The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 7, 2398

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Leona is sitting in her wheelchair while Mateo is sitting up in her bed. He’s mindlessly flipping through channels on the TV, but it’s impossible to find something good. He’s sure there are plenty of great programs here, but they always make him a little uncomfortable. It feels like Third Railers are on a slightly different frequency than normal people. Their idea of entertainment isn’t wrong or even weird, it’s just a little too different than what he’s used to. It’s hard to explain what he doesn’t like about it, but he can only stomach about ten minutes of it before it makes him shiver, and he has to change it to something else.

“I’m getting hungry,” Leona notes.

Mateo checks her watch. She’s not allowed to wear jewelry while she’s checked in as a patient, in case they need to take her out for tests. It shouldn’t matter now since no one is running any tests of the sort, but they don’t want to piss the hostage-takers off any more than they already are. “Rations were meant to come an hour ago.”

“I hope they’re late because patients in critical need of nutrition are taking priority, and not that they’ve decided to starve us.”

“Want me to go out there and check?”

She shakes her head vigorously. “Nope. I don’t want you to draw attention to you or us at all. Maybe you could sneak back over to Cheyenne’s room again, though?”

“Okay.” He peeks his head through the doorway. The coast is clear—too clear, like a scene in a horror movie that you think is maybe a dream sequence, but it turns out the killer’s not dead, and he’s found her, and the hospital floor is totally empty only to increase tension, despite how unlikely that is. Mateo slinks down the hallways, and slips into Cheyenne’s room.

Marie is in there with her. They’re playing a card game across the bed. “Problem, or is she still just worried?” Marie asks.

“The second thing,” Mateo answers. “Have you heard anything? Are they going to let us out anytime soon?”

“It depends on what you mean by soon,” Cheyenne replies. “Santiens are pretty hardcore. They won’t stop until they’ve purified everyone they deem to be unclean.”

“Yeah, and you’re sure that doesn’t mean they’re going to kill them, right?”

“Positive,” Cheyenne assures him.

A group of heavily armed people belonging to a religion called Santienism took over the hospital when they learned that a group of Suiliens were involved in a bus crash, and were brought here for treatment. According to Carlin and Moray’s research, the two sects were once one, but Santiens broke away when they became obsessed with using natural remedies to cure disease. This caused the Suiliens to both metaphorically and literally dig into their own beliefs. They sleep in the dirt, and don’t ever bathe, believing that nature is the closest thing to divinity. Neither one of them believes in real science, and members of both sides get sick a lot because of their unhealthy habits. When their medical issues become too much for them to bear, they will go against their convictions with real doctors, but they are not meant to visit the same facilities due to a self-imposed policy of segregation. These are extenuating circumstances.

They have locked the building down so that no one can come in, and no one can leave. They have installed signal blockers to prevent communication to the outside world, which is why Mateo and Leona were unable to make their rendezvous with Ramses. They don’t know if he and Alyssa left without them, or if they’re still waiting in that park upstate. All they would have had to do, though, would be to check the internet for current events in the area. This isn’t national news by any stretch, as things like this happen from time to time, but it’s noteworthy enough to be reported on locally.

It’s been two nights since this debacle began, and now it’s early morning. How long exactly does it take to purify a bus full of your enemies, whether that means killing them, or not? Mateo looks towards the door, but that’s not what he’s thinking about. This is a team of action. They don’t do well just sitting around, waiting for other people to make things happen. His instincts are telling him to go out there, and make the situation better...or maybe make it worse instead, but brief.

“Don’t do it,” Marie urges him, knowing him well enough to predict his impulses. “This isn’t our problem.”

“We’ll be out of here by the end of the day,” Cheyenne believes.

“No, you won’t, and it’s your problem now.” One of the hostage-takers is standing in the doorway, aiming a gun at them from his waist like a buster in a film noir.

“We’re not doing anything wrong,” Marie protests.

“What religions are you?” the man with the gun asks, stepping closer menacingly.

“Unaffiliated,” she replies.

“The marker on your door indicates that you’re Caducean.”

Cheyenne leans forward to look at the faith indicator, but she can’t read it. “I hadn’t noticed. My friends must have put that there. Caduceans tend to receive priority treatment.” Caduceans do believe in science, and most medical professionals affiliate.

“Lying about your faith is an offense.”

“It’s not illegal.” One might think it would be, but not as long as the lie isn’t accompanied by other crimes. Still, some find the practice irreverent. In this case, he should just let it go as he obviously has more important stuff going on right now.

He relaxes his hand, but keeps his gun at the ready. “There are too many people in this room. One visitor at a time. One of you has to go back to your room, or downstairs with the other non-patients, depending on which one agrees to leave.”

“I’m going,” Mateo says.

“No, I’ll go,” Marie insists as she’s standing up. She gives Mateo a look that hopefully means don’t bring Leona into this, just stay here, because that’s how he’s interpreting it.

Ramses suddenly appears out of nowhere. “Oh. You have company over. I’m so sorry to disturb you.”

“Where the hells did you come from?” the gunman questions angrily.

“Umm....the bathroom?”

“The bathroom is behind me.”

“We don’t have time for this.” Ramses takes Mateo and Cheyenne by the hands, and teleports them to the rendezvous point in the park. Leona is already there, as are Winona and the AOC. Ramses makes one more jump to the hospital for Marie.

“What’s going on?” Mateo asks Winona.

She shakes her head and sighs. “Those guys who bombed the studio; they only did it to steal money, but nobody knows that yet. Someone was inspired to try to fix what they thought was a mistake. There is a bounty on Leona’s head. We had to act.”

Extremus: Year 15

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They were right. By checking serial numbers, Halan was able to confirm that a dozen cryopens were taken from the lab. Now that this one has been returned, Oaksent has ended up with eleven. But that’s not all he took. He managed to steal dozens of unfertilized eggs as well, giving him as much as he would need to sustain an isolated population on a habitable planet indefinitely. There are still a lot of unanswered questions, like where is this planet? How did Oaksent know that it would be habitable? What did Old Man have to do with anything? What happened to Rita and Airlock Karen? Hopefully Omega and Valencia would be able to find the truth during the time travel excursion. It could take them a very long time to pick up the trail, but they should be able to return to the moment they left. According to the Bridger doctor, Dr. Merlo, it was unsafe to return the cryopen to its place in inventory. They’re designed to be tamper proof in that once they’re sealed, any attempt to open them should result in the loss of all samples, but it’s just too risky. If they’re ever needed, they wouldn’t want one kid growing up with five arms, or something. Dr. Merlo took it to dispose of properly. Another potential life lost.

Exactly a year later, it was time to deliver the bad news. Halan gave Omega and Valencia this much time to figure out how to design a temporal illusory cloak that fools not only the naked eye, but sensitive detection equipment. Former ship temporal engineer Raddle desperately wanted to make it work, but Omega was right all along. It just wasn’t possible. It was relatively easy to cut and paste the background into the foreground in order to prevent someone from seeing what you don’t want them to see, even in real time. But the object you’re trying to hide is still there, and still making an impact on the environment. They could turn the ship into a darklurker, sure, which would shield them from such detection, but it would also turn them blind as well. Either no one can see you, including yourself, or everyone can. The illusion is a loophole, but it’s not perfect.

By now, Valencia has resigned herself to the fact that it’s not going to happen. They’re just going to have to be extra careful. She has to agree that it’s probably for the best in the long run, and in a more general sense. Such technology would have a myriad of ways to be abused. They intend to use it with the best of intentions, and they can do all they want to protect it from getting out, but as the old time traveler’s saying goes, “if something ever exists, then it has always existed.”

“Too true,” Omega confirms.

“So this means you two are ready to go?” Halan asks.

“Yes, sir,” Valencia admits.

Something about the way she said that gives him pause. “I want to make it clear that this is a decision we made together. This is not an order. If you want to back out, I’m not going to argue with you about it. I want to find out the truth more than anyone, but not at the expense of two of the most valuable members of my crew.”

“I’m not on the crew anymore,” Valencia points out.

“Retirement is not the same thing as a discharge,” Halan contends. “I still consider you part of the team. You just have a different role, like the one I’ll have when I become an admiral.”

Omega decides to jump in before the pre-argument can continue. “We don’t consider this an order, we want to do this, and we’re ready to go.”

“Okay,” Halan says with a quick nod. “Run a full final dia—”

“We did before you came in.”

“Well, did you—?”

“Yes.”

“What about the—”

“Three times, sir.”

“Very well. Launch when you’re ready,” Halan suggests, but doesn’t order.

“Just so you know,” Omega begins, “when it comes to temporal manipulation, technology is never as accurate as a human with innate ability. We can program the time shuttle to take us back to our destination, but relativistic speeds, and other factors, can potentially throw us off the mark.”

“We were able to send the mining drones accurately,” Halan notes.

“Well...most of them,” Valencia reminds him. “Plus, since they were unmanned, we were okay with a little bit—shall we call it—temporal turbulence.”

“It was a rough ride, sir,” Omega clarified. “Sending people is riskier.”

“So, we’re not doing it,” Halan sort of questions, sort of figures.

“No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” Valencia assures him. “We’re just going to use a different tactic. The mining ships needed to leave on a very specific course, so they would have enough time to complete their missions, and return at a specified time. They were better off being unmanned for a number of reasons, the turbulence being one of them, but also because they weren’t capable of improvisation. If they were off target by a given degree, they wouldn’t be able to compensate for it. For us, the timing doesn’t have to be so precise, because we can always try again. What we’re worried about is running into the ship. Or rather, having the ship run into us. It’s much safer for us to jump to the future, to a point when you’re long gone, and only then make our way to the past after we’re safely clear of your flight path.”

“It also means that we won’t necessarily return a second after we leave,” Omega adds. “One might think accuracy is paramount, but for us, it can be dangerous. It’s easier to just get close enough, and teleport the rest of the way.”

“Teleportation is far easier to control,” Valencia finishes.

The Captain nods again. “As long as you both are comfortable with the math, I’m confident in your abilities.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Thank you.”

Halan’s watch beeps. “Mercer needs me in the mess.”

“You don’t have to see us off, sir. It’s okay.”

“No. It can wait. Take your time.”

Omega and Valencia give each other a look. “There’s nothing left to do. Just a few buttons, and we’re gone.”

Captain Yenant proceeds to the observation room while the two travelers close the hatch, and prepare for launch. Not a minute later, the time shuttle, which they have chosen to call The Suárez, disappears. As warned, it does not return a second later. He waits five minutes to make sure they’re not just a little late, then teleports to a corridor near the mess hall to make up the time he would have spent walking there. He made a point of making himself out to be the kind of person who prefers to use his legs, even though he has full teleportation privileges. He uses this fib to delay making his way to the next crisis, but only when it’s taking him away from the current crisis. He likes to keep people’s expectations low, so he doesn’t set the precedent that he’s a wizard who can make any problem go away with the snap of his fingers.

He walks into the mess hall to find security flanking a passenger, whose hands have been bound behind his back. Others still have food before them, but aren’t eating. “Report.”

Mercer steps forward. “Sir, he won’t leave. He’s been...uncooperative.”

“I have a right to be here!” Yavo Gusorisi is an unremarkable shoemaker who Halan put on a list of staunch supporters of Ovan Teleres for Passenger Chair. While Ovan did win the election, most of his voters are not quite this radical. Yavo is loud and angry, for pretty much no reason at all, and has not been able to make his presence known to the rest of the ship. He’s not as famous as he wishes to be. Halan only knows this much about him because of the list, but had Ovan never existed, Yavo’s passenger file would have made for a quick and uninteresting read. “Segregation is a sin!”

That word. Halan knows what this is. The first of the blind loyalists have started to clang the pots of pans of their unwarranted feelings of disenfranchisement. The Chair has emboldened them to finally take noticeable action against the Teleres administration’s perceived enemies. Once all the crazy ones have shown themselves, Ovan will treat them as misunderstood, and not as radical as the cucks and snowflakes make them out to be. Still, people will remember that they are indeed radicals, and won’t want to become like them. Soon after that, some of these moderates, who believe themselves to be more rational, and immune to radicalization, will begin to institute small protests of their own. They won’t feel as inhibited about it as they were before, because they can see that they’re not as bad as people like Yavo. This is all part of the plan. Ovan’s plan.

The man is an evil genius, and Halan isn’t sure he’ll be able to beat him. How he handles this situation will determine the nature of all political battles in the foreseeable future. As long as Halan is captain, Ovan will be able to paint the crew as the enemy. More than three centuries ago, a country on Earth known as the United States of America was divided. Some people wanted equality, and some didn’t, and during the 1950s, the second side was the clear dominant force. A young woman by the name of Claudette Colvin refused to leave her seat on a public transportation vehicle because of her skin color. Her act of defiance against the establishment was one of many precipitated by those who believed in freedom and justice. They had a right to fight for their rights. Their rights were being violated. They called it segregation, and it was created in order to continue too oppress an entire peoples after centuries of abduction, slavery, abuse, rape, murder, and other forms of much more obvious mistreatment.

Though Halan has been focusing primarily on the True Extremist movement, he has not let the Ovan problem go without maintaining a line of intelligence on the matter. Though not, strictly speaking, legal, Halan managed to get his hands on the manifesto that Ovan has been writing. He cites Claudette Colvin, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, and many others, essentially claiming that he is presently in the middle of the same war against tyranny. While the situation could not be more different, this was obviously designed to be Yavo’s Claudette Colvin moment. This is meant to illustrate just how unfair and elitist the crew is, and why the civil administration should be making all decisions on The Extremus. This is the mess hall, rather than one of several passenger-run restaurants in the passenger section. It’s meant for the crew to separate themselves from their responsibilities, and relax. No passenger is meant to be here. More is at stake than that, however. There are other places that the crew can go to blow off steam, and complain about their clients. The only way to win the war is to concede this battle before it begins. The separation of passenger and crew sections is not the same thing as segregation, but if that’s the game Ovan wants to play, then he’s going to play it by Halan’s rules.

The Captain looks over at security. He lifts his hand, and cuts the air with his index and middle fingers. A security guard takes out her knife, and snips off Yavo’s zip cuffs. Yavo rubs his wrists as if he had just been detained for the last twenty years. Halan places a hand on the curve that connects Yavo’s shoulder with his neck. He sports his most genuine-looking fake smile. “Come. Let’s get you something to eat. How do you feel about paninis?”

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Microstory 1728: Jim Crow

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Your Honor, my name is Jim Crow. My first name is not James or Jacob, or anything like that. It’s actually Jim. My parents were named Beckett Crowley, and Geraldine Devlin. When they got married, instead of my mother taking my father’s last name, they decided to shorten it to Crow. When they had me in 1984, they named me Jim. Believe me when I tell you that this was no accident, nor coincidence. My parents are two of the most racist people I know, and they knew exactly what they were doing. They believe in white supremacy, and they believe in segregation. They may even believe that all black people should be exterminated. They’ve hinted at such evil thoughts on more than one occasion. I literally witnessed them spitting on a young black girl just because her family wasn’t around, and no one could stop them. When I was a child, my mother told me a story she made up, about how the people of Africa so displeased the Lord that he glued dirt to their skin, and forced them to live in filth from then on. Their skin isn’t black, it’s that there is actual grime all over their bodies. I never bought into it, obviously. Had I grown up during the actual time of segregation, I might have seen no other choice, but I developed my sense of right and wrong during the 1980s. My relatively small city in Maryland was not at all without its racism, but I had something that some people in the past did not. I had Star Trek. I remember seeing Whoopi Goldberg on The Next Generation. Here was this black woman who had standing on the ship...who people trusted, listened to, and cared about. That very night, as young as I was, I thought long and hard about who my parents are, and what they were trying to teach me. I made a conscious decision to reject their hatred, and come to my own conclusions. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of informing my parents of my intentions.

They started to punish me. They withheld dessert, and when that didn’t work, they took away my dinner, and when that wasn’t enough, they stopped letting me have water. They eventually realized I was going to die if they didn’t do something, so they changed tactics. They developed their own Jim Crow laws. I was allowed to eat, but I had to make it myself, and I had to find somewhere else to do it. An old lady lived next door, so she let me use her kitchen. I did try to explain to her what was happening, but she was senile, so she barely understood, and never remembered. She introduced herself to me every day. She wasn’t abusive, but about as racist as my parents, so I didn’t want to spend much time over there. Still, she had a bathroom I could use too, which was nice, because I wasn’t allowed to use mine anymore. Basically what my parents did was show me what it was like to experience segregation. I can imagine the non-racist parents of a racist child doing the same thing to teach them a lesson, but my parents didn’t see it that way. They figured I would grow tired of the restrictions, and finally admit that it was both easier, and better, to be white. Of course, their methods only enforced my conviction that they were completely wrong about everything. When I was seventeen, they started to see that they were losing me, so they maneuvered the legal system, and had me declared unfit for independence. I was a ward of the state for the last twenty years under false pretenses, and it has taken me this long to get out. That, Your Honor, is why I’m only now getting around—as you put it—to changing my name. I haven’t been allowed to until now. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for you to grant me this.