Microstory 2264: Tell You a Secret

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Yeah, it’s true, I’m considering relenting, and writing an autobiography. I didn’t want to do that, but I’m told that passively donating my money to various charities isn’t enough. I have to bolster my reputation through action. This could mean volunteer work, and hopefully one day, I’ll feel safe enough to get back out there without a posse of bodyguards. But for now, the charities need a reason to accept my donations. They don’t just take money from anyone. That can cause a whole lot of sociopolitical issues, as you can imagine. People are also making things up about me, because even though I’ve been talking about myself on this site, it’s not really organized, and it evidently doesn’t have enough about my past. People wanna know where I came from, and what my world is like. They’re envisioning wondrous and grand differences that just aren’t there. I guess it’s my job to set the record straight. Against my publicist’s instructions, I’m gonna tell you a secret, which is that I hate autobiographies. It’s not just because, how dare you think your life is so interesting that anyone would want to read about it, but also they’re usually pretty boring. But I may have no choice if someone else decides to write one of their own, and gets a ton of stuff wrong. I’ve not committed to anything yet. It’ll take a long time to write, and I don’t want it taking away from my other responsibilities.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 11, 2432

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The next stop on their magical mystery tour of the Goldilocks Corridor was Ex-371. For the most part, the reason it was called a corridor was because the inhabited star systems were roughly in a straight line. This one was a little more out of the way. It was less than a light year away from Ex-548, which was why their ship managed to get there in time for them to return to the timestream, but it was three light years away from the next world after that. Once they left here, they would be spending a little time cooped up with nowhere to land. That shouldn’t be a problem. Depending on what resources they could find here, they were considering pushing their next pit stop even further so that Ramses would have time to build them a better vessel. They needed to investigate this world to find out whether that was a viable option. If the locals decided to attack them with missiles, or cannonballs, or whatever they had here, it might not work out that way. The map of the empire only showed them which planets were inhabited, and where they were in relation to each other. It didn’t say anything about what they were like, and even if it did, the data was already fairly outdated.

“One town?” Leona asked.

“Only the one,” Ramses confirmed. “Based on the energy readings I’m getting, they’re fusion powered, which suggests 2030s-level technology, but their architecture and layout better resemble something out of the 20th century. I think they live simplier than they need to. They have cars. They’re electric. I doubt this planet came loaded with fossil fuels. The rest of it is barren.”

“It looks like Oaksent focused primarily on atmosphere when geoengineering his slave worlds,” Olimpia guessed. “He didn’t put too much effort into any greenery.”

“He didn’t put no effort into it, though,” Leona responded. “He just prioritized some worlds over others. I saw a squirrel on Ex-275. It wasn’t just squirrel-like. It was a squirrel. Anyway, Rambo, does any building down there strike you as a City Hall, or something like that?”

He pointed. “This coin-shaped building right here. It’s unlike any of the others, and it’s right in the center.”

“All right.” Leona cleared her throat as she was holding up her tablet, just a little worried about how the team was going to react to this. “We’re starting a schedule. I hope that’s okay. I’ve assigned Vitalie and Ramses to the Vitalie!371 search. This time, I have babysitting duties on the ship, and I’ll do it alone. Everyone else will go check out that building.” They might obviously realize later that it wasn’t practical to adhere to a duty rotation when the nature of certain worlds necessitated the division of labor to be distributed in a particular way, but for now, it seemed like the most fair way to do it. No one wanted to have to stay up in orbit, but someone had to. Any given world could be hiding secret technology that could ultimately trap them there, or worse.

“That sounds good,” Mateo replied. “Did you think we wouldn’t like this?”

“I don’t know.” The truth was, she still wasn’t comfortable barking orders at people, except in an emergency. When they were in danger, and-or trying to fix a problem, it made sense to her, but just handing out responsibilities like she was middle management in an office was a little weird. It probably never wouldn’t be.

He gave her a kiss on the cheek, and stole the tablet from her hands while he said, “we got this.” He looked over the upcoming schedule. “I couldn’t help but notice that you place yourself up here more than you should. I’m getting better at pattern recognition. Why are you always alone when you do it?”

“Well, I can handle it alone.” She tried to shrug, but it wasn’t convincing.

“So can Ramses, and he’s always with someone else.”

Ramses chuckled. “This wasn’t a bad idea, but let’s all work on it together later, okay? We’ll have plenty of time to worry about it on our way to Ex-586. It’s fine for today, though.” He offered his hooked elbow. “Shall we go, Vitalie!324?”

She took his arm as if they were in a courtship, and they disappeared together.

“Keep in touch, love.” Mateo gave Leona another kiss on the cheek, and the teleported down to the surface, right in front of the entrance to the building. No one was around to see it, except for the receptionist and security guard inside, neither of whom were looking up at the time.

They opened the doors, and started to walk towards the front desk. The receptionist perked up, and stared at them. “It’s them.” He slapped the guard on the shoulder. Hey, it’s them!”

The bored guard was writing something down, or maybe just doodling. “Huh? What? Oh my God, it’s the Matics. Hey, can we get a picture?”

“Of us?” Mateo questioned.

“With you,” she clarified.

“Umm...okay?”

The guard and receptionist turned around to face the inside of the building. The guard held the camera up, and snapped the photo. It wasn’t a phone, so she had to turn it around, and check it with the digital viewer. Oh no, Miss Sangster didn’t get all the way. Could you scootch in more, and try again?”

“Sure,” Olimpia agreed.

They took a second one.

“Ah, man,” the receptionist said with a big smile. “That’s great, thanks. You go ahead through the gates. I’ll open them for you.”

The guard met them on the other side of the optical turnstile. She pulled up her pants a little since her belt was a little heavy on the accessories. “I’ll escort you down to the main lab.”

“Pardon, but may we ask, what exactly do you do here?”

“Oh, I just help greet people when they come in in the mornings, and say farewell to them at the end of the day,” she explained. “The job is pretty easy, we don’t have a problem with people trying to break in, or cause other issues. But theoretically, I would help with that. You’re the only ones who have come in who don’t work here, besides a few people’s spouses who do other things around town. They like to have lunch in our cafeteria, because it’s the best food in the world. I mean that literally. Do you eat? Are you...robots?” She was clearly concerned that she was offending them.

“No,” Marie replied. “Yes, we eat, but we probably won’t need anything for another few days.”

“I understand. Well, it’s back through those doors, if you need it.” She never did answer what the purpose of this building was, whether it was because she didn’t know, or it wasn’t her place to say, or because she didn’t realize that they were never asking about her job specifically. “Okay. Here’s the main lab,” she said after a few minutes of walking. “I’m not allowed to go in unless it’s an emergency.” She pantomimed tipping her hat at them before realizing her mistake, and trying to brush off the awkwardness. “Okay. Bye.” She swiped her access card, and held the door open for them. I love you, Mateo thought he heard her whisper as they were stepping through the door.

They were in a wide expanse, wider than was presumably needed for what they were building here. A football pitch away, they could see the unmistakable design of a machine that they had used many times before. It was missing two walls, and as they drew nearer, they could see some other flaws, but this was definitely a Nexus. “Umm...”

Angela and Marie exchanged a look. “We’ll manage the ship,” one of them said.

“I’ll switch places with Ram,” Olimpia volunteered.

All three ladies disappeared to soon be replaced by Ramses and Leona. Wow, her duty roster was already not working for them. A woman in a pantsuit jogged up to them. “Sorry, I meant to meet you out the doors. You just came through so quick. I thought maybe they would make you badges, since that’s protocol. But, you know, it’s fine. Hi, my name is Ex-371-JM6824.”

Mateo balked. “That’s...” That wasn’t a name. It was a number. She didn’t have a name? Wait, had anyone they had met here ever had a real name? They never bothered to ask, did they? Woof, that was not very nice of them.

She eagerly awaited her response, before guessing what was stopping them. “Oh, ha. We don’t have names like you, we just have numbers. Exin Empire, planet three-seven-one, region JM, resident number six thousand, eight hundred and twenty-four. Of course, we only have one region, but...”

“So there can only be ten thousand people on this world at any one time?” Leona calculated.

“No,” she answered. “We just share names. I’m sure you’re not the only, uhh...you might be the only one, but—let’s see—Angela Walton? That’s pretty common, isn’t it?” That was true enough. Though, how would she know what was and wasn’t common on Earth? This was such an isolated part of the galaxy, and their knowledge appeared to be deliberately restricted.

“Right. So, you’re building a Nexus?”

6824 nodded and sighed. “We’re certainly trying to. I don’t suppose you’ll help.”

“Sorry,” Leona said.

“That’s okay. We have the plans, it’s just...”

“Not as easy as you would think?”

“Right? It’s so detailed, and the alloys have to be mixed perfectly. This is taking us a lot longer than we hoped. But we’ll get there. It’s only our second attempt.”

“What went wrong with the first one?” Ramses asked.

She lifted a device to her lips. “Switch on the lights to sector V-26.” The loud pounding sound of harsh lights flipped on in the back corner, revealing a second Nexus building, this one not missing any sides, though they couldn’t see how completed the interior was. “It’s totally finished. Or rather, we thought it was. It powers up, drawing vacuum energy from wherever that comes from. We can even get objects to dematerialize and then rematerialize. It just doesn’t go anywhere. We can’t access the network, and we have no idea why.”

“Could we see it?” Leona asked her.

6824 presented the finished Nexus to her like a gameshow model, prompting Leona and Ramses to teleport away. Meanwhile, Mateo offered her a hand. She took it tentatively, and then they followed.

“Venus, are you there?”

No response.

“Venus Opsocor, this is your favorite idiot, Leona Matic. Please respond.”

You’re not my favorite, Venus contended.

“Gotcha. Now I know you’re here. Could you tell me why this Nexus has not been assigned a term sequence?”

They’ve not asked, Venus explained. They have to submit a request.

“That wasn’t in the plans,” 6824 argued.

It was implied.

“Can I do that now?” 6824 requested.

“Ignore that,” Leona said quickly. She frowned at the woman. “I don’t know you. Maybe you deserve a Nexus. Maybe everyone in the Corridor does. But I know that Bronach Oaksent does not, and I know that you’re building this for him. Am I right? My guess is the entire purpose of this world has been devoted to getting on the network.”

“It has not always been our purpose,” 6824 countered. “We’re a research town. We’re not the only one responsible for scientific progress, but we are always dedicated to massive undertakings. Our last one before this was the antistar containment rings.”

“What will happen to you if you fail to get on the network?” Mateo asked.

6824 frowned. “We’ll be killed.”

She’s lying.

“Thanks, Oppie,” Leona said gratefully.

“Okay, we won’t,” 6824 admitted apologetically. “There is no time limit to our progress. He doesn’t even come check up on us. He just waits for us to call him. I’ve never called him. The rings were before my time.”

“So you just keep working on it,” Mateo reasoned, “and you can never fail. There’s no risk to you?”

“I suppose not. He has too many other concerns. There’s a lot going on in the empire at any one time.”

“How are the numbers determined?” Ramses jumped in, changing the subject. “This world is Ex-371. Where does that come from? Don’t tell me that it’s random.”

“It’s not random,” 6824 said.

“So, what’s the pattern?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Are you declining to answer, or is it random, but he asked you not to say that, so you can’t answer at all?” Mateo pressed.

She still didn’t say anything, but her expression gave everything away. It was as they thought; totally random. Oaksent seeded life on these planets to be his playthings, and like all children, he eventually gets tired of playing with some of them. They were worth very little thought, even when they were otherwise important to him.

Olimpia suddenly teleported to them. “I’ve always liked the name Floriana. How about Floriana Waltz.”

“I’m sorry?” 6824 was really confused.

“You deserve a name. Everyone deserves a real name. Including your planet. So I would like to start an exponential chain. I’ll give you a name, and then you give a few other people names, and eventually everyone will have their own. Just as it should be. Then together, you can come up with a name for your planet. How does that sound?”

“Hm, I think I like it too,” Floriana agreed.

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Microstory 1911: Shift Laws

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Senior Guard: Jail Guard, could you come into my office?

Jail Guard: Yeah, boss?

Senior Guard: I noticed that the male jail cell is empty at the moment.

Jail Guard: Oh, you’re right. It is, isn’t it?

Senior Guard: Why do you think that is?

Jail Guard: Looks like they broke out, sir. Happens about once a year.

Senior Guard: True. Care to hazard a guess as to the number one way detainees and inmates find themselves capable of breaking out of whatever lock up facility they’re in?

Jail Guard: Bad craftsmanship?

Senior Guard: Help from the inside. You were posted at that cell earlier today.

Jail Guard: I suppose I was. I did have to go out for coffee.

Senior Guard: How long were you gone?

Jail Guard: Only about ninety minutes.

Senior Guard: [...]

Jail Guard: I didn’t help them escape. I just didn’t watch them.

Senior Guard: Of course. Were you aware that the law states that at least two guards are required to be posted at a holding site where five or more detainees are being held?

Jail Guard: I think I did know that. Does that mean you erred?

Senior Guard: It does not. My roster is sound. It was a proctor who brought in the fifth detainee, which means it would have been the proctor department’s responsibility to supply your backup. Just for confirmation, did they fulfill this requirement?

Jail Guard: They did not. I was alone.

Senior Guard: And you are allowed to leave for food, beverage, and personal hygiene reasons once every two hours, correct?

Jail Guard: Correct. That is also the law.

Senior Guard: When you left for coffee, and...personal hygiene reasons, had it been two hours since your last break?

Jail Guard: *frowns* No, it had only been about an hour.

Senior Guard: No. No, look at this, see? You logged your break at 17:00 earlier this evening. I have it right here on the records. Those are your initials, aren’t they?

Jail Guard: Impossible, sir. I eat my dinner at exactly 18:00. I’m on a particular diet.

Senior Guard: Yeah, I remember, but something was different about today. You were so hungry, you took a break at 17:00, and then at 19:15, you needed another break, and since you were alone, you had to leave the detainees alone. And that’s not your fault. It’s not my fault either. It’s the proctor department’s fault. Do we understand each other?

Jail Guard: I think so, sir.

Senior Guard: *sighs* I know you have trouble remembering things sometimes, so when the fugitive department questions you regarding this matter, just tell them that you do not recall, and ask them to defer to the records, because you may not know much, but you know that the records are one hundred percent accurate. Okay?

Jail Guard: Okay, I think I can do that.

Senior Guard: Perfect. Now go finish your shift. They won’t come until tomorrow.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: December 28, 2398

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Alyssa seems okay. If there’s secret information in her brain that she can’t access, it doesn’t appear to be doing her any harm. It’s not making her hurt people, or spontaneously cluck like a chicken. After all the tests that Ramses could think of, and all the psychic therapy that Arcadia tried to perform, they had little choice but to give up, move on, and hope that it doesn’t cause problems later. It’s been a long time since they first came up with their plan to fake Leona’s death, and they have yet to go through with it, despite nearly everything being ready. All they need is for someone to pretend to be her using the currently vacant Leona Reaver body, and Alyssa has had enough of the waiting. “I’m doing this. Show me how.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Ramses warns.

“You’ve all done dangerous things. So have I. I went to Russia. This is important.”

Ramses shakes his head. He’s tired of this argument.

“I’m tired of this argument,” Alyssa says. Maybe she is psychic. “I’m doing this, so you can either help me with the Insulator of Life and Livewire, or I can try it myself. Talk about dangerous.”

He sighs. “Okay. We’ll do it tomorrow.”

She laughs, then starts to fake laugh, “ha-ha-ha. Let’s go to that secret government hospital. Right now.”

“Very well. If you’ll get the keys, I’ll—”

“No, I said right now.”

He’s confused at first, but then realizes that she’s expecting him to teleport them there. It’s less about the thrill of superpowers, and more about them getting there quickly without him having any time to change his mind, or try to talk her out of it. “Okay, we’ll do that. But I still have to get the special equipment.”

“Okay, go ahead,” she says as if he needs her authorization.

After they’re ready, they jump to the secret hospital, directly into Leona Reaver’s room. The guard standing outside her door is alarmed, but relaxes when he sees through the window that it’s just the two of them. Ramses peeks his head out to inform him that his assignment is about to be changed. Instead of watching over Reaver’s body, he’ll temporarily be watching over Alyssa’s. He understands, and isn’t surprised. He’s probably never shocked about anything anymore. One day, everyone in the world is gonna know about time travel and time powers. The secret can’t last forever.

Alyssa has seen this done before, but Ramses reviews the procedure anyway. It’s important for her to understand that this is not just dangerous because the mission she’ll be going on will result in a near-death experience. The transfer itself is also dangerous, because it’s mysterious. Normal human brain uploading technology has been researched and perfected by thousands of experts, and experienced by billions of people in the main sequence. This? No one knows how the hell this works. It just does. And that means that if something goes wrong, they won’t necessarily be able to fix it. She accepts the risks, and lies down on the bed next to Reaver. They provided a bariatric medical bed just for this eventually, so there’s plenty of room for the both of them.

“I’ll see you on the other side.” Ramses plugs the Livewire in.

Alyssa transfers to Leona Reaver’s body. Then she starts to have a seizure.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 22, 2398

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Kivi hangs up the phone, confused and frustrated, perhaps even more frustrated than before she made the call, but now for different reasons. The interrogation of Meredarchos is not going well. There are only a few people in the world who are immune to his psychic abilities, and half of them don’t work for the government, so they’re off doing their own things. The rest are left to stay at the black site, and keep watch over him in tiresome shifts. They grow weary of it, but until they figure out how his ability works, they are the only line of defense against him. Kivi was hoping to get Arcadia to immunize others, but she can’t come back, for reasons she didn’t get into. She did make one crazy claim, which is that generating mental barriers in other people’s heads is something that Kivi may be able to do herself.

“What you’re doing when you say that you’ve picked up the scent of a target has nothing to do with smell,” Arcadia said. “The reason you can find people is because you’re tracking the unique psychic signal that everyone gives off, whether they want to or not. You too have psychic abilities; maybe not as strong as Meredarchos, or even me, but everyone has a little, and you’re definitely better than the average person.”

Kivi is confounded by this. Obviously she knew it had nothing to do with smell. Catching a scent was just the easiest way to put it without having a degree in neurology. Still, psychic is a bit of a stretch. If she can read minds, shouldn’t she have done so accidentally by now? In the movies, if a character has a special ability, it will always surface at an opportune time, especially if we’re talking multiple abilities. Kivi has been interrogating this dark entity for days, and nothing like that has happened to her. Though maybe just knowing it’s a thing will make it work the next time. She’s certainly going to try that before she attempts to protect a new agent from Meredarchos’ intrusions. If she fails, it places someone in danger, but this only puts her at risk.

They’ve been living at a safehouse about a kilometer from the secret one-person prison, which was built into an abandoned mine shaft by another team while Kivi and her team were still looking for the enemy. She makes the drive back, and checks in at the gate. She takes the elevator down, and heads for Meredarchos. His two frontline guards have already moved him to the interrogation room, and placed a dark bag over his head. If this is going to work, he can’t be allowed to sense anything through her microexpressions. She sits down across from him, and starts to operate on instinct. If I were a real psychic, how would I read someone’s thoughts?

After a few minutes, Kivi starts to feel something. Her own mental wall is still there, but now she’s getting the sense that there are two walls. One of them belongs to Meredarchos and Erlendr. They apparently also have to protect themselves against intruders. She looks up to the top. She can see both of them there, on separate corners, scanning the horizon. They’re looking so far in the distance, they can’t even see that she’s right there in front of them. It’s one tall-ass wall, though. As a metaphor, it’s a pretty good one. There’s no way she’s scaling that, and making it to the other side.

She hears a whisper at the base of the wall. “Psst. Come here.” It’s a shadowy figure, holding onto an open door.

“Who is that?” Kivi asks.

“It’s me, come on.” The figure steps a little more into the light. It’s Cheyenne.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 16, 2398

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All hell broke loose, and so did the two prisoners still left inside the SD6 blacksite. Rothko Ladhiffe, in Alt!Mateo’s body, figured out how to get his powers back, though they still don’t know how he did it, or what took him so long. It had been a few weeks since they gave him what they believed would be just another perfectly harmless flashlight. The man is not well, and they were just trying to keep him comfortable while they decided on a more permanent solution. They are not the time police, and he is not their responsibility. Neither is this Meredarchos fellow, now in Andile’s body, who evidently came from another universe. That’s about all they have been able to learn about him. When Rothko blasted his way out of the facility, he damaged enough of the building to collapse it in on itself, which provided Meredarchos with enough space to escape too. He will be harder to find, because they don’t know where he might go. Rothko, on the other hand, is completely predictable.

Fancying himself a superhero, he literally flew out of the rubble. As near as Leona can guess, Rothko Torches have the ability to teleport and accelerate particles of light, and possibly other things, turning them into extremely powerful rocket nozzles for their size. He obviously overestimated his ability to control the damn things, and fell to his death instead. But Alt!Mateo can’t die. Whenever he gets close, the time gods transport him back to where he’s supposed to die in an earlier timeline. It doesn’t happen there either, though, because a time mirror is waiting underneath him, so he falls back through, and returns to the Third Rail every time. That’s why Alt!Mateo and Leona Reaver had to escape their substrates, and transfer to new ones. At some point, the mirror trick is going to stop working, be it naturally, or following human intervention. They are not safe bodies to be in, but Alt!Mateo’s had at least one more life in it, because Rothko has landed exactly where they expected, in that unremarkable parking lot in Crown Center.

“Oh, uhh...hi.” Rothko stands, and looks at the small crowd. He reaches up to feel for what’s around his neck.

“That collar absorbs temporal energy,” Ramses warns. “If you try to use your powers, it will all just go in there, and be neutralized.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“You escaped from prison,” Mateo explains.

“I wasn’t talking to you.” Rothko is still looking right at Ramses.

Ramses clears his throat. “You’re unwell, and a danger to yourself and others. We’re here to take you to a new facility. It will be safer, and you won’t have any flashlights. You won’t have any lights at all. They’ll be situated outside of your cell, and come in through windows near the ceiling. You have lost the weirdest privilege ever, the ability to control how bright it is.”

“It’s not a weird privilege,” Mateo counters. “It’s just weird to lose it.”

“Whatever.”

“Wait. What if I gave you information?” Rothko pleads.

“What could you possibly give us?” Mateo asks.

“How do you think I broke out? Could I have done it on my own?”

“Shut up!” Ramses presses a button on his remote, sending an electrical shock to Rothko’s collar that’s strong enough to knock him to the ground.

Mateo and the four SD6 guards stare at him.

“He was...he was, ya know...”

“Gonna blow your cover?” Mateo guesses.

“What are you talking about?”

Mateo teleports away briefly, and then comes back, but this time behind Ramses. He wraps the prototype of the collar around his neck. It works all right, but there appears to be a limitation to how much temporal energy it can absorb, which the real Ramses found unacceptable, so that’s why he built the model that Rothko is wearing. Hopefully it will be good enough for now. “What did you think was gonna happen here, that Rothko was just gonna keep his mouth shut?”

“What are you talking about?” Erlendr whines.

“Save it, I know who you are. You people think I’m so stupid, but I have a lot of life experience now that I didn’t have before.”

“Mateo, I really don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m your best friend, you can trust me.”

“Oh my God, why are you so bad at this? Is it because you’re so used to being the most powerful person in the room that you get lazy about tricking people? You don’t sound like Ramses at all. You’ve been weird since we tried to switch your bodies.”

Erlendr knows he’s been caught. “You didn’t try to switch our bodies. You tried to trap me in the Insulator!”

“Instead, he’s there, and you’re still in there.”

“Oh no, he’s in here too. When you switch bodies with someone, you don’t have access to their thoughts and memories, but when you share a mind—Mateo, I could tell you things...”

“I don’t care. When Leona gets back from trying to find the other prisoner, she’ll help us put everyone where they belong. I might even stick you in Leona Reaver’s body after all, and then let you die in her timeline in her place.”

“It’s impossible,” Erlendr claims, shrugging Ramses’ shoulders. “It’s a loop. He’ll always end up here.” He looks over at one of the guards. “Go ahead and shoot him. He’ll disappear at the last millisecond, and be back totally fine tomorrow. You can shoot this Mateo too. He can’t die either. Wink,” he says with a wink.

“Come on,” Mateo says, starting to escort Erlendr and Ramses to the prisoner transport van. Two of the guards help Rothko off the ground, and follow.

“Wait, what if I gave you information?” Erlendr echoes Rothko’s words from before.

“Ha! Haven’t heard this joke before. Go ahead, I’m listening.”

“We talked on the inside, while I was still in Trina’s body.”

“You and Rothko,” Mateo assumes.

“Yes, but also with Meredarchos.”

“He was several stories below you, there’s no way.”

“He doesn’t need a voice to talk,” Erlendr insists, stopping at the steps up to the back of the van. “He has psychic abilities. Now, they’re suppressed while he’s in this reality—or else he would have taken over the whole world by now—but since I have a history of telepathy too, we can connect.”

“So you can use your own abilities, which should also be suppressed in this reality, to find him.” Mateo shakes his head. That doesn’t make any sense.

“Not only that, but I’m the only one whose head he can’t get into. Matty, trust me, you don’t want this guy out in the world. He will find a way to get his full power back, and he will destroy everything. It’s what he does. We don’t know why.”

“Why is it that you know so much about the bulk, but you had never heard of the Third Rail?”

“No one calls it that, Matt. Jesus, I just didn’t know your words for it.”

“Uhuh,” Mateo says sarcastically. “Get in the van.” He not so gently helps Erlendr up the steps, and begins to shackle him in place, then watches as the guards do the same to Rothko. This is a huge mess.

“You need me, Mateo!” Erlendr shouts. He keeps repeating that, and similar declarations, after Mateo shuts the doors, and heads for the front. “You need me!”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 15, 2398

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Rothko Ladhiffe wasn’t born evil. He wouldn’t even call himself that now. Maybe he fell off the right path a little bit, but he can get back on if someone would just give him a chance. These people have not done that for him. They trapped him in that glass tchotchke thing, and when he finally got out, he found himself in somebody else’s body. He didn’t ask to be here, and he doesn’t deserve to be locked up in this cell. They don’t even let him out for yard time, what kind of prison is this place?

The door opens. One of the strangers walks in—not a guard who works here, but someone in charge. “Hello, how are you doing today?” he asks.

“I’m not great,” Rothko replies.

The man nods. “It’s a little dark in here. Would you like a flashlight or two?”

Asshole. “I’m not crazy. I’ve transformed flashlights into powerful tools before. I can do it again. I just need the right model.”

“Oh, Mister Ladhiffe, I know all about your chosen one powers, believe me.”

“Who are you?”

“You know me, Rothy. We’ve whispered to each other, through the vents.”

Rothko thinks about it, trying to remember. “Belinder?”

“Close enough.”

“You were a little girl.”

“Not anymore.”

“You went back to your old body? How did you find it? Can you find mine?”

Belinder rolls his eyes. “This isn’t my real body. I stole it from someone else.”

“Oh.” Rothko frowns. “So you can’t help me.”

“I didn’t say that. Like I was saying, you’re a chosen one, which makes you special beyond special. Your mind has the power, not your body. The reason these flashlights aren’t working for you is because you’re in the wrong reality. There’s something here suppressing your power.”

“Can that be fixed?”

“Yes.” He takes a syringe out of his pocket. “With this.”

Rothko gulps. “Is it gonna hurt?”

“A little, I guess. It’s a needle, man, man up.”

“What exactly does it do?”

“It’s a concentrated elixir of temporal energy, which will activate your powers, and allow you to break out of here.”

“Why don’t you just hold the door open for me?”

“I can’t blow my cover. Everyone still thinks Ramses is in charge of this body. I need you to wait for about a week. Hide the syringe in the casing of one of your flashlights, and then take it with you, so they never find it.”

“Then where do I go?”

“Find shelter, I know how resourceful you are; surviving on your own on Durus.”

“I wasn’t alone,” Rothko explains.

“I know, but you kinda were, weren’t you? You couldn’t truly trust anyone.”

“How can I trust you?”

“Because I’m giving you the temporal energy.”

“How do I know that that’s what this stuff is? Maybe it’s poison.”

“I’m not breaking you out to help me. I’m just doing it to help you. So inject it ,or don’t, I don’t really care. But wait until next week.”

“Okay.”

Belinder gets up to leave.

“Wait, what if I need to contact you on the outside? I don’t have any money, or anything.”

“I’ll find you, don’t you worry about that.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Rothko smiles softly as he watches the friendly man who used to be a little girl, who used to be a different man, leave his cell. Once he’s alone, he hides himself under the covers and twirls the syringe around in his fingers. He admires it, and gives it a little taste...just plastic. It’s what’s inside that counts. How long did he say to wait? A week? He pulls the covers off his face, and looks around the cell. There’s no calendar on the wall. How the hell is he meant to know when it’s been a week? It could be any minute now. It could be right now. It probably is. He removes the cap of the needle with his needle, and spits it out. He’s always wanted to do that.

It’s hard to describe the feeling of injecting it into his neck. It hurts so good, he wishes he could get more of it. Even without the powers it’s going to give him, he would love it as long as it always felt like this. Energy is right, it surges all over his body like a PG-13 orgasm. He shakes and trembles to make sure that it reaches every corner of his veins. He gets out of bed, and starts to dance around, knocking over some of the flashlights that he has set up. They call these things Rothko Torches, and apparently it doesn’t matter what kind they are. He can transform them all, he just needs to figure out how. He first clears a space in the middle of the cell by moving the flashlights a little closer together. Then he just spins around, letting the light warm his skin, and trying to send energy back down into the beams. The first time he did this, he had no idea what he was doing; it just happened. Now he’s doing it on purpose. Now he really wants it.

He’s starting to think that nothing is going to change when suddenly it does. The flashlights begin to shake. It’s not enough to knock them over, but they feel like they’re about to explode. Afraid of what might happen, and without any other choice, Rothko dives under the bed, taking some of the flashlights with him. He doesn’t want to throw them back, so he desperately switches them off. Seconds later, there’s an explosion. Concrete particulates and dust start flying all around, so he tucks his head in, and shuts his eyes. He’s not sure what’s happening, but not nothin’, that’s for sure.

When the dust settles, Rothko crawls out from under the bed. The flashlights have been destroyed. If the blast itself didn’t burn them out, the falling debris finished them off. He looks up at a clear blue sky; his way to freedom. One of the guards forces his way into the room, and points a gun at him. Rothko takes out one of the surviving flashlights—which should officially be called Rothko Torches now—and sends a photon blast into the man’s chest. He smiles proudly, having not really used one of these things very much before. They were stolen from him shortly after they were created. The guard is out cold, but there will be more. He gathers the surviving torches from the floor, and ties them up in his sheet, also tying it around his neck. He keeps two of them out, so he can use them like Iron Man’s rocket hands. He flies out of the building, whoopin’ and hollerin’ like he’s riding a bomb in a cowboy hat. Unfortunately for him, he doesn’t know how to aim these things. He loses control rather quickly, and starts to plummet to his death, dropping all of the flashlights on the way. He wakes up in a parking lot.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 8, 2398

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The guards followed Leona’s orders by transferring this mysterious Meredarchos to a lower level with no contact with the outside world. It apparently has plumbing, electricity, and a reserve of survival food that can last one person ten years. He shouldn’t be of risk to anyone unless whatever power he has is even stronger than Arcadia knows. She doesn’t know a whole lot. What she discovered after commissioning the creation of the LIR Map is that it’s not only capable of illuminating the entirety of the spacetime continuum for the universe it’s in at the time, but also the entirety of the bulkverse when it’s outside of any universe. With it, she could find any and every brane in all of reality, of which there is an infinite number. It was far too much information for her, but before she folded it back up, and shoved the overwhelming memory deep down in her mind, she noticed one thing. Branes exist in neighborhoods, drawn together for various reasons. The neighborhood they live in formed at the hands of people like Vearden Haywood while in possession of The Crossover, but there are other forces at play. Meredarchos hails from his own neighborhood, in a dark corner of the bulk. He’s either the improbably lucky lone survivor of a cataclysm, or the cause of it. Either possibility makes him a threat.

They’re not going to do anything with him until they have a better understanding of what they’re up against, or if they’re against anything at all. Until then, the team is trusting Arcadia to not try anything fishy. While Vearden leaves Ramses’ unit to start using Delaney and Andile’s, Arcadia is moving into Leona Reaver’s old apartment. They will read her into every pertinent situation, and let her contribute to the decisions, but she has to be honest with them. In turn, they will be honest with her, which they were worried about doing, since they know things about her future, but she dismissed these concerns. Nothing they had to say ought to have any terrible repercussions on the timelines, even the bomb they dropped about her father raping her mother. She said that it would be all right, that she would be able to act like it was all new information when the time came. If the Prestons aren’t even aware of the Third Rail, then keeping it a secret against as many people as possible could be paramount.

Mateo walks into the common area, where Heath is reading a book about Easter Island, and Arcadia is staring at the LIR Map. “Are you still at it?” he asks her.

“It’s psychic paper. It knows what I want. It’s just not listening.”

“No, it doesn’t have any power. You’re basically trying to watch a television that isn’t plugged in.”

“Mateo I used to watch the timeline play out through still paintings.”

“Baudin explained that to me once. Those weren’t still paintings, they were transdimensional viewscreens with fancy golden frames. And unless we can find some temporal energy, that thing doesn’t have a working battery.”

She sighs, and finally looks away. “I know. Maybe you could get me some?” She bats her eyes at him. She’s not allowed on the second floor, nor anywhere on the first floor besides the lobby, and the elevator.

“We don’t trust you that much.”

She shrugs with her chin, but not her shoulders. “That’s fair. Do you see anything on the map?”

Mateo goes over to try. “Nope. Still blank.” This is a lie. He’s currently seeing the location of all of his friends, including sketches of what they’re doing right now. Most are somewhere in the building, but Leona is at the fusion factory, and all the McIvers are at the black site with Erlendr. They fully understand that the girl they see in the prison cell is not their sister, Trina, but they still can’t bear to be away from her. The guards have been instructed to prevent any attempt at visitation. They can’t even speak to him. All they can do is watch him through the one-way mirror. He’s also reading a book about Easter Island, which Mateo finds quite alarming.

“You’re lying!” she exclaims.

“No, I’m not.”

“You went into your head,” Arcadia says. “You only do that when something triggers you, and a blank piece of paper isn’t going to do that. What did you see?”

“It’s none of your business,” he tells her.

“Is it a picture of your naked wife, because I saw all that the last time I took a shower.”

“Why does everything with you have to be confrontational or controversial?”

Her smile drops into a frown. “I don’t know, but I don’t know how to stop.”

Mateo ponders the problem. “Think of it as a challenge. You love those.”

“I do,” she agrees. “I really do.”

He ponders some more. “You’ve never had a job in your life, have you?”

“That’s not true. I had a huge job, protecting the timeline from choosing ones.”

“You were born for that. You were literally made to do it. Why don’t you try something that doesn’t come naturally to you?”

“You say that like you have something in mind.”

“Come on.” Mateo spins around three times for show, and then stumbles out of the room as Arcadia smiles and follows. He takes her down the elevator, to the first floor, where Angela just so happens to be setting up the welcome screen for the lobby. “I heard you were looking for a receptionist.”

Angela looks up at him, and then over at Arcadia. She quickly guesses the purpose of the remark. “Do you have any experience with that sort of thing?”

“You mean with...people?”

“I’m not interested,” Angela decides.

“No, please, just give her a chance.”

“Look, Matthew, I don’t know her that well. Most of your dealings with her were before my time, so I don’t harbor any resentment. What I do have are two ears, and they have heard a lot of not-so-great things about her. This new business is really important to me, so I can’t just let anyone sit in that chair over there. They have to be friendly and helpful. They have to have experience.”

“All I’m asking you to do is train her,” Mateo asks. “That’s what you do, right; counsel people who are struggling?”

“Oh, you’re playing that card, huh? You know I have a thing for the Level Threes,” she says, referring to the prisoner class of people in the afterlife simulation.

“I would consider it a personal favor to me,” Mateo adds.

“All right, all right,” Angela concedes.

“Hold on, hold on,” Arcadia interjects. “I’ve not agreed to do anything.”

“You’re doing it, or I’m putting you back in the Insulator of Life,” Mateo warns.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 26, 2398

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The process of freeing the unconscious prisoners is not easy. It wasn’t legal for them to be kept there like that in the first place, but that doesn’t mean it’s legal to just let them out, and drive away. Certain people should be notified about all of this so a proper investigation can take place. The Matics didn’t have time for this, and they didn’t want all that heat on them anyway, so their only choice was to sneak them out themselves. Most people working at the facility didn’t know about the secret prisoners, but enough of them did to avoid having to actually break out, like Mateo and Leona have had to do so many times in the past. Still, they had to wait for the cover of night, and the few guards who could help them had to dress differently. The prisoners would have been spooked to see a guard’s uniform. It had to look like a legit covert mission by a third party, which it essentially was. They loaded them into a school bus, and drove off without a hitch. Winona had to go back to finish one last thing first, which Leona assumed was code for killing the doctor who kept them locked up there, but she can’t prove that.

It’s morning now, on a Sunday. They can’t take the strangers to the secret McIver cabin, because there must be a reason they were in the prison in the first place. The question is what was that reason, or those reasons? It wouldn’t be any of their business what they allegedly did to get themselves into a special isolated section of the prison under normal circumstances, but since the team broke them out, it doesn’t seem crazy to ask. But are they entitled to an answer? Maybe, but food and shelter first, and Winona claims to have a little place to take them just outside of Las Vegas. Leona tried to call it a safehouse, but Winona was hesitant to agree with that guess. Both she and Mateo slept most of the way, the Energy water they injected themselves with having worn off, and caused them to crash

“Where are we?” a groggy Mateo asks Winona, who is sitting behind him.

“A few miles past Santa Fe,” Winona answers.

“Santa Fe...New Mexico?” he questions.

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that the wrong direction? I thought we were going to Las Vegas.”

“Yes,” Winona confirmed. “There’s also a Las Vegas in N-M.”

Mateo relaxes his neck. “Yeah, that’s right. I’ve been there.”

“You have?” Leona asks. It’s funny that she should forget such a thing. How many other memories managed to escape her steel trap?

“Yeah, my parents and I were stranded there once, back in, uh...” That was 378 years ago, in an old timeline.

“Right, I remember now. I was in school at the time.”

“Do you have something against the town?” Winona asks, worried about pissing them off.

“As long as it helps these people, it’s fine,” Leona brushes off.

“Anyway, we’re not technically going to be in Vegas. We’ll pass it in a half hour or so, and end up closer to a one-horse town called Arriba.”

Leona nods, unperturbed. She doesn’t know about Marie yet. Mateo doesn’t know how to tell her, or any of them, for that matter. He should talk to her first, to get her side of the story. She’s obviously not evil, but the Honeycutts have caused them all a lot of problems since they came here, and that’s not something they should have to just forgive and forget without an explanation.

The bus exits onto Highway 104, and heads away from civilization. Before too long, it turns again, and takes them to a place in the middle of nowhere called Jimenez Cemetery. “Ominous,” one of the prisoners muses. “You are saving us, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely,” Winona replies believably.

The driver stops, and opens the door. Everyone begins to climb out, looking for any sign that this is the right place to be. It might be a poetic location, fit to kill a bunch of ne’er-do-wells that society doesn’t want to deal with anymore. She’s probably going to force them to dig their own graves.

There’s a little shack on the other side of the graves. A man comes out of it in response to their arrival, polishing something in his hands. As he approaches, Mateo starts to think that he must recognize him. Even Leona seems to be having trouble matching a name to the face. “Mr. Halifax,” Winona greets him respectfully.

How could they not spot him immediately? It’s The Gravedigger. Though, to be fair, it’s been a pretty long time since they’ve seen him, and he looks a few years older. If anyone can get them back home, it’s this guy. He lives in another universe, and is on a first name basis with the powers that be. Or maybe they should be referred to as the powers that were. Nah, they’re still in control of other people’s lives.

“Is this all of them?” Halifax asks.

“Yes,” Winona says. “Can you take them all at once?”

Halifax narrows his eyes at the crowd, particularly at Mateo and Leona. “That depends. Do any of them not want to come with me?”

Leona crosses her arms. “That depends. Where are you taking them?”

“That depends...on where they belong,” Halifax says cryptically.

“Where might they belong?” Mateo asks him.

“Various places,” Halifax begins. “Kind of like how I belong elsewhere.”

“They’re bulk travelers,” Leona realizes.

“What does that mean?” Winona asks.

“It’s above your paygrade,” Halfiax says to her.

Winona looks over at Mateo. “This is why I need to debrief you, despite what you think I’ve already been told.”

“You’ve been told enough for us to want to debrief you.

“How did they end up here?” Leona asks Halifax, ignoring the short exchange between her husband and Winona.

“Westfall,” Halifax answers, surprisingly forthcoming.

“So, they don’t even know,” Leona notes.

“Unclear,” Halifax says. Westfall is a section of The Crossover which instigates travel between universes while preventing travelers from even realizing that anything happened. Instead, they believe that everything they see is just a part of their own world.

“We’ll go with you,” Leona begins “as long as our friends can come with us, and as long as we get certain biochemical characteristics back.”

“I can’t give you either,” Halifax says apologetically. “I wish I could.”

“Come on, Honeycutt,” Leona says as she turns away. “It was nice to see you!” she yells back to Halifax.

“Likewise,” he returns.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 9, 2398

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Okay, new plan. As it turns out, it’s a good thing that Amir Hussain is such a common name, because there are a few others in the penal colony. It takes them a little bit of time, and a little bit of them breaking into a records room, but they think they have found the right impostor for the job. He actually wants to leave the colony, and start a new life in Usonia. The real Amir Hussain—or rather, the one they’re assuming the two senators are trying to transport as a refugee—is already gone, having been teleported to The Olimpia just as it was coming in to free all of them. He and the rest of their friends should be safe and sound by now. He would have explained to them who he was, and they would have dropped him off somewhere else around the world, given him a little starter money, and returned home.

They weren’t trying to trick Birket, per se, but since no one on the team appears to have actually escaped, their enemies shouldn’t suspect a thing, and they will hopefully accept the other Amir as a decoy. He looks enough like him, given the poor quality of the photo, but maybe there are better ones out there. The Honeycutts may have deliberately made this difficult on them, for whatever ridiculous reason. If so, then they’ll see right through the ruse. The didn’t explain any of this to the new Amir. They’re pretending to legitimately presume that he’s the one they have been looking for this entire time. They’ve almost convinced themselves of as much. Right now, they’re waiting outside of the rundown transition building, which is where release requests are processed.

A man gets on the speaker. “Leona Matic, Marie and Heath Walton, Kivi Bristol, and Amir Hussain, please come inside.”

They walk in to find the building cut in half. Their side is bare, with only chairs up at the barrier, allowing them to communicate through bulletproof glass. The other side is part of a sliver of land where the true citizens of Birket live. A woman is rifling through some papers, and doesn’t bother looking up when they walk in. “Please sit in the order that you were called, starting from this chair here, to that one down there.”

They do as they’re asked.

She keeps consulting the documents, but finally does look up at them. “One million U.S. dollars.” She smiles in a strange way before adding, “each.” Not even Leona knows what she means by that. “That is how much it has cost to get you out of the Birket Penal Colony. I have never seen a bid that high, not even close. But apparently it comes with a...” She looks back at one of the pieces of paper. “...relatively large jug of Dead Sea Water?”

Leona clears her throat to show that she’s not deaf, but doesn’t say a word.

“We don’t like stealing here, but one jug of saltwater is still just one jug. It’s not worth five million dollars.” She continues to wait for them to respond, but gets nothing. “Though, I suppose the payment is more to get us to keep quiet about the whole thing...which I’ll honor. We need to repair and remodel half the blocks in the colony, and that money will contribute nicely to the fund.” She waits once more, but is neither surprised nor perturbed by the silence. “We don’t care if you have any belongings. You won’t be returning. A guard will open that door way down there in ten seconds. You’ll then have ten seconds to get through it before it closes again. Good luck.”

They jump out of their seats.