Microstory 2791: He’s Being Paranoid, No One is Coming

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Jande bolts. He does not wait to see who shows bloodthirst in their eyes. He does not ask questions, or hope to hear other people’s questions. He just takes off, needing to put as much distance between him and anyone who might want to see him dead. Van and the producers are truly sick, not only allowing deaths to occur, but actively encouraging murder. How are they getting away with this? Killing is illegal in the stellar neighborhood, and very illegal on the Core Worlds. It might be a clue that people aren’t really dying, or an old law is so ironclad that it’s a loophole no one can argue against. Either way, he just wants to survive. Even if it means he’ll never be Superintendent, he would rather at least keep living.

They’re still in the vector stadium, though it’s empty of its audience. Everyone is watching at home now. There is almost certainly plenty of smart dust tracking his every move. He doesn’t have the equipment to destroy it. It’s part of the competition, seeing him make it through...or not. He makes it out of the stadium, though. He isn’t looking back because it will only slow him down for precious fractions of a second. If someone catches up to him, there is no point in seeing it coming.

Jande is in the parking lot now. It’s pretty dead, but there are a few random ancient land vehicles scattered about. They may have placed them here strictly for ambiance, which could mean they’re non-functional. But they could also be the means of widening that gap between him and his opponents. But which one to choose? He doesn’t know much about obsolete Earthan tech, but some of these look nicer than others, which implies they would be faster. Is that a trap? Should he choose the boxy-looking one with peeling paint? Or did the producers guess that he would pick that, so they intentionally discharged the battery. Do these damn things even run on electricity?

Oh, it’s a crapshoot. Now he does turn around, but immediately feels a shiver down his spine. Since he didn’t stick around, he doesn’t know if Van provided the other candidates with weapons. They could have bows and arrows, guns, or even rocket launchers. He has no clue. His only hope has not changed since the moment Van said go. Jande has to let his instincts take over, and pick a car without thinking about it.

He runs over to a sweet cherry ride. The door is unlocked, which is either very good for him, or the trap he was worried about. Nope, it doesn’t matter. Always forward, never back. He slides inside. It feels so good, the seat wraps around him perfectly, like the designer knew he would be the one to drive it. Maybe they did. Who knows how long they have been planning? Even if this is a real model from the olden days, the producers could have commissioned a synthwright to modify it, knowing he would be right here, right now. Again, it doesn’t matter. He just needs to make it go. How do you do that?

Jande stares at the console before him. There aren’t any buttons or levers. It’s just a smooth, curved surface. He looks to his left. “Oh. That makes sense.”

Jande climbs back out of the car, takes another look towards the stadium, feels another shiver, then jogs over to get into the driver’s side of the vehicle.

“Welcome to your new Starburst,” the AI voice says in what he has heard described as an Australian accent. “Where would you like to navigate to? Or if you would like, you may browse Aevum’s comprehensive library of entertain—”

“Just get me out of here as fast as you can,” Jande interrupts.

“Posted speed limits require that I travel no faster than ten miles per—”

“Manual mode,” Jande demands.

“Sir, I really must discourage—”

“Manual mode!” Jande screams.

The engine engages. The steering wheel adjusts itself to Jande’s dimensions. A little graphic tutorial appears on the central screen, showing him the basics of how to operate it. It’s not all that different from the vehicles he uses on the farm. The pedals are new, but they look intuitive. And when he presses down on one of them with his right foot, it feels so intuitive too. It feels like this car has been waiting for him since it was invented. It doesn’t even lurch. It knows exactly what he wants from it, even though he’s quite inexperienced. He starts out by taking it a little slow, but he can’t afford to wait much longer. He takes one more look in the rearview mirror, and then he guns it.

He finds the parking lot exit to the main road, and then the highway. They don’t have much infrastructure like this anymore, but if you’re looking for it, the early colonies are the place to check, especially Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. They pride themselves in being low-key and low-tech when luxury is not necessary. Many worlds are building out their vactrain network, but it doesn’t really fit the naturistic vibe of this one. The highway doesn’t either, but it looks fresh and new. He still doesn’t know what continent they’re on, but this could be a closed course built specifically for the game.

Jande is smiling now, realizing how many miles he’s putting behind him. It slowly fades, though. There were other cars in that lot. Maybe none of them was a trap. Maybe they were there to even the playing field. He should have taken the time to disable them. Of course, he wouldn’t have known exactly how to do that, but he could have brute forced it by crashing one car into all of the others before absconding with the only good one. Then again, that would have taken a lot of time. Those people don’t likely know how to drive either. They live in the same time period. Even if they were alive when self-driving was more common, they probably lost those skills. Or he’s just kidding himself, because there are plenty of simulations—both physical and virtual—that will teach you legacy skills like this. The fact is, he is no better off than he was before. All he can do is keep going and hope to run the timer out. Except...the road abruptly ends.

It just stops. There are three little lozenge-shaped signs in a row, sticking out of the ground where the asphalt meets the grass. Jande stops the car and gets out. There was nowhere to turn off for miles and miles. If he tries to double back, he could wind up running into someone who is trying to kill him. The grass is tall, this thing won’t be able to make it through. One of the cars in the lot looked like it was some kind of off-roader, but what you get in versatility, you sometimes lose in speed, and he wanted to go fast. The producers knew this. They knew exactly what he would choose, and they designed the path so he would lose no matter what. There were a number of ways he could have gone, but they probably all end like this. It was inevitable.

Jande shakes his head, disappointed in how they rigged the game. He checks the trunk for supplies, but finds nothing, so he reties his shoes, prepares himself mentally, and walks into the woods. He doesn’t stop moving save for periodic five-minute breaks. He doesn’t want to lose any lead he might still have.

He’s exhausted, but he never lets himself sleep. While he’s delirious and moving quite slowly, a drone descends from the sky right in front of his face. “Sudden Death contest is over. You won, Jande Ter Avest. All other candidates forfeited.”

Microstory 2459: Savanna Land

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Right now, this is one of the least impressive domes on the planet. I guess I can’t say that. It’s not like I’ve seen every single other one. Then again, people have been making these kinds of statements forever, like when a food blog would rate the best restaurants in the country, as if they have any semblance of a comprehensive authority regarding anything close to what they’re claiming. All I mean is that there aren’t any animals here yet. For this one, I don’t think that they want to get by with lifelike robots. I think they want it to be really authentic, and that’s going to take some time. Still, it’s not called Savanna Animal Kingdom. They opened it, because it currently already exemplifies exactly what it says on the tin. There’s a ton of grass, patches of barren dirt, and very few trees. I didn’t see many other people while I was there, and the ones who did show up didn’t stay very long either, because we all saw the same thing. Potential. But not completion. The vehicles are ready, which is an interesting thing, but the real interesting part about that is how big they are. Back on Earth (before we stopped having to drive) roads had to be sort of standardized. It would have been ridiculous if French roads were 10 meters wide and Spanish roads were 50 meters wide. They developed organically, initially based on the size of people, then of horses, then horse-drawn carriages, and so on, and so forth. They got bigger, but you could still still see the natural origins. Even when they broke new ground, like I was saying, the cars were the size they were, and they weren’t going to make special cars for some hip, new region. I’m talking a lot about vehicles, because I can’t talk about the lions or the elephants yet. The point is, we’re starting from scratch here, and not limiting ourselves to tradition. Some of the vehicles are big, with giant observation bubbles which allow for 360 degree viewing all around. Man, it’ll be great in 15 or 20 years when this place is populated, and there are actually some cool things to see, but until then, we can literally only imagine.

Microstory 2302: Still Feel So Lonely In Here

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You may have noticed that I’ve not been talking much about the KC memorial at the end of this week. That’s because I’ve had to step back from it. The mayors of KCMO and KCK have been working on it through their own teams. I’m still involved, I answer questions, but I just can’t do too much. I can’t let this all drag on like it has been. I’ll be there, it’s okay, I’ll be there. But I don’t want to be too involved anymore. I realized that I have something else to do before it’s over, which is to do something with Nick and Dutch’s private spaces. Neither of them were big collectors of belongings. I don’t need a moving company to haul stuff away, but I also don’t wanna create a shrine to them, even incidentally. I am thinking about moving, though. This house was already too big for the three of us, and only made sense because of our security team. They’re still here, protecting their one remaining charge, but I still feel so lonely in here. I mean, this whole place reminds me of the two of them anyway, so why would I make myself stick around? That reminds me, I should discuss the elephant in the room. I want to make it clear that I do not blame the security team for what happened. It was a freak accident, no one did anything wrong. Those roads were slick, and I looked it up; they’re not the only ones to suffer from that particular stretch of highway. People think of bodyguards as these supernatural beings with no room for error. They’re still just humans. They’re fallible, and they’re fragile, and they can die. They did die. The firm lost just as many of their people as I did of mine. I’ve always felt that we are commiserating together. So no, I’m not going to fire them, and I’m not going to sue them. It was a terrible tragedy, which I’m choosing to not make worse by seeking some undue form of vengeance.

Microstory 2295: Stress Out of the Process

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What I’ve learned is that the publicity firm that Nick was using to protect his life story from rumors and lies is no stranger to memorial services. A few of their clients have died while they were working with them, and their survivors can purchase a new package to help with arrangements. Some clients even purchase it ahead of time in anticipation, like one would reserve a burial spot in a cemetery because they know they’re gonna die eventually. Nick didn’t do that, because he didn’t even think to hire anyone when his health started to decline from the prion infection. Well, I think he did consider it way back then, but he didn’t have the money, and didn’t follow through until later. Anyway, I purchased the memorial package, so they’re handling everything. I’ll be signing off on all decisions, but I won’t have to think them up myself, which takes a lot of the stress out of the process, so I’m grateful for their help in this matter. Or perhaps they should be thanking me for my help, if they’re the ones taking point. I did secure a reservation for the Causeway Center in Chicago, though. It’s so last minute that someone already had the auditorium booked. Homes for Humankind and CauseTogether.hope have assured me that whoever it was was happy to push it back to another day, but it’s hard for me to imagine how that’s possible. That room can accommodate hundreds of people, which means that they have to contact hundreds of people to alert them to the change in dates. I suppose that’s not necessarily true. Maybe they booked the whole place for an audience of eleven. I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure out who it was, and if they’re really okay, but I can’t seem to find any information. You would think that an event like that would be advertising somewhere so customers could sign up for their thing instead. If you know what was supposed to be happening in the auditorium next Friday, shoot me a message. I feel that I owe them a thank you. In the meantime, I’m flying up to look at the venue this weekend, but I’ve already seen photos, and it looks great.

Microstory 2294: Mostly Long and Narrow

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What Nick’s publicists and I determined is that people from all over the country, and indeed all over the world, are interested in coming to his and Dutch’s memorial service. Because of this, we decided that it didn’t have to take place in Kansas or Missouri. If you’ll recall, there were some issues months ago when someone created an unauthorized CauseTogether.hope campaign for him. Despite the issue, he’s maintained a healthy and amicable professional relationship with the website. At the same time, he was working with Homes for Humankind. As it turns out, the house-building organization and the charitable fundraising platform teamed up some years ago to build a sort of convention center. It is here that charities come together, and reach out to their donors, volunteers, and beneficiaries. It’s located in Chicago, which is fitting, since the three of us went there one time on the Heartland Expressway, and Nick visited the city many times in his home universe. The Humankind Causeway Center is mostly long and narrow to fit the theme of its namesake, but there are two larger buildings on either end. One contains a large ballroom, and the other boasts an auditorium that can fit about 900 people. I can’t imagine that quite so many mourners will sign up to attend the service, but it should be great for our needs. We’re still working out the dates, but I’ll keep you updated as needed. Gratitude for all your words of love and togetherness during this difficult time.

Microstory 2263: A Long Road Trip

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In 2008, city planners from Kansas City, and those from Chicago came together with an idea. There were, of course, ways to travel between the two domains, but these pathways weren’t built specifically for this purpose. They twisted and turned to stop at other places, which was fine, but KC and Chicago enjoyed many special political and business relationships with each other, so they wanted something new. They began planning what would eventually come to be known as the Heartland Expressway, with a numbering designation of Interstate-56. It took sixteen years, but that highway is now officially complete, though people have been driving on sections of it for years. A couple of months ago, they held an event that was publicized as the Maiden Voyage of the Heartland Expressway. The current mayor of Kansas City, Missouri drove the roughly seven hours to Chicago with her whole family. Meanwhile, the mayor of Chicago did the same with his own family, stopping in the middle to have lunch with each other in a border town named River City, Illinois. It was a little funny, because the Chicago mayor’s family took too long to get going, and drove a little slower, so they were just a little bit late. His kids are younger, and you know how often they need to stop and get out during long road trips. Once they were finished with their meal, they went their separate ways, and ended up having dinner with each other’s deputy mayors. I’m sure you probably already heard about this, because it was a fun and innocuous story in the midst of all the bad news. It’s just relevant to today, because Kelly, Dutch and I just drove that route. It’s 428 miles from start to finish, which was perfect, because my EV gets about 450 miles to the charge. I wanted to test it out, and also just go somewhere. It was just a day trip, if you can believe it. We left at 5:00 in the morning, spent some time wandering around the city, particularly the pier, and waited for the car to charge up before leaving at around 14:00. We got home fairly late last night, and we were pretty tired, but we’re millionaires, so we didn’t have to worry about going into work today.

Microstory 2009: Ohio

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Both of my dads are really smart, and everyone in their families are smart too. While my papa was still in high school, his sister was older, and went off to college. She chose a place in Ohio. It was really fancy, and only for really smart people. There are probably really good colleges closer to where they lived, but she wanted to go there. I forgot to ask her what it was called, and she was too busy tonight, which will be last night by the time you see this. She had too much stuff that they couldn’t fly it all out there, so they drove the whole way from Idaho. They left early, so they could make it a road trip. It took them over three days to get all the way across the country, but they could have done it faster if they had really wanted to. They drove through five other states besides Idaho and Ohio. Remember, my papa had already been to Wyoming and Nebraska, but not Iowa, Illinois, or Indiana. Papa didn’t count that as going to those states, though, since they drove through them so quickly. He even thought that his family didn’t stop once the whole drive through Indiana, though dad thinks they probably had to stop for gas and a potty break at least once. Anyway, Aunt Cooper had to go back and forth from home to her school a few times every year in college, but papa never went back. This was the only time he was there, and he stayed one night in a motel before his parents drove the three of them back to Idaho, so Aunt Cooper could be alone and start learning. I’m still too young to be thinking too much about college, but I really hope to go to somewhere here in Massachusetts. Maybe even Harvard if my grades get a little better.

Microstory 1945: Cutting Teeth

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Leonard: Hold your fire! I know them!

Reese: I do too.

Shadow Team Leader: Yeah, I recognize them from the files.

Leonard: Look who’s in the back.

Reese: I see him. [...] Jail Guard, We’re surprised to see you, especially with those two.

Former Jail Guard: Well, after what happened, I was fired. They said it wasn’t about the escape, but we all know it was. It turned out to be the greatest thing that ever happened to me. But that’s a roundabout story. I’m sure you don’t have time for it.

Leonard: And you two? How did you end up here, and why?

Escapee 4: Part of that is part of Former Jail Guard’s story.

Shadow Team Leader: I need to know the truth; the whole truth. If there’s a leak or a weakness in our organization, we have to understand it so we can fix it. No one was meant to know about this operation. How did you find out about it?

Former Jail Guard: Well, if you insist, I’ll get into it. Like I said, I was fired, but not before I met you, Agent Parsons. I was inspired by your words at the law station, and I started looking into applying to Fugitive Services. Of course, I’m not really qualified for all that. Apparently everyone needs some kind of predating story?

Reese: It’s not an official requirement, but it’s an unwritten custom that FS doesn’t accept you unless you’ve already caught someone. Most people go after small fish; a simple bounty that any rookie could find. They’re usually hiding at their girlfriend’s.

Former Jail Guard: I didn’t wanna do that. I wanted to cut my teeth on something pretty big. I met with your former partner, and he—perhaps unwittingly—gave me the impression that no one was really looking for the five escapees. It’s not like the competition would have been my greatest obstacle, but I still figured I had a better shot. And obviously *points* I found them. Well, I found most of them.

Escapee 1: Four out of five ain’t bad.

Leonard: Where are the other two?

Escapee 1: Escapee 2 and Escapee 3 didn’t want to stick around. He let them go.

Former Jail Guard: They told me about how Agent Parsons found the fifth escapee. The story was really weird, so I was intrigued. I think we uncovered a lot, right? We learned about the bond groups, and the OSI. You were in a fancy hotel at one point. I just knew that there was something more to this, so I reached out to...someone who could help me hack into the OSI’s system.

Shadow Team Leader: So there is a weakness.

Former Jail Guard: There was a leak. Don’t worry, it’s been plugged since, but not before the three of us discovered that there was something freaky going on in the middle of nowhere Wyoming. We didn’t know for sure that we would find you here, but we knew there would be something. We saw the footprints leading here from the road, so—

Shadow Team Leader: Wait, what? Footprints? There should be no footprints.

Former Jail Guard: There was one set, leading in this direction.

Shadow Team Leader: We wiped everybody’s tracks on our way here, including our own. Weapons up again, folks. Someone else is here.

Microstory 1936: Road Trip

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Leonard: I can’t believe they let me out. How did you manage to pull that off?

Reese: Believe it or not, I threatened to quit.

Leonard: You’re that important to them?

Reese: I didn’t think so, but I said it as a last resort, since nothing else was working. I think they hesitate to read people into these kinds of situations, so they would rather you just do it, instead of having to bring in someone new.

Myka: You brought me in.

Reese: They don’t know about you, and we need to keep it that way.

Myka: Sure, as long as we get this straight first. So. You’re telling me that there are a bunch of aliens—

Leonard: Not a bunch. One confirmed. We’re on our way to find out if there are more.

Myka: Right. One alien, maybe more, plus him, who’s human, but also somehow an alien? What are the odds?

Leonard: I’m not from another planet, I’m just from another universe; another version of Earth. We have a different history, different sociopolitics—particularly law—and I believe minor anatomical or physiological differences.

Reese: Really? I didn’t know that.

Leonard: The scientists didn’t probe me, but one of my parolees told me about it. He never sat me down to warn me about anything. We just spent a lot of time together, and he would tell me stories. I didn’t believe him until we started getting into messes together, but I didn’t really believe until I came here. This is a very different world from mine. Nothing major, but the subtle differences add up to something undeniable.

Myka: Oh. But the other alien is an alien? What does it look like?

Reese: It looks like a dragonfly, it sounds like a cricket, and it acts like a person. It talks normal. If you heard it talking with your eyes closed, you wouldn’t know the difference.

Leonard: So there was a microphone hidden somewhere in our basement jail.

Reese: Yeah, that’s half the reason why they put you together, to get more information. They played a little of your conversation for me. I’m sorry, I tried to get to you first.

Leonard: Nah, man, I get it. But if you didn’t hear all of the audio, then there’s something else you should know. Have you heard of cicadas? Do you have those here?

Myka: Yeah, we do.

Leonard: Well, the Ochivari life cycle is reminiscent of theirs. They live underground for years at a time, sometimes decades. That I didn’t know before.

Reese: We’ll have to remember that. We may be able to use that against them.

Myka: *after a lull in the conversation* Hey, I hope you didn’t bring me along to help you drive there and back. I shouldn’t be behind the wheel. It’s a trigger for me.

Reese: Yeah, I know. You’re not here for that. We will need your help keeping watch, though. One of you two will be awake for three hours while the other and I sleep. I’ll take the four-hour middle shift, because it’s harder to wake up, then try to go back to sleep.

Myka: That’s stupid. I’ll do that, since you two need to do your jobs.

Leonard: Well, we’ll talk more about it tonight.

Myka: Yeah, we will. One thing you’ll learn about me is that I always win in a fight.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 6, 2398

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Carlin and Moray haven’t slept in about a day. They can’t stop working on this project. They have learned so much already, it’s a wonder that no one has noticed this before. Or maybe they have noticed, and somebody disappears them. Mateo and Leona are the ones who gave them this assignment. They should be here to hear the big news.

Vearden hangs up the phone. “Okay, Mateo can’t come, and Leona can’t get away from her work in Arcadia.”

“What? How is that possible?” Carlin questions. He takes another drink of his energy drink. Someone needs to ban this stuff.

“Can’t he just teleport here?” Moray asks.

“Apparently his ability isn’t working,” Vearden informs them.

“He was just here literally yesterday.” Carlin stares into space. “It was yesterday, right? I didn’t lose time, did I?”

“No, you didn’t,” Vearden assures him. “He went back to Kansas City, and now he’s stuck. We can’t rely on that trick anymore. They don’t really know how it works. He may be able to come tomorrow, but no one can guarantee anything.”

“Then he can take the Olimpia,” Carlin suggests. “It’s not that far to fly.”

“We’re trying to be discreet here,” Vearden explains. “Our people can’t be spotted flying back and forth from a country that only a few people are allowed to visit each day.” He frowns at the two of them. “Maybe you could tell me first?”

Carlin starts to pace. Moray paces alongside him. He wants to be just like his older brother when he grows up. Carlin shakes his head. He has to get this out. He has to tell someone, and Vearden will have to do. It’s too big. “Okay.” He opens the map.

“What am I lookin’ at here?” Vearden asks invitingly.

Moray reaches over to tap on the screen of the large tablet to activate the presentation. Points bubble up in various regions around the world. Transparent colors spread from these points, and swirl around, crisscrossing each other, and mixing, dancing around the screen in an oddly organized fashion. New points and colors spring up. A slider at the bottom shows the passage of time.

Vearden tilts his head near the end. “I assume that this is showing how religions have propagated across the globe?”

“Yes. Did you see it?”

“I watched it, yes.”

Carlin rolls his eyes. “No. I’m talking about that spot right there.”

“Hmm. Yeah, there appears to be no religion there, but it’s not the only one. See there’s another one in the Philippines. And another over here, and another.”

“Those are unpopulated areas. This is a big area in the middle of Kansas. People live there, so why do they all report no religion, and why have they done that for centuries after the area was settled? I looked into it.” Carlin zooms in more. “The other cities seem normal, but there’s something weird about this bit of land exactly in the middle of it. Roads don’t go through. Satellite images don’t render. It’s weird as hell.”

“Weird as hell,” Moray echoes.

Vearden peers at the screen. “Hold on. I know this area. This is where Springfield, Kansas should be.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 17, 2398

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Ramses was waiting for Marie and Mateo when they got back to the hotel from the hospital. He didn’t want to talk about the mission he went on for the senator and his daughter, but he assured them it wasn’t that bad. He made a point of telling them that he didn’t have to kill anyone, though people did get hurt, and he’s not sure if they’re on the right side of this. They stole an object in a luggage-sized grayish box, but no one would tell him what it was. Leona is being coerced into working on it once it arrives in Kansas City, so while there’s a chance it’s a weapon of some kind, they’ll know the answer soon enough. She’ll take the appropriate actions when she learns more information. Both she and Ramses asked that the away team continue on, and perhaps they should extend their trip to continue throwing off any suspicion of their true goals.

Their next destination is Prague, Czechia, which has fairly strict airspace policies. The only reason they want to go there is because heading for Croatia now would practically draw a straight line on the map. This is all highly calculated to insulate them from any prying eyes. It’s not perfect, and they could always get caught, but it’s the best they can do. Going to Croatia is dangerous. They have to be sneaky. There are underground systems in place once they near its borders, but reaching those systems in the first place is a delicate dance. Prague is just a distraction. Its traffic laws are strict too, as it is in Germany, which means they won’t be able to drive as fast as they want. That’s fine, it will only take them about five hours with one stop in the middle to cross a border. Marie will probably want to hide for that part.

Ramses pulls over at a rest stop an hour in. They get out to stretch their legs and grab some local food, then get back in. But Ramses doesn’t move. He just sits in front of the steering wheel, and stares into space.

“Are you okay?” Marie asks.

“Winona wants us to go to Türkiye,” he says.

“I know, you told us that,” she says. “Apparently there’s an even more important mission there?”

“The border is stronger than it is for Germany-Czechia, but she says she can sneak us across.”

Mateo flinches. “Okay, but we don’t want to go to Türkiye—that’s Turkey, right?”

Ramses nods, “we may want to go there.”

“Rambo, what are you talking about?” Marie asks.

He sighs. “You and I weren’t around when Mateo and Leona were dealing with the immortality waters. You were dead yourself, and I hadn’t even been born yet.”

“What does this have to do with anything?” Mateo questions.

“The Constant, the Bermuda Triangle; they both generated unusual amounts of temporal energy.”

“Stonehenge didn’t,” Mateo reminds him.

“First of all, we don’t know that there was ever anything special about Stonehenge. The Delegator always implied that he just liked the way it looked. He was the one with the power to transport people through portals. He used the walkways between the stones, because hell, why wouldn’t you, but that doesn’t mean the stones mean anything. Secondly, if the British Isles sank, this reality’s version of it might just be too deep underwater for this baby.” He pets the dashboard.

“You wanna make another diversion? There’s nothing special about Turkey,” Marie claims.

Mateo looks away. “Yes there is. There’s one thing.”

“What?” Marie presses. When no one answers, she repeats herself. “What? What is in Turkey?”

“Death,” Mateo answers cryptically.

“Then maybe we don’t go there.”

“No, I don’t mean death, I mean Death. Death water is in something called the Pools of, uhh...”

“Pamukkale,” Ramses helps.

“Death water?” Marie is still indignant about the whole thing. “Why is there an immortality water called Death?”

“I don’t know,” Ramses answers honestly, “but it’s the only water you would take if you want the full experience. If you drink Youth, it will make you young. If you drink Longevity, it will extend your lifespan. But if you want one hundred percent no-death, no injury, immortality, that one must be included.”

“What happens if you take it by itself?” Marie asks the obvious question.

“Well, it’s poison...you die,” Mateo replies bluntly.

“So again, why do we want that?”

“Because the reason we’re here is because one of us has to die,” Ramses says, also bluntly, but much more somberly.

Marie takes a long time to respond. “That one is a part of me at the moment. How could the fetus ingest it without me also ingesting it?”

Ramses takes a long time to respond as well. Then he takes something out of his pocket, and holds it up. “We teleport it.” It’s a time bullet.

“You’re gonna shoot me with that thing?” Marie asks in a no-thanks kind of way.

“No, that would defeat the purpose. I would transport the bullet itself, into the fetus, which would open upon contact, releasing the Pamukkale water.”

“You’re talking about just having a developing baby dying in my body.” She looks back and forth between the two of them.

Mateo takes a long time to speak. The Death water, as Zeferino once explained it to me—”

“Oh, he’s such a reliable resource,” Marie says sarcastically.

“I don’t know if he was telling the truth, but sometimes, the man could be sincere, and I remember the day he taught me about all of them. He looked like he was being honest. After the conversation, we didn’t talk about it again, so if he was trying to trick me, he was doing it in a weird way. Plus, this was long after all that Tribulation stuff.”

Marie shakes her head. “Go on, what did he say?”

“There are many reasons why people don’t just all take the immortality waters. They’re hard to get to, especially the last one, but one in particular is...unsavory.”

“Keep going,” she urges.

“It’s Health. Both Death and Health come from the pools of whatever. The former creates the latter when used.”

“It’s a sacrifice,” Marie says. “It’s a human sacrifice.”

“Yes.”

“Why would death make health? Maybe it would make life, because they’re opposites, but...” She doesn’t have an end to her sentence.

“Death isn’t really the end of life,” Ramses tries to explain. “It’s just the end of health. We’re proof of that. We all lost our bodily health, but kept our lives.”

Marie begins to pace. “So, under the assumption that the Pools of Pamukkale in this reality serve the same purpose as they do in the main sequence, you want to take a sample, and fill a time bullet with it. Then you want to teleport that bullet into my fetus—which would require phenomenal precision, by the way—which will poison it, and transform it into an elixir. So I get an abortion, and the cure for cancer at the same time.”

“Well, if you have cancer, then yeah. If you don’t, then at the most, you might just skip the flu this year. It doesn’t last forever if you don’t take Activator afterwards, and I believe it only works once if you don’t take Catalyst beforehand.”

“So you want to forgo Czechia, and take a detour all the way down to Türkiye, where we’ll be expected to complete an espionage mission we know nothing about, then steal a sub-detour to a tourist attraction to get a sample of water that authorities probably don’t want you to steal. I assume you’ve confirmed that the site even exists on this Earth.”

“It does,” Ramses promises.

“Well, that’s one complication down.”

“We don’t have to choose this,” Ramses tells her, standing up from the driver’s seat. He presents it to her. “But whatever we do, you have to be the one to make that choice. That’s what pro-choice means.”

“Thanks for mansplaining that to me,” Marie snaps back.

Ramses doesn’t respond, so Mateo decides to do so in his place. “He’s not telling you it’s your choice so that you will know that it is. He’s telling you so that you know that he knows...that it is.”

“You two have really thought a lot about this,” Marie realizes.

“Mateo didn’t know a thing. He didn’t even know about Türkiye.”

“Actually, I did,” Mateo clarifies. “Winona lamented that we chose to come here, instead of there. I didn’t think it would come up again, though.”

Marie considers the information she’s been given, and the profoundly difficult choice now laid before her. Deciding to get an abortion was hard enough, but now she has to determine whether she’s going to go through with it using the conventional, scientific method, or if she’s going to depend on the complex nature of temporal magic. “Wait, if the water in Pamukkale is poisonous, wouldn’t lots of people know as much?”

“It has to be infused with temporal energy,” Ramses says. “Such was its natural state on November 13, 1622. That’s the date most people travel to when they’re on the quest for it. Using the data I’ve gathered by studying the Existence water from the Bermuda Triangle, however I believe that I can synthesize what we need.”

Agreeing that she has to be the one to make the choice either way, Marie sits down in the chair, and starts The Olimpia back up. She keeps going on the selected route. A part of her just wants to do the normal thing, and not hope that the time bullet works. So she passes what might have been their exit, and heads for the border, for an hour, until they’re nearly there. She comes to a stop. They can already see the border checkpoint far off in the distance, but they can still choose to go elsewhere. They have to choose now, though. Either they get back on the highway and head Southeast, or stick to the original plan. Or they can open Door Number Three.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 3, 2398

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Leona did a double take as she was driving last night on her way back from date night. She and Mateo were meant to have dinner downtown, but they got in a fight on the ride out there, and ended up just skipping it. He got out of the car to walk alone, so she decided to drive around a little bit to clear her head. It’s not everyday that he has the upper hand in an argument, so she wasn’t exactly excited to get back home and face her friends. She wasn’t too far away when she spotted one of them walking along the path in the park across from their building. “Hey!” she called out to him. He looked around for the source of the voice, and smiled when he found it. Before they could exchange one more word with each other, a dark van pulled up between them, and stopped for a few seconds. When it drove away, Ramses was gone.

She held for a second to go over the possibilities. He could have been taken against his will, sure. It wouldn’t be the first time for any of them. She didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but he clearly saw her on the other side of the road. He wouldn’t have smiled if he didn’t realize in time that it was her. Given that, he would have made an effort to say something to her if he was intending to get into that van. He wouldn’t have just shrugged off the awkward timing, and went about his secret business. No, even though she didn’t know why he would be taken, it was the only logical hypothesis. So she moved over to the right lane, put on her hazard lights, and impatiently waited for the traffic to clear. Then she made an illegal u-turn, and begin to pursue the van.

She called his phone, just in case there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this. After three rings, the driver of the van tossed something relatively small out the window. She was pretty sure she knew what it was, but she stopped anyway, and quickly opened her door to pick the phone off the road, and bring it in. Hopefully they didn’t just see her do that, because they might become suspicious. Fortunately, the car behind her still had a ways to go before catching up, so nobody honked their horn. Now it was pretty obvious that something nefarious was going on here, and she needed help. She tried to call Marie, and then Angela, but neither of them answered their phone. She called Mateo, even though he was surely still on foot, but his phone rang inside the car. Damn, he left it here when he hopped out in a huff. She was going to have to fix this on her own.

Twenty-five minutes later, they were into the rural outskirts of the metropolitan area, and the van was showing no signs of slowing. That was when the route started to become all kinds of crazy. They turned down one road, and then down another, and then another, until they were all the way back to where they started from. They winded around, and occasionally spent a little too long at a stop sign. Oh no, they must have realized that she was following them, and were just testing her. She tried to call her friends again, but this time couldn’t even get through to voicemail. She couldn’t find a signal at all. What were these people doing? And what were they going to do to Ramses once they confirmed that Leona was behind them. It was dark, though, and despite the fact that they were out in the country, there were still quite a few other cars around. She just hung back a little farther, and prayed that they couldn’t prove any suspicions. 

They played this game for hours, and now it’s after midnight. There’s still no cell service, and Heath’s car is running out of gas. The van probably is too, but she has no choice but to keep trying. All she can do is continue to follow, three cars back, and hope that they stop soon. They don’t, though. In fact, they turn off on a single lane road; that’s one lane, full stop. It would look mighty suspicious if she happened to be going that way too. But it doesn’t matter, because Ramses needs rescuing, and she’s the rescuer. They keep going until they reach this isolated little farmhouse.

Leona switches off her lights, and turns into the driveway, because if they haven’t noticed her by now, they probably never will. They go all the way up to the porch, but she stops near the road to watch. She sees them drag a Ramses-sized burlap sack, up the steps, and into the house. If he’s dead, she’s going to kill them. One of them leans against the van and lights up a cigarette while the others are starting to do whatever it is they plan on doing. That’s when she gets out of her car, and approaches without caution.

“Hey, you’re not supposed to be here! Who are you?” he cries.

“This your van?” she asks, nodding to it like a gangsta.

“What of it?”

“How did you not detect my pursuit?”

“Hell you talkin’ ‘bout?”

She pops him in the nose with her forearm, spilling blood out like a beer can at a college party. As he’s crying like a baby, and trying to shove the blood back into his body, she slams the back of his head against the passenger window, cracking it slightly. Lastly, she situates the inside of her ankle against his, and pulls the back of his neck away from the car. He trips on her leg, and crashes to the ground. She stomps on his back before casually walking up the steps, where she finds the other two men trying to get Ramses into a chair. They stop and stare at her of course, not sure what the hell is going on.

“Hey, wait, I know you. You’re just a floor worker.”

“No,” Leona contends. “I’m the lead floor worker.” She fights them both. They have knives, which is adorable, and they’re rolling on the floor in a matter of seconds. Those three years she spent training with the Crucia Heavy really paid off. These electronic repair idiots are no match for her, but it’s better to be overqualified than underqualified.

Once it’s all over, Ramses finally comes to. He takes a moment to assess the situation. “Thanks for coming after me.”

Leona starts to untie him. “What do these guys what?”

He chuckles. “Honor. You see, I quit, which apparently didn’t mean that the number two worker was promoted to supervisor, or as a thought, repromoted. They had to be tested again, and evidently, Bruno over there cheated the first time, so they fired him. And the other guy, Stockboy, just sort of does whatever Bruno says.

“We were driving for, like, four hours, but we’re probably less than an hour away,” she tells him, questioning the rationale.

“Yeah, they were worried about being followed or traced, so they thought going around in circles would prevent that. I guess they figured that would be good enough, and they wouldn’t have to actually look out for someone like you. True morons, if you ask me.”

“I would have asked,” Leona begins, “if I didn’t surmise that myself.” She tenses up when the front door opens, but relaxes when she sees that it’s the rest of the team. They’re in no hurry either, presumably after seeing the driver writhing on the ground.

“Okay,” Heath says, “next time you go into the Great Dead Zone, drop a message. We barely found you.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 20, 2398

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Mateo Matic is not a very smart man. He hasn’t had a lot of education, and what he did manage to get through, he didn’t pay much attention, nor retain it. That’s why he became a driver. That’s not to say all drivers are stupid, but it he excelled at it, and he wasn’t great at anything else, so it made the most sense at the time. Even since all this, he’s had opportunities to enrich himself with knowledge, but he hasn’t really taken them. That’s fine, that’s why he has people like Ramses, Leona, and the Angelas. It’s also one reason he misses Olimpia so dearly, because she’s more like him. Despite all this, he’s still been around for quite awhile, and in that time, he’s grown wiser.

Jessie did not appear to be a threat, but he didn’t want to take a chance. After listening to her stories, he escorted her to her car parked by the side of the road, and then reentered the woods. He did not return to the bunker, though he was certain he knew what direction it was, which he was proud of himself for. Instead, he pulled out his bivy sack. It’s very small, but useful in situations such as these, and he’s grateful that it survived the destruction of his bag’s pocket dimension. It’s kind of weird, really, that all the essentials survived. His e-reader, and extra clothes are gone now, but he has a sleeping bag, pocket knife, and he had extra water, until he drank it all to turn it over to a fresh cycle. When Ramses got ahold of him through the radio, Mateo relayed that he needed to sleep outside tonight. He didn’t say why for fear of being eavesdropped on, but his team accepted it, and didn’t try to lure him back. If Jessie, an associate of hers, or some other nefarious party wanted to find out where Mateo’s friends were hiding, they were going to have to wait ‘til morning. That seemed unlikely.

Unprompted, Fairpoint called Marie the next late morning to inform her that he was finally on his way to the police station to find out where Heath and Angela were. She reminded him of what was at stake here, and what the authorities were allowed to know. Apparently, atheists are conventionally that way when it comes to religion, but so-called agnostic in terms of anything else. They don’t care about police brutality. They don’t care about racism. They don’t care about war. They think all these things are bad, to be sure, but they’re generally comfortable in their superiority, and find that trying to alleviate suffering can lead only to frustrating inefficacy. Religious people are the passionate ones. Some are on the wrong side of any given issue, but atheists don’t usually get involved at all, so someone like him needs to be directly encouraged to go out of his way to do the right thing. It should be okay. He sounds like he understands the concern, and is going to do everything he can.

“So we still have to wait,” Mateo presumes.

“It could take hours,” Marie replies. “They may make him wait, or not agree right away to let him advocate. There’s no telling how they’ll handle this. It all depends on the religious makeup of that station.”

“God, why does religion always have to mess things up?” Leona questions.

Marie twitches at this. Mateo was Catholic once, and he knows this academically, but The Superintendent stripped him of all his faith just before he tore him out of the timestream for half a century. Leona was born enlightened, and Ramses at a time after superstition had faded significantly from culture. Out of all of them, Marie and Angela could recall belief the best. Back when they were only a she, she did lose her faith over time. It was reportedly common for dead people to stop following the lies that their particular prooftexts claimed once they learned the truth. It wasn’t a given, though. There were those who continued to believe. Pryce’s afterlife simulation, after all, was just that; a simulation. It could never explain what happens after one dies. It only demonstrated that it was possible to technologically stave it off indefinitely. Some of the more intelligent religious people recognized this reality, and continued to believe in some kind of actual divine power that was still out of reach. Though to be fair, if they were so smart, they probably rejected mysticism anyway.

Here, religion has taken over society, but unlike most fictional depictions of such a world, there isn’t one governing body that lords over the innocent people. It’s not a cult of belief. It’s a cult of belief in belief. That is a lesson that the main sequence began to gradually learn for themselves in the latter days. It’s not really any specific denomination that ultimately proves itself no longer worthy of devotion. It’s the very idea of devotion to the unscientific. Young generations realized that simply believing in something that isn’t real is detrimental to healthy and ethical personal and sociological advancement. It doesn’t matter that a certain sect donates money to the poor, or accepts gay people past their doors. The act alone of trying to convince someone of a lie—even if you are genuinely convinced of it yourself—is immoral at the highest level. The only sane and virtuous path is the one towards observable truth. If what you think can only stand on its own potential to be true, then it is not true, and ought to be ultimately rejected. This is something that Mateo doubts the people of this planet will ever come to accept.

The phone rings. Everyone holds their breath as Marie listens. She then says, “okay,” and hangs up. “We’ll see them tomorrow. It’s over.”

No, Mateo thinks to himself, this has just begun.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 11, 2398

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Anxious, and needing to feel useful, Mateo took time in the morning alone, coming up with plans. He reorganized his list of all the places he had visited at some point, in some timeline, into a list by proximity to the team’s current location. Some of the more distant places would be more difficult, but surely doable. Then again, he didn’t know that much about this reality, so maybe they would turn out to be impossible. Now that it’s complete, he’s presenting it to Leona.

“Well, Antarctica is going to have to wait.”

“Why?” Mateo asks.

She stares at him in that face she displays when she wants him to figure it out on his own.

“Because it’s cold.”

“Because it’s cold,” she confirms. “You really can’t go until the summer, which for the southern hemisphere...”

“Is winter for us.”

“That’s right. That being said, maybe there are different rules here. It doesn’t turn into the moon, it’s just more treacherous. As for Easter Island, I dunno. For these people, it may just be another random island in the middle of the ocean, or a nature preserve. These are all special temporal locations for us, but who knows what things are like here? Think about what your life was like before you became a time traveler. These were mounds of dirt, and grass, and flora. There were animals, and roads, and precipitation, and bodies of water. It really feels like this is the manifestation of that original assumption about the world. Nobody here knows that time travel exists, partially because...it doesn’t.”

“Somebody knows something,” Mateo reasons. “Obviously what we need to do first is go to Lebanon.”

“I think you should go back to the parking lot.” Heath has entered the room, holding a tray of assorted breakfast beverages. “At first, it seemed random that Marie should show up there, but your arrival at the same place changes the math. Maybe it’s special. Maybe it is for your reality too, but you never knew it.”

“Maybe,” Leona concedes. “It’s certainly closer than the Center of the U.S.”

“The center of the U.S. isn’t in Lebanon,” Heath declares as if it should be obvious.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s Gothenburg.”

“Is that a band, errr...?” Mateo jokes.

“It’s a small town in Nebraska,” Heath tells them.

“Lee-Lee, how is this possible?” Mateo questions.

She thinks about it for a moment, then faces Heath. “Could you show me a map of the United States?”

“Yeah, here.” He takes a phablet out of the pocket of his cargo shorts, and pulls up a map service neither of them are familiar with.

“Whoa,” Mateo notes, staring at it. “What the hell am I looking at here?”

“It’s just a south-up map,” Leona explains.

“But why? It’s freaking me out.”

“Why would north have to be up?”

“Because most of the world is in the northern hemisphere,” Mateo reasons, thinking he’s so clever.

“Eh, whatever. Besides, that’s not even the point here. Look at that. Most of Texas belongs to Mexico. Some of Canada is in the United States. Geography is a human construct, not an inherent one. These incongruent borders are more than enough to change the location of the center of an arbitrary geographic mass.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Mateo says. “My cousin lives in The Constant, which is underneath Lebanon. They didn’t move it two centuries ago, or whenever the borders were created. It’s been there for billions of years. That’s still where we need to go.”

“I would check both places,” Heath suggests. “Might as well. You’re gonna be here for a while. Money’s not an issue, if that’s what you’re worried about. We can support everyone here, in whatever venture you need.”

“Thanks,” Leona says. “I do have one question, but I’ll probably have more.”

“Shoot,” Heath allows.

“Ya know what, I have two questions actually,” she amends.

Heath nods

“What is this drink?”

“Hagadesfām juice. It’s a fruit from the Arabian Garden.”

“I’ve never heard of it. Have you ever heard of The Beatles?”

“Is that a band, errr...?”