The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 13, 2526

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There were some major issues with the sensor array, which delayed its activation. Aeterna promised that she had nothing to do with it, but they weren’t the dome police, so she wouldn’t have owed them an explanation either way. It was a year later now, and they were back on track. It would be turned on in a few days, when the team was out of the timestream again. It was inevitable, though, that the descendants of the Oblivios would start noticing the giant tower in the middle of their habitat. Well, they wouldn’t notice it, per se, but their instruments would claim that it was there, and if the Valerians didn’t want to damage people’s psyches, they would reveal themselves. They still didn’t know exactly how they were going to explain it, but now hoped maybe someone on the team had a good idea.

“I don’t know that we have to worry about it,” Leona claimed. They had spent the rest of yesterday in the penthouse, but now they were getting a look at the lower floors. She recognized them, and it clicked. “This is Arvazna.”

Mateo winced. “That micronation that you owned in The Third Rail?”

“That I will own,” Leona corrected. “It hasn’t happened yet, from this building’s perspective.”

“It was 130 years ago,” Marie reminded her. “I know, we’re time travelers, but if this thing ends up on an alternate Earth, thereby avoiding being detected here on Doma, it’s going to have to leave soon, and it’s going to have to go back in time, and then it’s going to have to be shunted to a parallel reality that doesn’t exist in present day.”

“The whole thing doesn’t have to end up there,” Mateo said. “This thing is, what, forty times larger than that one?”

“That’s true,” Leona agreed, examining the walls. “Tertius, how is this thing attached to the dome? Is it buried in the ground, or hanging from the apex?”

“Both, basically,” he answered. “They’re connected. It’s like a giant pillar connecting the ground to the top. Or a column? I don’t know, I’m not an engineer. I just asked Étude to build it, and she used her magicks.”

“I assume you have specifications for it, though,” Ramses said. “We would like to look at those. If we’re gonna bootstrap this tower to the Third Rail—or part of it—we will need to know how it works first.”

“Are you being serious? Are you just gonna make the tower disappear for us?” Tertius pressed.

“I think we’re fated to,” Leona said. The three of them went back upstairs, along with Aeterna and Marie, who was mostly just curious.

“I don’t know what understanding the engineering of the tower is going to do for them,” Mateo lamented. “You can’t just move a tower like this. None of us has that kind of power.”

“It doesn’t have to be one of us,” Olimpia claimed. “We already know someone who can do it. Well, we don’t know they can do it at scale, but we just met them. You partied with one of them.”

Mateo considered all the people he had met recently before landing on a guess. “The Overseers?”

“Yeah,” Olimpia confirmed. “They can just make one of their black hole portals, and send it through.”

“How’s the building going to move?” Mateo questioned.

“Gravity,” Romana suggested. “They can make the portal on the surface of the ground, and it will just fall through.”

“Is that even possible?” Mateo asked. “I’m guessing the foundation runs several kilometers deep. Could they get under it somehow?”

“You’ll have to ask them.”

“You want me to Boyd my way to them,” Mateo presumed.

“We don’t have time to get there and back using the slingdrives,” Angela reminded him. “It takes too long to recharge.”

“Plus, only you can find them through the dark particles,” Romana added.

A few hours later, Leona chuckled upon seeing Magnolia and Garland. “We were just gonna suggest that.”

“Great minds,” Romana mused.

“Can you do it?” Ramses asked the dark portal makers. “Can you make a portal wide enough to fit the tower?”

“The width alone is not really the problem,” Garland began. “Holding it long enough will be.”

“It’s not really the time either, son,” Magnolia said to him before facing Leona, “it’s the mass. I can hold a portal open for several minutes if nothing goes through in that time. But a tower? How long would you need? How long would it take to fall?”

“If we time it right,” Leona replied, “from the moment we release the clamps, to the second the roof makes it past the threshold, I would feel most comfortable with a minute and a half. With Proxima Doma’s gravity, it’s going to fall fairly fast, and get there in under that time.”

Magnolia’s eyes widened. “Whew, that’s a lot.”

“Together we can, though,” Garland said confidently.

She smiled at him. “Yeah, I’m sure we could do it. It would be a hell of a lot easier to send it somewhere with lower gravity, though, like outer space. I don’t know how to get it to another reality in the past anyway, so this would be just a stop-gap measure.”

“We just gotta get it out of the dome,” Rames said.

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, everyone,” Tertius finally jumped in. “I regret asking them to build it in the first place. It was never necessary, and this isn’t the first headache I’ve gotten from it.”

Everybody filed into the elevator, and went down to the surface. The Overseers and the smart people began to survey the tower, and the surrounding area, rapidly developing their plan to make a gigantic building disappear. It was not a good plan, it was just the only one they had. Any number of things could go wrong. The Valerians could make the inhabitants forget they saw something unexplainable, but if the calculations were off by a single decimal point, memory would be the least of their problems. The apocalyptic explosion from the falling tower would send shockwaves across the surface...literally. It would decimate the dome, at best, and certainly kill everyone in it. As they were standing there, trying to consider every contingency, a tremor came through to remind them what started all this. It was a small one, but a herald of times far worse. They could see the nearest city shake in the distance. Nothing serious broke apart, but they could see tons of dust from here, and it might have been more destructive in other regions.

“We better do this now,” Magnolia decided. “If the ground begins to shake during the attempt, we could lose our balance.”

“That tremor means the big one is coming,” Leona tried to explain, “not that we won’t have another for a while.”

“Then let’s get on with it,” Aeterna contended.

“It could be minutes,” Leona warned, “and it’s not your call.”

“No, it’s ours,” Garland argued. “I say we do it, and we do it now. Ninety seconds is all we have available to us anyway.”

Just in case they needed a couple of extra hands, Angela teleported up to the control room in the penthouse with Tertius and Ramses, so they could release the clamps connecting the tower to the dome. They were coordinating on comms, relayed to Magnolia by Leona on one side of the cylinder, and Marie on the other with Garland. They were still in the middle of the process when another tremor began. “Guys, we need to abort,” Leona urged. No, she begged.

It was pretty much too late, though. Declamping the tower links wasn’t a single step. For clamps that large, it happened in stages, and they had already opened the first two stages, which placed them at more risk if they didn’t just move forward, full steam ahead.

“On my mark,” the team could hear Ramses say through comms. As he counted down, Leona and Marie’s voices synced with his, “eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, mark!” They slammed their fists down in the air, and pointed to the Overseers.

Magnolia and Garland opened a joint dark portal, slicing through the bottom floor like a hot knife through butter. The tower started to fall through. It was a magnificent sight to behold. The people in the control room appeared back down on the ground next to Mateo, Olimpia, and Romana.

“We can’t hold it anymore!” Leona cried, just about immediately, repeating what Magnolia was saying.

Marie reported a similar sentiment from Garland. “It’s worse than we thought! Best we can do is collapse the portal uncleanly, and generate an annihilating vortex!”

“I’ve never done that before!” Magnolia argued.

“Do it now!” Garland urged. There was absolutely no time to argue. After only about ten or eleven seconds, the portal fell apart, but it didn’t just evaporate into nothing. It exploded from the ground, and ate up part of the tower like a Lucius bomb. Unlike an L-bomb, though, it didn’t travel very far. Almost all of the tower was now falling towards them, preparing to crash on the surface. Leona teleported Magnolia out of the dome while Marie took Garland. Ramses hugged both Valerians, and spirited them away to safety.

Mateo was about to teleport too when he saw his wife, Olimpia take her Sangster Canopy out of her bag. She didn’t even give him the chance to protest before she jumped only a couple hundred meters away, directly underneath the falling tower. She opened it, and aimed it at the annihilator. She sent pockets of new space out of the tip. It wasn’t holding up the tower, but perpetually making the ground farther and farther away from it. She couldn’t hold on forever, though, and in fact, not for any meaningful amount of time. The Oblivios could not evacuate before she lost control. The first to escape would probably still be in the tunnel when it happened, and still be caught in the destruction. This was a desperate attempt doomed to fail.

But maybe Mateo could help instead. Both he and Romana jumped over to her, and took hold of the umbrella. “No!” he argued. “Just me! You two get out of here!”

“I know what you’re planning, dad! I can help!”

“You don’t have dark particles anymore!”

“Oh, yes, I do! Get out of here, mom!”

“Mom?” Olimpia echoed. “You’ve never called me mom before.”

“Go!” Olimpia reiterated.

“I love you!” Olimpia disappeared.

“Is this gonna work?” Mateo asked his daughter.

“Hell, yeah, it will!”

They both screamed their heads off. A massive swarm of dark particles erupted from them, through the umbrella. They were still adding space between them and the tower, but they were experiencing diminishing returns. It and the swarm met in the middle, but it was taking time for the dark particles to cover the entire thing. Meanwhile, it continued to fall, closer and closer to the surface. It might have appeared to be going rather slow from the outside, but it was actually accelerating, and would strike the planet with an even greater force than it would have had they done nothing but save themselves. The particles were nearly at full coverage and the tower was nearly upon them when the rest of the team appeared next to them. One by one, they took hold of the handle or the shaft, wherever they could find purchase.

“There’s nothing you can do to help!” Mateo shouted at them.

“We can die together!” Leona reasoned.

“That’s freaking stupid!” Romana volleyed.

“Don’t talk to your mother like that!” Olimpia scolded.

They continued to scream into the wind, as a team, and as they struggled to hold on, they started to float in the air a little. With one final push of their might, the dark particles turned all sorts of colors, and disappeared, as did the tower, and the whole team with them.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 11, 2524

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It wasn’t until the next year when Mateo, Leona, and Angela could safely reactivate their tandem slingdrives. They technically could have left shortly before midnight, but they decided it was for the best. They left a message with the Vitalie who lived on Vitalemus, to relay to the Vellani Ambassador if she ever heard from again. She hadn’t, but had kept apprised of Goldilocks Corridor news, and no one had reported seeing them lately, so no one knew where they were at this point. With nothing left for them here, they made the jump, and returned to the beacon floating around in the space where Castlebourne once was. They weren’t alone. They quickly picked up comms from Ramses, Marie, Olimpia, and Romana. They only had to make a few jumps to rendezvous with each other.

“Gang’s all here,” Mateo mused.

“How did you get back here?” Angela asked the other half of their team.

“You were taking too long,” Ramses began to explain. “We decided to come back here to see if you were stranded after failing to track Castlebourne’s new location. The rest is obvious. We were just about to come find you on Vitalemus.”

“Did you put a pocket dimension in the buoy thinking Romana would be able to use it?” Leona asked.

“No, that didn’t occur to me,” Ramses replied. “It was just a failsafe if something went wrong. With no other habitable structure around here, there needed to be some way to survive, like if you had a stranger in tow with a less advanced vacuum suit, or no suit at all. As it turns out,” he went on while tapping a piece of the buoy that he had separated from the rest, “it was necessary.”

“Is someone in there?” Leona questioned.

“You’ll see.” That was a weird way to put it.

“Can we all go back to Castlebourne together now?” Mateo asked.

Ramses shook his head. “I’m afraid this was a one-way trip. Hrockas scrambled the tracker from his end. Where they are by now is a mystery. I could probably write an algorithm that could predict their movements using their last known location. The choosing one he’s using to push the host star around is powerful, but she has her limits. They can’t be all the way to the outer arm of the Milky Way, or something. But we would have to leave something behind to keep trying to track them...”

“Or I could do it again,” Romana volunteered.

“No,” Mateo countered decisively. “I don’t want you breaking your pattern ever again.”

“Do we really need to find Castlebourne at all?” Marie asked the group. “We were trying to leave it at one point.”

“That’s true, I remember that now,” Mateo affirms. It was the closest thing to home they had ever had, but it was always going to end eventually. It was supposed to end a long time ago, but they got sidetracked with all that Pacey-Underburg stuff, which kept them tied to Castlebourne for a bit longer.

“Do you want to try another aimless jump?” Romana offered.

“And end up back in that hellhole?” Leona added. “No, thanks.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Romana reminded them. “I liked the outfits.”

“You could always wear that kind of outfit, whenever you want,” Leona said.

“True,” Romana replied. She shed her suit, and shifted her nanites to a 1950s-esque dress, not exactly like the kind she wore when they were oblivious and trapped in Underburg, but similar.

“Put your suit back on,” Mateo shouted.

Romana couldn’t reply in the vacuum, but she could still hear via conduction, yet she pushed the back of her ear forward as if she couldn’t even do that. After her father pointed at her with stern determination, she switched her suit back on. “Geeze, Papa Bear,” she joked. “Rambo’s got me covered. That man knows his way around a woman’s body.”

“Goddammit!” Mateo complained. “Don’t say things like that!”

“Okay, okay,” Leona jumped in, as she usually had to do when those two were at it. Romana knew how to push her dad’s buttons, and Leona knew how to put a stop to it, which was to change the subject as quickly as possible. “Let’s just go back to Earth. I’m feeling a little homesick. And it was home for all of us at some point, though not technically the same version of it.”

“That’s a good idea,” Marie concluded.

Ramses looked at his forearm readout. “My coherence gauge is in the Orange, where are you?”

“We just arrived, so it’s still Red,” Leona answered. “We won’t be ready to jump until nearly the end of the day, probably.”

“I’m doin’ a bottle episode!” Olimpia suddenly shouted.

“I was just thinking about that,” Angela said. “Not the bottle episode thing, that’s nonsense. “We should call it slinging. Why are we calling it jumping?”

“Seconded,” Romana agreed.

“All in favor,” Mateo posed. They raised their hands. “Motion passes. New lingo established.” He paused for a moment. “Great, that entertained us for all of ten seconds. What do we do in the meantime? And don’t say RPS-101 Plus. I don’t like playing in my suit. I can’t control my objects right.”

“You just say that because you consistently lose!” Olimpia teased.

“Mah-ri?” Angela began, “why are you looking around?”

“Oh, we just made a decision to go to Earth,” Marie replied. “That’s usually when God laughs and intervenes.

That was true. Everyone started to look around too, but found only space. The sudden intervention she was talking about didn’t usually happen when they were actively looking for it...kind of a watched pot never boils sort of thing, but it was still prudent to check.

“Do you guys realize there are three wars?” Angela offered. She opened the floor up to anyone, but no one responded. “The Exin Empire, the Sixth Key conflict, and those dragonfly aliens. I don’t know if you’ve realized this, but we’ve been switching between them. Once we close one chapter of one book, we start the next chapter of one of the other two books.”

Ramses glanced down at the piece of the buoy he attached to his chest. Only Mateo noticed, and he chose not to address it.

“Yeah, you’re right about that, aren’t you?” Leona asked rhetorically. “We just closed one of the books, but we don’t know which one we’re about to open, if either of the others.”

“I am curious about what’s going on with the Sixth Key,” Marie admitted. “It’s been a long time. I spent some years in one of those worlds.”

“So did I,” Romana said, referring to having grown up in ancient Third Rail.

“But the Ochivari are so fascinating,” Angela insisted. “We could end up in any universe, dealing with any new, unfamiliar culture.”

“Well, we might be able to trigger the Transit to show up if one of us makes a declaration that we want to fight in a cosmic war, or join the military,” Marie suggested.

“Let’s not do that,” Leona volleyed.

“Then the Sixth Key it is,” Angela responded. “Raise the sails! Navigate us to the aperture!” She pointed in a random direction. It was a little funny, but nobody laughed. They just fell silent for a time.

“That lasted us another five minutes. How’s everybody’s coherence? Mine’s still in the Red. Do we all have to be Green, or...”

“Maybe not,” Ramses explained. “I would feel safer if we were, though. I would feel even safer with Violet.”

“If you’re bored, we could just go into stasis for a few hours. It’s not bad in here. I found it easy to wake back up when they found me.”

“Well, yeah, Rambo knows his way around a woman’s body,” Olimpia echoed Romana from earlier.

“I want a divorce,” Mateo said, joking, but...clearly not happy for real.

The seven of them continued to hang out there while they waited for their coherence gauges to rise up to acceptable levels. They mostly held onto the buoy to stay close to one another, but occasionally, one of them would push off and float around. They could always return by utilizing their maneuvering thrusters, or just teleporting back. That was what gave Romana the idea to play hide-and-seek. It was a dangerous version of the game, which not everyone in the galaxy would be able to play. Because space was empty and black, the chances of finding someone just by the naked eye were incredibly low. They could use their heat signatures instead, but then detection would be incredibly easy. The only way to do it was for each hider to shut off their own life support systems, and stay in one place for long enough for the seeker to find everyone else first. They could still use their comms, but they would be untraceable. Some of them could withstand the cold for longer, and were better at hiding. Others were caught when they just couldn’t take it anymore. At this point, they could try to teleport away, but the seeker could always jump right to them wherever they ended up.

They played the game for a couple of hours before noticing that the same people were winning each time. It was always either Mateo or Ramses, which made this whole thing feel very unfeministic. Even though Ramses supposedly built their superstrates equally, it seemed as though the women got colder faster, just as they would if they were simply wearing business clothes in an office. The coherence gauges still weren’t Green for everybody, but they were sick of playing around, so most of them just took naps. They floated aimlessly there in the black, mostly apart, though Mateo and Olimpia held together like the two lovers they were. Leona was working on the self-destruct sequence for the buoy. Instead of bringing it with them, they were just gonna blow it up, so no one could have any hope of finding any information on it. It took a lot of time and work to engage the explosives. This was by design, so it couldn’t be switched on incidentally, or when the user wasn’t thinking rationally.

Finally, the last of them turned Green, and it was time to leave. Ramses woke everyone up with a calm, but crescendoing, song. They teleported back into a group, and magnetized their suits so they could watch the explosion together. It was a bit anticlimactic because of how fast and efficient it was, but still something worth seeing. They synced up their slingdrives, and with one final goodbye to the Castlebourne that was no longer there, they slung away.

They landed on the surface of what they assumed was Earth. They quickly detected a breathable atmosphere, and were able to recede their nanites into regular clothes. This did look like Earth, but perhaps one from long ago. Earth didn’t really have any cities anymore. They just lived in arcological megastructures, and some seasteads, if they weren’t just orbiting from space. They were on a street, though. The buildings were sleek and advanced, but just too dense for Earth in this time period. People were staring at them, including parents trying to hold their children close. A man approached them cautiously. “Do you mean us harm?” he asked.

Leona stepped forward. “Absolutely not. We’re travelers, attempting to return to Earth.”

The man looked over his shoulder at the crowd, and then back at Leona. “Never heard of it. How did you do that thing with your clothes?”

“Have you heard of other...” Leona trailed off. She slowly darted her eyes side to side, looking for the right way to word this. Unfortunately, the beginning of her sentence might have painted her into a corner. No, she could figure this out. The Prime Directive applied here until she determined otherwise. “...other cities.”

“You mean on the other side of the tunnels?” the man guessed. “Yes. We don’t interact with them, except to exchange some technologies sometimes.”

Tunnels. Leona looked up at the sky, or what appeared to be a sky anyway. She pulled a small swarm of nanites over her eyes, and used them as sensors. “Yeah, that was definitely a hologram, and they were under a dome. Goddammit, they were back on Castlebourne, and in some kind of simulation. Wait.

The man looked up at the sky too, trying to figure out what she was so baffled by.

The dimensions were off. This wasn’t one of the Castlebourne domes. It was too small. Not by much, but other than the ocean caps, and a few rare exceptions, all Castlebourne domes were pretty much the exact same skeletal design. Where would they be where people would be living under a dome, but alarmed by their use of nanite technology. She looked back at the stranger and breathed. “Have you heard of Proxima Doma?”

“Yes,” he replied. “We don’t know what it means.”

Leona looked back at the rest of the team. She just regarded them for a moment, trying to decide the best course of action. There was really only one. They couldn’t teleport, and they couldn’t explain their odd behavior. The locals wouldn’t understand, and it would break their worldview. “Run.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 10, 2523

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They should have realized that Ramses!324, a.k.a Tok’ra’s responsibilities and loyalties would remain with the people of New Welrios. Apparently, the two factions there had managed to become one cohesive peoples since the rest of Team Matic—including a different version of Ramses—was there. When they sent Old!Bronach back to the Goldilocks Corridor to reclaim his throne, they asked Team Kadiar to ask Tok’ra for his assistance in this matter. It would be his job to make sure that Old!Bronach became a decent leader, and started treating his people well. They never really found out how Tok’ra took it. They didn’t even know how the crew of the Vellani Ambassador broached the subject; whether it was more a command or more of a request. He apparently accepted his new role out of some sense of guilt, which wasn’t what they wanted. More recently, however, he put his foot down, and returned to his roots on New Welrios.

They had become a powerhouse over the last century, armed with a plethora of technologies that Tok’ra built for them. They were completely untouchable, much in the same way that Vitalemus was. Even The Oaksent was reportedly scared of getting near it, or even sending troops. Also like Vitalemus, they had evidently stayed out of the politics, and were satisfied with being independent and isolated. They were living proof that Oaksent’s hold on this sector of the galaxy wasn’t as strong as they once believed. The movies made it look easy, but it was probably pretty hard to keep control over so many worlds. Things had only gotten harder since the team showed up. They hadn’t realized how much of an impact they had had, but things were looking up.

Leona managed to convince the other parties to let the New Welriosians speak. They didn’t want to be so distant anymore. They wanted to participate in the community. The negotiations started back up again. Some of the agreements they had come up with last year had to be scrapped or replaced, but many weren’t rendered obsolete by this development. They pushed forward, and were almost home free. All that was left were signatures of all parties involved. It may have taken a long time, but they seemed to be able to agree that they wanted peace. That wasn’t possible just a couple of years ago. It was going to be a perpetual struggle, just as it was in the Sixth Key, but they should be able to handle it.

There was just one more thing before the deal could be finalized, at least according to everyone but Tok’ra, Dubra and Kivi, and Team Matic. The other negotiators had evidently come up with a new demand during the interim  year, which they decided not to bring up until the New Welrios situation could be resolved. Korali volunteered to be the one to speak for the group. “We want slingdrive technology.” She smiled, thinking that she had them right where they wanted them. “Nothing gets signed until we get it.”

Mateo stared over the table at her. “There are seven of us in total. We are in this room for you. This is not to our benefit. If you fail to sign these agreements, the VA will continue to ferry refugees to their new rightful home on Castlebourne. And in the midst of all that, the rest of you can fight it out all you bloody want. It’s sad, and we feel for the people of the Goldilocks Corridor, whether they identify with the Exin Empire, or otherwise. We won’t feel bad about our decision to bug out, however, because we did everything we could. And again, there are only seven of us. No one would blame us for failing to fix the whole universe. We will not let you get your hands on this technology. There is no threat you could make to change our minds. So sign it, don’t sign it; I don’t care anymore...our job is done. You never had any leverage against us. We came to this world in good faith to help, but we’ll only let that go so far before we hit our breaking point.” He stood up. “Let’s get out of here, ladies, back to Castlebourne.”

Bronach stood up as well. “If you leave, we can’t guarantee the safety of your new homeworld. Even if we do sign this, nothing we agreed to in the document bars us from attacking your region of the galaxy.”

“Do what you must,” Mateo responded. “We’ll take care of our people.” He looked over at his old friend. “It was nice meeting you, Tok’ra.”

Tok’ra nodded back respectfully.

Mateo, Leona, Angela, and Romana disappeared in a flash of technicolors.

They found themselves floating in the middle of outerspace, rather than on a planet, or even near one. Mateo laughed. “Slingdrive still slingin’.”

“That was a good speech you made, love,” Angela said to him. It was up to Leona to figure out what was going on, and to see if they could determine where they ended up, and they all knew it, so there was no point in vocalizing the plan of action. They just let her do her thing.

“Do you mean it?” Mateo asked.

“You said what we were all thinking,” Romana noted.

“Constellations are the same,” Leona interjected.

“They use constellations here?” Angela questioned.

“Well, they’re not named constellations, like Taurus or Leo. It’s just a map of the firmament as seen from our coordinates. We could be a couple light years off course and still be in the right vicinity, but...I would also be able to see the host star, which I can’t. The whole solar system is missing.”

“Wait, I’m getting a message.” Mateo tapped on his wristband.

“So am I,” Romana confirmed.

They listened to the message together. “Friends. This is Ramses. I can’t tell you what it took to get Hrockas to let me drop this buoy in the water for you to find. He hooked up with a powerful time traveler, who agreed to literally move the star system. This is to prevent any enemy from ever finding us. Ever. Depending on when you return, we’re probably only five or ten light years away at this point. Please retrieve the buoy, so no one else can find us. It includes an onboard tracker, which will pinpoint our exact location. Don’t leave it there, please. Rocky’ll have my ass.”

“I see where the beacon is,” Leona said. “It will only take us one normal jump to get there.”

They all teleported away, and took hold of the buoy. Leona popped the access panel open, and started working on the tracker. It wasn’t just there for them to consult on the first screen. She had to log into the system using her credentials, then go through this whole security system to prove her identity. If she made one little mistake, the entire thing would apparently self-destruct, so she had to be very careful and methodical.

“Do we have enough power for a second jump?” Romana asked. “It’s looking a little low to me.”

“It’ll be pretty short compared to where we just came from,” Mateo said to her. “I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

“We’ll wait several hours to be safe while our safety levels rise,” Leona said as she was still working. “They will not have traveled very far at all in that time.”

“Wait, what about the Vellani Ambassador?” Angela realized. “They need to find Castlebourne’s new location too. In fact, if it’s constantly on the move, they’ll need constant updates to keep up.”

Leona stopped and sighed. “That’s a good point. We can’t leave this here, though. Hrockas will be mad. I’m sure he went to great lengths to hide. The new coordinates cannot be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. But we have no idea when Team Kadiar will come back too. We just left them behind, and we cannot communicate with them from this distance.”

“We have to go back,” Romana urged.

“Correction,” Leona said. She tapped one more button, like it was the last one she needed. “We’ll go back. You need to stay here to protect the buoy. We don’t know what the VA’s quintessence levels are. They might not be able to return until tomorrow. We also may not be able to find them at all, so you can be our back-up messenger.”

“Leona, we’re not leaving my daughter here alone.”

“There’s a pocket dimension attached to this buoy. She can rest in stasis, and wait for someone else to arrive.”

“What if that someone else is an enemy, who blows this thing out of the sky?”

“They won’t be able to find it,” Leona reasoned. “I’m turning off the beacon. Only we or the Ambassador will be able to reconnect with it.”

“It’s okay, dad, I can do this. I’m the only one who can turn off my pattern.”

“I don’t like you to use that loophole all the time,” Mateo argued. “It’s so...lonely. I was never lonely. I met Leona right away after I started slipping time, and it wasn’t even two weeks before she joined my pattern. You shouldn’t have to keep doing this for us. We shouldn’t keep putting you in this position.”

“What’s the point of a loophole if we can’t use it to loop holes?” She winced. “You know what I mean. I won’t really be alone, I’ll be asleep. And I’ll only wake up if my sisters show up.”

He reached out and hugged her the best he could with their suits on. “Argh!”

She smiled at him, then receded her nanites so she was just wearing jeans and a t-shirt. He did the same, so they could hug each other for real. I love you, she mouthed.

I love you too, he mouthed back.

They each reengaged suit mode, then Romana had Leona help her access to pocket dimension. They could still hear her in there through comms, so she was able to promise that everything was okay. It was pitch black, but her suit was equipped with everything she needed. She said her goodbyes, then initiated stasis. Leona needed to watch her vitals, and run diagnostics on her behalf, before they could leave her behind. Once she was satisfied that Romana was going to be all right on her own, it still wasn’t time to leave just yet, because their own slingdrives weren’t safe enough to make another jump. Finally, though, after the waiting period, the three of them synced up their tandem slingdrives, and jumped back to Vitalemus. They were floating in orbit, though, not on the planet anymore, so hopefully no one would even notice their return. It was kind of embarrassing, to make such a dramatic exit, only to come back because they forgot their keys.

They tried to reach out to their friends, but no one was responding. After a few tries, they shifted gears, and made a call to the version of Vitalie on this planet, who informed them that the Vellanie Ambassador had already left, but she didn’t know where they were going. Cool. So now they were stuck in the Goldilocks Corridor with nothing to do, and no way to go back home until their slingdrive came back online.

They just hung in orbit for a few minutes, having no better plans as of yet. They certainly weren’t going to try to land back on the planet.

“Wanna make out?” Angela joked.

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Microstory 2500: Welcome to the Landis Tipton Breath of Life Foundation

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Welcome. And thank you all for coming to the Landis Tipton Breath of Life Foundation. In a few moments, I’m going to start the video, which will give you a more comprehensive idea of what we do here, and how our principles have guided our vision for the future. You all came to this place either because you are suffering from a debilitating or terminal disease, or you are chaperoning someone who is. You have all already filled out your preliminary applications, and would not be in this room if there were some reason to reject you. So congratulations, you’re about to be cured! Let’s go over some reasons why some people face rejection, so you’ll better understand why you were selected for treatment. First, we handle otherwise incurable diseases only here. We do not treat injuries. No one is here because they broke a leg, or suffered a cut on their cheek. Those are not life-threatening conditions, and conventional medicine should be able to help them. We also do not accept patients for holistic benefits. Someone who just wants to feel better overall will not be given a place in line. Landis also can’t treat what we like to call conditions of state. You may be considered overweight, by popular medicine, your doctor, or even yourself, but this is not an acute or chronic illness, and Landis is unable to make changes to these types of systemic issues. There is simply nothing to repair in these cases. It may be unhealthy, but nothing is broken, and in the end, that’s what Landis can do for us. He can fix what is broken, not simply make something more preferable.

It’s important to understand as well that, while you were granted allowance to add more than one medical issue on your form, Landis is unable to selectively decide which conditions are cured, and which are not. I doubt any of you would like him to leave anything out anyway, but we have to make it clear that if you left anything off of your form, it will not be excluded. If you have poor eyesight, but don’t care about that, Landis’ breath has no way of knowing that, or ignoring it. In fact, if you do happen to have some minor injury along with your illness, that will be cured too. The breath doesn’t choose. It is the program, and our policies, which choose what to spend Landis’ time on, but once you’re here, everything that can be repaired will be repaired. We have yet to find a disease that Landis cannot cure. Our mission is to one day rid the whole world of all disease and pain, but for right now, due to the sheer number of requests, we have to prioritize, and sacrifices must be made. I don’t say any of this to scare you, but to excite you for what’s to come. This is literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I know you’ve all been waiting for your chance to be healed of what ails you, even before this organization was founded. You’ve been through great hardship. I can’t tell you that life will be easy from here on out, but we can at least take this off your plate. Now, please sit back and relax while you watch the introductory video, which will provide you with a history of our foundation, beginning with the mystery of the origin of Landis Tipton’s powers, and explain how we are providing the community with more than just cures. We’re building the future, and finding a place for everyone in it.

Microstory 2485: Passage of Rites

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They call this an antimetabole, with the name referring to the physical space where rites are performed, as opposed to the original phrase, which involves a more metaphorical passage from one state of being to another. A rite of passage is a ceremony—or a more abstract transitional period—that marks some change in a person’s life, often when they are still young. In some cases, it’s specifically meant to mark someone’s development from youth to adulthood. Bar Mitsvahs, Quinceñeras, and Sweet Sixteens are all about this concept, and come at the age when that culture believes an individual sufficiently matures. It doesn’t have to be based on a particular age, or there might be some leeway. For instance, our ancestors used to have to wait to learn how to drive land vehicles, and once they did learn this skill, it came with a sense of independence that they usually did not feel before. It often happened at a certain age, but it didn’t have to, and some people never learned. Different people have different ideas about what someone needs to experience in their life before they can be respected in some form or another. Some have believed that you weren’t a man, for instance, until you participated in a physically violent altercation. Others thought you really only needed to learn how to hunt game, or go on some kind of lone journey in the wilderness. Some rites of passage are a very specific set of rituals which offer symbolic practices to represent the transition. They might be asked to drink a bitter drink to symbolize the harsh realities of life, then receive a sweet candy to exemplify the reward of a life well lived. Some of them their participants prepared their whole lives for. A lot of the rites of passage shown here have been lost to time as the culture who practiced them forgot, or had newer generations who began to see less value in maintaining them. There’s a relatively new tradition on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida where the current permanent residents gift each of their younglings a stone every year of their lives. They are expected to hold onto their collection between the ages of six and seventeen, even as it grows, until their seventeenth birthday, when they throw all of them over a cliff. These stones represent the care and attention the child needed as they were growing up. The weight of them collectively represents the burden they placed on their families. Ridding themselves of their collections represents the second stage in their life, when they are now expected to fend for themselves—to collect their own proverbial stones. That rite of passage is here too, reenacted by visitors, so they can physically feel the meaning behind the traditions. Other rites are performed exclusively by androids, such as the human sacrifices, which thankfully, no culture today has continued to observe. As I was saying about the birthday observances, there’s a lot of fun here, and you can come just to party. But I hope you do venture out to the other areas, and see some of the more somber and profound events. You can learn about any of these things in the archives, but there’s nothing quite like seeing it up close for yourself. I’ve learned a lot here already, even though I’m an archaeologist, and I’m sure you will too.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 1, 2514

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Ramses posited that the temporal energy that Boyd had absorbed when he blew up the crystal with lemon juice was basically all that was holding him together. Even after Mateo resurrected him from the afterlife simulation, he could not be saved forever. He knew this. Leona knew this. She also knew that it was only a matter of time before it killed him anyway, whether he was drained of the power or not. Temporal energy is really just time itself. You can have an excess of it, but if not properly stored, it will leak out as time passes, and that would have been the end of Boyd Maestri. She chose to not let his sacrifice go to waste, and to restore their own powers so that they could go on with the mission that he was intending to help them with. The role he was going to serve on the team now fell to Mateo. That was a problem for the future, though. Right now, they were going to honor their frenemy with a proper burial.

Everyone was here already. They were just waiting on Ramses, who was working on something in his lab. Mateo looked over at his daughter awkwardly. She glanced back at him, but quickly turned away again. He tried to look away too, but returned. She did another double-take. “What is it, dad?”

Mateo reached down and took a fold of her outfit between his fingers. “This isn’t your suit.”

“No, it’s real clothing,” she confirmed. “I went to Fashiondome, and sewed something myself. That’s what I’ve been doing all morning.”

“You know how to sew?”

“Yeah, I grew up thousands of years ago in the Third Rail. Of course I know how to sew.”

“Oh. That makes sense. I forget that about you.”

“Yeah.” Romana tried to go back to waiting patiently for Ramses.

“I know you’re an adult, it’s just that it’s a little—”

“Shh!” Leona warned before Mateo could finish his sentence.

Romana sighed, but continued to look straight forward. “Boyd liked my cleavage, and I choose to honor him in this way. This is a perfectly normal black funeral dress.” She said that she wasn’t angry at him for not being able to resurrect Boyd a second time, but there would always be that question between them of whether he genuinely tried, or if the part of him that didn’t want to save Boyd was big enough to stop it.

He looked on down the line at Olimpia. “And you?”

“You’re the one who likes my cleavage.” He didn’t say anything more, but she took the hint, and commanded her nanite clothing to cover her chest up a little more.

Ramses appeared. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. I had to come up with a way to safely dispose of temporal energy crystal.” While Mateo was trying to get Boyd back, and Romana was crying, Ramses had to delicately remove the shards from Boyd’s face. It wasn’t exactly trained as a medical examiner, but they couldn’t risk anyone else for the job, or really, trust them with it.

“It’s okay,” Mateo said. “You get on that end.”

“No,” Romana said. “I can carry it myself.”

Mateo looked at her sadly. “Romy, it’s unwieldy. You could hoist it over your shoulder, but you can’t carry it with the respect that he deserves.”

“Watch me.” Romana reached over the casket and tried to grab the handle on the other side. It wasn’t that she wasn’t strong enough. Her arms weren’t long enough.

“Let me get the other end,” Mateo offered. “He and I had our issues, which is exactly why I should do this. You wanted us to be friends, didn’t you? Or did you enjoy being in the middle of the animosity?”

She sighed again, relenting. “Okay, get the other end.”

Mateo and Romana carried Boyd down the trail as the others followed, or walked on ahead. “You spoke with Hrockas?” Leona asked.

Angela nodded. “This dome won’t be used for another fifty years, if ever. We’ll bury him deep, where there’s more activity while the regolith is being transformed into soil from chemicals they added to the water table.”

“Did he end up making an announcement?” Leona went on. “The first permanent death on the planet. That’s a big deal.”

Angela shook her head. “He’s burying the truth along with Boyd himself. No one needs to know that anyone died. Even though people are still allowing themselves to die on the Core Worlds, it could hurt visitorship. His death was completely unrelated to anything offered in the domes, so there’s no point in advertising or disclosing it.”

The two of them were talking rather quietly, and their comms were off, but everyone wearing an upgraded substrate had excellent hearing, so they all heard it. Romana was not upgraded, but even she heard it somehow. She glanced over her shoulder at Leona and Angela and frowned, but didn’t speak to them. She instead looked at Ramses, who was next to her. “People should know that he died, and what he died for. He sacrificed himself...for us.”

“You’re right,” Ramses said. “One of the hardest things we do is keeping our lives secret from the vonearthans. I know you know everything about that, living in the Third Rail for the majority of your life.”

Marie and Olimpia were in front, and had just rounded a corner when they suddenly stopped short. Olimpia nearly tripped on a rock, but caught herself in time.

“What is it?” Mateo questioned.

“There’s a man,” Marie answered. “He may have a weapon.”

“Set it on the ground,” Mateo ordered. He slowly bent his knees as his daughter did, and carefully set the casket down. “Wait here.” Mateo walked on alone, gently pulling the ladies’ shoulders back so this mysterious stranger wouldn’t be able to see them anymore. He did see a man, standing in the distance, resting both of his wrists on what appeared to be a shovel. Mateo used his telescopic vision to zoom in. “It’s Halifax.”

“Really?” Leona asked. She walked forward to get a look for herself.

“I recognize that name from the list,” Olimpia said.

“He’s The Gravedigger,” Mateo replied. “We’ve not seen him in a long time.” He looked back at Romana. “Not since the Third Rail.” He grabbed the casket again. “Let’s go. He’s no threat.”

They continued on their way. Halifax waited patiently where they first saw him. He was chewing on sunflower seeds, and spitting the shells off to the side. “I expected you sooner! Why didn’t you teleport here?”

“It’s a funeral procession,” Mateo explained. “You can’t teleport through a funeral procession.”

“No, s’pose not.”

“What are you doing here?” Mateo asked him.

“I’m here for him.” Halifax nodded at the body.

“Not many work orders from this time period, I would guess,” Mateo mused.

“Nope,” Halifax replied matter-of-factly.

“So he’s never coming back?” Leona asked.

Halifax took a beat. “No,” he answered solemnly. “He’ll be in good company,” he added after Mateo exchanged a look with Romana. The Cemetery magically appeared behind him, including a new open grave right behind him, and a second one a few meters away, which was alarming.

“Can we still do a green burial?” Romana asked, stepping forward. “It’s what he wanted.

“Is there any other kind?” Halifax responded.

Romana knelt down and started to unlock the casket. Mateo reached down, and covered her hand with his. “You don’t have to do this yourself. You don’t have to...see him like this.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, father.” She unlocked the other latch. “I do.” She lifted the lid, and stared at Boyd’s dead body for a few moments. Then she slipped her arms underneath his, and began to drag him out, across the ground, and over to the edge of the grave. She let go only to hop in, then took hold of Boyd again to pull him down on top of her. She lay there for another few moments, staring blankly into empty space. They gathered ‘round and watched her in reverence. Finally, she freed herself from him, stood up, and just teleported to the surface.

“Your dress,” Mateo pointed out.

“That’s why I wore something real,” Romana explained, “so it wouldn’t have a self-cleaning function.”

“Would you like to say a few words?” Halifax offered.

She stepped over, and looked into the grave with everyone else. “Boyd Maestri was not a perfect man. Like many of our kind, he took his power for granted. He made life harder for some people, like Dave Seidel and June St. Martin. But he never really hurt anyone. He wasn’t anywhere close to being evil. He was actually really sweet. And I wish that you had all been able to see more than just glimpses of that. But I’m at least glad that you got to see a little. I know you weren’t happy with our age gap. The truth is, it was wider than you even know. But he never pushed me, or pressured me. What he felt for me was love. I can’t say that I felt the same. Growing up the way that I did—skipping all that time—I couldn’t have real relationships. If I met someone, they would be dead in the blink of an eye. So yeah, when the first man who I could be honest with took an interest, I fell for him. As I said, he took his powers for granted, but he didn’t treat me the same. He was respectful, and kind, and he recognized my boundaries. I—” she stammered. “That’s it.” She stepped backwards, away from the grave.

“Anyone else?” Halifax asked.

Mateo was already pretty close to the grave, but he stepped closer, letting the toes of his shoes hover over the edge. “I forgive you.”

Romana hadn’t cried this whole time, but now she snapped her eyes shut, and scrunched her cheeks up, trying to hold the tears back, even though she knew that no one expected that of her. She buried her face in the safety of Olimpia’s bosom. Suddenly. Ellie Underhill climbed out of the second open grave. She tried to clap the dirt off of her hands, and wiped them on her skirt. Without saying anything first, she began to sing, “I just found a lemon tree. It’s a bad day for my enemies. Yes, there’s sugar water in the breeze, and I’m ready, I’m ready. So someone play guitar for me. I’m ready to leave my body.”

It was at this point that Olimpia pulled off her necklace, and joined in. “And oh, this could be rage. We’re flying to the space between the lies we told, and find the good in every soul is all connected energy, or how would I know you were thinking of me in the tree?” Only two of them were singing, but with Olimpia’s echo powers, it sounded more like a small chorus. They went on with the song, but skipped the instrumental break, since they were singing a capella. When they ended with the final two lines, “when all of the lights remain, this is all that our time contains,” Olimpia belted it out. Her voice roared up into the sky, and apparently tore a hole in spacetime. The Time Shriek answered back, echoing in its own way, just as Olimpia could.

Romana smiled as she wiped more tears from her eyes. “Boyd loved that scream. He thought it was so cool that so many people from so far away could hear the same thing.”

“You got to know him better than I realized,” Mateo said, wrapping his arms around her. “I’m sorry I didn’t make it easy on you.”

“It’s okay,” she assured him. “I understand. Or rather I don’t understand what it’s like to be a parent. But I will soon.” She smiled, and placed her palm on her belly.”

“No,” Mateo said, struck with dread, trying his best not to faint, or shout in rage.

“No, I’m kidding!” Romana said apologetically.

“Oh, god...dammit! Don’t do that to me!”

“Or me,” Ramses agreed surprisingly. “We would have to uninstall your EmergentSuit.” He looked around at the rest of the ladies. “That goes for all of you. I wouldn’t otherwise have the right to know if you’re pregnant, but...”

“We get it,” Marie said to him. “We’ll let ya know.”

“Thanks for coming, Ellie,” Leona said. “That was a very thoughtful and beautiful gift.”

“That wasn’t your gift,” Ellie said. “I just like to make an entrance.” She reached into her pocket. “This is your gift.” She pulled out a smooth red stone. Or was it made of glass? It looked familiar, but no one could place it right away. “The angry Russian I took it from wasn’t happy, but he and his daughter will be fine. I moved them somewhere safe.”

“The cap of the Insulator of Life,” Ramses exclaimed. “We’ve been wondering how those two got separated, and where this has been.”

“St. Petersburg, I guess.” Ellie looked from one to another, to another, but only with her eyes. “Is anyone gonna take this from my hand, errr...?”

Angela happened to be the closest, so she accepted it.

“Forgive me, but...this was a funeral gift?” Leona questioned. “Do they have those in Fort Underhill? I didn’t even think you had death.”

“No, it’s a wedding gift,” Ellie contended. She looked around at them again, but with her head this time. “Wait, what year is this?” She reached out and grabbed Leona’s wrist so she could look at her watch. “Whoops! Better go! Forget I said anything!” She ran off and hopped back into the portal grave.

“Well,” Olimpia said with a sigh. “I guess the cat’s out of the bag.” She reached into her own pockets, and pulled out two diamond rings. She held them in front of her. “Mateo and Leona Matic...will you marry me?”

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Extremus: Year 102

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There is a very old, and very sad, tradition on Ansutah, which gratefully, no one has had to practice in a very long time. Life was hard on the human continent. It was perfectly designed to be a protective haven from the white monsters, but that was pretty much it. They were limited technologically, because they still had to keep hidden from any Maramon who might stray too close. They couldn’t develop aeroplanes, fireworks, or even tall buildings. They made do, and their population eventually numbered in the billions, but that was thanks to the knowledge that they retained from their ancestors, who lived on post-industrial Earth. Had they been starting entirely from scratch, many experts posit that they would have gone extinct. Unfortunately, while they survived as a people, it did not come without loss.

Dead babies were once a fact of life, on Earth, as it was on Ansutah. Though they don’t receive much news from the stellar neighborhood all the way out here, the Extremusians believe that it’s still going on. There are holdouts, who refuse to adopt certain advances, including those which might save their own children’s lives. Such choices come with consequences. This did not happen in the Gatewood Collective. The refugees embraced modern technology, grateful to finally achieve a way of living that was safer, healthier, and less restrictive. No more dead babies, what more could they want? To not forget their past. History is a profoundly important subject to teach each subsequent generation. Not every kid likes it, nor do they grow up to change their minds, but they do recognize its value. There was a time when the bed of mourning ritual was a common practice, and they’re getting a practical history lesson on the subject today.

When someone died on Ansutah, a funeral or memorial service would start off the mourning process. They were superstitious that the scent of the decaying corpse would attract the white monsters, alerting them to their location. The body was buried deep to hide them, and they were buried quickly. For many years, there was a debate about whether they should start performing autopsies on their deceased when the circumstances called for it. Many murders went unsolved because this belief was so ingrained in the culture that medical examiners had very little time to perform proper inquiries. This technique of a quick burial was also used when it was a child who died, but this created a secondary problem. Especially in the case of infants, there were few—or even no—images of their loved one. There was little to remember them by. Often, the only thing they had that remained was their bed. Often, not even that existed yet, and there was an entire industry that specialized in single-use cribs.

With the body of the child gone too soon, their bed was left temporarily empty, and the Ansutahan humans believed that the angels would not be able to find their soul so deep underground. The belief did not extend to adults, for their soul should be strong enough to seek the angel’s gate on its own. To help the angels find her child’s soul, the mother was expected to drag the child’s little bed out into the cemetery, lie in it the best they could...and cry. Her wails of pain would bring the ferrying angel to her, where they would find the child’s soul below, and rescue it. She would not be alone, at least not at first. Friends and family would attend the ritual, just as they had the funeral. They would not stay forever, though. While the mother continued to mourn, and the father or partner continued to try to comfort her, little by little, the visitors would leave. The first to go were anyone who just wanted to be there for the family for a fleeting moment, who did not know them at all. The next ones were passing acquaintances. And the dance continued until only the mother and father remained. And then...the father would leave as well. That is the most depressing part. The lessons in this are that you are ultimately alone, and that everyone leaves eventually. When that angel comes to retrieve your soul, it comes only for you. No one can be there with you. No one can see you. Not even your mother. For once she has been alone in that bed of mourning for some time, she too will leave. The bed, the body, and the place in their hearts where the child once lived, will finally be empty forever.

Audrey is in her bed of mourning right now, and Tinaya is standing nearby, in irony. It feels like five minutes ago when she was scolding the medical team, and the other conspirators who betrayed the public with their secret plan to impregnate however many women on this ship without their consent. Now it is she who is lying to their people. Audrey’s baby is not dead. She is being kept in a secure location while they put on this little charade. It is not entirely a lie, however. Audrey will never see her daughter again. That is called an ambiguous loss, and it can be just as impactful and saddening as an unambiguous one. Once this is over, she will give the child a name, say her goodbyes, then watch her disappear into the mini-Nexus that they have in the Admiral office. Audrey, Tinaya, Silveon, Arqut, Thistle, and one other person are the only ones who will know what truly happened to the girl. Everyone else is in the dark, including the baby’s father. That sixth person is presently caring for the baby until it’s time to leave. It’s someone they can trust, but whose absence will not be noticed at the ritual.

Waldemar is hovering over the crib. He is incapable of feeling certain emotions, but he has become better at pretending. Tinaya can tell that he’s faking it. She even caught a glimpse of the nanopuffer that he used to induce tearing in his eyes. He still doesn’t quite have the facial expression right. It’s overexaggerated, like what they show in cartoons, so young viewers can tell with certainty which emotion is being displayed. Arqut is gifted at reading people. He’s scanning the crowd for any indications that anyone is clocking Waldemar’s performance. He hasn’t seen any skeptics so far, but they may be exceptionally emotionally intelligent too, and pretending not to notice. One day, everyone will know what Waldemar truly is. That day is unavoidable, but they hope to put it off until there are no longer any innocent people in his orbit. That may be an impossible task too, especially now that Audrey is in so much more of a vulnerable position than she was before the baby.

People are really starting to leave now. They’re in Attic Forest. It’s not expansive enough to fit everyone on the ship comfortably, but they’re not all trying anyway. Some strangers want to be there, but some are just living their lives, or have to be at work. This is the first dead child in a very long time, so it is absolutely noteworthy, but that doesn’t mean everyone has to be involved somehow. Even so, there were a lot of people before, and now, it’s mostly empty. Even Lataran is walking away now. A few random visitors are here because they want to walk around the forest, but the Captain’s people are asking them to leave, because that’s not really appropriate at the moment, even if they are clear on the other side. Tinaya wants to be the last one to stay with the sad couple, but she’s only the mother of a friend of the mother. The families need to go through the final steps alone. Captain Jennings will stick around until it’s time for Waldemar and Audrey to be there alone, though. Waldemar’s mother is still a hot mess, and kind of needs supervision, and he’s perfect for this role because he can go anywhere he wants, and he always carries a good excuse with him.

Tinaya and her family are currently standing outside while Audrey’s parents depart. Audrey overwrote her younger self’s consciousness at an older age than Silveon did, so she was able to hide her maturity from them. They have no idea that she’s from the future. She thinks that Waldemar took advantage of her, and they are pursuing legal action in this regard, which is a whole other thing that they’re going to have to deal with, one way or another. They’re not exactly right, but they’re not wholly wrong either. Waldemar is not a good guy, but it’s unclear what happens to the future if he goes to hock. Will he still become a leader, and if he does, will he be worse than he was in the previous timeline? Will all of Silveon and Audrey’s efforts be for naught?

Immediately after Audrey’s parents round the corner, Waldemar steps out too. He’s supposed to stay in there with his baby’s mother for longer than that, but he’s not feeling anything but annoyed with what this might do to his ambitious plans. He nods politely at the three of them, then walks away. Audrey is now alone in there. Waldemar was right about one thing, there is no need to drag this out. “Meet us in my office.” Tinaya teleports back to the crib, helps Audrey climb out of it, and then waits patiently as Audrey tries to wipe the tears out of her eyes.

“Did I do okay?” Audrey asks.

“That was perfect,” Tinaya answers.

“Believable?” Audrey presses.

“You are in mourning, Audrey. You weren’t faking anything.”

“No, it’s fine. She’s fine. She’s gonna grow up on a planet. That’s everyone’s dream. That’s why we’re here.” She’s smiling, but her tear ducts continue to leak.

“Aud. You’re sad. I would be very concerned if you weren’t. I wouldn’t let you see her again.”

“I know,” Audrey admits. “I’m just trying to be strong, because it’s going to be hard to watch her leave.”

“I can only imagine what you’re going through,” Tinaya responds with a nod. “But you are right. She’s going to be happy there. The only thing that she’ll be missing is you. I know that sounds like I’m trivializing you, or your contribution, but you’re gonna need to make a clean break, and being optimistic about her future is vital to that, for your own sake.”

“I agree.”

“Are you ready?”

She wipes more moisture from her cheeks. “Yes.”

They take hands, and Tinaya attempts to teleport to the entrance to Admiral Hall, but they end up somewhere else. “Thistle? Where the hell are we?”

“This is a sealed chamber in a currently vacant sector of the ship. You can only enter through a teleportation frequency of my own devising. I built a clone lab here.”

Tinaya is confused and apprehensive. “...why...?”

“It’s a gift,” Thistle replies. “Turn to your left.”

They both turn to find a gestational pod. It lights up. A copy of Audrey is floating inside. “What did you do?”

“I understand that one Audrey Husk must stay behind on the ship to fulfill her mission, but that does not mean that a different Audrey can’t travel to Verdemus, and raise her child. I know that it’s not the same thing, but my own consciousness has been copied countless times, split across multiple universes, injected into countless systems and devices. You will get used to the knowledge that there is another you out there.”

“We did not discuss this at all,” Tinaya begins to scold. “You had no right to build this, let alone that clone. It is a violation, on par with what the medical team did with the faulty birth control.” She keeps going on with her admonishment against the superintelligence.

Meanwhile, Audrey has slowly been approaching the pod. She’s looking at herself in there, tilting her head in thought. “Thank you.” She says it quietly, but Tinaya can hear it.

“What was that? You’re thanking him?”

Audrey ignores the question. “Have you already copied my consciousness?”

A light flickers on over a casting pod on the other side of the room. “Not yet.”

Audrey nods as she’s slowly walking towards the second pod. “Sedate me. Copy me. Do not reawaken either of us until one Audrey and the baby are on the other side of the Nexus. It doesn’t matter which one you send away. There is a fifty percent chance that I will simply awaken in my cabin, and an equal chance that I will awaken on the planet.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” Tinaya says. “Others would say that there’s a hundred percent chance that you’re the copy, and a hundred percent chance that you’re not. Both of you will think that you’re the original, and one of you will be just as disappointed as the other would have been.”

Audrey spins back around. “I am a consciousness traveler already, Admiral Leithe. I understand the philosophical ramifications of the process, better than you ever could. This is my choice. One of us is gonna stay here as Space-Beth, and the other...will be happy.”

“Audrey...”

“She will be happy planetside...with Silvia.”

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