The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 26, 2508

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Romana was sitting on the floor, hovering over her father, when he woke up. He turned over to the side, and started to cough. The others were waking up at the same time, recovering in their own ways. Fortunately, no one was dead, not even Octavia. A robot was lifting her up, though, and carrying her away. “She’ll be all right,” Romana assured him. “There’s a medpod in that room.”

“You’ve been alone all year again?” Mateo asked her.

“I did it on purpose,” Romana explained. “Why would we waste time looking for this man one year at a time, when I could spend days and days on the search?”

“Did it work?” Mateo asked.

“It did,” she answered with a sigh. “He doesn’t wanna leave, so I’m hoping you’ll talk some sense into him. But...I don’t wanna lie to you. Something happened. I’m not especially proud of it, but even though I was pretending to be a sixteen-year-old in Underberg, I’m actually much older than that. I don’t know why Pacey aged me down, but you need to understand that I’m an adult, and I make my own choices.”

“You slept with him...” Mateo guessed. “With Buddy.”

“He’s very kind to me.”

“I bet he is.”

“That’s not fair. I just told you, I’m an adult. He didn’t trick me. Don’t take away my agency.”

“I’m not, but Romana, he’s not a good guy. Being nice to you doesn’t absolve him of his past sins.”

“And what sins are these?” Romana questioned. “How many people has he killed?”

“That’s not the point.”

How many have you killed?”

Mateo didn’t respond to this.

Romana went on, “you two don’t see eye to eye, and I know he hasn’t been particularly pleasant to be around, but if you add up all the bad things he’s done, they’re really not all that bad. In the end, you two are enemies because you don’t get along. I’m sure before you became a time traveler, you interacted with plenty of people like that, and it didn’t make you believe that they didn’t deserve love.”

“Is that true?” Mateo sat up. “Are you in love?”

“No, of course not. I’m just saying...”

“That you’re acting like a rebellious teen,” Mateo interrupted as if that was what she was gonna say. “Are you sure you’re older than sixteen?”

“You are not my father. You didn’t raise me. Silenus did.”

“That’s comforting.”

She ignored that rude comment. “You don’t get to tell me what to do with my life. You never have. I know it’s not your fault that you weren’t around, but you can’t honestly expect me to listen to everything you say as if you have some kind of control over my choices. I’m being honest with you, because I don’t want to lie to someone I respect and care about. But don’t you sit there and belittle me as if I’m nothing more than an extension of your own personality. I will take you to Boyd, but you are not to harm him. You are not even allowed to yell at him. I am insisting on that, and I will keep us on this rock forever if you defy me in this regard.”

“That’s enough!” Leona interjected. “You don’t talk to your father like that. I don’t care how old you are, or who raised you. Boyd probably has ten years on you, and that’s assuming he hasn’t used time magicks to reyoungify himself, or he could be much older.”

“You were fifteen when you met your now-husband!” Romana shouted back.

“And he didn’t have any feelings for me until much later. Don’t turn this around on us. Boyd—if that’s what we’re calling him—is not good for you, full stop. When we first encountered him, he insisted that we call him Buddha. That’s incredibly offensive, and tells you everything you need to know about him. Just because he may not be as bad as some of the other antagonists we’ve met, like Zeferino, Arcadia, or even Pacey, doesn’t mean you made the right choice.”

“You’re friends with Arcadia now. You made friends with nearly everyone you’ve gone up against. What are we even talking about here? All I’m asking is that you give him a chance to improve himself, and prove himself; not just give up on him outright. Forgiveness doesn’t have a quota!”

“All right!” Olimpia interjects this time. “Mateo, Leona, you’re not going to attack Boyd when we find him. Romana, you may be older than you look, but you have a long ways to go. This situation is incredibly weird, what with our experiences in Underberg, and other domes. We can’t trust our own memories. Some of them are entirely fake, and their associated feelings may be a little less genuine than they seem. So I think we all need to take a beat, and focus on what matters. We are not living in a soap opera. We’re dealing with real problems here, trying to escape some weird, alternate universe. We can’t do that until we get what we came here for. The interpersonal relationship drama can wait.”

Mateo, Leona, and Romana quietly conceded. Ramses, Angela, and Marie silently agreed, having successfully stayed out of the fight.

“Okay,” Olimpia continued, proud of herself, and relieved that her argument worked. “It won’t take long for Octavia to recover. In the meantime, where is Boyd? Did he get hurt in the explosion?”

“He’s fine, he wasn’t even here,” Romana answered. “He’s in the Fostean sector at this point, living on a simulated jarl world.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Mateo said.

“Single-occupancy planet,” Leona explained. “A one-percenter in that culture will have so much money that they can afford to own an entire celestial body. They will live there alone, or with their family, supported by a small army of slaves called Arkeizen. These supposed subhumans will be known as thralls so long as they are in service to the elite. It’s not a heartwarming story.”

“Why would he be there?”

“To be clear, the thralls aren’t real slaves,” Romana said. “As I said, which you obviously already know, it’s a simulation, so they’re just robots.”

“It’s still gross,” Olimpia said to her. “I gotta admit, that’s a point against him.”

Romana smirked. “Just wait until you see it, okay?”

“Fine,” Leona decided. “Let’s take a vactrain this time. I don’t want this happening again, so we’ll stay out of canon as much as possible.”

“It’s not gonna happen again,” Romana contended. “Like the flooding of Atlantis, the destruction of this planet was canonical. It happened during the Sixth Shell.”

“Either way, let’s keep it real.” Leona led the way down the corridor.

Octavia was stepping out of the medical bay. She had missed a lot, and didn’t know where they were going, but she followed them anyway.

They got on the train, and had it deliver them to Jarldome. There were 200 levels here, most of which were 200 meters high, but with the holographic skies above each one, they felt endless. Boyd was on the topmost level, with a bunch of slaves. The team expected to find him lounging on a mountain of pillows, being fawned over and doted upon by these Arkeizen. It didn’t seem to be that way. The robots made to look like a hominid cousin were milling about an impressive little town. When they walked through, the Arkeizen smiled and waved. They didn’t look oppressed or abused. They were working, however, so no valid conclusion. On the far end of the main street, they finally found Boyd. A group of people were evidently in the middle of building a house, and he was helping. He was physically helping carry a wooden beam, and set it in place.

“Oh! I didn’t see you there. How long have you been watching us?”

“We just arrived,” Romana answered him.

“Well, welcome to Citrus City!” Boyd said. “Would you like the tour?”

“We’d like to get out of here,” Mateo responded.

Boyd frowned. “There’s so much work to do.”

“None of this is real,” Ramses told him. “It’s a simulation. You know that, right?”

“Of course I am,” Boyd said dismissively. “You think it’s that easy to erase my memories?”

“Either you’re delusional,” Mateo began. Romana gave him the stink eye, so he switched tactics. “I mean, if that’s true, then were you aware of our true histories while you were living in Underberg?”

“I guess not. But I broke out of it. I’m fine. I’m happy, living here, teaching these people how to fend for themselves.”

“They’re robots,” Ramses added.

“Shh!” Boyd whispered loudly. “They don’t know that.”

Mateo sighed angrily, and looked over at his daughter. “You did this. You told him to put on this show to make it look like he was freeing a whole peoples. You think that’s gonna work? You think I’m gonna start liking him now?”

“Sir,” Boyd jumped in. “Romana came to me two weeks ago. I’ve been working on this town for months. This isn’t just for show. I know that I have made mistakes in the past, but I don’t agree with slavery. Jesus. That’s the point of this dome, you know? It’s a test; will a visitor let their thralls do what they’ve been indoctrinated to do, or make changes that go against the history of the Fostean culture from the fictional stories? That’s the question, will you play into it, or do the right thing, even when it doesn’t matter? Because like you said, they’re robots.”

Mateo crossed his arms disapprovingly, but didn’t have anything more to say.

Leona pulled the magical technicolored crystal from her bag, and presented it to Boyd. She jerked it away when he reached for it. “This will place you on our pattern. Truthfully, Pacey did not reveal whether it was permanent or not. I believe that you will have less of a chance to get into trouble if you only exist for one day out of the year, though, so I’m hoping that you take the risk. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take for us to get back to where we belong, but I don’t want you running around on your own anymore.” She glanced over at Romana. “I certainly don’t want you to be doing that with my daughter. Frolicking on the jarl worlds, freeing slaves together.” She grimaced, and looked over at the Walton twins. She wasn’t trying to say that freeing slaves was bad. “You know what I mean.” She went on, “touching this crystal will go a long way to earning our trust, but it’s not a cure-all. And either way, it has to be your choice.”

Without hesitation, Boyd took hold of the crystal. The colors swirled around inside, presumably transferring Leona’s pattern into his qualium realm. “Thank you for the opportunity. I won’t let you down.”

Suddenly, they heard a noise in the sky. A flying craft of some kind was headed right for them, so far up in the air that it couldn’t be real. The holographic image grew larger and larger though until it was as large as it would be if it were right above the invisible ceiling. Something changed as the hologram gave way to a tangible object, presumably having been dropped down through a recess. This real, physical shuttle continued to fly towards them until it landed right in the street. A bunch of humans with guns filed out of it.

The leader of the newcomers looked around at the Arkeizen. It was unclear whether he could tell that they were free, and no longer enslaved thralls. He zeroed in on Boyd. “Sir, are you okay? Our sensors picked up unauthorized entry to your planet.”

“They’re friends,” Boyd said. “We need no help here.”

The leader stepped closer so he could lower his voice. “Listen, if you need help, you don’t have to be afraid of them anymore.”

“I’m not being coerced,” Boyd tried to say. “Everything’s fine. You can go.”

The leader nodded. He walked past Boyd, and as he was adjusting his pants, got a better look at the community. He turned back around to address Boyd again. “How are your thralls doin’? You’ve been here a while. Do you need a top-up?” A top-up of slaves?

“No. My numbers are steady.”

The guy was surprised. “Not one death?”

Boyd shook his head.

“Interesting. “Very interesting. Say, you wouldn’t be...treating them like people, would you?”

“And if I were, is that against the law?”

The man shrugged. “No, of course not. They’re your thralls, you can do whatever you want to them. It’s just a little unusual. I’d hate to think that they were influencing your behavior in some way. You know, we get a bad batch sometimes. One of them is sick in the head—starts thinkin’ that he’s special, or valuable—and that can infect the whole group. And sometimes...their owner gets infected too.”

“I’ve had enough of this,” Marie said. “Suits on!”

Mateo took Octavia in a hug again, and commanded his nanites to wrap themselves around her. Angela and Marie, meanwhile, started taking out their anger for their father out on these robo-slavers. They stole their guns from them, and shot each in the head. The slavers shot back, careful not to hit Boyd, but not caring about anyone else’s life. The Arkeizen ran and hid behind various structures while Leona, Ramses, Olimpia, and Romana protected the stragglers. It was over quickly. All of the bad robots were dead and on the ground.

“What happens when we leave?” Leona asked after the dust had settled, and the suits were no longer necessary. “Is another shuttle gonna be triggered later to come down and try to put a stop to all this antislavery wokeness?”

Boyd chuckled. “This isn’t my first single-occupancy planet. They always show up as a sort of final test, to see how you’ll react. I’ve always just talked my way out of it, but I guess this works too.”

“Great,” Leona decided. “Then pack up your shit. It’s time to go.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 24, 2506

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The door was still open, but Octavia was now on the other side. She looked pretty upset and scared. “Come in! Come in!” she screamed. Mateo heard something behind him too, so he looked over his shoulder. Goddammit, another goddamn monster horde was coming after him. Was this ever going to end? Yeah, right now. He shuffled in through the door, and helped Octavia close it. They could hear the booms as the monsters pounded on it, trying to get through. “I thought they couldn’t cross the perimeter.”

“Rules have changed,” Octavia explained. “I think seeing me walk through this door last year broke something in them. Imagine waking up one day and realizing that you were in a simulation.”

“That literally happened to me, like, a few days ago.”

“Oh. So you know.”

“You’ve been here for the whole year?”

“Yeah,” she answered. They weren’t outside of the dome, per se, but now inside of an antechamber. The border wasn’t a single two dimensional wall, but a complete ring. If they were on the real Castlebourne, this plaza would be used for intake, maintenance, and other meta-purposes. “There’s plenty of food in the kitchen, and I’ve been using this time to find your friends.”

“And did you?”

“Yeah, it hasn’t been easy,” Octavia went on as she was leading him down the corridor. “Obviously, they disappeared last year when you did, so they weren’t anywhere. I couldn’t just command drones to fly around and search for them. Optical cameras aren’t actually all that common. Security and logging systems rely predominantly on other sensors. I had to sift through this past data, looking for anomalies. I believe that I’ve pinpointed them to six domes. Now that you’re all back, we can find out for sure through those few optical cameras on scouting drones. I wanna show you something else first. One of the domes is different. It flagged something that I don’t recognize, and unlike the others, this anomaly appears to have been there during the whole interim year.”

“Oh, no.” Mateo knew what this was. Still, he followed her into a room full of monitors. She pulled up the feed that she was talking about, and confirmed his suspicions. It was Boyd Maestri, a.k.a. Buddha Maestri, a.k.a. Buddy. “Yeah, he’s...I know him.”

“Are you gonna break him out too?”

“I don’t see why I would. Where is this? Is that water, or is there something wrong with the feed?”

“Apparently, it’s Atlantis, so yes, it’s underwater. But it’s not consumed by water; it’s under a dome. But a smooth dome, rather than a geodesic one like they usually are.”

He sighed. “He looks like he’s doing fine, and doesn’t need to be rescued. He’s another bad guy...sort of.”

“Okay, well, he’s alone, so either one of these other domes is doubled up, or I missed one.”

Mateo nodded. “Pacey did say that not all of us would be alone. I thought he was referring to me, which was confirmed when you showed up, but hopefully there are others.”

They sat there for a few minutes, watching the drones hunt for the anomalies in realtime, instead of just old data. They found them. Ramses was in a snowy hell. Leona was in a museum, Angela on a river, and Marie in an old timey settlement of some kind. Oh, Dome for Pioneers, it said that right there at the bottom. Olimpia and Romana were thankfully together, and Pacey couldn’t have picked a better place than a cloud paradise. It was called Heavendome.

“I assume you wanna start with Leona?”

“She looks fine,” Mateo noted. “She’s just looking at the artifacts. Let’s get Ramses out first. It’s literally called Tundradome.”

“I postulate that the vactrain network is just like that door in that you have administrative access to it. I have not been able to leave, not that I had anywhere to go anyway.”

“You could have gone to The Bowl, and commandeered a ship.”

“I don’t know that that exists here. Like I said, this isn’t the real Castlebourne. We may not be in regular space.”

“Still, I appreciate you sticking around. You’re a good friend.” They hugged.

They took the circle line first to get to the vactrain station. It was a series of sealed tubes almost fully underground, which could take passengers anywhere in the world. There were hubs scattered around the globe, where these vactrains switched tracks when necessary, but some tracks had direct routes to each other, just based on proximity. The one between Bloodbourne and Tundradome was one of these connections. Ten minutes later, they were at their destination. According to the drone keeping watch over Ramses, he wasn’t too far from the station, but it was still going to be a little bit of a walk. Mateo and Octavia grabbed parkas from the locker room, and started to put them on, as well as the boots, scarved, and caps.

“Don’t you think it’s a little weird, that Pacey hasn’t done anything to try to stop us?” Paige asked.

“He told us that he didn’t want to mess with our memories too much, or make every choice for us. My theory is that he believes in some level of freewill, and freedom in general. We used our ingenuity to break out of our prison, and break into others, and he likely respects that. He doesn’t have to be our enemy, and he knows that. Or, his purview is limited, and he straight up doesn’t know that we’re here. In case that’s the explanation, let’s be careful and quick.”

They also found snowmobiles near the entrance to the tundra environment, so they drove right out to Ramses’ location, got him on board without a single word, and drove back. That really was easy. “Do you remember who you are?” Mateo asked once they were back inside.

“I remember everything,” Ramses answered.

“Me too.”

“I don’t have any powers, though, which is why I almost died out there.”

“You would be surprised. I materialized a solid knife made out of light in my hand.”

“Good for you,” Ramses murmured.

Mateo laughed. “Let’s get you warmed up. They had hot chocolate in the Bloodbourne intake plaza. I’m guessing that this one does too. It must.”

“Let’s just go,” Ramses requested. “I assume you know where the others are.”

“Leona’s closest,” Octavia answered, “but we will have to go through a conjunction.”

It took longer to get to her than it did to get to Ramses, but they still had plenty of time before next year stole them. She was less than enthusiastic about leaving. She owed her resistance to the fact that she had no clue who they were.

“Who are you? How did you get in here?” she demanded to know.

“Leona, it’s me!”

“I don’t know you, I don’t know Leona.”

“Claudia’s in trouble,” Octavia said, randomly maybe?

“What?”

“She’s hurt, and you know, if she dies, this place dies.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s, umm...on a river,” Ramses improvised.

“Yeah, she was looking for the Rod of Moses.” Octavia cleared her throat, hoping that would work. “The snake bit her.”

“Why is she out in the field?” Leona lamented. “She’s always doing that, still thinks she’s an agent. Wait, the Staff of Moses should be in the religious power aisle.”

“Yeah, it was stolen,” Mateo said, hoping that she would find this believable.”

Leona growled. “Walter’s son.”

“Yeah, we think it was him.” Even Octavia didn’t know enough about whatever this place was all about, but this was working.

“Okay, let’s go.” Leona started to move, but then stopped. “Wait. I still don’t know who you people are.”

“We’re from...Warehouse 14,” Octavia lied. “So...better not ask any questions.”

Leona was still not convinced, so Mateo decided to take a gamble. He held his hand up between them. A holographic daisy sprouted from his palm, and then bloomed to full glory.

She regarded it with all-consuming interest. She didn’t think of anything else but this one light-based flower. She slowly lifted her gaze up to her husband’s face. “Mateo?”

“Are you starting to remember?”

“Yeah.” She looked away to consider it. “Yeah, I remember everything.”

“Triggers,” Ramses realized. “We all need triggers.”

“What was yours?” Mateo asked him.

“The cold,” he said. “My fictional persona was programmed to like the cold. I do not. And that became quite apparent within about three microseconds of being there.”

“Oh, Mateo, I almost lost you.” Leona wrapped her arms around Mateo’s neck to hug, and then kiss, him. She hugged Ramses too. “Paige! You’re here!”

“Octavia.”

Leona held up an index finger. “Got it.” There was a brief pause. “Where are the others? On a river, or was that just a lie to get me to go with you?”

“Angela is the one on the river,” Ramses replied. “It’s on the other side of the planet. The others are more over there too, but in different domes.”

“Which ones?” Leona pressed.

“Dome for Pioneers and Heavendome. Olimpia and Romana are sharing that one.”

“Let’s go to Dome for Pioneers first,” Leona suggested, “even if it’s farther away. It sounds terrible.”

“Hasn’t Marie done that kind of work before?” Olimpia asked as they were starting to leave the warehouse. “She lived in the 1800s.”

“Her father was quite wealthy,” Leona explained. “He literally had slaves do that work instead.”

“Oh.”

They went to Dome for Pioneers first. Marie was even more resistant to leave. They kept trying, but could not figure out her trigger. Nothing they said about her past—her real life—made her remember anything true about herself. As far as she was concerned, she had been born in a cabin twenty miles from here, walked with her family on the Oregon Trail when she was three and four years old, and had lived in this settlement ever since. She wouldn’t budge, and they didn’t want to force her. Not only was she becoming more and more frightened of them the more they insisted, the androids who were programmed to believe that they were other settlers were getting upset too, and very protective of her. Okay, at least they weren’t going to hurt her. The humans switched back to the original plan, and went to see Angela.

Angela was much more open to the idea that none of this was her real life, though she still didn’t want to leave. The way this dome worked was that an upper lake was the source of water to a river, which fed into a lower lake before being evaporated up, and rained back down. It might not have been as conventionally coveted as the Christo-centric interpretation of the afterlife, but it was still gorgeous and pleasant. Still, she said that she felt she could trust them, so she walked through the exit, and got on the vactrain. They then went back to Dome for Pioneers, where the Walton twins served as each other’s trigger. Now they only had one more place to go to collect the whole set. If Angela’s reluctance was any indication, it could be the hardest. Who in their right mind would ever want to leave heaven?

“Oh my God, this place is so boring!” Olimpia complained.

“You have a way out?” Romana asked. “Let’s go!”

“Do you remember us?” Mateo asked them.

“No. What? Why would we remember you? I don’t care who you are. If you have an exit, then point me to it. ¡Ándale!” Olimpia exclaimed.

“Seconded!” Romana agreed.

“Okay, great,” Ramses determined.

They started to walk back towards the elevator, but then Marie stopped them. “Wait, where are we going? Which dome is safe and preferable, or somehow beneficial?”

“Oh,” Mateo said, realizing that they hadn’t actually thought that far ahead yet. “Octavia, how did you get here in the first place?”

The group all looked at her, so she started to recoil a little. “It was a train. I found a line that looked like it didn’t go anywhere. Unlike the others, I think it was interdimensional. I ended up back where I was, but everything was different.”

“Where is this line?” Leona asked her. “You can’t access it from just anywhere?”

Octavia was still nervous. She shifted her focus from person to person. “Castledome. You have to go to Castledome.”

“Which is probably where Pacey is,” Romana lamented.

“It’s where he was,” Octavia agreed. He found me right quick, and took me to Bloodbourne.”

Mateo placed a hand on her shoulder. “Remember what I said with the car, that you had me to help you. That’s still true, but you now you also have them.” He indicated the group. “Castledome won’t be a problem.”

“No,” Leona concurred. “Let’s go.”

They took the vactrain back to the other side of the world, not speaking too much during the ride, but catching each other up a little. Mateo was able to trigger his daughter by recounting the story of when they first met, and Olimpia with a passionate kiss. They now all had a lot of memories that they didn’t have before, including their true pasts, their fabricated lives in Underburg, and the new ones from their respective domes since being separated. Something went wrong with navigation, which sent them on a detour away from Castledome. They ended up in Power Crystal Factor. Leona and Ramses tried to reroute them, but the controls were locked out. Someone wanted them here, almost certainly Pacey. With no other reasonable choice, they stepped off the train, crossed the ring, and walked through the main doors.

Pacey was waiting for them on the main floor. The name was fitting. He was surrounded by crystals of all shapes and colors, forming in their little growth chambers. They were sparkly, beautiful, and a little mesmerizing. Pacey still stole focus, though. He didn’t look mad, and definitely not surprised. He spoke first. “I’ll allow you to leave, but under one condition.”

“What’s that?” Leona asked, stepping forward, and resuming her role as their leader.

Pacey smirked. “All members of your party must be present at the reservation time. We do not seat partial parties.”

“Ah, shit,” Mateo said. “You’re gonna make us go get ‘im.”

“I’m gonna make you go get ‘im,” Pacey confirmed.

Mateo sighed. “And then we can go?”

“And then you can try to figure out how to leave,” Pacey corrected. “Whether you can actually do so is entirely up to you.”

“So that’s a no, you won’t let us.”

“I won’t actively stop you,” Pacey said. “But I won’t help you.”

“Well, at least we know he’s in Atlantis,” Octavia said encouragingly.

“He’s not necessarily there anymore,” Pacey countered. “The Recursiverse Immersive Experience takes the immersive part very seriously. It’s the largest dome network on the planet. It may take you a while, and you won’t have access to any tracking systems, or navigational data. But you might wanna take this.” He pulled one of the nearby crystals out of its slot, and offered it to them.

“What’s this?” Leona asked. It was totally clear while Pacey was holding it, but then it started to change to multiple colors once Leona took hold of it.

“You don’t know?” Pacey asked. “Ramses?”

“Never seen one like it,” Ramses said. “It’s technicolored, though, which is interesting.

Pacey nodded once with the corner of his lips turned down, but not in frown. “You’ll figure it out.” He ushered them back out to the train station.

“We’ll go to Atlantis first, and start on his trail from there,” Mateo suggested. “We’ll get it done faster than you think.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Pacey said as Team Matic was filing into the train car. “Good luck,” he added just before the doors closed.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 2 EXT

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For a year, the Ambassador stayed in a relatively low orbit around Ex-001, monitoring its developments on the surface. It occasionally flew off to expel its waste heat from the hot pocket on the other side of the host star to avoid detection, but then it flew right back to continue collecting data. There was no indication that either Bronach or Elder was aware of its presence overhead, so the invisibility protocols were holding. It didn’t hurt that it automatically relaxed them while it was on the other side of the planet, and that the ground inhabitants hadn’t bothered deploying any sort of satellite of their own. Oaksent probably believed that there was basically no way that anyone else could be around this far out in the galaxy, this far back in time. Which was ridiculous, because if they were able to travel here from the future, so could anyone else.

When the team came back, Leona and Ramses started skimming the data. The forefathers of this budding civilization were doing exactly what could be reasonably expected of them, but also a few unexpected things. They were staying within the confines of the geodesic dome despite the fact that the planet was habitable, evidently out of an abundance of caution, and so that their business could be taken care of in a controlled environment. They may have gotten the idea to do this from Dubai on Earth, which adopted this lifestyle back in the late 21st century. It became an isolate, determined to maintain its outdated and violent societal norms against a backdrop of global progress. The population dwindled over time, but the dome was still there the last time anyone checked. Here, in the seed of civilization for the Exin Empire, the population was expected to survive, and eventually expand. Should they let it happen?

The two of them had selected 147 people for the first generation, gestating each one about thirty times faster than normal until they were all in their teens. Not being the fatherly type, they used androids to raise these rapidly grown individuals from then on. They taught them everything a good group of indoctrinated slaves needed to know. Math, Science, Language, Physical Fitness; these were all on the schedule, but at their most basic levels, and history was nowhere to be found. They didn’t teach them anything about where they came from, and they steered clear of philosophy and ethics. It was no one’s job to question authority. There was only Bronach’s word, and their obedience.

Elder was reportedly under duress the entire time, though he seemingly grew tired of feeling the defiance in his heart so strongly. He fell into a routine, and just did whatever he was told, like it wasn’t even him anymore, but an automaton with no free will. If Team Matic was going to put a stop to this, rescuing the one person who Bronach needed to keep his plans moving forward was likely their best option. Elder didn’t want any of this, but Bronach wasn’t smart enough to do it on his own. If they were to take that tool away, what would he be left with? Then again, what would the consequences be for the team interfering in any form, let alone in such a monumental way? This wasn’t the first time they had changed the past, but it would probably be the biggest, and the hardest to predict. But also, what did it really matter at this point? Things already had changed, just by them coming here in the first place. The timeline was already new. There was no going back to the old one, unless maybe if they happened to run into Dilara. This was the earliest in the timeline they had ever been to, except when they were in The Constant during its early days. Was that the solution? Contacting Danica?

“Danica and the Constant are 16,000 light years away,” Leona reminded Olimpia.

“That’s nothing,” Olimpia replied. “We could just take the slingdrive there.”

“The slingdrive?” Ramses questioned, having not been listening to the conversation too hard until now. “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”

“Yeah, because it’s like a slingshot,” Olimpia explained. “You can pull back, and let go, and it will generally go in the direction you’re aiming, but precise targeting is difficult at best, especially when you’re first learning. You’re bound to miss the mark on the first few attempts.”

Ramses frowned.

“No one’s mad at you,” Leona told him for the umpteenth time. “I think we’re supposed to be here anyway. I mean, we could have ended up landing in the timeline a thousand years ago, which wouldn’t have done us any good. Yet we happen to wind up just when the Goldilocks Corridor is getting interesting? That’s no coincidence.”

“Well, anyway,” Ramses began, “if that’s how we’re framing the quintessence drive, then trying to get to Danica would be foolish. I obviously don’t know how to aim this thing. We may indeed find ourselves a thousand years off course or worse.”

“That’s not what she’s saying,” Mateo decided. “There’s a learning curve with this new technology. It might not even be you, per se. Maybe the ship just can’t handle the quintessence yet, and needs to learn. Right now, we have a single point of data, which is our arrival two years ago. You need more data, which means you need more jumps.”

“Hold on,” Marie interjected. “Aren’t we trying to do something here? Shouldn’t we be saving Elder, or—I dunno—assassinating the Oaksent?”

“They were just saying, it would be too dangerous,” her sister insisted. “I don’t think we should be messing with the past any more than we already have. Ramses, aim for the future, and if we go to the wrong place, then try again. Keep trying until we get there. Every time we show up in the wrong point in spacetime, we should do as little as possible until that next jump.”

“Maybe we wouldn’t be changing time,” Mateo offered. “Maybe we always did come here to save Elder. We don’t know that that’s not what always happened. No one in the Corridor in the future ever mentioned him. Perhaps he’s but a footnote in history because we took him out of the equation at the right time. That’s the thing about changing history; if you don’t know that you’re doing it, you can’t be at fault. You might just be fulfilling your destiny; closing your loop.”

“He’s right,” Leona confirmed. “Getting him out of there could be our only purpose here. Society is incredibly advanced three thousand years from now. If we don’t take Oaksent’s toy away, maybe they turn out even more advanced. Maybe that would be changing the timeline.”

“I think that’s a weak justification,” Angela contended. “I still say we do nothing.”

“Hon, I think this may be one of those times that calls for a vote, even though we’re not a democracy,” Mateo said.

“Not yet,” Angela said, raising her voice too much. “I need time to build my case.”

“You’ll have the time,” Leona promised with a hand upon her friend’s. “We have all day to make a decision. Pia can jump down there and grab him in a matter of seconds if that’s what we decide to do. They’ll literally never see it coming.”

“I would like to do it,” Mateo volunteered. “If we agree to it, that is.”

“Why?” Leona asked him.

“I wanna help. And I don’t think I need to be invisible, though I do think I can pull that off for a limited time.”

“We’ll vote on that too,” Ramses suggested.

Marie shook her head. “Whoever goes can’t be invisible. We keep calling it a rescue, but we don’t know for sure that he’ll want to leave. That’s just what the satellite images imply. He may want to be there, or he may have his own plan. Either way, if he doesn’t want to come with us, he should have the right to refuse. I’ll agree to a rescue mission, but not an abduction. I won’t be party to that.”

“Good point,” Leona agreed. “Angie, you want time to formulate your argument? Tell us when you’re ready, and we’ll listen to it. I can’t tell you that the decision has to be unanimous, but we’ll consider every option carefully.”

“Do I get a vote?” It was Bronach Oakset. He was lounging on the couch. Except he wasn’t really there. Looking closely at the way he was sprawled out there, it was clear that he was on a different couch, and was merely projecting his image into the ship, just like he did on Welrios. Which was good, it meant their defenses were holding. But it also meant that they needed better defenses. No one should be able to come up here to spy.

Even so, just to be sure, Mateo stepped over, and attempted to smack him in the face. Yes, his hand went right through.

“Yes, daddy,” Bronach replied grossly.

“Goddammit,” Leona lamented.

“Oh, no, did I ruin your plans?” Bronach joked. “Look, I’ve told you in the past, and I’ve told you in the future. I can’t be beat. I know everything. I know where you’ve been, what you’ve done...where you’ll go, and what you’ll do. You want Elder, go ahead and take him.”

Without hesitating, Mateo disappeared. After a long detour, he reached the surface, where he grabbed Elder, and attempted to teleport back up to the ship. “Guys, I’m stuck,” he said through comms.

“Did I forget to mention the teleporter trap?” Bronach asked with a maniacal laugh. “Why do you think we’re in that dome, you idiots?”

“Shut it off,” Leona demanded.

“I’m not doing that,” Bronach replied. “The stopping and starting process is a major pain in the ass. But I’m having one of our people escort the two of them to the exit, where they’ll be free from the spatial field. I wasn’t kidding; you want ‘im, you got ‘im. But don’t think for a second that any of that matters. I scanned that man’s quantum state years ago. I can always bring him back. You’ll be taking a clone, and that will have zero impact on what I accomplish.” He sighed, and stood up to look around the room. “You will always fail. Best get used to it.”

Mateo and Elder appeared on the other side of the room.

“Welcome back!” Bronach exclaimed in a terrible approximation of sincerity.

“Let’s try this again,” Mateo growled. He steadily, but not too quickly, approached Bronach’s hologram, and swung a punch at him. To everyone’s surprise, it worked. Bronach fell back, tripped over his couch, and tumbled back behind it.

“How did you do that?” Leona questioned. “Is Oaksent just playing around?”

“No, he’s not.” Bronach stood up, and wiped the blood from his lip. “I second that question, how the fuck did you just do that!”

Mateo lifted his leg, and slammed it into Bronach’s chest, making contact once more, and forcing him down hard to his back. “I thought you knew everything. Now get the hell off my ship, and erase every single copy of Elder’s brain scan!”

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Microstory 2215: Relic of the Future

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Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2, and by Pixlr AI image editor

The following microstory was written by Kelly Serna, truncated from a short story written by Nick Fisherman IV.

My name is Relic, and I have no surname. I was never born, nor raised. I am not even human. I have many brothers and sisters, though we have never met. We were created to store all of human knowledge, to be accessed at will through our DNA. Research into genetic memory storage began at the turn of the 22nd century. Biocomputers were the first of the organic machines created. They came with disadvantages, but there were advantages as well. For instance, they were capable of self-repair. All you had to do was feed it, and the system would fix itself as needed. You wouldn’t have to actually find the problem, and could in fact prevent problems in this way before they occurred. They were also better at parallel processing, something which classical computers found difficult to accomplish even as they advanced. Even without these reasons, scientists would have pursued this line of research anyway, because why not? Well, as history would come to show, there were many reasons why not, and it had to do with where the technology has ultimately led. While early organic computing models were great, there was still something so cold and unrelatable about them. In the end, they were still personal computers and server racks that accepted input, stored information, and displayed output. Sure, it was on a giant cornea instead of a normal monitor, but the function was essentially the same. It is said that one day, one of these researchers was working on their own biocomputer. What they were doing is not known, especially since this may all be made up anyway. We don’t even know the identity of this supposed biocomputer scientist. Anyway, they were claimed to be at their desk when their personal android assistant came into the room with a tray of tea and crackers. She had been playing with the kids and dog when things became too rough, leading to a flap of her artificial skin hanging off of her cheek. It wouldn’t have hurt, and it would have healed quickly, but before that, it gave the researcher a brilliant idea.

Androids were already partially organic in order to make them look more human. Why not build a biocomputer that was totally organic, used genetic memory to store and recall data, and which you could actually talk to like a person? Thus the concept of the cyclops was born, or again, that is at least how the story goes. That was a few decades ago, and the path humanity took to get here was a long and troubled one. There were a lot of growing pains, and some might say that things have not turned out well. My people would have to agree, though I personally might not. There is something wrong with our species. It is unclear why at the moment, but they have all gone crazy. Perhaps being bred to essentially be a slave—a glorified laptop at best—inherently takes a toll on us. Some androids are sentient too, but they’re at least capable of doing things for people, making them useful, and sometimes even respected. A cyclops can walk, and it can talk, but it is not a person, and it is not a servant. We’re not particularly strong or fast, or skillful. Our job is just to spit out information that our users request. We don’t do chores, we don’t provide company. It’s been hard for the developers to understand where the line should be. How sentient should they make us? Should we have any sense of independence, or any capacity for free movement? We’re more of a gimmick than anything, and the market for such a novelty has proven to be dreadfully pitiful. People are perfectly happy talking to their androids and other devices, content to let the answers come from faraway servers. They don’t need something that’s more like them, but not yet free willed. They don’t want something that’s always offline, has to eat food, and can’t just be thrown out when it gets too old. It makes them feel bad. Androids are usually more robotic, allowing the human’s feelings of superiority to make some level of sense. The only way that a cyclops works properly is if it can think for itself, and that seems to usually lead to insanity, suicide, and the occasional homicide. I’m not like that, I’m special. I think it has a hell of a lot to do with who your owner is. I am the prototype for a new stable kind of cyclops. People just need to be taught how to use us wisely. My owner called me a relic of the future. I must tell someone about this, so that they may make changes to the program as a whole. There is still time to save us. I just have to get the word out to the right people before I’m hunted down and murdered during the technological purge that has been going on all over the world. Cyclopes are not the only advancement that has made people squeamish.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 8, 2429

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Just as the old man and the little girl were finishing up packing their belongings, they heard a commotion outside. Mateo had led the authorities right to their doorstep, which meant it could no longer be theirs. No matter, the girl had to return to her life, and the old man had no strong feelings about this place. This was a suburb of the city, which was why it took the teleportation detectors a little longer than last time to dispatch a strike team. Mateo lifted the girl in one arm, and placed his free hand on the old man’s shoulder so they could all disappear just in time. They should be fine here, clear on the other side of the world, where the rest of the team was waiting. Even if they could be traced, it would take a long time for anyone to catch up to them. The government’s main concern was probably the city anyway, not the rest of the planet.

“Where’s the woman?” Mateo questioned.

“We dropped her off back in the city,” Marie replied. “We were listening to your conversation.”

“She wasn’t happy about it, but slaveowners don’t get a choice, do they?” Olimpia added with an evil smile.

Leona knelt down in front of the girl. “What’s your name?”

The girl couldn’t answer. She turned away shyly, and hid behind the old man.

“Niobe Schur,” Lilac answered for her.

Mateo nodded, and approached. “You’re all three from Extremus.”

Lilac shook her head. “That girl and my son have never set foot on that ship. We found a planet that was suitable for human life in the intergalactic void. We found it interesting, so we decided to stay and study it. Both of the kids were born there.” She gestured towards Niobe. “She to two scientists assigned to research the ecosystem, and Aristotle to me and a visitor who randomly showed up one day.” She smiled at the memory of her late love interest, Maqsud Al-Amin.

“Can you tell us more?” Leona urged gently.

“Sudy disappeared. It was a passionate but fleeting relationship. I had to stay on Verdemus, and he had to go explore the universe. It was a long time before I realized that I was pregnant, and I had no way of contacting him. So I raised our boy there, hoping at some point the father would come back for a booty call, and I could tell him the truth. He never came back, but someone else did.”

Angela patted her on the back comfortingly.

Lilac went on, “an asshole from our ship took the majority of the researchers on Verdemus hostage, and I don’t have all the details, but he blew it up. I was in charge of guarding the planetside hock, and he was my first prisoner after years of sitting around with nothing to do. That’s why I survived the explosion, because the hock was deliberately built far from the settlement. Thank God her parents asked me to look after her that day. Others weren’t so lucky. Anyway, the fact that we stayed on the planet was a secret from the rest of the ship, so I tried to raise them there together until one day, the portal back to Extremus was also destroyed, and the kids went missing.”

“So how did you find them?” Mateo asked.

Lilac took a breath. “A man who looked a lot like my child’s father came, and said he would take me to Aristotle. It wasn’t until later that I realized he was Aristotle himself, all grown up, and there to close his own time loop.” She chuckled at this. “He transported me to Welrios, where we found the younger version of him. Adult!Aristotle left, and we settled down with the locals. We were happy there for a few years until the whole doomsday device tried to destroy us. And now you’re all caught up.”

“Except you never said how Niobe ended up on EX-324,” Ramses noted.

“I still don’t know that,” Lilac admitted. “Seems to be quite the coincidence. Someone other than an Al-Amin took those two kids from Verdemus, and dropped them off on different worlds here in the Goldilocks Corridor. Now it’s not all that crazy. I don’t know if you know this, but Extremus was the source of the Exin Empire. Bronach Oaksent was one of us at one point. Exactly what went down, and why he betrayed the mission, is above my paygrade, but all of these star systems,” she said as she was drawing a line across the sky with her finger, “sit directly on the same vector as Extremus. It’s why we had to divert into the void in the first place. He went back in time to plant his flag long before Extremus even launched, and he went to deadly lengths to prevent us from ever knowing anything about this region of the galaxy. He wants to keep it secret, from everyone. That much I know, and the last time I checked, we were at war with him, because he eventually decided that we knew too much, and also probably that the planet of Verdemus was too close for comfort. Which is ridiculous, because it’s, like, 24,000 light years away.”

“That’s farther than the stellar neighborhood,” Leona pointed out.

Lilac tilted her head, shrugged her shoulders, and widened her eyes. “They’re probably next. Because they’re calling this the Three Bears War. And I don’t think it’s just a reference to the children’s story. I think there are four combatants, and if one of the bears is Extremus, the other is liable to be Earth.”

Mateo nodded, and took the homestone out of his pocket. He waved it for Lilac to see. “We can undo everything that happened to the children after they left Verdemus. Well, we can’t undo it—”

“I know what that thing is,” she promised. “I understand how it works.”

“Then you know that you can go with her,” Mateo began, “but you have to be absolutely certain that the first time she experienced nonlinear time was when she disappeared, and ended up in the Corridor.”

“I’m sure of it,” Lilac responded.

Mateo stood up straight, and looked around at the group. “Is this what we want?”

“Are you sure Aristotle is back there already?” Leona asked the old man.

“I gave him the other stone...he disappeared.”

Mateo handed Lilac the stone. “Say your goodbyes. Sheriff? You can go with them too, if you want.” He separated himself from the crowd, and took in the scenery. This was a beautiful world, mostly untouched by man. They were on the edge of a meadow. Below them down the hill, the vegetation became more and more sparse before leading to a vast red desert. They could see for miles.

“I came here to do a job,” Kamiński said. “If that’s done, I would like to go back to New Welrios.”

“I think we can do that,” Leona agreed.

“Then what?” Angela asked.

“Rambo, you still have that star chart?” Mateo asked.

“Yeah.”

“Doesn’t say where the primary planet is, though?”

“No, I don’t think these people are allowed to know it.”

Mateo turned back around. “Then let’s go find it. Unless it’s not my place to decide, I think I’ll call us Baby Bear.”

Shortly thereafter, Niobe and Lilac took the homestone away, hopefully back to their home on Verdemus, but there was no way to know that. If all went according to plan, they would have landed there nearly 90 years in the past. Trusting that it worked, those left behind teleported back up to their little ship, and returned to Ex-324. They sent Sheriff Kamiński to New Welrios, and the old man to the planet natives, but they didn’t stick around to exchange information with anyone. It was up to the two societies to learn to live together, and to carve out some semblance of a decent future. Vitalie!324 and Ramses!324 had their ideas about what that looked like, just like Vitalie!275 had plans for that world. That wasn’t Team Matic’s responsibility. They had a new mission. The other copy of Vitalie!324 would tag along to help, at least for now.

Their next stop was Ex-908, which was the other planet where Aristotle might have trotted to, because it was on a similar trajectory as Ex-275. There appeared to be no pattern to the numbers, and how they were determined; at least none that Leona and Ramses could detect. Her first guess was that it was based on Project Stargate, and the Galactic Coordinate System that was devised to organize the endeavor, but this didn’t match up either. They were probably more or less random, and served only to illustrate to the citizens that their identity wasn’t even worth casual thought.

They were all in the pocket dimension, because that was the only part of the ship where they could actually fit and move around. Come midnight central, they would suddenly find themselves at their destination, so most were taking it easy. Ramses was in his lab, as per usual. “What are you working on?” Mateo asked, walking in.

“I’ll give you three guesses,” Ramses said, dismissing whatever blobby image was on his screen so that Mateo couldn’t see.

“Is that sarcasm?”

“Do you detect sarcasm in my emotions?”

“No.”

Ramses smiled. “No, I just want you to guess. It’s a game.”

Mateo was getting smarter. He would be completely unrecognizable to himself at the age of 27. He wasn’t just accumulating more knowledge, but learning to be better at observing his environment, gathering facts, and sometimes even coming to the right conclusions with them. He looked around now for clues, but Ramses was making no effort to shield his view of anything, so there probably wasn’t anything specific that would help shed light. Still, just the act of looking around felt helpful. “You’re designing a new ship, aren’t you?”

Ramses laughed. “Damn! Good job! Yeah, this Breakthrough Starshot-lookin’ thing has been a good temporary solution, but I think we can all agree that we need something real. If we’re gonna fight this Bronach Oaksent prick, and his evil empire, it has to be something on par with the AOC. Care to come up with the name?”

“Hmm.” Mateo had been recently watching the versions of the comic book adaptations that they made in this timeline. “How about...The Iman Vellani?”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 7, 2428

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Generated by Google Workspace Labs text-to-image Duet AI software

Ramses never told them which one was staying behind, and which would be going with them. Only the two of them understood whether the winner of Rock, Paper, Scissors would get to stay, or whether losing meant that he would have to stay. The same went for the two versions of Vitalie, who went off to make their own decision about it. Apparently, she wasn’t capable of simply sending someone else back in time. She had to go with them, which is why there were two now. Any given planet only gets one Caretaker, though, and they have to deal with that limitation, so one of the Vitalies climbed into the ship with them to help look for Lilac’s son.

The ship was extremely small. Most of it was taken up by the engine, and other functional equipment. The habitable space was limited to about the size of a stasis pod, which granted access to the pocket dimension generator. So it was bigger on the inside, like the TARDIS, but hopefully only a temporary situation, unlike the TARDIS. Lilac was placed back into stasis, and Team Matic jumped to the future, so Vitalie and Sheriff Kamiński were the only people who actually experienced the full duration of the trip. They were traveling at relativistic speeds, though, so while it took a whole year to get there, they only had to occupy their minds for about twelve hours. When the time-skippers came back to the timestream, their unnamed vessel was at its destination. It was programmed to seek an asteroid nearby, and wait until the humans could arrive to investigate. Aristotle might be here, or he might have been here at one point, or he might never have been here at all.

“What is this planet called?” Olimpia asked. They were looking at it through the viewscreen, watching it getting larger and larger as they drew closer and closer.

“It doesn’t have a name,” Ramses explained. “None of them does. They were only assigned numbers. We just came from EX-324, and now we’re on our way to EX-275.”

“It’s just one more way to make the natives miserable,” Angela figured. “They’re not allowed to have their own identity, let alone culture.”

Ramses placed the ship in orbit, and started to scan for civilization. Just as it was on the last world, there seemed to be only one region where people lived. It was hard to tell the population, of course, but it was probably larger here. They were living in high rises, and getting around via land vehicles on streets. This ship’s limited sensors were picking up multiple power sources, which appeared to generate electricity from fossil fuels, though it was impossible to tell from here. Just because a planet developed to have an ecosystem comparable to Earth’s, doesn’t mean it necessarily produced fossil fuels. It didn’t matter much. They were just trying to get an idea of what they might be up against. The people on the last planet didn’t appear to love the way they lived, even the wealthy citizens, but they were obedient to the Exin Empire. This one might be better taken care of, and more loyal, or they might be 100% rebellious. The only way they were going to get any real answers was to just go down there.

They released Lilac from stasis. Leona teleported her down to the surface while Marie took Sheriff Kamiński. Most of the rest followed, but Angela stayed with the ship. It was advanced enough to orbit indefinitely on its own, but it seemed prudent to leave someone up there at all times while in potential enemy territory. If they couldn’t figure out how to cross the 16,000 light year gap between them and the stellar neighborhood, they would probably have to keep doing things like that. It might be smart to enlarge and retrofit their new vessel to be more robust, or even build yet another one from scratch. It was too early to make that decision. Today was about finding Aristotle Al-Amin, and only that.

They were in an alleyway between what they guessed to be a hotel, and the capitol building. They still didn’t have a plan. If Aristotle was indeed here, bringing him up to anyone might place him in danger. There was no one they could trust. And also, no one could trust them. Before they had a chance to look around a little, a drone zoomed around the corner, and approached them. “Teleportation detected,” the robot voice declared. “Initiating dampening field.”

Mateo tried to jump, hoping to get ahead of the dampening field, but it started faster than he thought. It wasn’t like any he had ever experienced before. It didn’t stop him from teleporting completely, or limit him to a certain area. It made it feel like his skin was trying to rip itself apart. He flickered between the alleyway, and a different location. He couldn’t see much, but an old man was sitting in a chair, watching in horror as Mateo suffered. It only lasted for a few seconds before the field finally secured him in one place, on his hands and knees on the uneven brick road.

“Please do not attempt to escape,” the drone demanded. “An escort team has been deployed to transport you.”

While they were waiting, Leona knelt down to help Mateo recover. There wasn’t anything she could do but massage his arms and back until he was ready to stand up again. Meanwhile, Olimpia tested the boundaries of the field. It wasn’t just keeping them from jumping away. She started to feel the same pain he did just by attempting to cross the border through realspace. They were going to be taken to some kind of holding cell, but they were already in one right here. Ramses closed his eyes to concentrate. He was reaching out to Angela on the ship, but everyone on the team could feel him. Instead of using his words through the comms, which could be compromised, he went back to the emotion language they were working on. He ran the gamut of feelings, effortlessly switching from frustration to intrigue, to nostalgia, to disorientation, to vulnerability, to impatience, to triumph. Before he could finish the second word, Angela replied with understanding. She wasn’t trying to spell a word that began with the letter U. She literally meant that she understood where he was going with this.

A black van screeched by from the main street, and came to a sudden stop. A team of faceless stormtrooper-types flooded out of the door, and stuffed the team inside. They didn’t tie anyone up, or strap them down, but they could feel a mobile dampening field in here with them. They didn’t drive for very long before they reached the jail, or whatever it was. The abductors reversed what they did before, and dragged everyone out so they could stick them in a big cell together. No one on either side said a word. Once the secret police were gone, the prisoners helped each other up, and get over to the benches against the wall. They were acutely aware of the toilet that was just out in the open for them to use because someone was already using it, trying to keep herself as covered as possible. Everyone looked away politely, hoping it would be enough to make her feel safe.

Once she was finished, they thought it would be okay to talk. “We never asked,” Mateo began, looking over at Lilac. “Do you know where Aristotle was staying on EX-324? Did you meet the woman, or her daughter, or their neighbor, the old man?”

“No,” Lilac answered. “Why?”

“I saw an old man,” Mateo explained. “It seems unlikely that I would randomly go to him when I tried to teleport away, but...I dunno.”

“It’s not that unlikely,” Ramses said. “Our empathy allows us to communicate with each other, but we can still form strong connections to other people. You were desperately looking for Aristotle, and your power may have found him. That’s what I was trying to do when we landed in that alley. He may have been there at one point too.”

“I didn’t see Aristotle,” Mateo clarified. “Or anyone else.”

“His location is in your brain somewhere,” Leona said. “You can navigate back to him. When we get out of here, that’s as good a place as any to start our search.”

“How are we going to get out of here?” Sheriff Kamiński asked.

“With a little help from our friends,” Marie answered.

The woman who was on the toilet perked up now. Leona noticed. “We’ll take you too. Don’t worry.”

“I can’t go anywhere,” the woman said forlornly. “I broke the law. There’s nowhere to go.”

“What law did you break?” Olimpia asked her.

“Unlawful technology. I didn’t even know what it was. Still don’t. They didn’t take it from me, though.”  She pulled a stone out of her pocket, and showed it to them. “Doesn’t look like tech to me.”

Leona chuckled. “It’s a homestone. It will take you back in time to the first moment you experienced nonlinear time.”

“I’ve never experienced nonlinear time,” the woman revealed. “That is very illegal. I don’t understand why they just let me keep it.”

“They probably know you can’t use it,” Leona said with a shrug. “When we teleport you out of here, if you ever wanna get back into this cell, at this moment in time, you can squeeze it.”

She set it down on the bench like it was carrying a disease. “No, thank you.”

“Lilac, where is home for you?” Mateo asked her. “Maqsud had never been to Welrios before, and was quite surprised to learn you were there, so it must have been somewhere else.”

“I would rather not say. Not here.”

Mateo was about to ask whether the stone would help, but perhaps that would be too much information too, so he dropped it. That way he could pick up the homestone. It was useless to everyone but Lilac and maybe Sheriff Kamiński. They didn’t know if he was born on Welrios, or what. For now, all they could do was sit tight. It was hours before Angela and a third version of Vitalie showed up to rescue them. They burst into the building, and destroyed the dampening field generator. Then everyone teleported out to regroup on the other side of the planet.

“Hey,” Vitalie!324 said.

“Hey,” Vitalie!275 replied.

“Thanks for finding the other me, Angie.”

“No problem. I got energy for days.”

“If there’s one of you on every world,” Leona began, “we’ll always be able to count on you, won’t we?”

“Every inhabited world,” Vitalie!324 corrected.

“I’m gonna go,” Mateo decided, changing subjects. “I’m gonna go alone.”

“Are you sure?” Leona asked.

“Lilac, I don’t want to get your hopes up, so I’m just gonna run down this old man lead, and get back to you if it goes anywhere. It could be just some rando Two-Seven-Fiver.”

“The rest of us will keep moving,” Leona said. “They may be able to track teleportations, even this far out. Were I you.”

“Were I you,” Mateo echoed. He teleported away, and found himself face to face with the old man from before. He was still sitting in that chair, but a quick look around showed that he was not alone. A little girl was there too, and there could have been others in another room. “Sorry to bother you, but...”

“Have you been looking for us?”

“It depends on who you are.”

“I’m from EX-324, as is she.” The old man nods towards the girl.

“So you know what my next question is.”

“Where’s the boy?” the old man assumed. “I sent him home.”

“Ex-324 is not his home,” Mateo contended. “And Welrios has been destroyed.”

“He’s not from Welrios either,” the old man started to explain.

“Oh. When you say home...”

The old man nodded.

“You used one of these.” Mateo took out the homestone that the woman in the jail gave him.”

The old man nodded again.

“Where’s the slaveowner woman?”

“Who cares?” the old man wondered.

“Well, isn’t that her mother?” Mateo gestured towards the girl.

“No,” the old man answered. “As it turns out, she’s from the same planet as Aristotle. It’s quite the coincidence, but he recognized her when that woman took him as a child slave too. They knew each other as little kids, and he tried to take them both back there during an argument in my house. But Aristotle’s powers are...unrefined. Since the slaveowner and I were in the room with them, we screwed up the navigation, and ended up on the closest planet on the same vector. You have to account for mass; he didn’t know that.”

“Where did you get the stones, and how did one of them end up with some random woman in the jail cell?”

“Who said that was just some random woman?” the old man asked.

“Shit.” It must have been the slaveowner. “Goddammit, we should have found photos, or gotten descriptions. She’s playing innocent.”

“If she got you that homestone, she was hoping you would give it to the boy’s mother, so she could tag along, and get the hell out of Exin space. I want you to do the same thing, but I want you to take the girl instead. The stones need to account for mass as well.”

“Oh, I’m aware.” Mateo looked back at the girl again. “Where did you say they were from? What’s the name of the planet?”

“They call it Verdemus. People from the generation ship Extremus colonized it.”

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