The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 20, 2441

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While Mateo was taking a trip away from the station, the rest of the remaining team was trying not to get caught. When they first entered this station in 2440, they didn’t want to rely solely on Marie’s excellent impersonation skills. At some point, someone may realize that she couldn’t be who she said she was. Not everyone who worked here was in the hangar bay. As word spread, the chances of somebody catching on increased. The first guard who realized it could have just been the tip of the iceberg. Besides, they didn’t know anything about what objects were being stored here, or how vast the collection was. They needed time to download the manifest, analyze it, and make a plan. Still invisible, Olimpia walked straight to the primary security room too upload a computer worm that would take control of all management systems, but lay in wait during the interim year, so that no one would know that it was even here. Leona, Ramses, and Marie snuck into the main office to find the information that they were looking for. There they uploaded their own worm to gather all data on the warehouse, which they would redownload once they came back.

All of the personnel were so busy trying to find the fake missing item that no one came to bother them, and as midnight was approaching, they held their breaths, hoping that they would jump to the future without anyone realizing it. The staff would be very confused about what happened to their messiah, the godking Oaksent, but they would have no reason to believe that it was really Team Matic in disguise, right? They opened the door to a storage closet so they wouldn’t suddenly appear next year in front of other people when someone actually did show up. “I think I found it.”

“What?” Leona questioned. That should be impossible. They told these people that they deliberately misplaced a warehouse item at an earlier date, and that whoever discovered it would be rewarded. But nothing was actually misplaced. It was just to keep everyone busy while they executed the heist. They didn’t consider the possibility that an artifact was genuinely misplaced without their intervention, probably accidentally. A flaw in their plan.

The young man, whose job in the station was not immediately clear, held his palms out before them. On top of them was a lighter, and it was one that they recognized. This was the Muster Lighter, which could be used to summon people from distant places as a mass teleportation object. It was lost centuries ago, but it wasn’t entirely out of left field that it should end up here. This region of the galaxy was seeded with life by someone who once lived on the generational ship, Extremus, which launched from the Gatewood Collective, where the lighter was last used and seen. They didn’t think that Bronach was alive at the time, but perhaps a relative stole it, and he ended up with it. Or it was someone else on Extremus, and he procured it later. “This wasn’t in the Time Vault, where it belongs. It was hidden behind a box of scissors by the door to an auxiliary maintenance airlock that doesn’t get use.” When Ramses reached towards it, the young man pulled away. “No. I shall hand it directly to the Emperor.”

Marie nodded appreciatively, and accepted the lighter as ceremoniously as she could while so pressed for time. “Thank you, my child.”

“It’s legit,” Leona said to Marie before turning towards the young man, “but, uhh...this isn’t it. We hid a different item. Someone else must have left this where you found it. They probably just use it to smoke in the airlock, because then they can easily vent it all into space when they’re done.”

He frowned, and hung his head low.

Leona’s watch beeped, as did the other two. “Shit, we gotta go.”

The three of them slipped into the closet, and hoped that the boy would give up, and leave. He didn’t. He opened the door behind them. “Wait, can I still be sent to—”

They didn’t hear the end of his sentence before midnight central hit, and sent them into the future. But they heard it once they came back, “...the resort planet.”

Leona looked at her watch to confirm that they had indeed jumped forward. It was May 20, 2441. She looked over at Marie and Ramses, who now appeared as themselves. They were unable to hold illusions across the time jump. Good to know. “You’ve been waiting for us this whole time?”

“Yes,” the young man answered. “People underestimate me, but I am smart. I had a whole year to work out who you really were, Leona Reaver.” Odd choice for a surname that she technically remembered having, but never actually used in this timeline.

“Who did you tell?” Ramses questioned.

“No one. Something that you probably don’t know about the Corridor is that most don’t give much thought to who the Emperor is, or how the Empire is run. We just deal with our own lives. I have no strong feelings about him. I just wanna get out of here.”

“You want us to take you with us so you don’t have to work anymore?” Leona guessed.

“I think I deserve it. I kept your secret, and lured everyone away for a party that I’ve been planning for months. I don’t know why you’re here, but I know that you won’t stay here forever. You don’t have to keep me, or even take me to Ex-613. You can just drop me off on an uninhabited world where I can live the rest of my life in peace.”

“What do you think?” Leona asked the other two.

“I’m fine with it,” Marie replied. “We’re here to help people, right?”

“Rambo?” Leona pressed.

He was busy studying his tablet. “Oh, I don’t care. The worm has delivered the data. The algorithm found what we were looking for. We were kind of misled. This warehouse is predominantly for banned and restricted tech. As he said, there’s a Time Vault, and that is the only place that stores temporal objects.”

“All right, let’s go there. You’re coming with us,” she said to the refugee.

They made their way along the corridors, up the elevator, and down the people movers. The Time Vault was heavily guarded, as they expected it would be, though their new friend whispered that it was usually worse. The party was a banger. Marie took the initiative to speed up, and approach first. “I see that you are all dedicated to your work, and I would like to thank you for your loyalty and devotion. The winner of last year’s contest has finally found the missing object. That is why we have returned. She would like to attend the party now. Please proceed to the mess hall to offer your joint protection. You will be rewarded for your efforts as well.”

“Sir!” one of them said with intense respect. And then they all left.

“I could get used to this,” Marie mused.

They entered the vault, and started to look around, each of them being drawn to something different. Most of the objects were generic, like teleporter guns, spatial tethers, and wall breachers. These were all lining the walls. Unique and rarer objects were on pedestals in the center of the room, a few of which they didn’t recognize. The Muster Lighter pedestal was empty, which made sense, but so was one labeled for HG Goggles. It was never clear how many pairs of those existed, but like the lighter, these were probably being unlawfully used by some rando who worked here.

“Hey kid, what are ya doing?” Ramses asked as he was inspecting a teleporter rifle.

The refugee was standing before a pedestal near the back, blocking the others from seeing what was sitting upon it. He turned around, holding what resembled a Fabergé egg, though not so intricate and pretty. “They never would have let me in here, but I know that when the Oaksent learns of my heroism, he’ll reward my family with riches beyond imagining. I killed Team Matic.” He turned two sections of the egg away from each other, then another two sections, and then he pressed the plunger that popped up on the top. The egg began to disintegrate, followed quickly by the boy.

“It’s a Lucius bomb!” Leona shouted. “Get out!” As she ran for the hatch, she grabbed a tube of concentrated antintropic nanosealant while Ramses was swiping a clear box. “Olimpia, where are you!” She screamed into her comms.

Olimpia came into view next to her as they were running. “Right here, buddy!”

“Mateo, we’re gonna have to teleport!” Leona cried. “Stop darklurking, and spark a flare! Don’t dock with the station! Just stay within range!”

“We can’t just leave!” Marie yelled, still running. “These people are innocent enough! We have to save them!”

“We can’t!” Leona argued. “There’s too many, and the bomb is too fast!”

“Yeah, we can!” Ramses and Olimpia replied in unison. “I took something!”

“Okay, we’ll try, but I make no guarantees. Ram, where’s the party?”

“A few life signs are scattered throughout the station, but most are right here!” He showed her the dots on the floor plan.

“Tap into the public address system!”

“Go ahead.” Ramses handed her his tablet.

Marie ripped the tablet out of her hands. “This is your emperor, Bronach Oaksent! The station is suffering from a cataclysm! If you are not already at the party, go there now! That is the only safe location! Go! Go!”

“Whatever you two stole,” Leona began, taking the tablet back to keep an eye on the dots, “get ready to use them!” The live sensors were actually pretty smart, and well-distributed. She could watch the dots running for the party, and unfortunately, she could also see dots disappear from the screen, along with the wall boundaries that they were between, indicating that the bomb had already reached that section of the station. All sensors that had yet to be destroyed remained in operation throughout.

They made it to the mess hall, and started funneling people inside until they could do so no longer. The blast was approaching them quickly, and they had to get inside. Leona still didn’t understand how they were going to stop it, though. A Lucius bomb didn’t start working until it reached sufficiently dense matter, and once it did, it didn’t stop until all reachable matter was consumed. It didn’t really matter how thick the walls were. Olimpia had that covered, though. She was the last inside. She immediately turned around, and opened and umbrella, tensely holding it up against the wave of energy trying to kill them. The wall continued to disintegrate, but slower now, and then slower still. They watched as the last remnants of the station disappeared, ripped apart molecule by molecule, until everything but this room was gone, and the tumult ceased. They were now floating alone in outer space. This weird umbrella that none of them had ever heard of before was keeping the atmosphere from escaping into the vacuum.

Olimpia held fast, and smirked at the team. “Topological modulator umbrella. I can’t hold this forever.”

“You won’t have to.” Ramses spun around, and stepped onto the nearest table to address the crowd. “Workers of Ex-467, I know that you’re all scared and confused right now, but we are here to help you! The four of us have the ability to teleport out of here!” He pointed to the Vellani Ambassador, which was hovering over them now. “We could save ourselves alone, or we could save all of you as well! If you would like to die today, stand over by that far wall! If you wanna live, stand on this side, and wait to get into this tiny little box!”

Everyone stood still for a moment before all moving over to the rescue side.

“What the hell is that?” Leona asked him.

“Subdimensional Crucible. It should be able to shrink people.”

“Should?” Leona echoed.

“Hey, I’m just goin’ by the name.” Ramses removed the teleporter rifle from his pants, and began to program it.  “I can get everyone in. All you have to do is wait patiently, and maybe give Olimpia a break.”

“I’ll give her a break,” Marie volunteered. She now looked like herself as well. She took hold of the umbrella, and they shared the burden for a minute before Olimpia felt comfortable letting it go.

Ramses used his tablet to interface with the box, and also the rifle. There was enough charge in it to pocket all of these people away. The problem was figuring out how the box worked. If he didn’t understand the mechanism well enough, all he would do was send the first person as a mangled mess of blood and viscera into the box. Everyone else would die when the umbrella stopped working. The survivors eventually started to sit down to wait, trying not too look up at the rippling force field above them, which threatened to fail every few minutes when the current holder of the umbrella got a little tired. It shifted hands periodically amongst the three ladies. A few members of the personnel volunteered to help, but it wasn’t safe. Even if Leona chose to trust them, they did not necessarily metabolize temporal energy. This thing might not work without it. Ramses needed time to investigate it, which of course, he couldn’t do right now.

After half an hour, Ramses was finished with his work. One of the section leads agreed to go first, and report back if anything went wrong. Ramses shot him in the chest, and then Leona used the box’s built-in microscope to check on him. He was standing in a miniature furnished living room in the middle of the box, and waving up at them in all directions. He was so small that he couldn’t even discern the shadows, shapes, and colors above him as people. “All right, he’s fine,” she announced. Who’s next?”

Ramses continued to shoot people with the rifle. It took longer than they would have liked, because the remainders always wanted to be sure that that last person also survived. They were apparently worried that each time was a fluke, and the next one after that may have resulted in disaster. The girls had to keep holding onto the umbrella the entire time, but eventually, everyone was shot and safe in the box, and they could drop it. The atmosphere vented around them as they teleported up to the ship together.

“Long day?” Mateo asked them, perhaps with a little too little sensitivity.

“Let’s just go. I don’t know what the hell we’re gonna do with these people.”

“Did you bring me a present?” Mateo asked.

Leona showed him the nanosealant. “Yes. I think I can fix the reframe engine.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 19, 2440

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The team was split, but since there were only five of them now, it was not even. Mateo, Leona, and Olimpia all wanted to reroute the ship, and return to Ex-666, where they might be able to find some allies, specifically Mirage and Niobe. They had to get back to Angela, and since they had no idea where or when she was, seeking out help seemed like the only logical response to this situation. Ramses and Marie, on the other hand, wanted to continue on to Ex-467, where a time tech warehouse was waiting for them to break and enter. The rationale for this was that there had to be something there that could help them instead. Leona didn’t agree. Mirage and Niobe were known variables, while the warehouse could turn out to be completely empty for all they knew, or even just pretty much impregnable. One might think that the result would be obvious, but Marie’s vote held more power, as it was her sister who they were trying to locate. In the end, they kept on course, especially since Angela herself seemed rather excited for this mission, and even though she would like to be here with them, she would be more upset if they skipped it altogether on her account. Marie knew how her mind worked.

When they returned to the timestream in 2440, they immediately learned something about their destination that they could not have guessed before. So far, every Ex- designation referred to either a planet, or a person, with the planetary designations being significantly shorter, and the personal designations including the number of their planet of origin. Ex-467 was either a space station, or a ship. Its design included main thrusters that suggested it could be navigated away from the host star that it was orbiting, but the shape itself implied that it was meant to remain a stationary hub at all times. There were tons of ports on it, but none of them was in use at the moment, at least not the exterior ones. There could be large bays somewhere they couldn’t see. It was difficult for their scans to penetrate the extremely thick hull.

Ramses was able to detect teleportation suppressor field generators, however, they were turned off. Mateo and Olimpia were relieved by this until Leona pointed out that they were probably not there to keep people out, but to trap any thieves inside in the event of a breach. If they were going to break in, teleporting was likely the worst way to do it. “Why wouldn’t we break in?” Marie questioned. “Why did we just travel all this way if not to go in and shake some shit up?”

“Poor choice of words,” Leona said apologetically. “All I’m saying is that no one teleports, okay? Not even internally. It’s too dangerous. We are going in...as long as everyone still wants that.”

Marie stepped forward authoritatively. “Yes, everyone wants that.” She glared at Mateo, who was incidentally the most vocal against this route, since they still had no idea what they would be up against.

Mateo regretted being so adamant in his position, but this development only proved his point. Everything they knew about this world came from people who Vitalie!613 had spoken to on the resort world. But they conveniently left out that it wasn’t a planet at all, which placed all intelligence they had regarding the Goldilocks Corridor in question, especially when it came to this place. “Yes, we do,” Mateo said, hoping to earn back some points with Marie.

Ramses nodded. “All right, the computer calculated the safest, most distant point of ingress that’s still large enough for the Vellani Ambassador to dock. We don’t want it to be too big, or our arrival might be noticed. It still might be. We don’t know a whole lot about their security measures.”

“Right,” Leona jumped in. “That’s why we stick together, no matter what. People say that in movies all the time, and it never works out. We can’t afford to get separated, though. If teleportation is our only escape, we absolutely must do it at the same time. That’s the contingency, and we only get one shot.”

“What are we waiting for?” Marie asked impatiently. “Let’s get on with it. It may take us a while to find an alternate self locator, or whatever might help.”

“Hold on,” Mateo urged. “Maybe we shouldn’t get on with it. I think I have a plan that necessitates us waiting. We’ve done something like it before, Leona and I.”

He explained his idea to them, and then they reformulated it together. It immediately called for a reversal of Leona’s order for them to stay together. It was all about misdirection. The Ambassador’s holographic generators were making them look like one of the ships they saw in guardian orbit over Ex-908, which was the planet that was constantly being attacked to test the Empire’s defensive technology. If they ran into other people, Marie was making herself up to look like someone who could not be denied. She was quickly becoming the best at impersonations. Olimpia would remain quiet and invisible the whole time unless they ran into trouble. Ramses and Leona made themselves look like random people that they knew from their pasts, who were not likely to be in any Exin historical records. Mateo was still particularly bad at all the powers, so he was just wearing a physical disguise of a beard and glasses. He was also going to keep his head down, and look like he was the lowest man on the totem pole here. He essentially was, so it wasn’t that great of a stretch. Then again, he was the one who was noticing everyone else’s strengths, and came up with this division of labor in the first place, so he wasn’t totally useless.

A group of guards filed into the room, pointing weapons at them as Leona, stepped out of the ship, alone at first. “State your business, strangers,” the leader demanded of them.

Leona stood tall, and inspected the guards with a cold look on her face. It was the face of a girl she knew in elementary school, aged up to her twenties. “Lower your weapons for the Oaksent,” she commanded.

Ramses appeared from the darkness first, followed closely by Marie to his left, but she no longer looked like herself. She was Bronach Oaksent now, Jacobson-Cline Father of the Goldilocks Corridor, Despot of the Exin Empire, Douchebag of the Milky Way Galaxy. She was their enemy. Mateo followed at her flank in rags as Oaksent’s own personal slave. They didn’t know whether he actually had slaves, but it was a decent educated guess. Plus, they figured that they didn’t have to specify Mateo’s role.

“Oh my God,” the leader uttered. He and the rest of the guards knelt down, but in the worst way they had ever seen. They placed the butt of their respective guns against the floor, and rested their foreheads against the muzzle. They weren’t about to pull the triggers, but it was a horrific sign of deference to an evil leader. Was this what everyone did in the presence of their god-king?

The rest of the team could feel Marie’s reluctance to let them treat her this way, but that wasn’t what the real Oaksent would do. They sent her feelings of support and encouragement, so she composed herself, and pretended like this was all perfectly normal, and not profoundly disturbing at all. She cleared her throat. “Not long ago, I sent a team here to extract an object for me as a test. You failed that test when you failed to report the item missing. Do not feel bad, these were the elites, trained personally by me. And lucky for you, I am now giving you the chance to redeem yourselves. My team did not remove the object from the station. They hid it somewhere else. Search the warehouse now, and bring it to me. The first person to come to me with the correct answer will be rewarded with a permanent life on Ex-613.”

“Sir, if I may,” one of the guards near the back asked, carefully letting his head up. “Many of us have families. Will they be allowed to join the winner on Ex-613?”

Marie waited to respond, trying to decide what Oaksent would say. The most obvious answer was yes. That would only incentivize them even more in this snipe hunt. But that didn’t sound like something the real man would agree to. Remember, he was a ruthless dick. She came up with a compromise. “They will be given their own opportunities to join you. Their place on that world is not guaranteed, but I won’t deny it outright either..”

“Thank you, sir. You are most magnanimous,” the inquisitive one replied.

“Go. Go now. Spread the word to everyone else here!” she ordered as they were running out of the room. “Find me that missing object!” They waited until everyone was gone. “Oh my God, I can’t believe that worked.”

“Ya did good, kid,” Mateo said, throwing an arm around her shoulder.

Just then, a guard came back into the room with a smirk on her face. “I was just transferred here from Ex-42,” she said. “I met you while I was there, sir. Do you remember that?”

“Of course not,” Marie responded. “Why would I recall someone like you?”

She smirked. “Well, you were on your way back to Ex-420. There’s no way you could be here now. You were heading in the wrong direction.”

Marie did her best to look like an offended ruler. “I ordered a change in course. I don’t have to explain it to the likes of you.”

“It’s true, the real Bronach Oaksent would owe me nothing, but you’re not him. There are other issues with your ruse here. For one, Oaksent likes the ladies. He doesn’t own male servants, because he can’t impregnate them with the next generation of servants. So I don’t know who that guy’s supposed to be.” She nodded towards Mateo. “And who’s that crouched on the hull of your ship?” They all fell for it. They spun around to see who the hell she was talking about, only to find that no one was there. When they looked back, the smart guard had her weapon trained on them. “Put your guns down.” They heard a short pounding sound as she lurched, and widened her eyelids. Then her eyeballs rolled out of view, and she fell to the floor, unconscious, but very much alive.

Olimpia briefly made herself visible to the team as she was still holding the gun over her victim, which she had used as a blunt instrument. “Good plan, Matty.”

“Except it’s hard to see how beautiful you are when we can’t see you at all,” Mateo acknowledged. He placed a hand softly upon her cheek as she disappeared again. “Y’all go look for the central database,” he told the other three. “Olimpia, you think you can find the security room on your own? I need to secure this one in a closet, or something.”

“Yes, sir,” her voice replied out of the aether.

They broke into their groups, and went off on their separate missions. What Mateo didn’t tell them was that he wasn’t hiding the guard somewhere on the station. He stuck her in hock on the Vellani Ambassador. A half hour later, midnight central hit, giving the station an entire year to cool down, and relax their defenses.

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The Edge: The Eagle Has Landed (Part I)

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Leona closed the door behind her, and let the portal close along with it. She turned and reopened the door on this side to confirm as much. A part of her hoped that her husband and friends would be able to join in on this special occasion, but she was not surprised that they weren’t. There was a reason they called this group The Shortlist. It will presumably be even shorter now that Ramses was dead. Either that or they’ll pull him from earlier in the timeline, which seemed a little unlikely since there was not much the two of them didn’t tell each other prior to his death. He probably would have let it slip at some point. There never had to be eleven members, though. That was just how it worked out. Perhaps they will find someone worthy of replacing his seat, or maybe they won’t. She didn’t know who was organizing this whole thing. No one was really in charge, but Hokusai Gimura often found herself in a pretty strong leadership role.

They were here to discuss the future of the Milky Way Galaxy in the main sequence parallel reality. Most of the public had seen or learned by now that there was something else going on in the universe that they didn’t understand. A message appeared in the night sky that could not have formed using conventional technology. Light just does not move fast enough to join stars together like that in a brand new constellation. Plus, the stars that were used to display the message weren’t even on the same celestial plane, as they never were. There was just no logical explanation for the message. For now, no one had to come up with one yet, but the longer they put it off, the trouble it might cause. Someone has to answer for it, and the energy god who actually wrote the message wasn’t going to do it.

“The Eagle has landed,” Thor Thompson said into his watch as Leona passed.

“Hey. What are you doing here?” Leona asked. He was intelligent, and well-versed in the world of salmon and choosers, but he was not part of the Shortlist.

“I’m just here to watch.”

Pribadium Delgado glided up, and took Leona by the hand. “He’s been saying that to everyone. Everyone is The Eagle.”

“What does he mean that he’s here to watch?”

“Come. We’ll explain.”

As Pribadium was leading her down the corridor, they heard Thor repeat the phrase when Weaver walked in through her own portal, from wherever it was she was.

They turned into a room which might have been the observation deck of a space station. A large array of windows was showing them the star that they were orbiting. “Where are we?” Leona asked.

“Altair. The locals have agreed to host,” Pribadium answered.

Leona kept looking at the beautiful star for a moment before turning her head. “I’m not familiar. Not the star, I’ve heard of Altair. I just don’t know who lives here.”

Pribadium smiled. “The Altares, of course.”

Leona chuckled. “All right.”

“Follow me. This is their diplomacy station, which they call Diplomacht.” She continued through the corridor until they came into an open space. It was a huge expanse with simulated daylight, plantlife, including trees that would be the envy of the tallest redwood, and walking paths. And these paths were being walked on, but not by humans or other humanoid entities. They were animals. They were intelligent animals. Some were wearing clothes, some were carrying on conversations with each other. The majority of them were the great apes, like orangutans and chimps, but there were plenty of canines, felines, and even birds. It was difficult to tell whether the birds were smart too, because they were just flying around and hanging out, but everyone else was definitely of comparable intelligence to humans.

“Uplifted animals. How did I not know about this?”

“You’ve been pretty busy, going to other worlds, other realities. Besides, this is a different timeline than the one you left. It’s close to what you recall, I’m sure, but you can’t trust anything you thought you knew from the past.”

“You seem to know a lot about what I’ve been up to,” Leona noted.

“Your grandfather filled us in.”

“Labhrás is here?” Leona questioned.

“We sent him back to where he belongs,” Pribadium explained. “He still has to father your father, so your father can father you.”

Leona nodded, and continued to watch the animals moving about like a creeper.

A bonobo hopped over to them. “Take a picture! It’ll last longer!”

“I’m terribly sorry,” she said to him.

“I’m kidding,” the bonobo replied with a laugh. “It’s okay to be intrigued. If I saw a cricket pushing a baby carriage, I would probably stare too.” He held out a hand. “Hello, my name is Gresham Oberti, Exalted Ten. I run this station. If there’s anything you need, you can ask me, and I’ll do what I can.”

“Exalted Ten?” Leona asked with a slight grimace, embarrassed by her ignorance.

“There are degrees to which an organism may be uplifted. Level Ten means that I have the tools I would need to elevate myself to superintelligence status, but I have not actually done that. In my opinion, Ten is the best. I don’t wanna know everything, and I don’t understand anyone who does. Anyway, I have to introduce myself to the rest of the Shortlist, but remember what I said, I’m here to help.” He ran off.

“Altair,” Leona repeated. “Exalted ones. Cute.”

“We didn’t name them that, or choose this as their homestar. They chose for themselves, and the migration was authorized by the Earthan government. There are plenty of them who still live there, of course, and on the other worlds. They just wanted a home of their own, as we all do. You’ve been gone a long time, and as I said, this is not the timeline that you remember.”

“Yeah. Our actions changed a lot.”

“Not just yours. There were other teams crossing the parallels, creating new timelines. I’ve done it a few times myself.”

“What does any of this matter?” Leona asked. “The meeting, I mean. You know what’s about to happen, don’t you?”

“The Reconvergence? Yeah, we don’t have to worry about that.”

Leona shook her head. “I’ve spoken to people who know the fate of the universe. The main sequence will be taken into the Sixth Key. If there was ever any hope that the public could be kept in the dark regarding time powers, it has been sent down the drain. It will happen. If nothing else, the Parallel and the Fifth Division will see to that.”

“It’s complicated, but don’t you worry,” Pribadium began. “We’re not going to be in the Sixth Key. We’re staying right here. Now let’s keep going. We’ll be convening tomorrow in Lylla Hall. It’s across Town Square.”

Leona looked back to see Weaver in the middle of a conversation with Thor and Gresham. Everyone on the Shortlist was probably taking the same route. This was all planned and structured, but by whom? They walked across Town Square, and entered the double doors under the huge sign that read Lylla Hall. They first entered the vestibule. Standing there in full military dress was General Bariq Medley from planet Teagarden. He was once in charge of the Quantum Colony game that millions of people played without realizing that it wasn’t a game at all, but they were in control of real star systems light years away, some of which were inhabited by clueless natives.

“Madam Matic,” Medley said. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“Likewise, I hope,” Leona replied. “I did not expect you to be here.” She looked over at Pribadium, who wasn’t looking back. “I did not expect any of these people.”

Pribadium cleared her throat. “Is she free?”

“She’s inside, finalizing the audience roster,” Medley told her.

“Audience?” Leona questioned. “What audience? Pribadium Delgado, who is she, and what audience are we talking about? Will people be watching us?”

The door to the meeting hall opened. A familiar face stepped through. It was Divinia Tiongsong. They met her in the Third Rail, but she didn’t say who exactly she was, or why the global brain scanner logged her as an error who had experienced an unusual amount of time for someone in the rather primitive reality. “It’s okay, General, I’ll take it from here.”

He nodded, not just respectfully, but reverently. She was more powerful than him. “Ma’am.” He walked away with his entourage of officers.

“I could hear you talking from in there,” Divina said to Leona. “Yes, there will be an audience, and no, it was not our idea. Members of the Shortlist made this decision. Why you were not involved is not something that I can answer, but in your absence, they convened a quorum, and requested certain things from us. Firstly, they did not want to hold the meeting on Earth, Teagarden, or other politically charged locations. They chose Altair, and the Altarens obliged, following my facilitation. If you take issue with his, I suggest you speak with the others. As the term goes, the public has been deveiled. It’s my job to keep everyone safe while you decide what that means.”

“Okay.” It seemed wrong and weird, but what could she do? Leona wields the least amount of power and influence amongst the group. Honestly, she’s always felt that her inclusion was more out of pity than anything, so if this is how the others want to do it, then she won’t object unless someone else does first. The question was, who would be in this audience, and would they have any say in the decision-making process?

Weaver and Thor came into the vestibule. The former was just as confused as Leona was. Thor just acted fortunate to be included. Right behind them was Ramses Abdulrashid. He did show up. “Oh hey, Lee-Lee. Shocker I know. I’ll explain how I survived the destruction of Phoenix Station. But first...I found Olimpia.”

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Microstory 1122: Saxon Parker

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While a select few run around with special temporal powers, the rest of the world develops pretty much unimpeded. Even though faster-than-light travel is clearly possible, the people who possess such capabilities have kept themselves secret. They don’t do this to hoard their power, but because exposing oneself means exposing others, and no one has the right to do that. If they were to come together, and create some kind of council, they might be able to agree upon a time period to reveal themselves to the world, but this has never taken shape. At the turn of the 23rd century, some time-based technology is finally made public, but its use is heavily regulated, application limited, and true nature disguised as advanced quantum research that was already heading in this direction anyway. In the meantime, without being able to reach the nearest planet in a matter of minutes, humanity continued on its upward trajectory of expansion. We traveled to Luna, and Mars, and the moons of the gas giants. We sought out new worlds around neighboring stars, and made plans to explore the farthest reaches of the galaxy. One man who was part of this was named Saxon Parker. Before Thor Thompson could travel with his family to create a permanent presence on Mars, pioneers like Saxon needed to do this first with Earth’s moon. Luna became an important staging ground for Mars missions beginning in 2024, when a permanent outpost was established. This outpost was designed to manufacture vital materials, and process fuel, so that any ship wishing to reach Mars would be able to get far enough. In another reality, and with a different name, Saxon chose a career of military service in the air force, but in the new timeline, he remained a civilian. His education was expedited, and he became an astronaut by the time he turned eighteen. In February of 2026, he went on his first trip to the moon, and he never returned to Earth again, except for a relatively brief mission that the public cannot know about. He helped construct and expand the lunar base, so by the time the first Martian passenger mission took off, they were ready to provide assistance. In the fall of 2028, with Mars at a decent opposition to Earth, Saxon joined one of the crews that were bound for the red planet. He remained here for some time, using his expert knowledge to build even grander habitats, for an even larger settlement. After another few years, he began to move out to other worlds in the solar system, making sure researchers and colonists had everything they needed to survive so far from Earth. Then, when he was 223 years old, he boarded his first interstellar ship, to a nearby system called Gatewood. And from there, the entire Milky Way was at his fingertips.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 22, 2229

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While Mateo was gone, Greer Thorpe managed to alter the time bubble, so that the entire continent of Comron was experiencing real-time, while the rest of the universe was moving at an incredibly slow rate. Some Maramon warriors and spies were free on Comron, and some human prisoners were stuck on the other side, but this was never going to be an easy or perfect fix. The idea was to give a few smart people enough time to come up with something more permanent, so that eleven billion humans would survive. As for the outliers, they would have to deal with that later. Serif was spending her day mulling over some plans for rescue missions, but they would not be practical until the majority of refugees were all the way in the Gatewood cylinders.

Mateo had nothing to do. A better man might be able to contribute significantly until the timejump, but he wasn’t qualified to help with anything. Leona could do more in one day than many engineers could in a year, but Mateo was useless in the attempt to expand the power of the Muster Lighter. He had new experience as a world leader, but Ramses and Goswin were already working on that. He decided he would just wander the primary centrifugal cylinder, and see what was out there. He couldn’t get too comfortable, though, because every time he tried that in the past, some new enemy reared his or her head. So far, so good; this place was beautiful. And impressively expansive. They said it could hold nearly three billion people.

He went up to the platform on top of one of the gigantic megastructures; a design adopted from the ones built on Earth. He then stepped onto the automated train, and asked it to take him on the scenic route. All the arcs looked exactly the same, but they were surrounded by majestic vegetation. This was basically an entire continent in cylindrical form, and possibly the coolest thing Mateo had ever seen. He was enjoying his solitude, which he hadn’t felt in decades, when he noticed some light coming from one of the living units in a tower down below. He instructed the train to stop, then carefully made his way towards the light. It was pretty difficult figuring out exactly which unit he was looking for, but he eventually did, and knocked on the door.

The person who opened the door was none other than...someone he did not recognize. She was even more shocked to see him than he was to find her. “Who are you?”

“Mateo Matic. And you?” The safest way to speak to someone who was where they weren’t supposed to be was politely.

“Cassidy.”

“How did you get here, Cassidy?”

She shut her mouth tight, as if leaving it open would risk letting a truth out that she wanted to protect.

“I can help you, Cassidy, but I need to know what the problem is.”

“I woke up like this,” she answered.

That wasn’t that weird for him. “You went to sleep in your own bed, and when you woke up, you were suddenly in a strange place?”

“I wasn’t in my own bed; I was in a hotel, but pretty much, yes.”

“What year is it?”

She didn’t like hearing this question, but she wasn’t too confused about it, so this kind of technology must have already caused her to question her reality. “I don’t know.”

“I mean...what year should it be, for you?”

“2019,” she finally answered. “I assume that’s...wrong?”

“2229,” he said simply.

“How long have you been here? Did it happen to you too?”

“A couple days. No, I...well,” it was hard to explain that he came here suddenly as well, but did so on purpose.

She squinted at him curiously, but decided to put a pin in it. “The sun looks different.”

He looked in the general direction of the ground, outside of which was outer space, and Barnard’s Star. He couldn’t actually see the sun from this vantage point. I’m afraid...that’s a different sun.”

“I assumed, but I couldn’t be sure. How far is Earth?”

“Five-something light years. Maybe six. I forgot my tape measure,” he joked.

“You seem to know a lot for having only arrived two days ago. I’ve been here for almost two months.”

“What have you been eating?”

“I figured out how to work the food synthesizer. This place is ready to be inhabited, but it isn’t. Are we alone?”

“There are a few others, back at ops.”

“Ops?” she questioned. “You military.”

“No. Look, I don’t know how much you know, but you are what we call a salmon.”

“What, I’m part fish?”

“It’s just a nickname, for people who travel through time against their will.”

“Are you a salmon too?”

He nodded. “Yes. So I only came here a couple days ago, but I’ve been doing this for...” That was even more difficult to explain, what with all the detours, and alternate realities, and time bubbles, and being torn out of time. So he just settled on the vague word, “longer.”

“I’ve been exploring, even though the internet always says to stay put and wait for rescue, but I couldn’t get that train to work. I thought I heard it moving over my head, though. Were you on that?”

He nodded again. “We would just need to put you in the system, and authorize voice control.”

“What the hell is this place?”

“Giant space station. Lots of people need a place to live, so my friends built this place, and a handful of others like it.”

“They did it on their own?”

“Robots did most the legwork.”

“How do I get home?”

“You complete whatever mission the powers that be want you to complete.”

“And what would that be?”

He shook his head. “Most of us don’t ever know. We usually just try to do the right thing, and help people any way we can.” He went on when she didn’t respond to this, “you’re not random, though. You must have something that someone here needs. What do you do for a living? What are your hobbies? What are your skills?”

“I’m a stripper, I don’t have any skills.”

“You can dance,” Mateo said.

“I can swing around. I’m not one of those trained dancers trying to pay her way through nursing school. I’m just a stripper.”

“Hm. Maybe you’re distantly related to someone here, or you’re destined to fall in love with someone? There’s gotta be a reason. Either the PTB wanted you here, or you wanted to come. No one travels through time and space on accident. Unless...”

“Unless what?”

“Well, there are naturally occurring tears in the spacetime continuing. Some people can access them, but they usually use some device. I’ve never heard of anyone falling into one unintentionally. Otherwise, it would happen all the time.”

“I could be a statistical anomaly.”

“Possibly. There’s one person we can ask, but he’s hard to contact, and I don’t know if he’ll be willing to come all the way out here.”

“I don’t suppose I could talk you into trying?”

“Nah, I’m glad to do it. But I’m going to need to borrow your synthesizer.”

She stepped to the side, and let him in. “It’s not really mine. This was just the apartment I woke up in.”

He took his notepad out of his bag, and handed it to her. “This is a list of every time traveler I know, organized by salmon, choosing ones, and other. Let me know if you recognize anyone’s name.”

She took a cursory glance at the list. “What does the cross symbol mean?”

“It means stay away. They’re bad guys.”

“One of them has a cross symbol, but it’s crossed out.”

Mateo chuckled. “Horace Reaver. We made up.” He walked over to the synthesizer, and requested it build for him two replicas of the game jenga.

“You wanna play a game.”

“It’ll all make sense once I have it set up.” When the printer was finished, which was faster still than the ones Leona used in the 22nd century, he started setting up the blocks. “Any luck?”

“Well, I recognize this one, but not as a person.”

He looked at where she was pointing. “Yeah, her parents didn’t live on that street, but we think they liked it as a name. We don’t have the full explanation, though. You live in Kansas City?”

“Lawrence. Is that important?”

“Is Kansas important to time travel? Actually, it is. Lots of us are from there; we don’t know why. I lived in Topeka.”

“Speaking of lots of people; this list is long. What are the asterisks?”

“Those are people who I’ve heard mentioned, but never met. There are more empty pages than filled ones. No one seems to know quite how many of us there are in total.”

When Mateo was Patronus of Dardius, one of his constituents sought audience with him, and spoke of a way to contact The Delegator. He was considered middle management between salmon and the powers that be, and since he didn’t own a cell phone, he could only be reached one way.

“That’s what you think!” he uttered in feigned outrage.

The wall disappeared, and revealed Stonehenge behind it. The Delegator stepped towards the portal, but did not cross over. “Mister Matic, I’ve already told you, I’m not sending you back to Bungula to get your girlfriend.”

“Wife,” Mateo corrected. “And I’m not here for that; I’m at Gatewood, and she’s already on her way. I just need to know who this person is.”

The Delegator looked over at Cassidy. “Hell am I supposed to know?”

“She’s from 2019, and I don’t think she’s a chooser.”

He was growing more irritated, as he fumbled with his glasses. “Step closer.”

She took a few steps forward, but was wary of the portal, as she should have been.

“No, no clue. It must be a mistake. I can take her off your hands.”

She stepped back again. “Wait a minute.”

“You don’t wanna go back?” Mateo asked her.

“Well, it’s just...”

“Go on,” he prodded.

“I do recognize another name, and I don’t just mean Juan Ponce de León, which I would love to hear about.” She was pointing at one of the asterisked names.

“Asuk? I don’t know much about him, except that he was Paige Turner’s friend, and lived, like a thousand years in the future.”

She shook her head. “It’s very familiar. I mean, it’s not exactly a normal name, and I can’t place it, but I feel like I know it. I know it. I have to find him. See, I even know it’s a him.”

Mateo looked up to the Delegator.

“What, you want me to give you permission? I don’t care. She wants to stay, she stays.” And with that, the portal closed.

“Umm, if you change your mind, I can’t promise I can get him back. I didn’t summon him, I just called him. Sometimes he screens and ignores his calls.”

“I understand,” Cassidy said. “I have to find out who this Asuk is, and how I know him, and my answers must be here.”

Paige wasn’t here, though he didn’t really know where she was at this point, since the last time he saw her was in Leona’s memories back in the last century.

“I can’t promise we’ll find him either. Space and time are very big and long.”

“Well, in the meantime, maybe I can be in charge of entertainment. If you work at a place called ops, I imagine people need to relax.”

On the train ride back to where all his friends were working, he filled Cassidy in a bit more about his life, and what he had been through since leaving 2014. He introduced her to everybody, and set her up with one of the grave chambers on the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Come midnight central, he exited the timestream, and didn’t return until 2230, where he learned Cassidy had exited and returned at the same moments.”

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