Microstory 2283: Is How it Goes

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I’m sorry to disappoint you, folks but there’s nothing special to report in regards to my sleep study. Why am I sleeping poorly, besides the pain that I’m still in? Stress, mostly. Stress and anxiety. We were pretty sure that that was the issue, but we tested for it in case it was something weird. They took a lot of blood and other samples, though, and there’s nothing out of the ordinary. I’ve always had problems sleeping. When I was a kid, people would tell me that you need eight hours of sleep per night, so I would ask whether that meant we need six hours total, accounting for the two hours it takes to fall asleep, or if I need to give myself a ten hour window. They had no clue what I was talking about. It was taking them ten or twenty minutes to fall asleep. That’s when I realized that I hated people. Not really, lol, but...kind of. I apologize that I’m giving you such an unexciting explanation, because my readers may tune out because of it, but this is how it goes, and it should be for now. Maybe it’s not great for engagement, but that’s what we want. I prefer it to be boring, after all that I’ve been through this year. Stress, I can handle. I have been dealing with it my whole life, even as a child. I’m sure I’ll start to sleep better now. Speaking of which, let’s go test that out now. Goodnight, everybody!

Microstory 2244: Living With Other People

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I took a look at the new place where I think we’re gonna move into. It’s really nice and new. The couple who originally commissioned it to be built ended up going through a divorce pretty much right after it was finished, reportedly because of the stress of building it. I don’t wanna gossip, though. It has five bedrooms, a finished basement, and a near finished attic. It’s not dusty and cobwebby up there, but you wouldn’t want to carry up a bed, and sleep. It’s not the kind of place that I would normally even consider, but things are different now. It’s not just about me anymore. It’s important for it to be this big. It will be easier to fortify while still maintaining privacy for each of us. Members of our security team will actually be able to live inside the house with us, instead of just being posted in a car on the street. Everyone will have their own bathroom, which I think is the biggest problem with living with other people. If you can just have your own space to clean up and take care of your business, it makes it a lot easier to deal with everything else. Well, anyway, I put in an offer, and I’ve not heard back yet, so there’s no guarantee that it’s even happening. We’ll see. In other news, I managed to schedule my next surgeries. They’ll be happening in eleven days, on a Monday. In the meantime, I’ll be sending samples to the surgeon, and occasionally going in. While Kelly no longer works for me, she’s still trained as a lifecare assistant, so I won’t have to drive to the lab every single day, or anything. I think that’s about it for me today. I’m having lunch with Jasmine and Leonard tomorrow, so that should be fun.

Microstory 2240: Filth

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Not much has changed yet. Yes, the dude who wants my bone marrow and index and I had a discussion, and we came to an initial agreement. We’ve not signed any papers, but as a sign of good faith, he gave me a down payment, which I will be using to hire a personal security detail for myself, and my two friends. Kelly and Dutch had the option to leave me behind, and enter a form of witness protection. They could have blended in well enough wherever they were sent, but they chose to stick by me, so I have to do right by them. I won’t tell you how much money I have at the moment, but it’s enough to afford security for the three of us for at least a few weeks after the FBI lets us go. So when I said that not much has changed, that wasn’t totally honest. The government isn’t entirely keen on letting me donate samples of my body to science. I don’t know if they think that they should have it for themselves, or what. Who knows what’s going on in their bureaucratic heads when it comes to me? I don’t mean to sound mean, or to be overly critical of them. They’ve helped me immensely multiple times when I really needed it. But it may be time for our relationship to end. I need to reassert my independence, and I assume that they would benefit from diverting resources to other things. Of course, none of this should be a thing that I’m worried about. I wouldn’t need any of it if the world were safer. The violent, disturbing, and stalkery messages haven’t stopped coming. I hired a publicist, who has taken over the responsibility of sorting though the filth. They’ll handle getting the word out on that. Apparently, they have a database of dangerous individuals, so if you chose to write something to me, just know that you may end up on a list. If I understand their reach, it could affect your credit score. Just be nice, safe, and happy, okay? We’ve been over this. I am not your monkey.

Microstory 2239: Marrow and Index

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A private citizen with a whole lot of money—who I shall not name—has offered me a substantial amount of money for a sample of my bone marrow, and my index. Not just a biopsy of it, but the entire thing. I didn’t want to do anything like that, but I feel like I have no choice now. The FBI can’t be responsible for us for the rest of our lives, and it’s not going super great. Someone broke into the house that we were just living in. We’ve been moving around for security reasons, but if the suspect had been a week earlier, this might not have had a happy ending. Instead of trying to hide, and stay out of danger by remaining inconspicuous, I think a better strategy would be to be out in the open, but to become so well-guarded that I’m virtually untouchable. That’s how world leaders do it. We all know where the President of the United States lives, that doesn’t mean attacking her would be easy. This will obviously require significant capital. The procedure wouldn’t be simple, nor safe, but it would be relatively quick. I’ll only have to stay in the hospital for a couple of days, and only be in recovery for about a month as I regain my strength. I don’t know for sure what the backer thinks he’ll be doing with my marrow and index, but I explained to him that my immortality is gone, and it’s not something that can be studied in this universe. He’s willing to take that risk, and if we’re being honest, I don’t know with certainty that his researchers won’t gain any insight with it. Doctors have been taking samples for weeks, but never this much. So I think I’m gonna do it, to help myself, and my friends, and for the possibility that it helps everyone else.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 4, 2398

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“Hey, Ada...um, Abdoor—uh...”

“You’re close, sir. It’s Abdulrashid.”

“I knew that.”

“You can just call me Ramses.”

“No, I need to learn.”

“Okay.”

His boss doesn’t say anything more.

“Is that all you wanted to do; learn my name?”

“Oh, no. Umm. Look, here’s the thing. I know you’ve already been working for us for a bunch of years, or whatever, but corporate has this new policy where everybody who starts at a new location—be it their first day with us, or a transfer—has to be run through another background check.”

“Okay...”

“Most of it is easy, I literally just copied and pasted your living, work, and education histories from your transfer papers. But there’s one thing you’re gonna hafta do yourself.”

Ramses thinks about it for a moment. “The drug test.”

Oswald nods, and echoes, “the drug test.”

“That’s fine.” Ramses may no longer have his superpowers anymore, but he knows how to eat and live healthily, so his system is likely cleaner than anyone else’s in this joint. It definitely doesn’t have any drugs in it. “I can pee in a cup.”

Oswald contorts his face. “Pee in a cup? Why the hell would you do that? I’m talking about a blood test to make sure you don’t have any illegal substances in your body. I’m not sure what pee and cups have to do with anything.”

Oh, this world is different.

Oswald takes another sip from his fountain drink, but no longer has the taste for it after Ramses’ remark. “Ugh. Pee in a cup,” he says again, muttering under his breath. “You’re one crazy dude, Abdul-Jabbar.” There is no way, in a reality where people give blood samples instead of urine samples for drug screenings, that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar also exists. The point of divergence was far too long ago.

Stockboy sneaks up to Rames by the side. “Have you even ever had a drug screening before?” he asks, sipping at his own drink, unfazed by the conversation that he obviously heard.

No, he’s never taken one before. In his time, using recreational drugs was rare, so people just assumed you weren’t on them. If you were, and it didn’t negatively impact your productivity, then probably no one would notice. But if they did catch you...

“You’re taking too long to answer,” Stockboy muses.

That’s right, he spends too much time in his head. It’s a habit he picked up from Mateo. “Of course I’ve had one. I spent some time in Croatia. The complex where I wanted to live had a strict drug policy, which required multiple forms of testing. You can test for drugs in urine, we just don’t normally do it.”

“Weird. And gross.”

Ramses sighs, and looks over at him. “Get back to that smart speaker that’s stuck on a triple echo.”

“Sir, yes sir!” he mocks with an equally disrespectful salute.

Now that the coast is clear, Leona feels comfortable approaching Ramses to discuss something sensitive. “You remember that our background information is fake, right?”

“Right,” Ramses agrees.

“So when they run a real check on you, that’s what they’ll find...nothing. The forger didn’t fake a background check, she faked the results.”

“Oh, shit. We’re exactly the kind of people those things are meant to look out for.”

“Not exactly,” Leona corrects.

“Wait, you just had your own check, when you first started here. How did you handle it?”

“I had to go pay the forger again. She was not happy. She said she never wanted to see our faces once we left the first time.”

“I have to work late today, and fill in for Bruno tomorrow.” He looks at her with his deep set Persian puppy dog eyes.

“You want me to go back a third time?”

“Pleeeeeeeaaaase? I just don’t know how much time we need.”

“I guess I don’t really wanna go to work, so...all right.” She takes off her apron. “But you’re finishing my shift here.” She hangs it on his neck.

“Great,” Ramses decides. “I’ll call it cross-training. Thank you so much for this.”

“Sure, Rambo.”

Leona calls Mateo to pick her up, and drop her off at the forger’s secret hideout. He asks to go in with her, but she won’t allow it. The forger will be even unhappier than she was the last time, and they don’t need to compound that problem with extra people. Leona is confident that she can handle it on her own, and it’s true that she doesn’t feel like going back to the lab anyway.

“You’re not mad?”

“Why would I be mad,” the forger asks.

“You were mad last time.”

“You silly Egyptian water lily, I was kidding!”

“What’s with you?” Leona questions. “You don’t smile.”

“You don’t know me that well.”

“It’s exceedingly obvious that you don’t smile. You don’t give off the right vibe.”

“Oh, it’s—relax, we’re all friends here.”

“I feel like you’re about to tell me that...” Leona trails off. She takes a receipt out of her purse, and scribbles down a note that reads, Is this place bugged?

“No, we’re not bugged. I’m not trying to trick you, I’m just being friendly.”

“To what end?”

“To...” Her demeanor drops with each following word as she struggles to maintain the charade. “I don’t know what a normal person would say in this scenario.”

“They would tell the truth,” Leona explains.

The forger scoffs. “No, they wouldn’t.”

“Do you need something from me?”

“Do you need something from me?” she returns annoyingly.

“Yes, I need an emergency background check interception.”

“Easy.”

“And in return, you want,” Leona prompts.

“Oh, I don’t want anything,” the forger begins. “However, maybe in the future there could be something that you could get me?”

Leona narrows her eyes. “Something, like what?”

“Well, you work at that lab.”

“You got me in there. You could send anyone you wanted.”

“Honest hour? I didn’t think your fake university transfer would work.” She grimaces. “I’m glad to know it did, though.”

Leona ponders the offer. It would be dangerous, but that’s not the problem. The problem is she doesn’t know what it is yet. So here’s hoping that it’s worth it. “Fine.”

Microstory 570: Dwyn Rinen Lands on Moon

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Yesterday at 31:62 BCT, the first person to reach the moon planted the Buleoden flag next to Caterel Crater. Dwyn Rinen never grew up wanting to go to space. As a child, she watched as Koro Fallows first entered orbit around the planet, but did not intend to follow in her footsteps. Rinen was raised on a farm just outside of Pike City, ultimately becoming a crop duster for hers and neighboring families. Eventually, though, she decided to reapply her aerial skills as a commercial pilot, and was soon flying people all over the world. During her time off, she would go out and meet new people, learning their languages, and listening to their stories. She kept a vast collection of library cards from dozens of major cities, visiting them to study the subject for every book she could get her hands on. Before she knew it, she was one of the most knowledgeable uneducated people in the world. It was then that she was approached by a recruiter for the Buleoden-Hurshese Space Agency, the organization responsible for aeronautic studies all across the Central Euhsan continent. They were looking to increase their spaceflight capabilities, hoping to one day reach the moon. A lunar trip was planned for an octade and a half ago, but the BHSA ran out of funding, and the projects were put on hold. With the industry more robust, Rinen agreed to join the ranks of Fallows as the new class of aerospace heroes. She trained with her team for months, all the while continuing her extracurricular studies, and it paid off. Her first steps on the lunar surface were quickly followed by her partner, Bradford Jones. Together, they walked 1.3 sholmas to the edge of the largest crater on satellite, Caterel—named after the eleventh century astronomer who discovered it. Rinen and Jones will spend a total of 37 hours on the moon, collecting samples, and even planting sunweed (an extremophile plant, known for being able to survive in harsh conditions) before returning to the landing module and leaving the surface. It will take them 1.98 days to get back home, slightly longer than it took to get there, because they will be taking some time in orbit to capture more photographs, and waiting for their travel window. Stay tuned for updates on their progress.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 2, 2026

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As soon as Mateo jumped back into the timestream, Leona was ready with a needle. She injected him with a substance that she claimed to not know, but that would apparently clean his system of the virus for good. He began to feel sick during the car ride, but they had a bag ready for him. He was sweaty and dizzy, but was still able to understand as they told him about how the virus that he brought back from the future spread throughout the entire world. Almost everyone showed symptoms at some point, and to some degree, but they only ever lasted for a few days. His mother was the only one who died from it, presumably because she made skin-to-skin contact with Mateo. He was responsible for the deaths of both of his parents, and he couldn’t tell whether the vomit was from that guilt, or because of the injection.

The car drove them up to the small airport where they got into a private jet that evidently belonged to a close friend of Duke’s who owed him a favor. He spent the next few hours vomiting, shaking, and sleeping. He had nightmares about what his mother must have gone through, and was grateful for having been given the gift of feeling a fraction of that pain. They first took him to Leona’s father’s home in Topeka. He wanted to go straight to the cemetery to pay his respects to his mother, but they refused. He was in no position to argue, especially not after passing out on Leona’s bed.

When he woke up, he was still sweating the toxins out, but he felt much better. It was fairly late in the evening. A young boy was staring at him at the foot of the bed. “Are you doing okay?” the boy asked.

“You must be Theo. All grown up.”

“Not grown up enough,” Theo sighed. “I am sorry about your mother. She was a fine lady, and I wish I could have known her when I was more myself.”

“How are you not now yourself?”

“I’m getting there,” Theo admitted. “But I still need a little more time. The memories are returning quicker now. Soon, I shall have them all back.”

“How did you lose your memory?”

“I died,” he answered mysteriously before standing up. “Come on. It’s near time to go see your family.”

“All right.” Not feeling up to pursuing a line of questioning, Mateo got out of bed, took a shower, and followed everyone to the cars.

Duke, Leona, her little brother, her father, and her step mother all stood in front of the graves of Carol and Randall Gelen. There was another man there too. When Mateo asked Leona who he was, she explained that he was a doctor, and had treated Carol while she struggled with the virus. Each of his friends spoke words of kindness about his parents. He was surprised to find out how close Carol had gotten with Leona’s parents. He was missing a lot, and was growing more frustrated by the fact every day. He chose to not say anything about them, preferring to keep it all to himself. But it wasn’t much. He didn’t know what to think. For the first time in his life, he was seriously considering killing himself. The main thing that stopped him was the likelihood that the powers that be would not allow it to happen. They were going to force him to watch everyone he loved die. What he did wrong to deserve this curse, he couldn’t say for sure.

While the crowd headed for the cars, he remained behind to be alone. He desperately wanted to pray, but he was losing his faith, and the part of him that doubted the existence of God was presently winning. Instead, after only a few moments, he stood up and turned around. But he was no longer in the cemetery. He was in a different one. He was in the small graveyard outside the city’s borders. Everyone was gone; everyone, except for little Theo Delaney. “What just happened?” He looked around. “Daria!”

“She’s not here,” Theo said.

“How did we get here then?”

“You needed to be here.” He pointed behind Mateo’s back. “And so did they.”

Mateo turned back around and saw that his parents’ graves were still there. They had been moved here to the other cemetery. “But why?”

Theo smiled. “This place is for us. It’s for salmon. But, I suppose the powers that be made two exceptions. You must be pretty important to them if they allowed your parents to be laid to rest here.”

“What are salmon?”

“You and I. And Daria, and Mario, and your birth mother. That’s what we’re called. Well, that’s what I like to call us, at least.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re going the wrong way.”

“Aren’t you a little young to have a pattern? Leona hasn’t so much as hinted that you’re one of us.”

“Leona has been keeping a lot from you, but of this she knows nothing. Right now I don’t have a pattern. Before I died, I was moving forwards in time according to the Fibonacci sequence.”

“You died and came back to life?”

“As Theo Delaney, yes. Like I said, I have to regain my memories. I don’t remember everything yet, but I remember dying.” He paused for a bit. “And I remember your birth mother.”

“You knew her? When?”

“We were...friends, for a long time. At different times.” He nodded his head. “She’s over there.”

Mateo looked to where he was indicating. He saw two small gravestones buried deep in the ground that were not there before. He knew this for a fact, because the markers were older than he had ever seen. “Laurel and Samuel. 1744. You’re telling me this is my mother, Lauren?”

“Yeah, she used different names for different jumps. We spend a lot more time in one place than you do.”

He fumed. “Will I ever see her again?”

“It’s not likely. Her and her boyfriend’s pattern is to go back in time in a geometric progression with a ratio of two. One year, two years, four, eight, etcetera. My records suggest that she survived her death, like me, and continued backwards. I have no idea how you would encounter her again. But you know what they say...stranger things have happened. For instance, this graveyard. It doesn’t exist just outside of Topeka. It doesn’t exist anywhere. It moves to when and where it’s needed; a sanctuary for us when we are at our worst. So, you see, Mateo, you were born a salmon. Even before your 28th birthday, you were part of the plan. That’s why the graveyard has always been there for you.”

The doctor from the other cemetery appeared. “Teddy? Is that you? Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”

“Dr. Sarka,” Theo said with a smile. “They let you come back here? No one is hurt, far as I know.”

The doctor pulled out a device from his pocket and looked over it. “I’m here for a consult with a...Mateo Matic.” He looked up. “That’s you.”

What the hell was going on? “A consult for what?”

“Kidney transplantation.”

“My kidneys are fine.”

“Yes, exactly. You’re a donor.”

“I never agreed to that.”

Theo looked like he finally understood. “You’ll agree to this one.”

“Why? Who is it for?”

The doctor scrolled through his device. “I don’t have that information at this time. I just need some samples now that you’ve had time to push the virus out of your system.”

“I do,” Theo said. “It’s for my sister. She is very ill, and has been waiting for a kidney for about three years. They can make certain organs with 3D printers, but kidneys are extremely complicated, very expensive, and at the highest demand.”

“How do we even know I’m a match?”

“I wouldn’t have been sent here if you weren’t. My machines probably checked your compatibility in the cretaceous period while I was stitching you up from the explosion, but I don’t see that data until the powers that be disclose it. Need to know, and all that.”

“So you’re a...what did you call us, Theo? Salmon?”

The doctor laughed. “Yes, I am. I’m the resident doctor. They send me in when one of the others gets hurt.”

“What about when I broke my leg?”

He shook his head. “I wasn’t vital. I’m sure whatever treatment you received for that injury was good enough. I only go where I’m needed.” He looked back at his scheduler. “And I’m needed for a transplantation in one year’s time. It’s technically illegal, so they can’t just have any surgeon perform it.”

“Do you know anything about salmon deaths?” he asked of Dr. Sarka. “Theo here says he was reincarnated. My parents were moved here with all the other salmon. Is it possible that they will come back to life too?”

Sarka walked over and examined the gravestones thoroughly. He even took out another device and scanned the ground. “They appear to actually be here, and not just part of the transition between jump points.”

“What does that mean?” Mateo asked.

“It means that it is entirely possible that your parents were salmon their entire lives without knowing it. I make no promises, but you may very well see them again.”

Later that night, Dr. Sarka prepared Mateo for surgery. As soon as he jumped forward to the year 2027, they were ready for him. He looked over and saw Leona next to him, under anesthesia.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 1, 2025

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Mateo was under the impression that when he returned to his regular pattern, he would find himself back in the Snow White coffin; under automatic quarantine. But he was wrong. He was standing up, but it was pitch black, so he had no idea where he was. He could be thousands of miles from home for all he knew. His father was quite obviously a time traveler, but they had jumped through so many years that there was no way to know whether they had also moved through space or not. He waved his arms around, looking for a lightswitch, but accidentally knocked a glass off of the counter.

When the light came on, the room looked familiar. He was almost completely certain that he was in his mother’s new house in Colorado. He turned around and found confirmation. His mother, Carol was standing in front of him. He tried to get away from her, but she quickly wrapped her arms around him.

“Mateo, you’re back! My God, what happened to you?”

He pulled himself away from her. “We both need to be quarantined. Separately.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve been infected with a virus of some kind. I’ve probably already passed it on to you, but we have to try.”

She stared at him for a few seconds before showing determination. “Get into the room at the top of the stairs and to the left.” She left for her own room. “I’ll call Duke. He’ll know how to do this.”

Professor Duke Andrews came over with Leona. Together, they constructed barriers with plastic sheeting. It freaked him out a little. He knew it was for everyone’s protection, but there was a television character years back who would build rooms like this in order to kill people without leaving evidence.

Once they were all finished, Leona came back in with her hazmat suit. “I’ll need to take more samples.” She got to work.

“Leona.”

She looked annoyed with him.

“I didn’t run away this time. I was thrown into the future. That’s where I got this virus.” He waited for a reply but nothing came. “Leona, I’m sorry.”

“Tell me what happened,” she finally said.

He went about explaining everything he went through in 3118; from the dome to the robot, to the self-destructing message, to his father. She then relayed the information to Duke and his mother.

She shook her head. “The files were corrupted. We received almost no data from the machine, except for a series of unfinished equations regarding hyperspheres. But we didn’t think that meant it did something to you. When you didn’t come back a year later, we thought...we figured that you were dead.”

“I’m here now.”

She stopped working for a second and looked him in the eye. “Yeah, but for how long. I’ve always known, but with each passing year it sinks in more that you and I are destined for failure.”

“Well, maybe we can stop it. Tell me about the data. What’s a hypersphere?”

“We believe that the powers that be exist within five dimensional space. That allows them to see time all at once,” she explained. “Or so we think. Like I said, we didn’t get much from it. Which makes sense now that we know the way it disrupted your—what did he call it—pattern?”

“How would someone be able to see time all at once?”

“Imagine a beetle, crawling on the ground,” she began. “You pick up that beetle with a sheet of paper, and you carry it somewhere else; maybe hundreds of miles away. You set the beetle down, and what does it do? It just keeps crawling. It knows it’s moved, but that doesn’t matter. It has no choice but to keep going with its biological imperatives: to find food, and a mate. That’s what the powers that be are doing with you, your aunt, and your father. They’re picking you up and setting you down somewhere else. The difference is, since they see time from an outside perspective, they can move you back and forth within the timestream.”

“So we’re just game pieces to them? Moving us around on a board. For what reason?”

“If these people have any motivations, they would be so far beyond our comprehension that no analogy would sufficiently account for them. Again, it would be like the beetle trying to guess why you moved it from its original spot.”

Mateo nodded, knowing that if Leona couldn’t fully understand what was going on, there was no way for him to. He would have to surrender to the idea that this was his life now. There was nothing he could do about. Trying to figure it out would be impossible without access to the people controlling it. He decided to change the subject, “hold on. Is it April first?”

“It is, why?”

“Happy birthday.”

“That is yet to be determined.”

“Come on, don’t be like that. It’s gonna be okay.”

Professor Andrews entered the room without protection and directed Leona to stick Mateo back behind the zipper. “He needs to stay in there, but it’s pointless for you to wear that. We’ve all been exposed.”

“Leona took off her headgear. “What’s that now?”

“It’s a quick little bugger. It began spreading through the air as soon as Mateo arrived.”

“Oh my God,” Mateo said. “I’m here to destroy the world.”

“I don’t think that it will destroy the world,” Duke argued.

“The robot in the future called it a pandemic.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “you are a surprisingly effective delivery system. Whoever designed this thing had access to genetic data that we are nowhere near achieving. But my guess is that it was deployed on a massive scale, using some kind of weapon. You’re just one guy, and the virus has almost certainly mutated since then.”

“Mutations should be worse,” Leona said. “If anything, the strongest attributes have survived while weaknesses were stripped away.”

“Normally that would be true, yes, but you said that this was first created decades before your arrival?”

“That’s what the robot claimed,” Mateo confirmed. “He played it pretty close to the chest.”

“Like I said, this was designed with a very specific purpose,” Duke continued. “It was likely extremely aggressive on the outset. But once everyone was infected with it, the virus no longer had a purpose. There were no more hosts to attack; no more cells to hijack. But it didn’t die. So, it just sat there, quietly and slowly degrading and losing some of its attributes.”

“Are you saying that the virus would have eventually just disappeared?” Leona asked. “It seems like they would know that, and didn’t have to bother with Mateo.”

“They needed a cure for the virus because it caused infertility. If it ever died off—and I can’t be sure that it would, without more data—humanity might have died off before.”

“Please tell me you’re saying that it’s less dangerous to us,” Mateo begged.

“We have made great strides in medical technology since you’ve been gone, my young friend. It cannot yet predict the future, but it can come damn close. I suspect that the world’s gonna get sick. But it will survive. You have not destroyed us.”

He stayed behind quarantine for the remainder of the day, but the four of them still celebrated Leona’s 25th birthday together. Andrews was correct that the virus Mateo introduced did not destroy the world. As it turned out, it spread like a flu. A heavy majority of the population showed fever, sweating, cold flashes, and a loss of appetite as symptoms. But nobody became infertile as a result. In fact, Duke hypothesized that Mateo had immunized the entire human population so that, if it were ever to be created in the future, it would do little to no harm. Only a single person died from the infection; Mateo’s mother. He shouldn’t have hugged her.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 31, 3118

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Everything changed. Mateo was no longer in the Snow White coffin. Instead, he found himself on a comfortable bed inside of a larger dome. There was no discernable way out of the dome. He looked around for a seam, and banged on the glass, but it was useless. Around the dome were machines and other instruments. The rest of the room was empty, except for a man who was staring at him without a hint of surprise. “Welcome back, sir.”

“What is this? Where am I?”

“You’re safe. We need to keep you in there or you’ll be contaminated. We built this facility around your jumpsite so that you would never breathe the open air.”

“What year is this?”

“Thirty-one-eighteen.”

“No, that’s not right,” Mateo reasoned. “It should be 2024.”

“It should be, yes. But it isn’t. The machine that the old scientist had you in disrupted your pattern, and threw you here. And it’s a good thing it did.”

“Why is that?”

“You are very special to us. Your genes are the key to the revival of the human race. You are to become the father of a multitude.”

“Why can’t you do it?”

“I’m not biological. And even if I were, I would already be contaminated. Everyone is. The few living humans are incapable of reproducing. You’re the first pristine person we’ve encountered in decades.”

“And you knew I was coming?”

“You told us.”

Mateo nodded. “That makes no sense.”

“You helped us build this place,” the man explained. “Yesterday.”

“If you’ve already met me, then why didn’t the other me help you with your virus problem?”

The apparently non-human laughed. “That version of you was contaminated, along with everyone else. After today, you will travel back to your time period, and then you will resume your pattern. Centuries later, you will jump into a year after the virus is first released, and it will infect you.”

“But it won’t kill me?”

He shook his head. “That’s not what the virus does.”

Mateo sighed. “What do you need from me? This me?”

“Samples. Lots of samples.”

Mateo let the machines run tests and take samples from him, partly because he didn’t feel like he had a choice, but also because if there was even a slight chance for him to save humanity, he couldn’t risk refusing. They needed a lot more than Professor Andrews had. He was feeling a bit violated, honestly, especially since they at one point gave him anesthetic and took some of his seed. But he learned a little bit more about how the world had been developing. Biological humans were a dying race. The man was hesitant to tell him too much, including how the infection began. They were worried about him going back and altering the timeline. He could make things better, or he could make things worse. There were too many variables to count, and even a nanite transhuman was incapable of accounting for all of them. The dangers of time travel. But if that were true, how were the powers that be justifying their intervention in the timeline? Once the machines were finished, and the samples had been safely taken out of the enclosure, Mateo took a much needed nap.

He must have dreamt of it, because when he awoke, he remembered the device that Daria had given him yesterday. The man scanned it with his high tech robot eyes and nodded. “I could read that easily, but not from out here.” He waved his hand at the dome. “You actually have everything you need in there, but you would need to build the interface from parts.”

“Teach me,” Mateo asked.

And so the man went about giving him instructions. He had him strip parts from machines they no longer needed, and haphazardly put them together. He even had to use a sort of soldering tool to mold the pieces. Finally, he had what he needed. He inserted the device and let it play.

A video automatically came up on the screen. On it was a man he didn’t recognize. He had a sinister smile on his face. “Mateo Matic. The Transient Hero of Earth. You’ve not yet met me, but I know you. I’ve been scouring the timeline, looking for when I could be rid of you before you cause me so many troubles. I’ve been trying to kill you for, well...days. But something always protects you. The powers that be don’t ever let us get close enough to end each other. But I found a loophole. I set in place a series of events that eventually led to your dear aunt Daria giving you this device. It took me a long time, but we’re finally here.” He took a drink from something and slammed it back down on the table. “You’re done! And you haven’t even started!” The machine exploded.

Mateo was thrown into the other side of the dome, but remained conscious. The fire began to consume the bed, and the oxygen was quickly being ripped out of his lungs. He banged on the glass again, and begged the man to let him out.

He just looked back at him in horror. “I can’t let you leave. If you become contaminated, you’ll carry the virus back to the past and make things even worse.”

“But if I die in here, then I can’t go back, which means I can’t return using my regular pattern, which means that I’ll never help you build the dome in the first place!”

“I have to trust that you won’t die,” the man responded. “But I can do nothing from out here. My hands are tied.”

He looked for a way to snuff out the flames. They had left some drinking water for him, but it wasn’t nearly enough to put the fire out. He opened every bottle and started drenching himself with it. The explosion had compromised the integrity of the dome, but the weakest points were very clearly on the other side of the fire. He grabbed some kind of large instrument, then jumped onto a cart. He slammed the instrument into the glass. It didn’t shatter, but it opened up enough for him to escape. He fells to the floor on the other side and began to crawl. There were tons of cuts and second degree burns on his body. He reached out, hoping to receive some help from the robot man.

But the robot man made no move towards him. He stared at him stoically, like he was weighing his options. “I’m sorry.”

“Please. Help!”

“I can’t let you go back to 2025. The virus is bad enough in our time, but we have technology, the human race will survive. We might be different. We may even be unrecognizable. If there is no cure in your uncontaminated blood, we will still find a way to keep going. But we would never survive an early 21st century pandemic.” He started to walk away.

Mateo struggled through the blood in his throat. “Wait, just wait. I’m the cure, right? Well...I was the cure. So, cure me with my old blood.”

“We don’t know how long it’s going to take to develop a cure, or even if there is one. You may be fruitless for us. And we can’t risk losing what few samples you gave us by returning some of it to you on blind faith. I’m very sorry, but your journey is over.”

“But if I don’t survive, I can’t go back to 2025. We just went over this. You need me to build the dome whether I’ve been infected or not.”

“The past can be changed; this much we’ve uncovered. But if it were going to change, it would have already done so from our perspective. As soon as you broke out of the dome, your future—our past—was altered. Yet the dome was still constructed. I don’t know how, but it’s there. Someone must have built it just the same. I’m made out of nanites. I can shift into any shape I choose. Perhaps the man who helped me build it was never you at all, but an imposter.”

“Don’t do this,” Mateo begged, then coughed up a little blood.

Before the man could say anything else, one the walls lit up and turned into a video screen. The man from the message before was back again. “Did you think that that explosion was meant to kill you? That was just the primer. Now it’s time to paint this room red.” He let out an evil laugh.

Mateo prepared himself for another explosion, but yet another man appeared out of nowhere, took him by the shoulders, and jumped them both out of there.

Hours later, Mateo woke up again. He was on a bed of leaves and grass in the dark, but the moon was bright and seemed larger. A teeny tiny dinosaur that looked like a triceratops hopped around nearby. His wounds had been treated with some kind of high-tech liquid bandage. He rolled onto his side and looked around. The man who had taken him out of danger was holding a musket and keeping watch for danger. “Hello?”

The man turned around, but his face remained obstructed by shadows. “How are you feeling?”

“Alive.”

“Alive, and in the Cretaceous period. Great story for your kids.”

“You slungshot me through time, like my aunt.”

He tilted his head. “I don’t think sling is a verb.”

“What’s your name?”

The man looked at his watch. “It’s almost midnight.”

“I can’t know the name of the man who saved my life?”

He dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. “It’s my job.”

“No, it isn’t. You could quit. Eventually the powers that be would give up on you.”

“You’re just as tenacious as your mother.” The man stepped closer and showed himself by the moonlight.

“Oh my God. You look like me.” It was his father, Mario. Midnight came.

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