Microstory 2458: Diamond Dome

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Would you believe it, centuries ago, diamonds were considered a precious commodity? They’re still precious, but they’re not nearly as rare and luxurious as they once were. Our ancestors would cut them up into pretty shapes, and fashion them into pretty jewelry. We don’t care about that. We care about function over form. Carbon is one of the most versatile elements in the universe, and as it turns out, its diamond form is actually extremely commonplace. It was hard to find on Earth when people were digging it out of the ground with shovels and pickaxes, but when you have the automation and power to manipulate entire planets, you start to see how abundant things are. We use diamonds because the stuff is durable and reliable. It’s also clear, making it a perfect, semi-natural alternative to glass. There are lab-grown polycarbonates out there that we can use instead, and to be sure, those are here on Castlebourne too, but nothing beats the OG super-material. We could also grow diamonds in a lab, but there’s plenty of it in this world, so why not take what the Lord giveth. Now, what exactly is it used for? Well, it’s the primary material for the domes. Most of the domes here aren’t perfectly smooth. They’re geodesic, which means they’re made up of a skeleton called a space frame. Traditionally, these were metallic, but these days, we use metamaterials; particularly graphene. Between the struts for the space frame, they affix transparent triangular panels, which allow you to see the other side. Why do they do this? Most of the domes use holographic skies anyway, so you’re seeing whatever the image is programmed to be. Well, I don’t really know. The tour didn’t explain that. It wouldn’t really be better if the entire dome were opaque with no hope of seeing the outside for real. Using a framework with clear panels is the most common way to design these things, and I just think they look nicer. You can turn the hologram off, and see the true Castlebournian sky, but if they weren’t made this way, that would not be possible. I guess it just gives us more options. A lot of people are afraid, believing that clear equals unsafe, but obviously that’s ridiculous. They think some meteorite could crash through, and suck out all the air, but that’s not really possible. Like I said, it’s made of diamonds, and even if it weren’t, your concern is unwarranted. Even if one panel does falter, these things are so gigantic that it would take days for all the air to escape, at worst. If it’s only one panel, it would take years. At any rate, there would be plenty of time for a drone team to fly up there and replace the panel, or panels. If there is so much damage that the dome rapidly becomes unbreathable, well, whatever caused that damage probably killed everyone on the surface anyway, so the air would be the least of their worries. Okay, I’ll end this on that happy note. Safe travels!

Microstory 2440: Heavendome

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No one knows what real heaven is like, or even if it exists. Come to this place recognizing that this is but one specific interpretation. I see these other reviews criticizing it for its Christian-centric roots as if the creators had any obligation to be secular and all-inclusive. If you want to find your own personal idea of heaven, then either build it yourself with your own two hands, or do the same in a virtual environment. I mean, what did you expect, that this would be all for you, or that your concept is the best one, and we should be following that one instead? The point of this dome is to simulate to the best of science’s ability to simulate conditions of a heaven that was purported to be in the clouds. That’s not real, folks. You can’t walk on clouds. I don’t know if real Christians of the past were just dumb enough to not know that clouds aren’t solid objects, or if they thought that God was magic, and he could let you do anything just ‘cause. Still, it’s a powerful image, a cloud city in the sky. How do you even do that? Well, you start with an aerogel matrix that extends the entire area of an upper level of the dome. So it’s solid, but still soft and cushiony, which you would expect a cloud to be if you could somehow walk on it. Below that is a layer of clouds. I’m not sure if they’re real water vapor clinging to the aerogel ceiling, because that would not be out of the realm of possibility. Above the aerogel surface is a dense fog that you wade through. I think that was really important, to suggest that the floor of a magical cloud isn’t just like a bunch of pillows lying next to each other. This fog is supposedly the lighter, whispier cloud “material” (suggesting again, that clouds aren’t condensed water vapor, but some sort of independent stuff that you can grab onto, like cotton). You actually kind of can grab this fog, so I think it’s made of nanites, but you won’t be able to carry it around with you. It sort of melts and drifts away? It’s a funny feeling, you should try it. They really thought it through in a fun way. And to explain, you can push this fog away from you with your hands. And you can push away the lower level of the clouds below you by punching the aerogel surface. That would seem to suggest that the lower level clouds are nanites too, not real. This whole cloud layer is around two kilometers up in the sky, which is where real clouds like this would be. Below that is land. I don’t think it’s a hologram. I think it’s really what the bottom of the dome looks like. I can’t see anyone walking around down there, but I’m wondering if they’ll let people in one day, so there can be two sections. Perhaps you combine Heavendome with two different layers, and the lower one is just regular people who live on “Earth”. Or hey, what about a third layer? The one underground could be a Christo-centric version of Hell. That would be insane. I’m not sure who would go down there, but it could be scary in a fun way, like Bloodbourne. For now, though, we only have Heaven, and that’s good enough. There are other components for ambiance, like rays of light, pearly gates, and “angels” with wings. They’re pretty stunning creatures, and often exhibit traits of a slightly more universal definition of anyone’s heaven...if you know what I mean. They don’t speak, and I don’t think they can really fly, but they really add to the ethereal vibe that they’re trying to evoke here. Overall, I give it a five out of five. It’s not really a place that you live, so you might as well take some time to check it out.

Microstory 2314: Vacuus, August 14, 2178

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Dear Condor,

I hope this letter finds you well. My name is Corinthia Sloane. No, the fact that we share a surname is not a coincidence. I spent so much time crafting this message, because I didn’t want to shock you, but there is simply no delicate way to phrase it, and no best position in the paragraph to place it, except perhaps not in the first or last sentence. The truth is that you are my long-lost twin. Our parents separated us at birth. I am not certain of precisely why they did this. Perhaps you could ask our father. Tell him hello for me, or screw you, depending on what his explanation is. From what I could gather, they did it as some kind of experiment on nature versus nurture. Again, I’m not entirely sure how they thought this would be an interesting comparison. I’m a girl, born and raised, and I was told that you were at least born a boy, so we’re obviously not identical. What exactly were they testing for, and how did they account for the inherent differences in our physiology? Did they report back to each other regularly? Sadly, I am no longer able to ask our mother further questions. She confessed to me the truth on her deathbed, and has since passed on to whatever hell is somehow worse than this place. To clarify, I live on Vacuus. If you’ve never heard of it. It’s a distant planet in the solar system, taking nearly 42,000 years to orbit the barycenter! I’ve seen photos of the sky from your world, and am so jealous. From here, the sun does not appear as a dominating disc, illuminating all the lands, but a single point of light in the distance. It’s barely distinguishable from the other stars on the firmament. The surface of this planet is uninhabitable, as you would guess. It was the last one that humanity ever discovered, and it took them a very long time to figure out how. It is a cold, heartless place, where we live in stale, recycled air. It’s a wonder that we’ve survived this long, but it could all go up in an instant with a single breach in the walls. I’m exaggerating, but it is pretty dangerous and stressful here. I don’t know what your life is like, but for now, I would count myself lucky if I were you, that you were not chosen as the astronaut baby. I hope this news does not distress you too much. I only found out about you yesterday, and reached out as soon as I was able to sneak into the server room to mine for your contact information. If you are not my twin brother, Condor, please forward this message to him, or at least reply back that I have the wrong address. If you are Condor, please return as quickly as possible as I eagerly await your response. This far out, it takes light about a week to travel back and forth.

Excited to hear from you,

Corinthia Sloane

Microstory 1937: Pinpricks of Glory

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Leonard: *whispering* Hey, I can stand guard now. Go back to sleep.

Myka: *looking at watch* I wasn’t gonna wake you up. I was just gonna stay on and watch over you two, and then rest on the way back, since I can’t drive.

Leonard: You can always count on me to sleep exactly seven hours, give or take fifteen minutes. No matter what, that’s as long as I can go without having to relieve myself.

Myka: A walking clock. Well, anyway, do that real quick, and then just go back to sleep. I’m fine. I like being awake under the stars.

Leonard: *sitting down* Yeah, they don’t have these where I’m from. [...] I don’t mean literally. I’ve just always lived in the city, where there’s so much light pollution, so I don’t usually get this great of a view. I’ve been around the world a bit, but generally just to different cities, and at any rate, I couldn’t appreciate the beauty when I was young.

Myka: Yeah, same here, though I’ve not done much traveling at all. There were plenty of places to rob right near home.

Leonard: Yeah.

Myka: You don’t take issue with my criminal past?

Leonard: A lot of P.O.s get into the business hoping to keep bad guys behind bars. They like the idea of catching their parolees red-handed, instead of waiting until someone else calls in an issue. They get a kick out of it. I always tried to listen to my people, and while I was never a jerk about it, I started to empathize with them even more. I don’t believe in evil; just unproductive or counterproductive choices. It’s not my job to catch bad guys. It’s my job to try to help them figure out a better path. Or it was, anyway. There were others like me, of course, but one thing a lot of them never understood was that the right path isn’t the same for everyone. Like you said yesterday, driving is a trigger for you. For someone else, driving could be the only thing keeping them out. I liked to look for those positive outlets. It was my favorite part.

Myka: So you really got to know them. Tell me about your favorite parolee.

Leonard: It was the guy who told me about all this alien and parallel universe stuff. He felt like an alien himself, and didn’t think there was anything he could do to contribute to society. So I had him work with me. We went on a lot of missions together that weren’t exactly legal, but they were positive, and I think that helped. We were pretty good friends...too good, probably. I never told my bosses or co-workers.

Myka: Was he...more than a friend, then?

Leonard: No, nothing like that. I was married until recently. In fact, I had just signed the divorce papers when I was whisked away to your world. Hmm...I wonder if that had anything to do with it. Whatever, I dunno, tell me about yourself.

Myka: You can probably guess a lot about me. I’m not remarkable. I grew up in an average household with insufferable parents who drove me to a life of crime just so that I could exert some control over my own life, and learn to take care of myself without having to answer to anyone, or worry about other people’s needs.

Leonard: Wow, that’s quite insightful of you.

Myka: *smiling* I’ve had a lot of counseling since I got clean.

Leonard: Tell me more. Who was the first person to try to really help you?

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 11, 2402

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With Danica gone, the only logical place to seek help from someone in the time traveler underground was at the Salmon Civic Center in Kansas City. The place was deserted when they teleported there yesterday. It didn’t look like anything had gone wrong, more like everyone who worked there just happened to call out sick on the same day. They tried to go to the Great Pyramid of Giza too, but there was no one there either, though that wasn’t surprising, because as important as it was, it wasn’t known for its hubbub. No one could think of any other options for a while until Marie remembered something. “Let’s just reach out to the Delegator.”

“Ah, that guy’s never helpful,” Mateo whined.

“We have to connect to somebody,” Angela contended. “He may not be able to help, but he may know where everyone else is. This is just meant to be a start.”

Mateo sighed as he was stepping over to the industrial synthesizer, which they requested in their unit. “Hey Thistle, build me two sets of Jenga playing blocks please.”

Once the machine was done, they arranged the blocks in the formation of Stonehenge, then Mateo laid the final stone, and uttered the magic words. Nothing happened. Well, not nothing, exactly. They could feel a tug on their skin. The Stonehenge dimension was trying to reach them, but was unable to, for some reason.

“Ugh, I guess we’ll just play a game,” Marie suggested, shaking her head.

“No, there’s one other option at least,” Mateo said. “I didn’t offer it before, not because it would be a worse option, but because it may take some time for me to remember the code. Stonehenge isn’t the easiest thing to build a replica of, but there are tons of photos for reference. This one can only come from memory.”

It took so long for Mateo to remember the special knock that it was early morning the next year. Baudin Murdoch opened the door. “Mister Matic. How long has it been?”

“Hard to tell. Are you the only one left?” Mateo asked.

“Yeah, everyone else is at the meeting.”

“The Edge meeting?” Angela questioned. “I thought that was just for The Shortlist.”

Baudin shook his head. “No, it’s for anyone who didn’t want to end up with a duplicate in another universe.”

“That doesn’t describe you?” Marie asked.

Baudin shrugged. “Not many can do what I do. The way I see it, this new universe is better off with access to my power without the OG salmonverse being S-O-L at the same time. Anyway, come on in, come on in. Let’s have a seat in the lobby.”

They stepped into his office building. The girls had never been here before, so they looked around. “Do we have duplicates?”

Baudin shrugged again. “I don’t know. I suppose so, though.”

“We were led to believe that we were not allowed to attend the meeting.”

“Maybe that’s really where they all are,” Baudin began. “The way I understand it, the entire planet they’re on was protected from that whole thing. I didn’t read the fine print, because I made my decision quite quick.”

Mateo nodded, but needed to readjust the topic of conversation “We need help. Our friend is missing. She’s somewhere in the Sixth Key, but we don’t know where to start, and we don’t have a ship, or know anyone who might be able to get us one. We don’t know where all the other Earths are either, in relation to this one.”

“Did you speak with Stargazer?” Baudin asked.

“We went to the Pyramid, but he wasn’t there. And I only know that because no one was there. We’ve never actually met. Paige told me about him.”

“He’s mapping the new universe,” Baudin said. “I figured he’d stay there, but maybe he needed access to other telescopes, which are all basically doing the same thing. With all the time travelers gone, there’s no one left to help them understand what’s happening. Perhaps that’s why you weren’t invited to the meeting; so that you can do that.” He studied their faces, which were making it clear that they were uninterested in the responsibility. “All right. In that case, I’ll reach out to him for you.” He went behind the reception desk, and started digging through the cabinets and drawers. Finally, he found the remote control, which he used to bring down a screen behind them. They moved so they could get a better look while Baudin turned the projector on too. Using a tablet, he searched for what he was looking for, and then he picked up a microphone.

“Are you going to sing?”

“I’m going to sing,” Baudin answered. “No judgments please. I don’t have to sing well. I just have to sing passionately.” He prepared himself mentally for a moment, and then he switched on the music. “There once was a season of infinite light // When the distance from heaven was not far behind // I was close to You // I was close to You!” He continued the karaoke song, which was evidently called Constellations by Ellie Holcomb. He sang the whole thing, and he did so with the passion he promised, and he actually had a pretty nice voice. “Never alone // Never alone!” When he sang the final line, “out here in the dark” a real darkness consumed them all.

Seconds letter, pinpricks of glory began to appear above them. They formed the shape of a human heart, and once this shape was complete, they fell together from the ceiling, into a three dimensional human silhouette. From this, a man appeared. It must have been Stargazer. “I miss that feeling,” he said as the last of the light dripped from his skin, and faded on the floor like liquid sparks. It seemed to be a pleasant experience. “No one ever calls me anymore. Thank you for the opportunity.”

“Hello, Stargazer. My name is—”

“Mateo Matic. I’ve met a version of you.”

“I see. We were hoping that you could help us. It would seem that the main sequence planets do not possess many time travelers, but if you’re one of them, perhaps you can find a friend of ours? Her name is Olimpia Sangster.”

Stargazer nodded slowly. “Is she a friend?”

“Of course,” Mateo insisted.

Stargazer looked over at Baudin, who nodded. “If he says so, it is so.”

“I have heard the echoes,” Stargazer said as he was staring up at the ceiling. He waved his arm above his face, and transformed it back to the night sky, but this time with more than just the one constellation. “My name is Olimpia Sangster, and I have a normal voice,” he recited. “A fool who refuses to follow their superior only proves why they are the fool, and why their superior is the leader,” he added. “Olimpia Sangster, circa 2371.”

“Those are quotes from her. Where did you hear those?” Angela was nervous.

“She says other things,” Stargazer replied cryptically, “but those are the only times she mentions herself by name.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, she does say O-L-I at one point. I assume she was having to spell it for someone. I don’t know why she stopped in the middle.”

“Explain. Where are you hearing these lines?”

Stargazer looked up with his eyes, and pointed with his whole hand. “The stars. The stars are echoing her words. You can’t hear them?”

“No. We can’t...hear stars. Why are they talking about her?”

Stargazer was confused. “Because she made them. She made half the universe. Someone else made the other half.”

“What the hell do you mean, she made the universe?”

“Just what it literally sounds like.”

“Have you...seen her?” Marie asked him.

Stargazer shook his head. “She only speaks. She speaks from everywhere.”

Ramses suddenly appeared out of nowhere, holding Mateo’s once-rosary again. “Oh, hey. You’re here too? I just left you at your apartment, like, a second ago.”

“That was yesterday,” Mateo told him. “What are you doing? Where is Olimpia?”

“I need him.” Ramses gestured towards Baudin. “It starts and ends with the Superscraper.”

“Hm.” Bauden had never heard the term, but he was intrigued. “Tell me more.” He reached out to Ramses.

“Wait. Where. Is. Olimpia?” Mateo repeated urgently.

“Go to Violkomin.”

“What? Tell us what that is!” Angela pleaded, but it was too late. They were both gone. “Have you heard of this Volkomen place?” she asked Stargazer, mostly because he was the only one left with any answers.

“It’s the edge of the barrier between the two halves of the universe. The stars speak of it as well, but I can’t find it. I will one day”

“Grrr,” Mateo growls. “Then we need to go to the Superscraper. Hopefully we can catch Ramses a third time. Would you be able to take us to the Third Rail Earth?”

“That I can do.” Stargazer raised his arms, bathing them in light. When it receded, they were in the lobby of Leona’s Superscraper in the Nation of Arvazna.

A woman stepped out from behind the reception desk, which Mateo now realized looked a lot like the one in Baudin’s office. This whole building screamed Murdoch architecture, now that he thought about it. Baudin did build it. That made perfect sense. “Hello,” she said politely. “Welcome to Arvazna. Do you need to go through intake?”

“We’re pros,” Mateo replied. “We were looking for our friend, Olimpia. Or Ramses. Have you heard of them?”

“I’m sorry, I’ve not. Are they two of the New Arvaznians?”

“No, I...Alyssa!” Mateo could see her across the way. “Alyssa, there you are!”

“Mateo, you’re back!” She teleported the twenty-five meters to them. “Sorry I had to cut out a couple years ago. As you can see, I had a lot of other work to attend to.”

“You run this place?” Angela asked.

“Mhmm, I do. Someone’s got to help these people with their new powers, patterns, and afflictions.”

“Have you seen Ramses around here?” Marie asked, not caring about that.

“No. Why would he be here? He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“No.”

“Well, sorry.”

“Well, he built this building. I mean, he commissioned the man who built it, Baudin Murdoch.”

“Oh. Well that explains why the auditorium is called Murdoch Hall. I assume he went back in time to do it in secret?”

“Yes.”

“You work here? This place is yours?” Angela asked again, just in a slightly, but not any more helpful, way.

“Yes, I told you that, Ange. Are you okay?”

“You were supposed to be one of us. They know you from the past...the future...whatever. You can’t work here.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Angela. I can’t. This is my responsibility. Even if you stayed to help, I wouldn’t leave. These people need me. The normies are coming after us. We have to protect ourselves.”

“But...fate,” Angela pressed.

“It’s okay,” Mateo assured her. “It’s not meant to be.”

“No, she’s part of the team,” Angela argued. “We need her. We need all the power we can get. We need to find Olimpia, and no one else is left. They all abandoned the main sequence for the other main sequence.”

“I guess we changed things,” Mateo said sadly. “For Alyssa. For all of us.” Everything they knew about the timeline was up in the air. Maybe she was meant to join them on their future adventures, and maybe things will worsen because she chose another path, but they were not in the business of coercion, or even guilt-tripping. “It happens. Marie was never meant to exist, but she does, and I wouldn’t go back to put a stop to it. We’ll just have to find her another way.”

Angela scowled, and crossed her arms.

“Have you heard of...what was that again?” Marie asked Stargazer.

“Violkomin,” he helped.

“Yes, that. Have you heard of that world?” Marie went on.

“Yeah,” Alyssa replied. “The Global Council is sending one of Aldona’s diplomatic ships to meet with them.”

“We need to get on that ship,” Mateo decided.

“I can show you where it will be launching from next year,” Alyssa said, “but I can’t get you a seat. I’m sure they’re all full-up. This is a big deal. They’re trying to stop the Reality Wars. Of course, they don’t know specifically about them, but in these couple of years, there has already been a lot of tension. Everyone’s worried, and they’re hoping that the other half of the universe will help.”

“That’s okay,” Mateo said. “We’ll just teleport into a broom closet, or something.”

“Sounds cramped. Allow me to help you make it bigger. Take Moray with you.”

“Your brother? Does he have a power too?”

“Yes, as does Carlin, but it’s Moray you’ll need. Come on out,” she insisted to the aether. “Come out!” She rolled her eyes, and reached behind an invisible wall right next to her. She pulled Moray into view. At least it looked like him. He also looked about twice the age he did when they last saw him.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 10, 2401

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A part of Mateo expected the sight to be more spectacular; that they would see countless worlds suddenly appear in the sky, but obviously it wouldn’t look like that. Even he knew that all those planets would all be ripped apart if they suddenly came close enough to each other to be seen by each other. There was nowhere you could be where you could witness more than one planet appear out of nowhere. Even if you could, Mateo wouldn’t be in such a place. The whole point was that the main sequence would be spared the Reconvergence. Nothing should change here.

“That’s not entirely true.” Mateo, Angela, and Marie spent the night in the nearest arcology to Stonehenge. Bhulan has just shown up.

“What do you mean?” Mateo questioned.

“You’re not in the main sequence right now. You’re in the Sixth Key.”

“So it didn’t work,” Angela assumed.

Bhulan stared at her for a weird length of time. “There are two main sequences now. The original is fine, right where it was before in Salmonverse. This one is a copy.”

“That’s not what I asked for. The Omega Gyroscope was meant to read my mind, and do what I wanted. And don’t tell me that it was an accident, like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, because I didn’t even consider this outcome. I wouldn’t have thought that would be a thing. I’m not—how you say—creative.”

Bhulan nodded, and stood up, pointing to his jacket hanging over the chair. “Were you wearing this when it happened?”

“Yeah,” Mateo answered. “Let me guess, I’ve been unknowingly wearing the Jacket of Duplication this whole time, or some bullshit like that.”

“It’s not the jacket,” she said with a shake of her head. She reached into one of the pockets, and then another, where she found the knife that Mateo used to replicate parts for the Olimpia, and also fail at fixing Heath when he was on the brink of death. He kind of forgot that it was in there. “Oh, crap. Are you serious? I forgot about that.. Like I said, I wasn’t thinking about making a copy of anything. I was trying to save the main sequence the headache of the Reconvergence stuff.”

“This is a temporal object,” Bhulan said, shaking it demonstratively, but not angrily, “just like the Cassano Cane, and the Omega Gyroscope. Sometimes they interact with each other, whether you mean for them to, or not. Who gave this to you?”

“The natives on an island we ended up on once,” Mateo answered. “They were...mysterious, and noncommunicative.”

Bhulan nodded again. “This is the same place where Angela got her immortality waters, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Angela confirmed. “That didn’t work. Or it did? Marie is alive, but I never found Activator water, so that whole ordeal is confusing.”

“I can’t explain how Marie survived what happened to her,” Bhulan began, “but you becoming immortal would not have done it. Yes, she’s an alternate of you, but you had become two independent beings. There was no reason why she would not have been able to die. The only thing that Time and Existence waters do is prevent someone from preventing you from existing and becoming immortal, and Marie has nothing to do with that anymore. I don’t know who told you it would—”

“We were just...desperate,” Angela explained. “And it seemed to work, so we figured that it was inevitable.”

“Bottom line,” Marie jumped in, “what does this mean? What can we do, what should we do? Why are you here?”

“I’m not here to talk about the main sequence, or the new main sequence,” Bhulan said. “That’s just something I noticed you were confused about. I’m here for that.” She pointed to the corner where Mateo had leaned the Cassano Cane and Omega Gyroscope against the walls. The latter was still hovering over the former. “They need to be destroyed, and I finally figured out how. The Reconvergence has not technically happened yet. The Keys were turned ahead of time, in case there was a delay or complication, but all the other parallel realities will collapse, and everything in them will be destroyed. This whole thing with the Third Rail started because I was there too early. I showed up at the beginning, but I should have appeared at the end. This is my chance.”

“Any objections?” Mateo asked the girls. “Go ahead,” he told Bhulan when they shook their heads. “It’s only here because Alyssa disappeared on us when I used it...incorrectly, and don’t know who’s supposed to have it.”

“I appreciate you not pushing back.” She walked over and reached for the cane, and as soon as her fingers wrapped around it, Ramses Abdulrashid appeared out of nowhere, and wrapped his own fingers around it. “Um...excuse me.”

“I need this,” Ramses said.

“Report,” Mateo asked.

Ram looked at him, but did not let go of the cane. “I don’t have long here, so I’ll just give you the highlights. I survived Phoenix Station. I found Olimpia stuck in the Sixth Key before its big bang. I was forced to join the Shortlist’s meeting for The Edge. I escaped, and now I have a new mission...which requires my use of the Cassano Cane.”

“Nuh-uh-uh, buddy,” Bhulan argued. “I have to destroy these things.”

Ramses pursed his lips, and then let a puff of air escape to make a popping sound. At the same time, he flicked the Omega Gyroscope off of the cane, letting it fall to the floor, and begin to roll away. The glow emanating from it shut off while it was doing this, so it didn’t get far before becoming entangled in the hundemarke chain that had been hidden inside while it was active. “You can destroy anything you want, but you can’t destroy this cane.”

“This is my only shot. Once I do this, I’ll be dead, and I won’t be able to take anything else with me.”

“Then I guess you won’t be the one to destroy it, if anyone even is ever. Let. Go.”

Ramses was not letting up, and neither was Bhulan. They did not want to cause physical harm to each other, though; that much was clear. Mateo cleared his throat. “Bhu. It was your mission to destroy the hundemarke, correct? Then someone gave you the Insulator of Life, and someone else gave you the Omega Gyroscope, right? You have the hundemarke. No one here wants to see that used again, and we don’t really care about the gyroscope. So just go with what you have. Rambo obviously needs that for something that none of us understand.”

Bhulan frowned and considered her options. In the end, she chose the path of least resistance when she let go. “Fine.”

“Will we ever see you again?” Marie asked Ramses.

“I don’t know, but I was there. In the Third Rail, when you didn’t know I was. I was watching over you, and now I just have one thing left to do. When I come back, I’ll give you this.” He opened his other hand to show them an antique rosary. It was once Mateo’s, before he was ripped out of the timestream during Arcadia’s expiations. When the Superintendent returned him decades later, he made him an atheist instead of Catholic, and they never saw the rosary again. He only would have cared about it because it was his once-mother’s centuries prior.

“I don’t need that,” Mateo told Ramses. “It’s not mine anymore.”

Ramses smiled. “Trust me, you’re gonna want it, if only to keep it out of the hands of someone who would abuse its power.” He tucked the cane under his arm to free that hand so he could hang the metallic beads from it. “They call it the Mateo Rosary. He closed his fist over the cross, and disappeared, making it seem as though it was the rosary what done it.

“I’m not familiar,” Marie noted.

“I’ve never heard of it either,” Bhulan said, “but I don’t think it was just a teleporter. It probably also belongs on the list of objects that I would want to destroy.”

“You’ll have to settle for what you have,” Mateo told her. “I promise, I’ll do everything I can to make sure the cane, the rosary, and anything else like them, don’t fall into the wrong hands.”

Bhulan picked up the two objects, and disentangled the hundemarke, placing it around her neck. “I don’t doubt it.” She focused on the gyroscope, presumably trying to reactivate it. “I think Ramses did something to this. It’s...dead.” She looked pleased.

“That’s good, right?” Angela guessed.

“Yeah, that means it won’t be able to stop me from doing what I have to do.” Bhulan breathed a sigh of relief. “I die to save quintillions.” She disappeared as well.

“Whoa, does anybody else feel a little tired all of the sudden?” Marie posed.

The room around them changed. The furniture was moved around enough to cause the three of them to fall to the floor, and they were no longer alone. A couple was sitting on the couch with their young child.

“Sorry to disturb you,” Mateo said, standing up, massaging his coccyx.

“I recognize you,” the man said. “Why do I recognize you?”

“I recognize him too,” the woman corroborated.

“I just have one of those faces,” Mateo answered, not knowing the truth himself.

“We’ll leave you be,” Marie told them. “Apologies for the intrusion.” They left the unit, and stepped over to the nearest convenience terminal against the wall next to the elevator. “April 10, 2401. We jumped in time, just like we used to.”

“It wasn’t just like it,” Angela pointed out. “It wasn’t midnight central.”

“Yeah, it was,” Marie contended. “Well, it’s about fifteen ‘til one in Kansas, but close enough. It obviously happened because the Omega Gyroscope is finally gone.”

“What do we do now?” Angela questioned. “Where do we go?

“We have to find a way back to the real main sequence. That is where my wife is.”

“Are we sure about that?” Marie asked.

“No, you’re right, we’re not. In fact, there could be two of them now. Damn, I wish Ramses had stayed long enough to give us some details about that damn meeting.”

“If this is the Sixth Key,” Marie began, “then you know what we have to do, and it’s not looking for Leona.”

Mateo sighed, and nodded. “We have to assume she’s safe, but Olimpia may not be. I don’t know where to start with that trail either, though. Any ideas?”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 17, 2398

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Marie has gotten a lot of steps today, already more than she had yesterday, and it’s not even evening yet. With every orbital pass, the map of the brain scanner errors updates, providing them with a new location of their current target in Paris, France. Whoever it is has been moving around a lot, and they cannot catch up to them. There is no pattern to their movements. Some of the places are good tourist traps, but others are just a random alley, and people’s homes. They appear to be on the move with great purpose. The distance from one location to the next is always short enough to reach within the timeframe, but in some cases, only if they’re being evasive. They never spend too much time in one place, suggesting that they know someone is on their trail, and they’re trying to stay one step ahead. The team is exhausted, and everyone agrees that they need a new tactic. Marie has come up with a plan, but it’s best done after nightfall, so they ignore the next two pings, and wait it out in their small Parisian safehouse.

Three hours later, Marie takes the auto-injector out of her pack. Ramses was embarrassed that they were still using regular syringes up until this point for emergency jolts of temporal energy, but it’s fine. She has it now, and it’s time to use it, even though it’s not technically an emergency. For some reason, she feels like this is going to be a bigger deal than the other times she’s used the stuff. It’s not. She jams it into her leg, presses the button, and feels the usually temperate surge of electricity all over her body.

“Tell me again why you can’t just give us one of those too?” Esmé asks. She just won’t let it go. She’s not a very good diplomat, which is annoying, but Marie isn’t in charge of choosing her own team. Perhaps if she had stayed with the organization fulltime, she might have more pull.

“This doesn’t give me the ability to teleport,” Marie explains once more. “My body was designed with the power. This injector reactivates what’s already there. If I gave you one, it would do nothing. At best, it would add a whopping one hour to your lifespan.”

“I’ll...take it,” Esmé declares. She pretends to not notice Marie rolling her eyes.

“It’s almost time.” Agent Filipowski holds the tablet in front of Marie’s face.

Specialist Cleary and Officer Sharrow take their positions on either side of Marie. “Keep an eye on our realtime pins,” she instructs Doric. She can only carry two other people with her. “I may have to transport our target to a third location.”

“Understood.”

The tablet beeps. “Shit.” They’re at the Eiffel tower. Ramses’ scanner can’t accurately distinguish elevation. They could be on the ground, at the top, or anywhere in between. Plus, even this late, there are going to be tons of people there. They can’t just jump around a few times to look for them. Marie has to make a split second decision, and the rest of her team isn’t going to like it. “I’ll stay in contact, I promise.”

“What are you going to do?” Esmé questions.

“It’s too risky to move in a group.” Marie pulls herself away from the other two, and makes the jump. She’s on the ground underneath the tower. It’s one of the many unusual things about this reality, which is strikingly similar to the main sequence, even with a profoundly altered historical timeline. The primary difference here is that the beams are made of steel, rather than iron. She calls Ramses. “Hey, are ya busy?”

“No, what’s up?” Ramses replies.

“Can you see where I am?”

“Gotcha right here.” The scanner has always picked up on the rest of the time travelers in the group, as they qualify as temporal errors. They have always filtered out and ignored each other, but it’s useful now. “Who’s that with you, Leona? We can’t get a hold of her.”

“No one is with me. The second dot is our target. I lost access to the map. How far away are they?”

“About twenty meters southwest. You better hurry. They’ll go out of range again within ten minutes at the most.”

Marie starts to run. There’s a larger group of people over there, so she could really do with an investigator, but she’s alone, and that was her choice.

“Stop!” Ramses warns. “Two hundred meters directly south of you.”

“They’re a teleporter.”

“Yes.”

“Just like me.” Marie focuses on visualizing the distance, then covers it with another jump. There are fewer people around here, but she still has no idea who she’s looking for. She starts to scan them, hoping to see someone suspicious. She does in a man who’s staring right back at here. Now she has a face. If she doesn’t get him today, she will later. He can’t hide forever.

He teleports away again.

“Jump to the ship,” Ramses tells her.

Marie looks up to the sky, and jumps to the main level of the AOC.

Ramses is waiting for her. He tosses her a handheld device. “He jumped another five hundred meters. Go get him.”

Five hundred meters. That’s an increase, but still not very far as teleporters go. He clearly realizes that he’s being tracked, and he doesn’t want to be caught. That’s fair, he doesn’t know that she could be a friendly. She doesn’t know that either, but she hopes she is. If he’s so worried, though, there must be a reason he’s not bailing to Madagascar or Argentina, or something. Either something is keeping him in the city, or his power has limited range. Regardless, they have to find him. If Ramses can learn why this reality isn’t suppressing his abilities, it will take them one step closer to solving the problem for everyone. She looks at the map, and focuses on the dot. She jumps down to him, and without giving him any chance to react, wraps her arms around him. She then makes one final jump, back to the AOC.

“Curtis Duvall.” Arcadia smiles at him.

“Oh, Leona.” The man goes over and gives her a big hug. “If I had known that you were involved, I never would have kept running.”

“Yes, Leona is involved,” Arcadia confirms, “but I’m not her. I was accidentally placed in this body. I’m Arcadia Preston.”

He nods like that makes total sense. “I don’t know who that is.”

Arcadia narrows her eyes at him. “Which timeline are you from?”

“I don’t know,” Curtis argues. “Why would I know that? What do you want me to do, give it a random designation, like Six-One-Six or Earth-X? I’m from the timeline where I’m from!” That’s a fair point.

“I don’t care about that,” Ramses says dismissively. “I wanna know how you can teleport when no one else in the world still has their time powers.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 16, 2398

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Leona wasn’t calling Marie and Kivi because she wanted them to try to find her husband in the Mariana Trench. She just wanted to record a census of all the versions of Mateo that they’re currently aware of. The one down there appears to be the only one at the moment, which makes things simpler. The two SD6 teams are free to go off and do their own thing. She’s going to handle this herself, but she needs more data. The global brain scanner that found him operates on two axes. They can get some idea of elevation by measuring the strength of the signal, but it’s impossible to pinpoint a precise location. If she’s going to teleport down to him, she needs to know precisely how deep to go, and where to land, or she’ll end up drowning in the ocean while being crushed by its unyielding thousand atmospheres of pressure.

Ramses has been working on a temporal energy detector capable of surviving the stress of reentry into Earth’s top atmospheric layers, and he’s finally finished. They have decided that this is a perfect opportunity to feed two birds with one worm. The detector will fall to the surface of Earth, measuring the temporal energy fields along the way, as well as hopefully whatever is suppressing that field. It should land in the ocean over the trench, then detach itself from the parachutes, and sink down to look for Mateo.

“About how long will all that take?” Cheyenne asks.

Ramses is monitoring the exterior maintenance robot—or EMR—that’s readying the probe for launch. The ship wasn’t designed for this, so he’s had to improvise a lot of the process. If they’re in a time crunch, that’s all the more reason they can’t rush. “Forty-two minutes and eleven seconds.”

“Oh, so you know exactly how long?”

“Well, I couldn’t tell you how quickly the probe will find Mateo, because the whole point is we don’t know where he is, but if it has to sink all the way to the bottom, it will take forty-two minutes and eleven seconds from launch.”

“If your bot ever finishes building the launch brackets,” Leona says impatiently.

Ramses peels himself from the central hologram to look at her. “I hope you know that there is no guarantee—”

“I know,” she interrupts, frustrated.

“Sorry, what were you gonna say?” Vearden asks.

“He was going to remind me that we can’t be sure Mateo is the one down there,” Leona answers instead. “It’s true, were I you is not, like, this secret phrase that no one else would know. I just don’t think anyone else would think to use it in this situation.”

“Okay,” Ramses says passive-aggressively. “We’ll find out in about forty-two minutes.” He starts heading back down to engineering. “The EMR is finished with its work just in time for our launch window. You can all watch from up here.”

A few minutes later, the probe is through the miniature airlock that Ramses built in engineering, sacrificing what was once used as storage space. It’s now a little bit more difficult to walk around downstairs. The probe flies away from the AOC, and heads for Earth. It screams across the sky, exciting all amateur astronomers who were not expecting such a large piece of orbital debris to decay today. The truth is that it’s not all that large, but it’s built with materials not found in the modern world, so it would be assumed to be the size of a tiny home. Let the conspiracies begin.

The probe is through the rough spots now, so the parachutes deploy to slow its descent. Ramses frowns as he’s watching the data come in. Velocity, temperature, pressure, pollution levels. It’s picking up all of these things, but the one thing it’s not sensing is temporal energy. This is incredibly odd, even for the Third Rail. After it lands on the water, he goes back up to the rest of the group.

Leona shakes her head. “You see these numbers?”

“Yes, they don’t make any sense,” Ramses notes.

“Forgive me, but...” she begins awkwardly

“I didn’t screw it up. The detector is working fine. There is something seriously wrong with this world, and it’s bigger than we ever imagined.”

“I don’t understand,” Vearden says, worried that they’re going to roll their eyes at best, or chew his head off at worst.

“If I’m reading this right—and I’m no scientist, so I might not be—but it says here that you’re not sensing any temporal energy whatsoever,” Arcadia says.

“That’s right,” Leona replies. She reaches forward to play with the interface, but stops. There’s nothing to adjust or calibrate. It’s all laid out before them. It’s all wrong.

“Didn’t we kind of expect that, though?” Vearden presses. “We already know there’s no time travel, at least not down on the planet.”

“There’s always time travel.” Arcadia starts to talk with her hands. “For most people, time moves at a one to one ratio, which means that for every second that passes, one second passes. Temporal energy isn’t this magical substance that we use to manipulate time and space. It’s simply the transfer of excited particles from one moment in time to another, as a function of entropy.”

“Huh?”

“Temporal energy is just what happens when time passes,” Arcadia clarifies. “You can’t have no energy, because that would mean you have no time. It’s either balanced or unbalanced, and as time travelers, we exploit the unbalanced levels, but you can’t just have nothing. If you have nothing, you don’t exist. This world...doesn’t exist!”

The computer beeps. Leona looks back up to the hologram. “The probe is close enough to the source of the were I you signal. I know where to go.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” Ramses offers.

“No, stay here and...deal with this.”

Leona puts on her wetsuit, which is a half-measure, since it’s not what’s going to keep her safe down there. It just seems dumb to go down in her civies. She inserts the rebreather in her mouth, nods to the group, and then teleports to the signal. She can instantly tell that she’s standing inside of the Bridgette. She hears someone shuffling behind her, so she turns around to find Alyssa in a defensive position. Alyssa doesn’t loosen up, since Leona doesn’t look like herself with the mask on. “It’s me, it’s me.”

“Oh, okay. I guess it’s 2398 again.”

“Where were you?”

“Billions of years ago.”

“Tell me everything.”

Alyssa shakes her head. “I can’t. My memories are on a detonation mechanism. As soon as we surface, they’ll disappear, and I don’t have time to relay them to you.”

“I understand,” Leona says with a nod. “Is Mateo here?”

She hesitates to answer for a beat. “No. He’s never coming back.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 31, 2398

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Leona has been working on this machine for the last fourteen hours straight. She gets bathroom breaks, and someone will bring her whatever she wants to eat from the kitchen—which doesn’t have much variety, because the more supplies come in from Mozambique, the greater the chances that someone will notice that they keep going to random region of Antarctica. It’s not really that she hasn’t been allowed to sleep, but the Coronel doesn’t seem to sleep, so she doesn’t feel she has the right to waste his time. As for the Nexus itself, it doesn’t go anywhere. She can see the so-called map of possible destinations, but there’s nothing on it. The artificial intelligence that runs the network has evidently decided that she doesn’t have the right to go anywhere. Maybe it’s because the Mozambicans are here. Maybe it’s only because one other specific person is nearby. There is no way to understand its motivations. It does not communicate with its users.

“Magnus Matic.”

Startled. “Yeah, I’m up.”

“I apologize for disturbing you,” Coronel Zacarias says. “I was just wondering if you made any progress.”

“Since you asked me ten minutes ago? No.” She’s grumpy.

“It has been an hour and a half,” he corrects. “I was tending to other matters.” He appears not to have interpreted her tone as nasty, even though it was.

Leona looks at her watch. “I’m so sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry. I sometimes forget that people need to sleep. That is why I am not in charge of duty rotations. I do not understand how it feels to work without rest. I was born with a condition that makes it impossible.”

“You were?” she asks, fascinated. “How do you function?”

“Medicine,” he answers, and it doesn’t look like he wants to elaborate.

She nods. “Well, I still can’t do anything. I mean, I can do this.” She dims and raises the lights a few times. “And this.” She presses another button, and the computer beeps.

“What does that beeping mean?”

“No idea, it just happens when I push this button.”

“It is okay. You have gone further than anyone else has. At least you have been able to tell us what it does. Perhaps one day, we shall prove ourselves worthy.”

She frowns. “This thing knows more than you may think. It doesn’t gauge how worthy you are, or your people. It measures the world. It may think you could handle the full power of the machine, but also be aware that it would lead others finding out about it. Heck, it may have nothing to do with Earth at all. If there are other inhabited planets out there, maybe they’re not ready, so there is nothing for you to do but wait.”

Zacarias nods. “Yes. God sees all.”

She sports a half-smile. She wishes that she could help these people. There’s a reason the Nexa are always placed in neutral territory. No single state is more worthy of using it than another. The fairest way to do it—short of the Inventors sending a representative to watch, and later interfere with, the natives—is to let the first group to find it make whatever decisions they will with it. She needs something from them, and she’s afraid that if she doesn’t do more for them, they won’t agree to it. The first time she encountered one of these things was on Tribulation Island, but in The Parallel, she was given the opportunity to learn more from experts who knew so much about them that they were able to manufacture their own at will. They didn’t hand her the operating manual, but they did tell her a few things, such as the fact that they’re all powered by bulk energy. That’s why they don't ever run out, or have to be refueled. It’s all around; you just have to know how to access it. There is something in the guts of the machine that lets it do that, and if she just had a little bit of whatever that is, she might be able to make gloves for her husband, so he can start using his hands again. But how to broach the subject with the Coronel?

Zacarias has moved away from the computer, and is looking at the hand dialer on the wall. “What does this thing do?”

“If you have the code for a destination, you could enter it there.”

“Instead of the computer? Why is that necessary?”

“Redundancy. There’s also a foot dialer in the machine itself, in case a traveler needs to go somewhere alone.”

“These markings? What do they mean?”

Leona wheels back a little so they’re looking at the same thing. “They’re numbers. Zero through F.”

“Base-sixteen,” Zacarias says, smiling widely.

“The civilization that created these must have used a hexadecimal system in their everyday life. That’s just a hypothesis.”

“Have you tried just pressing random numbers? How many digits does each destination require?”

“Any number of digits, and with sixteen choices, repetition allowed, that’s quintillions of permutations.”

Zacarias shrugs. “Well...have you ever tried the first one?”

“The first one, what do you mean?”

He reaches up and presses the glyph that represents zero. Then he presses the ENTER button. Suddenly, the Nexus starts to power up.

She stands up, and looks through the observation window. “Holy crap, I can’t believe that worked!”

“It did?” he asks.

“Come if you’re coming. It’s probably only delayed because it’s been dormant for so long!” Leona races out of the control room, and hops down to the main floor, ignoring both the steps, and the ramp. She jumps down into the transport cavity.

Cheyenne walks in. “Leona, we heard something. What’s going on?”

“Call our friends. We pushed zero!”

Just as Zacarias crosses the threshold, the chamber fills with technicolors, and spirits them both away.

When the light recedes, they find themselves in a gorgeous expanse. There are no walls, and there is no control room. A hand dialer is on a terminal within reach of the cavity. Under them is an endless ocean, and above is a starry sky. A rowboat approaches from the darkness. An individual ties it to a post where the door to the outside of the Nexus chamber would normally be. He or she steps onto the floating platform, and smiles at them. “Welcome to Origin. I am Intentioner Senona Riggur. Congratulations on finding this destination. My guess is that you tried the address on a lark. There are two of you, which means you get two wishes to share. What would you like?”