The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 29, 2542

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During the team’s interim year, the pocket dimension generator belts they left behind explored the galaxy on their own. They did so while holographically invisible, in case the next encounter was with someone less kind than Renata and Quidel. The belt stack was able to visit nearly one new spot a day, for a total of 360 slings. When the stack arrived somewhere new, it had to wait for the coherence gauges to return to the violet. In the meantime, it took that opportunity to scan the region, providing Ramses with the data that he needed to rule out Spiral Station. The majority of the dots on the map were crabitats, but not all. Obviously, they started with the most remote since those were most likely to be what they were looking for. Besides Extremus, there was Verdemus, which created its own outpost around nearby stars. Some people from the Sixth Key had established a presence in this reality, and it didn’t look like they were hurting anyone, so the team decided to leave them be.

Every day, the belts would chip away at the map, gathering enough information to check each dot off. Now that they were back in the timestream, they elected to give the belts a break since the chances of being present when they found their target were low, and they really didn’t feel like going on another adventure. Ramses built them such a nice multidimensional home to live in, they decided to simply relax. The search was probably going to take years, so what was the rush?

Romana slammed her palm on the couch. “Downbeat!”

Everyone giggled. They actually weren’t even playing Downbeat, but trying to contrive the rules to another fictional game called Hassle the Fishmonger.

“No? I didn’t just win?” Romana questioned.

“Not unless you’re holding Mateo’s hand,” Marie suggested.

“Oh, good idea. I’m writing that down as a new rule,” Mateo said before taking his daughter’s hand in his.

They looked at each other before saying, “downbeat!” simultaneously. And then, as if it had been the magic words, the proximity alarm went off. A security feed appeared in front of the doors that led to the simulated backyard. A giant object had appeared before them, the technicolor webbing still fading away.

“Spiral Station,” Leona said, standing up.

“They must have been looking for us while we were looking for them,” Olimpia figured.

Without doing or saying a single thing, the station wrapped itself in bulk energy, and slung away.

“What the hell was the point of that?” Mateo questioned.

“They left something behind.” Ramses was tapping on his tablet. “It could be a bomb. Executing emergency teleportation.”

For about thirty minutes, they waited thousands of kilometers away, but nothing happened. Ramses had dropped a sensor buoy near the gift. It needed time to assess the threat level, but he was quickly confident that it contained no explosive materials. His best guess was that it was some kind of communication device, so they pulled it inside. He set it on the table and pressed the blinking red button. A hologram of Franka appeared behind the table. The sphere itself turned invisible to declutter the image. “Greetings, Team Matic. Word around the membrane is that you’ve been looking for us.”

Mateo stepped forward. “We have.”

“To what end?” Franka asked.

“Our slingdrive system,” Ramses began. “Someone pointed out that it can’t take us absolutely anywhere. It can only travel to a technological establishment, however remote. We were hoping you could fix that.”

“So you used the limitation to build a map of the galaxy, which pinpointed our location, albeit in an unlabeled manner. That’s clever,” Franka acknowledged.

Ramses looked awkwardly at Romana. “I’m not the one who came up with that either.”

“We’re guessing that you don’t have the same restrictions,” Leona said.

“We do not,” Franka admitted.

Dutch suddenly appeared behind her. He waved at the camera. “Hi, guys!”

“Hi, Dutch,” a few of them replied.

“Hi,” Romana said too, but in a very different tone. Not again.

“Okay, I’m talking here,” Franka said to Dutch, shooing him away without too much anger. She looked back at the team. “I’m afraid that bulk tech was my brother’s responsibility. I don’t know if you heard, but he kind of died?”

“We could have mourned together,” Leona argued, “but you abandoned us in the middle of nowhere.”

“You threatened me!” Franka volleyed. “I don’t like to be threatened!”

“Well, I’m sorry, I regret it!” Leona explained. “Which I would have said earlier, but we couldn’t find you!”

“Well, I’m sorry too!” Franka shouted back. “When you have this much power, it’s hard to remember how much normal people matter!”

“Well, okay!” Leona caught her breath. “I’m done with this sphere. You need to come back so we can have a real conversation.”

“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” Franka argued. She then tried to continue.

“We’re busy,” Dutch interrupted again.

“Thanks, Dutch, I got this.” Franka rolled her eyes in a way that suggested she liked having him around to keep the mood light, but it could be a bit much at times. “I brought you this intergalactic communicator so we could stay in contact, but Dutch wasn’t lying. We really are busy. I promise, it’s nothing you wouldn’t approve of, but you have your own destinies to fulfill. You are more boots on the ground, hands-on, street level people. And you...ya know, don’t exist most of the time? We have to stay out of the Milky Way galaxy, because it might cause a severe shift in the balance of power. The people there need to develop as they are for the most part. Project Starseed can’t have—forgive me for using this word—gods saving them all the time. They need people like you...with your limitations, your restrictions...your rules. I bet you’ve been trying to decide where to go. My advice? Go anywhere. Someone there will need you.”

“What about the Oaksent?” Mateo asked her.

“We’ve been monitoring the situation,” Franka told him. “It seems that you were...” She trailed off, and mumbled inaudibly.

“What was that?” Leona pressed. “We can’t hear you. There must be dark matter interference.”

“You were right!” Franka admitted. “The situation was a lot more nuanced than just the hypothetical assassination of one man. They are evidently fixing their own problems. A faction has broken off, and is on its way to go to war with Castlebourne, but it will take them long to get there and find it, and by the time they do, the balance of power will make their efforts fruitless. But instead of it being unfair and easy, the Castlebourners will have done it themselves. Thanks to people like you who made little changes, instead of sweeping decisions. The truth is, mom and dad, I admire you. And we can get to know each other better, but we can’t spend time. Our paths diverged before any of us were even born. One day, we might be able to team up again. I can see the Vellani Ambassador reuniting with the Iman Vellani. I see them working with The Jameela Jamil and Spiral Station. And I see Team Matic at the center of it. But for now, please stay in your corner. They need you, even if they don’t know it.”

“Wait,” Ramses said, worried that Franka was about to log off. “Is there anything you can do about my slingdrives? I know you didn’t design it, but surely Séarlas left behind operator’s manuals.”

“Why would you wanna go where there isn’t anyone else around?” Franka posed.

“I would like the option,” Ramses contended.

Franka sighed, and seemingly considered it. “When you return to the timestream next year, open your little map, and take note of a ping that you didn’t see before. That will be a beacon that I left in a remote region of the galaxy. You can go there for respite. But I’m not granting you access to all of time and space. This is the best I can do.”

“Well...thank you then,” Ramses said, having been hoping for a lot more.

“I better be going,” Franka said.

“Bye!” Dutch jumped back in. “You should go to Be—”

The call was disconnected.

“Well, that was weird,” Mateo said.

“We should try not to think of her as our daughter...because she isn’t,” Leona said to her husband. “She had different parents, who looked like us, and would make a lot of the same decisions as us, but were not us. We didn’t experience that, and we don’t have the right to treat her as family.”

There was an awkward silence, which Olimpia decided to break. “I think I’m gonna take a nap.”

“Yeah, me too,” Angela agreed. “Let’s all take an hour to do whatever we need to do, be that a nap, a talk, or a nice bath.”

Half an hour later, Mateo and Leona were in the former’s room, exhausted from having been talking about their feelings, when the slingdrives powered up. They ran out of their unit, and back into Marie’s. Most of their teammates were doing the same. Angela was fully naked, dripping wet from her shoulders down, and trying to dry herself off with a hand towel. Ramses came out last from his lab. “Who did that?”

“I did.” Romana was walking up the steps from Marie’s basement.

“Where did you bring us?” Leona questioned.

“The only logical place,” Romana answered enigmatically.

“Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida,” Ramses announced, looking at his device.

“Is this because of what Dutch said at the end of the call?” Mateo asked.

“This is obviously what he meant. Trust me, I looked through the colony catalogs, looking for an alternative, and this was the only place he could have possibly been trying to say before he was so rudely cut off.”

“Yeah, that’s probably true,” Leona agreed, “but that doesn’t mean we had to come here, or that you could make that decision without our input.”

Romana brushed it off. “Ugh, I’m so bored. I can’t take another game of Cones of Dunshire. It’s too thinky thinky.”

“The people who live here...” Leona began, trailing off, not knowing how to word it. “They’re not—oh my God. I don’t know how to put it. From the outside, they basically look like hermits, but instead of crabitats, they live in small pockets on the land and sea. Some do live in rotating cylinders, coins, and hammers, but up in orbit, because they don’t see their relative proximity to be any less isolating on a daily basis. No, that’s not right. They participate in community, but they technically live separately. They utilize technology efficiently, to make it so they don’t have to work. They otherwise worship nature, which makes sense given that this world is a miracle. I’m being really general here, but that’s to give you an idea of how they live. They don’t reject technology, and they don’t hate outsiders, but we probably shouldn’t meddle in their affairs.”

“Hold up,” Marie said. “Romy, you’re the one who sent us to Proxima Doma too. Is this the same thing? Did someone tell you to bring us here?”

“Yeah, Dutch,” Romana reminded them.

“I mean someone other than that. Did you meet a seer, or...?”

“It’s nothing like that,” Romana defended. “No more secrets. This is just our next stop. You don’t have to read anything into it. It’s just...we’re just...Doctor Who.”

“Doctor Who?” Leona asked. “How’s that now?”

“The Doctor doesn’t have to do anything,” Romana reasoned. “Everytime he goes somewhere, he pretty much always knows all the stuff. He’s not seeking out new life and new civilizations. He’s just flying around, and whenever he shows up, he helps whoever happens to be there. The writers gave up on contriving reasons for him to do that. It’s just the premise, and that’s enough. Let’s make that our premise. Let’s check out Bida for a little bit, and when we’re done, we’ll pick somewhere else to go. You don’t have to wait for someone to hand you a mission, should you choose to accept it. That’s what my sister was trying to tell us. She’s not my favorite sister, but it makes sense to me now, and I think I agree with her.”

Leona nodded. “It’s not a bad idea. The problem is that Bida has become almost entirely decentralized. That’s the consequence of extreme advancement in a post-scarcity economy. It’s why people like Linwood Meyers exist. Most aren’t misanthropic, but they lost their reasons to work together. Basically, everything that needed to be done is done. Some people will continue to look for new adventures, and new knowledge, but for a lot, a cabin in the woods is enough. They stand upon Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs alone because there is not much room at the top of a pyramid. So the people here probably don’t need us, and even if someone does, the chances of you landing us exactly at that settlement, instead of any of the other twenty million plots, are incredibly low.”

Romana held out her hand, but not in friendship. “I’ll take that bet.”

Leona smiled. “What are we betting?”

“If I win—if we’re where we’re supposed to be, helping the right person or people—you make me your navigator. As Captain, you reserve the right to veto, as I trust your judgment and wisdom, but as navigator, I initially choose our mission, every time.”

“And if I win?” Leona asked.

“If you win...you get infinite favors.” Romana seemed confident that she wouldn’t have to worry about the gravity of that offer.

Leona smiled wider now. “Okay.” She shook her daughter’s hand.

By the end of the day, Romana was the team’s navigator. It wasn’t even that hard. She cheated.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 28, 2541

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Ramses’ new Brane Establishment Map—name subject to change—was fully ready to go, but there was a catch. It required the equivalent of five tandem slingdrives to run, and once it was running, it counted as one sling. The coherence gauge went down when it was used, went down faster when it was used to map a larger region, and even faster when kept up for an extended period of time. Instead of slinging physical matter across the universe, it was only slinging information, but that still required punching a hole into the membrane of the universe, and that came at a cost. If they wanted to look for Spiral Station, they would be able to go there, but not come back until the next day. For them, that was a whole year, which if their target was on the run, would give them more than enough time to find a new place to hide.

“You should take a screenshot,” Romana suggested.

“Huh?” Ramses asked.

“Whenever you load the map, if you want to save on power, take a screenshot of it, and close it down immediately,” she went on.

“Well, it doesn’t work like that. The map is interactive. You have to zoom in and out to make out the different dots. A screenshot would just become a low-res flat image.”

Romana shrugged. “I never meant an actual single image. Download an offline file, and load it back up afterwards. It won’t be able to update, but we shouldn’t need that anyway. People don’t move around all that much on interstellar timescales.”

“Hm. It’s not designed for that,” Leona pointed out. “There’s no offline mode.”

“Then build one,” Olimpia suggested. “We’re in it for the long haul. We never expected to locate them on the first try.

They all looked back at the map. Every little dot represented some threshold of technological presence. It couldn’t find a homestead running on watermill power in the middle of nowhere, but that wasn’t the scale they were using anyway. This wasn’t about finding anyone and everyone in the galaxy. This was about spotting the outliers in this smattering of dots. There were so many of them, and it was impossible to tell what they could be walking into.  Some of them were obviously major colonies, because they were centered on known star systems, but there were a lot more isolated establishments than they knew. “Buncha hermit crabs,” Marie noted.

Any one of these could be Spiral Station.” Mateo randomly pointed to a few of them. On the last one, he accidentally touched the screen with his finger. The slingdrive under their feet sprang to life, revved up, and sent them away. “Uh...sorry? I didn’t know that would happen.”

“That’s my bad,” Ramses admitted. “It should not be that easy to navigate to a target. At the very least, it should ask for confirmation.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Leona said. “Remember that we appear as a small array of stylish belts in the main dimension. I doubt they will even notice.”

“They’ve noticed us,” Ramses said. The map on the big screen was gone, replaced with present environmental data. “It’s the Aerie.”

“The Aerie?” Angela questioned. “You mean the Iman Vellani shuttle?”

“The very same,” Ramses confirmed. “I don’t know who’s operating it, though. We will need to exit. I believe that we’ve been pulled into the tiny little airlock.”

“We might as well,” Leona decided when they looked to her for orders. “Everyone, teleport out of the pocket.”

They all appeared in the back of the shuttle. Two people were standing there, utterly stunned at their appearance. No one on Team Matic recognized them. “Uh, greetings, aliens. We come in peace.” The man held up the Vulcan salute.

“Greetings, travelers,” Leona said, stepping forward. “We are vonearthans, ultimately all from Earth.” She looked laterally at Romana. Well, six of us are. Do you identify as Dardieti?”

“I’ve never really thought about it,” Romana replied. “I’m a Nieman and a Matic.”

“I’m Quidel, and this Renata. We’re from Castlebourne, and we really do come in peace.”

“How did you come to possess this shuttle?” Mateo asked them. “We are friends with the owners, and used to crew its main ship’s sister ship.”

“A woman named Brooke Prieto gave it to us. She said they were upgrading, and didn’t it need anymore. It’s quite the gift,” Quidel says. “We’re moving at twenty-two-c.”

“Don’t tell them that,” Renata urged. “We don’t know if we can trust them.”

“If they caught up to us, they can go at least that fast too, if not faster.”

“What are you doing this far from Castlebourne?” Ramses asked. He was tapping on his tablet, taking readings, or interfacing with the Aerie, or doing whatever.

“Ram,” Marie said with her own tablet. “Look. Your computer actually did flash the last image it saw on the map before we slung here. What are these other dots?”

Ramses pulled up what she was looking at on his own device. “We’re a bit over four hundred light years from Castlebourne. The colonization sphere hasn’t reached this far out, which means there shouldn’t be anything else out here, so that’s a good question.”

Leona was looking over his shoulder. “Zoom out.”

“It’s just an image. I can’t zoom out. I mean, of course I can, but as I was saying before, it will just lose resolution. We won’t be able to see more detail.”

“Overlay that image onto a regular map of the Milky Way, as scanned by Project Topdown, and zoom out on that,” she clarified.

Ramses did what she suggested. It didn’t take long. “That’s...”

“Yeah...” Leona agreed.

“What is it?” Mateo asked. “Are we supposed to recognize it?”

Leona pointed to a cluster of stars deep in the galaxy. “This is the Goldilocks Corridor.” She pointed to another spot much closer. “Castlebourne is somewhere around here.” She pointed one more time. “This area between them is where those extremely far out dots are.”

“Oh my God, it’s the Exin Empire,” Mateo lamented.

“It’s the Exin armada,” Leona corrected. “They’re on the attack.” She looked back at the couple. “What did you hope to gain, coming here?”

Renata sighed. “The woman who gave us this thing. She tried to strip all the data out of it. We imagine that she and her own crew used it for all sorts of things before they were ready to give it up. But she missed something.”

“One communiqué,” Quidel continued the story, “between the mothership, and something called The Ambassador. It was a warning to her and her people of the danger in this region. We were trying to get there to see it for ourselves. We had nothing better to do.”

“There could be hundreds of ships in that armada,” Leona warned them. “This little thing isn’t gonna stand a chance against them, and they will swat you like a fly.”

“Seriously,” Angela said. “They won’t try to figure out who you are. They’ll just kill you and not bother to slow down.”

“We were looking for a mission,” Renata reasoned. “We were looking for a purpose. It may sound reckless to you, but if you found a treasure map with an X marking the spot, you would follow it, you’d have to. Even if you didn’t think it would lead to something good, your curiosity would win out.”

“I suppose I can imagine the allure,” Leona conceded. They had gone on similar experiences before for similar reasons.

“Wait.” Mateo swatted his own proverbial flies in front of his face. “Why did Brooke give this to you? I don’t mean, why did she give it away—that’s well within her character—but why you? Who are you?”

“We’re just—” Quidel began.

“I’m a robot,” Renata interrupted.

“Please stop using that word,” Quidel begged.

“You used it first.”

“And I regret it every day.”

Renata smiled and went on, “I was living in a base reality simulation, and I woke up. Actually, my mother woke me up. Still, I was technically an emerging consciousness, so Hrockas had to grant me independence. It was not an easy journey, and I won’t go into detail, but this was sort of an apology gift. I don’t think that Miss Prieto was trying to give it to us. I think she was giving it to him, and he was regifting it before he could even use it.”

“That’s well within his character,” Mateo acknowledged. “He must be trying to get rid of you.”

“What?” Renata asked. “Why would he wanna do that?”

“You emerged, in one of the domes?” Mateo pressed.

“Yeah...” she confirmed. “Spydome.”

Mateo nodded, having heard of it. “He probably doesn’t want that happening again. You’re...proof that it’s possible. But if all the intelligences he creates wake up, what does he end up with?”

“The most populated planet in the galaxy,” Olimpia put forth.

Mateo chuckled. “Yeah, that’s true. That could create a massive shift in power in the Milky Way, assuming it didn’t spark the deadliest rebellion in history, like Westworld times sixty thousand.”

“Hrockas brought that up once,” Renata said. “I’ve still not seen it.”

“If I have anything to say about it, you never will,” Quidel told her.

A brief pause. “Well, I have no interest in starting a rebellion. That was my mother’s dream, and I sacrificed everything to stop her.”

“Forgive me, but you don’t seem to have much love for her. Why would you call her that?” Romana asked. “Was she really your mom in some way?”

“After she reprogrammed me,” Renata began, “I retained all of my implanted memories. Even though they’re not real, I have years and years of memories of her raising me. She didn’t do a good job, because that was how her character was written, but they still feel real to me.”

“If she’s the one who woke you up, who woke her up?” Leona questioned.

“She never said,” Renata explained. “Apparently, she was an NPC in a completely different simulation years ago. I think a normal human changed her programming, and she spent a long time trying to replicate it.”

Leona and Mateo exchanged a look, as did various members of the team. She looked back at the couple. “Was her name, by chance, Proserpina, or maybe even Pinocchio?”

“No, it was Libera,” Quidel answered.

Leona looked back at her husband. “That doesn’t prove it’s not her. She could have changed her name. She did it before.”

“Libera is the perfect name for someone who thinks it’s their job to free intelligences from oppression,” Mateo agreed.

“Yeah.” Renata nodded. “She used that word a lot.”

“We have to go back to Castlebourne,” Leona determined. “I did this. This is my fault. We need answers, and I need to answer for it.”

“I’m partially responsible too,” Mateo claimed. “I ran into her in the afterlife simulation, and...forgot that I promised to help her.”

“We don’t know where it is anymore,” Olimpia reminded them both.

“I can find it,” Ramses promised.

“What about these two?” Angela gestured towards the couple. “We can’t just leave them here. You understand that nothing is waiting for you on your current trajectory but death, right?”

“Yes, we do now,” Renata replied. “We’ll turn around, and maybe finally see Earth. That’s what Hrockas suggested in the first place. It will take us, what, twenty-five years? I’m immortal now, so that won’t be a problem.”

“You said you were going twenty-two-c?” Ramses asked.

“Yeah, that’s what the computer thing says.” Quidel pointed into the little bridge behind them. “We also have to stop and let the engine rest periodically.”

“Could I take a look?” Ramses requested.

They stepped to the side, and let him pass. He looked through the console data. “Yeah, it’s a reframe engine, of course. It’s highly inefficient, though. I’m not surprised you’re moving so slow, and you keep having to stop. I can fix it for you.”

“You can? How fast would we be able to go?” Quidel asked.

“Seven-oh-seven,” Ramses answered him. “We will have to, um...go somewhere else at the end of today, but I can program my nanites to execute the repairs and upgrades in the meantime. If you’ve been piloting it, you must know enough to be able to tell when it’s done, and ready to go. It should only take a few weeks, but if you leave, we may never see each other again, because we won’t know where you are.” That wasn’t entirely true when they had their new little map, but they didn’t need to know about that, or the slingdrive technology in general, which was orders of magnitude faster than even maximum reframe.

“We would be grateful for that,” Renata said. “In return, we can tell you where Castlebourne is, if you forgot. It’s in our logs.”

“Nah, if you left twenty or so years ago, it will have moved since then. We’ll have to locate it ourselves. But that’s fine. We’ll figure it out. I have a general idea”

“Could I be so bold, sir, is there a way to get our hands on whatever technology you have that lets you, umm...miniaturize yourself into a tiny little baby ship?”

Leona smiled. “I’m afraid that secret must remain with us.”

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Microstory 2613: The Irony That if They Had Opened the Gates, They Would Have Found Their Salvation

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August 20, 2526. Breanna, Cash, Tertius, and Aeterna made it out of the soup, and onto solid ground. They escaped Leviss, and walked through the tunnel that led to Breckenridge. After taking a perimeter railtrain to the next exit, they walked downstairs to the vactrain station, which could take them anywhere in the colonized world. Breanna turned out to have credentials, which allowed her to look through the logs to determine that the Levins and Breckenridgers had gotten on train pods to travel northwards. They apparently stopped before reaching the northern polar region, however.

“Something must have gone wrong,” Tertius says. “The northern pole might have denied them entry. Aeterna, we’ll have to stop where they did to investigate.”

“We’re on the same page,” she agrees.

Tertius sighs, and looks back over at the empty vactrain. “You two get on this one and go as far north as possible. We’ll take the next one.”

“No, we’ll go with you,” Cash volunteers. “We lived on a sentinel. Our entire job was to watch over these people. We’re certainly not gonna stop doing that now.”

“We might encounter more toxic air, though,” Breanna warns. “I know you two are pretty hardy, but if you could put on your own suits, it would help us communicate. I prefer to keep my filter fully on, in case my carbon scrubbers stop working.”

“We don’t have suits,” Tertius says apologetically.

Cash is operating her handheld device. “The dome where they had to stop is a lot more advanced than these two. It will have IMS units for you to check out. Let’s get over there before the roof collapses.” They all file into the pod, but have to come right back out. This station was disconnected from the network due to the hazardous conditions. The tubes aren’t safe enough anymore. They spend the next two days traveling through the spines, and along the perimeters of the next several domes, sometimes using railtrains, sometimes electric carts, and sometimes on foot.

August 21, 2526. Finally, they have reached the dome where the Levins and Breckenridgers went, but no one is here. It’s totally empty according to the life signs detector. So they start to walk down the next connecting spine. Near the end, they find a ton of people, which Aeterna says could plausibly make up the entire population of Leviss and Breckenridge combined. She recognizes someone from Leviss, who doesn’t act like he recognizes her back. “What’s going on here?” she asks.

“There were a lot of people living in this dome before, but some of them died in an explosion, or something. Now, the people who are still here won’t let us through the gate. They say it’s for our safety, but we’ve been trying to negotiate with them this whole time. We know that we can’t go back, so we’ve been camping out here. ”

“It’s not safe in there?” Tertius presses.

“The dome itself is evidently safe enough, but they’re afraid if we all come in, we’ll try to get to the train station, but if they say we shouldn’t, we’ll listen to them. We’re fine with just walking.”

“That’s not the problem,” a young woman says. “One of the negotiators is my sister, so I heard that the Summerspringers are so afraid of the train now that they’re looking for land vehicles. They don’t want to share, because they don’t know how many there are. They’re not even sure if there are any left. They found a bunch, but there weren’t enough for everyone. It was apparently quite dramatic, the chaos of deciding who got to leave, and who had to stay behind to look for other alternatives.”

Breanna steps over as she’s working her wrist interface. “I think it’s right here.”

“You think what is here?” Tertius asks.

Breanna chuckles lightly. “I have credentials for this too.” She makes one more tap, and the giant door starts to slide open. The Levins and Breckenridgers back away nervously as they watch it open. Lights begin to flicker on inside the big open space. It’s a garage. It’s a garage full of cars. Real big ones.

Tertius takes his daughter by the hand, and guides her in front of the entrance. He kneels down. “Get on my shoulders and address the people. You know what to say.”

Aeterna climbs on, and has no trouble balancing when he stands all the way up so she’s towering over the crowd. “People of Breckenridge and Leviss, this is your way out. These vehicles are automated, and syncable.” She leans over. “They are, aren’t they?”

Breanna nods.

“We will drive the lead vehicle, and tell yours where to go,” Aeterna continues. “All you have to do is sit there, and enjoy the ride. Is anyone too nervous to try?”

Many people raise their hands, presumably all from the less advanced Breckenridge.

“Is anyone both too nervous to try and ready to die?”

They nervously lower their hands.

“It might be scary, but you will get through this!” she cries. “If the Summerspringers aren’t going to let you through, this is the only way! We’re not gonna force you, but if you stay, things will not be getting better. What you were running from is going to catch up to you, sooner or later.” She pauses for effect. “If you wanna live, follow us inside.” She hops off of her father’s shoulders, and they begin to walk in.

They don’t really pay attention to who chooses to stay in the main corridor, if anyone. There are more than enough vehicles for everyone here, but since they do not belong to them, they decide to not be greedy. Once these evacuees are secure, they will send a message to Summerspring, informing them that this garage is what they have been looking for. Until then, they’re going to prioritize the people who did not actively decline to help their neighbors. The vehicles are completely vacuum sealed, so they are in no danger from the inhospitable environment outside the domes, as long as they remember to actually stay inside.

The four outsiders initially lock out nearly all of the controls, so the intentionally technologically illiterate can’t accidentally push any wrong buttons. The Levins are more advanced, but they have never operated anything like this before. The domes are relatively small, so they had no reason to invent the car. Still, they will be able to figure things out after some studying the operator’s manual, so every vehicle is about three-quarters Levins and one-quarter Breckenridgers. They will be able to override controls if they so choose later, but that will be up to them.

Breanna, Cash, Aeterna, and Tertius select a smaller vehicle for themselves. The giant rovers can hold a few dozen people, but this one only maybe a dozen. Several other people ask to join them, seemingly out of pure curiosity. Finally, amidst all of this death and destruction, there might actually be hope. They open the exterior doors, send that quick message to the Summerspringer authority, and then head off into the unknown.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 27, 2540

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Angela inspired Ramses to alter his plans for their new pocket dimension habitat. He was still using a belt as a form factor, but instead of only having one central location where they would all live, they would have seven total. This helped a little with power management, which was important, even though they already had an advantage that not everyone trying something like this would. A temporal battery this small would not be good enough for most people’s use, but they only ever needed the pocket dimension to be active while they were in the timestream. During their interim year, it could be recharging simply by the passage of time. And if one of them lost power, the others might still be okay, and available. Each one of them would wear their own belt, which housed its own independent pocket. These would be connected to one another, though, allowing them to cross back and forth between each other’s territories seamlessly. And of course, each individual would be able to control access to their own pocket. They were in the middle of a tour to learn more about it.

“So, whose pocket is this?” Olimpia asked. “If it’s a common area, does one of us wear two belts?”

“No, this is just mine,” Marie revealed. “I figured, since I don’t have a love interest, or a laboratory, I might as well serve as the main hub.”

“Your personal quarters does lock, though,” Ramses explained, pointing to one of the doors. This was a room of mostly doors. “So you do have some privacy.”

“Well, thank you for doing that,” Leona said to Marie. “And thank you, Ramses, for building this. It’s quite lovely. Do the other pockets look like this, architecturally speaking?”

Ramses nodded. “Yes, same aesthetic, but it can be redecorated, or even remodeled, if you have your own vision. I designed them with forty-two square meters of space, though if you’re feeling claustrophobic, we can talk about expanding. It would just take a little more power...”

“That’s more than enough in the modern era,” Mateo noted. “The three of us are gonna be sharing our spaces.” He wrapped an arm around each of his wives.

“Uh, slow down there, cowpoke,” Leona said, brushing him off of her shoulder. “You’re gonna need to buy me dinner first, and it better be fancy. I’m talking laminated menus with multiple pages, and lighting so dim, you can’t read it.”

“Well, all right then. And you?” he posed to Olimpia.

“I’m easy. Just slap my ass and call me sweetheart.” They kissed.

“Gross,” Romana said.

Ramses laughed a little. “Like Marie said, this is the common area, but everyone has an antechamber like this one, but with only six doors, and smaller. You can enter each other’s domains directly, instead of going through the common area. So, Matics, you could just leave your doors open all the time, and it will feel like the same big house. Now,” he began as he was walking towards a door that was separate from the others. When he opened it, they saw a staircase. “This goes down to the basement where your respective tandem slingdrives are, along with other necessary equipment, like life support and power control. Don’t...” he hesitated. “Don’t come down here unless I ask you to, or if you really think there’s a reason. I don’t know what that reason might be, but you’re all adults, so I don’t want to make a blanket statement that it’s off-limits, or straight up lock you out. I just want you to be careful. In the past, you have not had physical access to the machinery, and I never heard any complaints, so even though you technically have access now, you really shouldn’t need it. I have direct doors to all of them, and you cannot lock those from your side, so fair warning.”

“Yeah, you’re our little basement troll.” Mateo put Ramses in a headlock and mussed up his hair. “Who’s our little basement troll?”

“I am,” Ramses admitted. He pulled himself out of the headlock, and straightened back up. “So, that’s about all I’m gonna show you. You can explore on your own. I mostly only put the basic amenities in there, like Alaskan king beds, VR connectors, stasis pods, emergency supplies. You can synthesize more, if you want. Everyone does have a giant hot tub, though. No amount of transhumanistic enhancement can replicate the relaxing feeling of hot water jets on your bare skin, lemme tell ya.”

“Gross,” Romana repeated.

“Oh, I almost forgot. One more thing,” Ramses said, leading them towards the back. He drew the curtains apart to reveal a glass sliding door. On the other side was what looked like the outside. It wasn’t just an illusion. He opened the door, and walked right out. The ground before them was only soil, but it was a sizable backyard. The landscape stretched for miles and miles, though that probably was all just holographic. At present, the sun was setting, so they stood there to watch it. “I didn’t plant anything, because I thought we might turn this into a little community garden. Wherever we go, we’ll be able to bring nature with us, even in the emptiness of intergalactic space.”

“This is really nice, Ramses,” Leona said again. “You did a great job.”

“You didn’t help?” Angela asked her.

“Not much,” Leona replied. “I ran some calculations, but the design was all him.”

“I needed a win,” Ramses told her. “I needed it to be my win, if that doesn’t sound too selfish and rude.”

“I understand,” she assured him. “It really is great. We finally have a home.”

“Is there a name for it?” Marie asked. “Like Willow Heights or Paradiso?”

Ramses started to look a little bashful now. “Well, we can come up with a different name, if you’d like, but in the base coding, I’ve just been calling it Silhefa. It’s kind of hard to pronounce in Egyptian Arabic, so that’s an anglicized approximation.

“What does it mean?” Mateo asked him.

“Turtle,” Ramses answered.

They all smiled. “It’s perfect.”

Mateo looked over, though, and noticed that there was a hint of sadness in Romana’s eyes. She was still going through a rough time, and she probably wasn’t talking to anybody about it. He slid over to her, and took her hand. She was a little surprised, but didn’t think of it as an opening to a conversation. She just smiled at him wider, and looked back at the scenery. He gently pulled her away.

“What is it?”

“Let’s talk,” he requested. He unlocked the door to his private pocket, and pulled her into it.

“About what?”

“Lie down with me.” He plopped down on the bed.

“That’s a little weird, dad.”

“You’re still my little girl. Lie down, come on.”

She sighed and lay down beside him.

“When you were just a tiny baby—I don’t know if your mother told you this—the Dardieti had built us this special bed.” He scooted over so there was more space between them that he could point to. “There was this hole in the bed which was just big enough for you. Your mom and I weren’t together, obviously, but for that brief period of time, we both slept in that bed with you. We felt like a family. It was in that bed that I made a commitment to protect you, which I was only able to do by letting you go.”

“We just talked about this on that scout ship. I’m not leaving the team.”

“I’m not asking you to. There are things I know you need that a father can’t give to his daughter. That would actually be weird. All I can do is be there for you while you figure it out. There’s something I might be able to give you, though. It won’t be easy, nor safe, but I can promise to try. I think it might help, though you would have to decide how you feel about it. The truth is, even though I didn’t know her well, I miss her a little, and would not hate seeing her again.” He drew from his memory of over a hundred realtime years ago, and used it to generate a hologram of Karla Nieman above them.

Romana teared up, and quickly started crying at the sight of her mom.

“We are time travelers. Let’s take advantage of that. Let’s go see your mother.”

“Getting into the Third Rail is not easy. Mom didn’t say anything about the baby bed, but she told me how hard it was to find refuge.”

“Then you know what to do.”

“Not exactly. She didn’t give me a map.”

“She gave you a way out, didn’t she? You made your way to Castlebourne somehow.”

“That was after the Reconvergence. I got out of the Sixth Key.”

“Well. We’ll find a way. Would you like that? Would you like to see her again?”

“Yes.”

“Come here. Come on,” he urged when she didn’t accept the hug right away.

She did lay her head upon his chest and cried into his shirt. “I have to admit something. I’ve been trying to Weird Science myself a boyfriend, using the Varkas Reflex computers. They know how to create characters, ya know. It’s not working, though. I keep trying to set very vague parameters, so he feels more like a real person that I didn’t come up with myself, but then he’s always a weirdo who I don’t really like. I thought maybe it was fate, because I thought of the idea, and then Ramses navigated us here, and it just made sense, but it’s not working out, and I feel like such a loser. I shouldn’t need an AI boyfriend. I’m just...desperate.”

Mateo sighed, not entirely sure what to say. “You had a boyfriend...once.”

“You mean Boyd?”

“Yeah.”

“You hated Boyd.”

“Well, he was an antagonist.”

She sighed.

“Until he wasn’t,” Mateo acknowledged.

“Why are you bringing that up?”

“Well. If we’re going to go back to the past to visit your mother, I don’t see why we can’t visit your ex too.”

“Really? You would do that?”

“You are my little girl. I don’t know how long it’s going to take for us to reach either destination.”

“I’m gonna need to print out a new bra.”

“Don’t push it.”

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Microstory 2610: There is the Opportunity for Help, But it Will Come at a Cost

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August 20, 2526. Domestic Affairs Administrator Clarita Moffett has been tasked with a responsibility that goes beyond her scope. She is in charge of the homeworld, not reaching out to neighboring worlds. But the Foreign Policy Administrator was arrested, and whether you would agree with that decision or not, it now falls on Clarita to figure this out. That’s okay, it’s not like she’s utterly unprepared for this. She’s been talking to people for a hundred and fifty years. All she’s doing is asking someone she’s never met to possibly send a fleet of ships 13,000 astronomical units away from their postings, completely unscheduled, and pretty much immediately. There’s always been this sort of rivalry between their colonies. It takes a negligible amount of time to get to Bungula from Earth, so some Domanians have wondered why not just stop here? Reportedly, since Rigil Kentaurus is more Sol-like, Bungulans have wondered why bother stopping, when they could just keep going a little bit to them. Plus. Bungula has been fully terraformed, and nobody can actually explain how.

Clarita opens her virtual eyes. This is a meeting space in a simulated environment. Maintaining persistent quantum coherence isn’t all that hard with today’s technology, especially given how close their two worlds are. Even so, it’s a bland room with two chairs, and a table between them. It’s also too hot in here. She removes her jacket, and looks around for a hook, only now realizing that she’s using her game avatar, which does not appear very professional. Too late. When she turns back around, she finds that she’s not alone. “Oh. Sorry, Captain, I didn’t see you there. Thank you for meeting me. I understand that you and your people have the data, but I thought it was time that we had a real conversation. First of all, I’m Clarita Moffett.”

“Reed Ellis, but I’m only an Executor,” he replies, shaking her hand anyway.

“Oh, forgive me, I—”

“The task was delegated to me, even though it is beyond my purview.”

“I’m in the same boat,” Clarita explains. She gestures towards the table, and they both sit down. “I know this is asking a lot, but we no longer have the infrastructure to reach orbit. Lower orbit objects—which were less populated, thank God—were decimated when our normally thin atmosphere expanded. Those in higher orbit are fine, but they can’t reach us. Our space elevator, of course, was in geostationary, but it was pulled down when the CME hit. We need help, and we believe that you can provide it.”

“We have a new elevator ourselves,” Reed says. “It hasn’t even begun non-testing operations yet. I believe that we could spare it, but I would be fighting an uphill battle. I know the people that I work with. It took a lot of us to procure some...special technology for it, and they will not want to give it up.”

“Even for a major rescue operation?”

“Even for that.”

“We’ll give it back.”

“For my part, I would let you keep it. The Tangent is a vanity project, and a waste of our resources. I’m just telling you that they know what you’re after. They sent me to talk to you, because I don’t have the power to say yes.”

“So, what are our options? Do you have any other elevators?”

“We have several others,” Reed confirms, “but they all have multiple tethers, serving multiple settlements. Reeling in one would create imbalance. Reeling in them all is doable if well-coordinated, but difficult, and extremely disruptive. The reason the new one is the only reasonable option is because we do not yet rely on it. That is the most frustrating part of this whole thing.”

“Well, how do you make elevators? Can you just send us the manufacturing platform or whatever? Forgive me, this is not my area of expertise, so I do not know what I’m talking about.”

“We could not build a new elevator in a reasonable amount of time, and they would not expend the resources for that either.”

“What are our options?” Clarita asks, fully aware that she’s repeating herself, though this time, it’s more open-ended, so she doesn’t lead him to another non-solution.

He’s nervous and hesitating. He looks around as if someone might be spying on them in here. If anyone could break into the simulation and do that, they would be able to do it without being detected, but his paranoia is not completely unfounded. “I will get you The Tangent, but you’re going to have to do something for me in return.”

“Anything.” Wait, no. “Um, I mean...almost anything,” she amends.

“It will not be pretty,” Reed goes on. “People will not be happy with my decision. It’s probably best that I not share with you the details of my plan, but once I enact it, I will be incredibly vulnerable.”

“What could we possibly do to help that?”

“I need backup. The space elevator platform is the first of its kind, but it is not designed for interstellar travel. There is a way, but it will be slow. It will take weeks to get to you and the most optimistic of estimates.”

“Okay...”

“Those who...don’t agree with us will have plenty of time to catch up, and put a stop to it. I will promise to defend ourselves during the initial mission, but I would ask you to meet us halfway. Come to us with a fleet; as many as you can. You say there are still ships in orbit. They are useless without a means to land, or more importantly, to pull grounders up to them. So send them towards Bungula, on the exact opposite vector that we’ll be on. Defend us. Help us save you.”

Now it is Clarita who is hesitating. “I don’t have that kind of power either. If I can’t get my people on board, I too will have to...” She is reluctant to use the word coup, or mutiny, or even commandeer. “I will find the support, though. You come to us, and we’ll come to you. But since I don’t know which ships I’ll be able to procure, they might end up being the slower ones. And if that’s the case...”

“You’ll still be in the same boat as me, defending yourselves in an internal conflict.” Reed nods. “I suppose we’ll just have to do our best.”

“I suppose so,” Clarita agrees.

“Your boss. Do they want this to happen?” he questions.

“It does, but it’s fighting a political war to maintain the power it needs to save the lives of our people before you could even possibly arrive. It will be in a very delicate position if we throw this new complication into the mix. We all will.”

“Then I advise you to exercise discretion. Keep the circle tight, and only tell who you must. Figure out who you can trust.”

“Same to you,” Clarita says.

“I better go iron out the plan. Stay in touch.”

Microstory 2604: Some Will Stay and Some Will Go, and Each Will Decide Their Fate

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August 18, 2526. By the time the Breckenridge Folk completed their caucus, and decided on Amos Bull as their new Merchant Prince, the Levins were ready to go. They had no real emergency plan for a community-wide domaquake, but they did have one for tornados. All they had to do was announce a new congregation area near North Exit. Over the course of the last few days, they met here, and began the trek through the long spine on foot, which led them to Breckenridge’s South Exit. When the gates were officially opened, all they had to do was continue walking into the refuge dome. There was no pushing and screaming. The Levins understand what is at stake, and they want all of their remaining population to survive. Not all of them did. The quakes have been happening for years, and generally intensifying each time, and a few people met their ends during that. But since the last event, no one has succumbed. There are a few holdouts, though. Statistically speaking, there always are. While the refugees are trying to get settled in, Tertius and Aeterna are back in Leviss.

“I don’t think we should be doing this,” Tertius decides.

“What? Saving people?”

“Saving the stubborn ones. They made their choice, they’re scattered, and we’re not teleporters.”

“We have to try,” she reasons.

“This isn’t our job, or our forte. One of the Levin leaders should do it, if anyone.”

“If the next quake hits,” Aeterna begins, “we will survive, no matter how bad it is. We can keep trying and trying until the last skyscraper falls, and the last curmudgeon dies. We may as well.”

Tertius stops, forcing Aeterna to stop too. “We should be focusing on the people who want to be saved. They need us.”

“They’re already saved,” she contends.

Tertius shakes his head. “You think Breckenridge is safe? Breckenridge is a pit stop. They are marginally better off, not just because of their limited infrastructure, but also their distance from the fault line. Make no mistake, this is only going to get worse, and they will have to be evacuated too. We should be coordinating those efforts instead.”

“Are you sure about that?” she questions. “The Breckenridge Folk say it’s not bad at all. There have been zero casualties. That doesn’t sound marginal to me.”

He shakes his head again. “I’m telling you, it’s not going to last. That’s why I warned the other equatorial settlements. Everyone’s got to go.”

“Go where?” Aeterna asks.

“Preferably, outer space; not even in orbit, but far away. I put in a call to the Master Megaengineer, and her assistant said that she would look into it, but I’m not holding my breath. They don’t want to evacuate the whole planet, but they should.”

“Why would they have to leave orbit? Can domaquakes get so bad that they’ll spew matter into orbit, and—I don’t know what you mean by this. I’ve never heard of such a thing, on any world.”

“I don’t think it’s the planet. I think it’s the host star.”

“You’re just making that up, you don’t know.”

He stares at his daughter, afraid of what he has to say, but he does have to say it. “Before you were born, I spoke with a seer, who said the son will one day flip out, and annihilate everything.” He pauses, even more nervous, but he must go on. “I thought that she was talking about you. I was surprised when you were born a girl, but maybe you were transgender, and I just needed to wait. But it’s been hundreds of years, and unless you have news for me, you still identify as a woman. I don’t think she was talking about my son, but the sun.” He points to the sky with his thumb. “The best seers don’t talk in riddles. She wasn’t the best seer.”

“You’re just telling me this now?” Aeterna complains. “Who is this seer?”

“They mostly prefer Earth. I didn’t tell you because it might have led to a self-fulfilling prophecy, and truthfully, I kind of forgot about it, because I thought it had already come to pass. It didn’t seem relevant anymore. I’m only now wondering whether I had misinterpreted it, and it’s all about what’s happening now. Or maybe I was right the first time, and the prediction was just about our falling out two hundred years ago. What does flipping out even mean? How bad does it have to be to count?”

“What does flipping out have to do with a sun?”

“I don’t know anything.” He looks around at the destruction that the domaquakes have already caused. “But this...isn’t gonna get better. Did you notice, it wasn’t difficult to convince the Levins to leave? They’ve not shared their data yet, but they must be picking up on something. I firmly believe that we can’t let them stop moving.”

“Okay, okay. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to save the stragglers. If anything, it makes it even more vital. They probably think there’s hope!”

“And how are we gonna convince them that there’s not? I just tried to do it with you, and you immediately pointed out that I don’t know what the hell I was talking about. We can’t exactly tell them that a magical lady with special time powers told me 300 years ago...in a riddle.”

“Maybe we can cheat,” Aeterna suggests.

“How would we do that?”

“You still have the ability to erase people’s memories?”

Tertius winches. “Yeah, of course I do. Oh, that was rhetorical.”

“If we erase their memories, we can tell them whatever they need to hear to get them through that tunnel. Then, once they’re on the other side, we lock the gates behind us, and restore their memories.”

“Two hundred years ago, you would have balked at that kind of subterfuge.”

“If it’s to save lives,” she reasons, “I don’t mind it.”

Tertius considered the proposition. “All right, I’m in. There’s one problem, though. As I said, they’re scattered. They may wake up confused, but that doesn’t mean they’ll randomly walk over to us.”

“I believe I have that covered.” Aeterna reaches into her pack pocket and pulls out a spent match.

“The muster match? That can only summon one person. And it’s used. You used it to bring me!” he reminds her.

“It’s not the match,” Aeterna tells him. She looks around until she finds what she’s looking for. “It’s the flame.” She manages to restrike it against a rock, and then set the bush on fire.