seal that crack, or just replace the whole engine.”

“Can we replace the engine?” Olimpia questioned. “Do they have one here?”

Leona did the Indian head bobble. “They have reframe tech, yes. Do they have one that specifically fits the Vellani Ambassador? I sure as hell hope not, because I don’t want them to know anything about it. It would just be easier to fabricate it if we had access to parts and equipment that’s used to make them.”

“Where can we find that?” Marie asked. “The dockyard, Ex-741 was destroyed.”

“Well, we know that they build some ships on Ex-182 too, according to Vitalie!324’s intel, as well as the rebels on Ex-666. In fact, we believe that some more advanced tech is kept there, since it’s so heavily protected. We specifically avoided it because it’s probably the absolute most dangerous one, and we decided that Niobe and the Ex-666ers would be responsible for it. If we wanted to go there instead, it would be a pretty long detour. We kind of sidestepped it.”

“No, I don’t think we should do that,” Olimpia reasoned. “You’re right, that sounds entirely too dangerous to so much as approach, even with my ability to turn invisible.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Angela decided. “We’re already on our way to Ex-467. That should be all we’re thinking about right now.”

“What’s there to think about?” Marie poses. “It’s a warehouse that holds secrets.” She threw up airquotes. “The person from there who Vitalie!324 spoke to barely told her anything about it. He either doesn’t know, or didn’t wanna say. There’s no way for us to prepare for that. All we can do is wait until we get there to see what’s what.”

“I think we’re going to have to break into it,” Angela posited. “Between the six of us, we have lots of experience breaking in and out of places, so let’s formulate some strategies ahead of time. They probably have one of those teleportation dampening field things, or whatever they were called. We need to be prepared for that. How does this ship do with surface landings? Do we have a shuttle? Escape pods?”

“We know all the answers to these things,” Leona said.

“Great,” Angela retorted. “Who’s we? You and Ramses? I’m saying that we all need to talk about it, so everyone understands what we have at our disposal. If we’re about to do a heist, I want to be as prepared as possible, so when we finally do get there, we’ll already know what tools are in our toolbag.”

“Okay, okay, okay. That’s fair,” Leona recognized. “And you’re right that it’s more pressing. I’ll stop what I’m doing, and give you the grand tour. We probably should have been more focused on that before, we just had so much going on. Once we’ve done that, we can talk about the techniques we have to get in and out of places. We can’t rest on our laurels with our special powers, because they may not work everywhere, especially not in a place that’s designed to be off-limits.”

“Let’s start with the reframe engine,” Marie recommended.

And so Leona started to show the majority of the team around, including a disgruntled Mateo, who was desperately trying to practice his illusion skills. He never thought he would be as good as any of the others, but he needed to be good enough to fool an enemy. Ramses wasn’t there, of course, because he already knew all of this stuff, and he had plenty of work to do in his lab. They spent hours on this, but it wasn’t boring for most. Leona was so articulate and informative with her lessons, it was as if she had known that this would be requested, and had rehearsed it. But that was a sign of being a true authority on something. She knew it so well, talking about it was an effortless task.

She went over the basic specifications of this reframe engine, which was more fuel efficient than any they had used until now. She also explained why it couldn’t be used, even though the crack running down the side was almost imperceptible to the human eye. She showed them the multipurpose pods, which could be used for stasis, virtual reality uplink, emergency escape, or even just sleeping. She took them to the bridge, where there were hidden compartments that Mirage had to give them access to. There were a few weapons here, but the vessel itself was not armed for space combat. Nor did anyone ever want it to be. As decided, that was the Ex-666 rebellion’s job. They had come full circle now, back to the Delegation Hall. This was modular, able to be modified to different sizes and configurations, but at full size, it took up the majority of the space on the vessel. After all, that was why it was called the Vellani Ambassador in the first place. This was all part of a larger vessel. Mirage thought that it had the potential to be used for diplomatic discussions and heated arguments between warring parties, and she wanted to be able to have it separate from everything else. The Mediator Stateroom was the only one fit for personal living here, designated for a peacemaker to be able to separate themselves from the factions while remaining close by. The team still needed the dimensional generator for their own living quarters, affixed to a door what was otherwise a storage closet.

“You may have noticed that we can walk all the way through on either side of this room, as well as above and below. It’s in the exact center of the Ambassador, and there are no viewports. This was done for strategic reasons as much as for symmetry, in order to protect parties from an external attack from one side or the other. These windows you see here are not real, but displaying the feed from exterior cameras. They can just as easily be changed to display an ocean view...” She hit a button on the remote to prove it. “...or a TV show, if you wanted.” She hit another button to reveal an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which was famous for its many, many diplomatic storylines. “So if you’re bored, you—”

Before Leona could finish her sentence, four people appeared out of nowhere. She recognized them, as did Mateo, but Angela, Marie, and Olimpia did not. It was Goswin Montagne, Holly ‘Weaver’ Blue, Eight Point Seven, and Briar de Vries. The last time they saw this group, an older roster of Team Matic was leaving Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida in the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the same time that these four were going in the opposite direction in the X González. Goswin held his hands up, almost defensively, but more so confusedly. “What year is it? I mean...report! I keep forgetting to say report!”

“It’s 2439,” Leona replied. “May 18,” she added.

“How the hell is that man alive?” Briar asked accusingly, pointing at Mateo.

“Don’t worry about it,” Mateo replied. Briar was the one who killed Mateo the first time. Well, technically Horace Reaver killed Mateo in a completely different timeline, but that didn’t count, because any number of others could have done it in any other of the infinite timelines that came before, of which they were not cognizant.

Briar’s volume increased by the syllable. “No, I am going to worry about it, because if you’re alive, then that means I didn’t kill you, which means I’m exonerated!”

“I suppose that’s true,” Mateo admitted.

Briar was fuming now, back to a lowered volume, but still intensely threatening. “Oh my God, you have been alive this entire time? You understand how they have been treating me? You need to tell them to leave me alone. I don’t have to power The Nucleus anymore. I don’t have to stop the Reality Wars, because I don’t care! I am free! I’m free!” He paused for half a moment. “And I’m out of here!”

“No, wait!” Goswin cried, but it was too late. All four of them disappeared just as quickly as they had arrived.

Leona winced. “That was weird.”

“Hold on,” Marie said, looking around fearfully. “Where’s my sister?” She was right. Angela was gone too now.

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