Microstory 2455: Flumendome

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If you don’t know what a flume is, it’s a waterslide. I mean, it’s a certain type of waterslide, but who am I to get bogged down in the intricacies of linguistics? Oh, that’s right, I’m a linguist. I suppose this rolls off the tongue better than Waterslidedome. Or Waterslidome. Well, hmm. Waterslidome. Yeah, it should be that, but pronounce it like slid. Whatever, it doesn’t matter what the name is, people! Waterslides is the name of the game. I don’t even know how many there are, because I did not read the prospectus. I saw that word, then saw the main picture, and I was hooked. I’ve loved waterslides ever since I was a kid. I remember going to the waterpark every summer, but just once per year. Oh, I would beg my parents to take us more than once, but they wouldn’t do it. It wasn’t about the money, it was about keeping it special, and learning delayed gratification. Parenting is a crapshoot; when I had kids, I learned that myself. I don’t fault them for their line of reasoning. I still wish I could have gone more, but we’re all immortal now, so yay, I have all the time in the universe! Back to Flumendome, this is the best park I’ve ever seen by far. Since it’s contained in this dome, its engineering limitations are a lot farther away from the ground than its Earthan equivalents. So are the slides themselves. The best one starts at the zenith, and goes all the way down to the surface. Again, I didn’t read the prospectus, so I don’t know how long it is, but I know it’s more than 41.5 kilometers. It could be double that, or more. I don’t have any friends so I shared a raft with some lovely, kind strangers. They calculated that it was probably close to 120 kilometers, which is insane to me. I grew up in the 2080s and ’90s; we didn’t have anything anywhere near this scale. It takes just an hour to get all the way down, and there is no escape. You’re moving too fast, and trying to fish you out of there would just be unsafe, for you, and anyone you’re with, or behind you. If you don’t think you can handle it, then absolutely don’t try. Fortunately, you can start small, with some regular waterslides, and work your way up. I told you, we’re immortal, baby, don’t be strict about your time. There is another that starts at the top, and goes all the way down, but it’s not as steep, and not as fast. It takes about four hours to get to the bottom, and if it’s a desperate emergency, a rescue drone can reportedly extract you, but only during lulls, so again, proceed with caution. I don’t think they’ve had to do it before, but I did hear about someone needing to get off this next one, which sounds like that wasn’t hard at all. The slide is the craziest one of all in some respects. It also starts way up there, but it’s even longer. We can’t even begin to estimate its length. It takes a full 24 hours to get down. They can extract you because you’re moving so slowly. It’s like being on a river, except if you climbed over the edge, you would fall off and die. Fortunately, that’s probably impossible, because the sides are so steep and wet, you’d have to be a tree frog, or something. And why would you? I’ve been talking a lot about extremes, but this place has a slide for everyone. Its prospectus is one of the most comprehensive (which is why I didn’t read it), but if you’re unsure, I suggest you take a look at it, and find what you’re looking for. It’s a lot of fun, for people of all ages.

Microstory 2056: Good Word For Me

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My mother always told me that the best way to succeed is to know people. I never put much stock into that, because I didn’t want to believe it. I remember watching some movie or TV show a couple of years ago. A guy was trying to get out of a speeding ticket, or something, so he promised the cop to help his son get into college. I think he was lying about knowing the Dean, or whatever. It was a ridiculous scenario. The speeder didn’t know this kid, or whether he belonged at that college, but the cop was willing to overlook that, because he was desperate. I guess he expected the speeder to make a phone call, and just randomly drop the name of an applicant who should go to the top of the pile. I can’t remember how all that turned out, but the fact is that networking is real. Only twice have I applied to a job, secured an interview, and then gotten that job. When I was still a kid, my dad signed me up for my lifeguarding certification. A friend from church owned a maintenance contractor. A friend of a friend knew about a warehouse who was hiring a lot of seasonal employees. That’s mostly how I’ve conducted business, and I find it incredibly annoying. Don’t put out a want ad online for employees if you’re just going to hire your old roommate’s slacker nephew, okay? But despite my “principles” I’ve played along with the game. I’ve taken my opportunities. I jumped at the chance to sleep in this finished attic from the nurse at the free clinic, and when she had a lead on a job, I jumped at that too. I have an interview for an entry-level gardening position tomorrow, but my landlord is pretty confident that I’ll get it, because no one else seems to be applying, and because she put in a good word for me. That’s all it takes sometimes. I don’t like it, but I’ll benefit from it, because if I tried to go through this life without any help, it would turn out to be a rather short one, I’ll tell ya that much. So anyway, wish me luck, and all that. Or don’t, if it goes against your principles.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 18, 2409

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No one came for them. Constance detected an unusual energy draw that came from the Dante, to their mysterious captors, which occurred at exactly midnight central, but other than that, nothing happened. They didn’t even lose much power as a result of whatever that was. Perhaps it was just a strange way of scanning them, because a few minutes later, the cargo hold opened up again, and spit them out unharmed. The ship accelerated to higher speeds, and then disappeared with a reframe engine.

“What the hell was that?” Olimpia questioned.

“No idea,” Leona answered, “but it’s April 18 2409.” She took a pause. “Constance, run a level three diagnostic on all systems.”

“There’s no such thing as a level three diagnostic,” Constance replied. “You made that up.”

“Actually, I can’t take credit.”

“Right away, sir,” Constance said with a slight smile. She went off to complete the task as requested. No sooner was she finished with it, having turned up nothing of interest or concern, did another ship appear out of nowhere. This one was much smaller—and less foreboding—and it responded to their calls.

“Hello, this is the Dardieti Outpost Boyce Shuttle One. Do I have a Mateo Matic on the line?”

“This is Mateo. Go ahead.”

“I’ve been rerouted to find you. It’s taken me a long time, but we received the message you sent out last year. Your presence has been requested on Dardius proper.”

“For what purpose?” Leona asked.

“It has something to do with the future, and your family, or the future of your family,” Boyce One replied. “That’s all I know. I’ve given the message, and confirmed that you’ve received it. Now I really must return to my work. This has been a really...” He mumbled and trailed off a little before remembering to switch off the mic.

“Thank you, Boyce One. If it is required of you, you can let them know that we are on our way, and that we’ll be there as soon as possible. We’re on our pattern.”

He didn’t say anything further, but he surely heard the last message. His little ship flew off in the same direction as the other one, though not at reframe speeds. Dardieti Outpost. How many of those were there, and where? All the way out here, they were nearly three million light years from home. This meant that that was how far Team Matic was going to have to travel to reach it themselves. The Dante wasn’t any more capable of crossing that distance in any reasonable span of time than the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was. With only the reframe engine, it would take them four thousand years. They either needed to reach out to their friends with true faster-than-light capabilities, or a Nexus. Though, the Dante could not fit inside of a Nexus transport cavity, so if they used that method, it would have to be jury-rigged, and they only ever got that to work in the Parallel.

“Does anyone live near the Nexus in Antarctica?” Angela asked.

“No, they abandoned the continent entirely,” Leona explained. “There was a time when people were able to live there because climate breakdown made it more hospitable to humans, but then they started to solve those problems, and made it colder again. They could still survive there if they wanted to, of course, but the population eventually dwindled into nothing. Either way, they weren’t in that region, no.”

“He asked about me,” Mateo pointed out. “Not the rest of you. He didn’t say anything about the rest of the team. I can go alone.”

“We’re not headed to enemy territory, Matty,” Ramses said with a laugh. “We can go. Might as well. I hear it sports some nice vacation spots. I was too busy to partake when I was living there before. Maybe we’ll get lucky, and we won’t be there to solve some kind of crisis.”

“It clearly took years for us to get the message,” Leona reasoned, “and could take us years of real time to arrive. I detected no sense of urgency in the messenger’s voice.”

“Maybe that had more to do with the messenger himself,” Marie reasoned right back. “Just because he wasn’t in a hurry doesn’t mean there is no hurry.”

“True. Dante?” Leona started tapping on the main console. “Teleport to these coordinates please.”

“Teleporting now.”

The darkness of space they could see through the viewscreens was replaced by the brightness of the snow. They opened the hatch, and let in the cold. It was a surreal feeling, knowing that it was profoundly frigid out here, but being basically unfazed by it. Ramses’ 3.0 model substrates were working well for them, and they were already clearly better than the previous model. “Hey, Dante, what’s the exact temperature?”

“It’s negative forty degrees,” Dante responded.

“Is that Fahrenheit or Celsius?” Olimpia asked.

Leona and Constance laughed. “Yes.”

“Why is that so funny?” Mateo questioned.

“They’re the same,” Leona explained.

The two of them stared at her.

“They’re the same at that degree,” Constance clarified. “They converge.”

“Got it. Thanks. Now it’s funny.” Not really.

“It’s underground, right?” Marie moves on from the subject. “How do we find it?”

“Hey, Opsocor!” Leona shouted into the wind aimlessly.

They heard the sound of metal against metal behind the Dante. They turned the corner to find a hidden trap door opening for them several meters away. They walked over to it and hopped inside.

“Opsocor, please teleport us to the main floor.”

Nothing happened.

“Wait, we can’t just teleport ourselves?” Angela asked.

“Can you?” Leona asked. “We’re not authorized to do so. The system is quite sophisticated.”

“Maybe it will work for you since you’re the one who got this giant hatch open,” Mateo suggested. “Leona, Queen of the Nexus.”

“That’s not the real problem. If Opsocor can’t do it, maybe she can’t do anything.” Still, she jumped herself away. Ten minutes later, she was knocking on the next hidden trapdoor, which they had to open from this side. They  jumped down to the second level, and then did it again to get to the control room below that.

“Is everything okay?” Ramses asked.

“No,” Leona answered with a sigh. “She’s not responding to me. I don’t know why not. But nothing is turning on either, except for this emergency lighting.”

“I wanted to wait until everyone was here,” Opsocor’s voice came in through the speakers. “I am a prerecorded facsimile of the one you know as Venus Opsocor. I have access control over the system, which allows me to let in anyone for safety concerns, or in your case, to explain what’s happened. This Nexus building has been taken offline. It has been too significantly altered, and therefore automatically removed from the network. It is incapable of transporting anyone anywhere. Do not attempt to—no. Yes, sorry. Shifting response path. You are indeed authorized to make attempts at repair. I am unable to run diagnostic tests, or provide you with any technical specifications, or troubleshooting assistance. Again, this is a prerecorded facsimile with limited response paths. I was not made aware of what has been broken within the system. I am here as a result of whatever those changes were, which you will have to correct yourself if you want to bring the station back to operational standards. Do not attempt to converse with me. I will not respond to any calls. This message will not be repeated. Thank you, and have a nice rest of your life.”

“So essentially,” Marie began, “it’s broken, but the AI doesn’t know how it’s broken, because that message was recorded just in case something like this happened.”

“It’s not an AI, it’s a real person,” Ramses corrected.

“Yeah,” Leona agreed. She got on her hands and knees, and started to get to work on the main computer.

Meanwhile, Mateo was shining his watch light through the observation window, and trying to use his arms to block ambient light from his eyes. “I think I know what’s wrong with it,” he declares.

Leona got up. “You do?”

“Don’t look so surprised. Can you get the lights on in the Nexus chamber? The drum is missing.”

“The drum?” Leona asked, confused.

“I don’t know what it’s called. It’s the giant thing that hangs over the cavity.”

“Uhh...I don’t know how to get the lights on manually.” She opened the door from the control room, and walked down the steps as everyone else followed. She used her light illusion ability to conjure a nano-sun on the ceiling, which illuminated the whole chamber. Mateo was right, it was totally missing. “That’s not a drum, Mateo. That is the Nexus. Everything else is either just the interface to it, or lets you control the rest of the building, like the lights. It’s really the only thing you need, and somebody took it. They took the whole thing out. What’s left doesn’t even look damaged.”

“What should we do?” Constance asked. “I don’t have the data on this thing; I wasn’t allowed, but I’m still smart, so I could help.”

“There’s no way to fix it. It’s like a car without an engine, or a boat without water. There’s nothing to repair. We would have to get it back, or replace it. I wouldn’t know how to build one. She told us that we won’t be able to read the manual, and I’ve seen the guts inside before, but not enough to recreate it from nothing. At this point, our only hope is to call the Jameela Jamil.”

“Okay, we’ll do that,” Mateo decided.

“There’s another option, if we don’t want to bother Team Keshida with this,” Ramses said.

“What would that be?”

“We could try to find the second Nexus on Earth.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 9, 2399

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The AOC came this close to catching up with the Constant, and whatever is propelling it through space. It was moving away from its original coordinates at subfractional speeds, probably under the assumption that it would be able to hide itself away without using up too much power. Then, as soon as they detected Mateo, Ramses, and Alyssa’s pursuit it switched the engines on to maximum, and started to stay ahead of them. This is where they have remained since yesterday, with pretty much no hope for the team to overtake them. There’s no way for them to gain an advantage. The reframe engine moves the ship faster than light, but it’s still inextricably linked to the light speed barrier. The Constant apparently has access to this technology, thanks to Pryce himself, no doubt. What they really need is a true faster-than-light drive, though to be fair, if they had that, so would likely the Constant. It’s kind of weird that they don’t, to be honest. Team Keshida figured it out, which means it’s possible, so why didn’t the builders of the facility from deep into the future include a propulsion drive in the original design? They supposedly had multiple contingencies for everything else.

“Is there anything we can do?” Alyssa asks.

“Not unless they falter,” Rames replies. He’s on edge, like a real spaceship captain, even though there’s nothing for him to do. Constance is handling everything.

“Well, if they’re going—as you said—ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine-nine percent the speed of light, can we just tack on a seventh nine? Or hell, even a one would get us there eventually, right?”

“That’s not how it works,” Ramses tries to explain. There are no more decimal places. Adding even a one at the end would be close enough to the speed of light to break the laws of physics.”

“Don’t you break the laws of physics every day with your powers?”

“It’s my theory that all time travel is powered by vacuum energy, which—to simplify it greatly—operates at a level higher than the bounds of the universe, which means it does move faster than light. Our problem is that we don’t have the resources to truly harness its might. We have friends in the main sequence who cracked it, but their ship is gargantuan compared to ours, and I would need more time to study the technology if I wanted to replicate it.”

“Maybe there’s some other loophole?” Alyssa offers.

“There’s one,” Ramses says, “but it won’t work for us. We could theoretically teleport forwards while we’re still moving at reframe speeds, which will cover a little extra ground. Unfortunately, we’re too far from them. It would only have worked if we had caught up to within teleporter range before the max reframe chase began.”

Alyssa frowns, and looks down at the floor, hoping that her uneducated brain can come up with a solution that a super intelligent person wouldn’t think to try, because it’s just too simple. “When’s the last time you tried to call them?” she asks Mateo.

“Twenty minutes ago. They have their heart set on staying away from us.”

“Did you tell them that Leona isn’t here, so they don’t have to worry about her being able to take over?”

“They’re aware. My messages got through, they just aren’t responding anymore.”

Alyssa paces. “Why are they so afraid of us catching up? What did we do so wrong? I mean, I know you’ve had your issues, but from the sound of it, they’re using a lot of energy to keep us at bay.”

“Does seem irrational,” Ramses agrees. “We’re little threat to them.”

Alyssa narrows her eyes at Mateo. “Do you know who all is out there?”

“Besides everyone on the government rocket, Tamerlane, and Danica, anyone else could be there. The facility fits thousands, and could accommodate hundreds at least if they needed to spend the night.”

“Right.” She pauses. “Ramses, how many people have we still not yet found from your little brain scanner; the errors, I mean?”

“According to the last scan, there were three remaining errors. We just haven’t taken the time to look into them. Why?”

“These grave chambers,” she begins, “they can be jettisoned?”

“Umm...yeah. What are you getting at here?”

“She thinks there’s someone in the Constant who has been marked with the timonite,” Mateo finally realizes. “Danica doesn’t want me there, because I would make them disappear.”

“How would they have gotten up there?”

“I don’t know, but think about the math. There were eleven errors in total, including the guy from that other dimension, who didn’t always show up on the scans. Add him to Erlendr, Meredarchos-slash-Erlendr, the woman from Manila whose name I can’t remember, because we let her go...”

“Everest, Curtis, and Aquila-slash-Bhulan,” Ramses finishes. “There’s one missing. How could I have not noticed that?”

“You’ve been pretty busy,” Mateo comforts.

“Wait, did you ask about the grave chamber, because you want to jettison Mateo?” Ramses questions.

“Park him somewhere safe, and retrieve him later,” Alyssa suggests.

“That’s so dangerous,” Ramses argues. “We could get to the Constant, and then find ourselves being locked up in stasis for 10,000 years. The suspended animation tech we have in the grave chambers can’t last that long.”

“Leave him with your little remote thing,” Alyssa puts forth. “If we don’t return in X amount of time, he can replicate himself a new ship.”

“There’s not enough ambient temporal energy out here. The teleporter eats more than the reframe engine, but the reframe engine also requires antimatter, which is even more precious to us at the moment.”

“All the more reason we should stop fighting from behind, and try diplomacy again. It can’t hurt to ask,” Alyssa assumes.

“It can. Trust me, it can.”

“I’ll do it,” Mateo volunteers.

“Matthew, you don’t have—”

“I said I’ll do it.” He slides the door to grave chamber four open. “Now show me how to jettison myself.”

“Let’s not be hasty,” Ramses warns. “That may not be the issue, and even if it is, they may not accept the solution. Constance?”

“Attempting to contact the Constant...again.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 28, 2398

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Kivi has been looking out at the scenery as the car drives down the highway, going the conventional speed, instead of as fast as possible, like Heath likes to drive. Her eyes are wandering now, occasionally looking over at Marie for a split second. Marie notices. “If you have something to say, go ahead,” she says, not aggressively.

“This trip has gotten pretty long,” Kivi points out.

“I can turn up the music, or change it.”

“I’m not bored.”

“There’s a rest stop soon, we can take a break.”

“We’re just...going a lot farther...than you implied when you asked me to accompany you.”

“Oh. We’re going to Springfield.”

Kivi winces. “Now, I don’t know everything that my alternate selves would know, but I know Springfield, and it’s the one that just disappeared one day, and ended up on another planet.”

“It wasn’t one day,” Marie corrects. “It happened over the course of decades, getting smaller and smaller all the time.”

“Oh.”

“And that’s Springfield, Kansas. We’re going to Springfield, Missouri.”

“Why?”

Marie takes a beat. “It’s where I grew up.”

“Oh,” Kivi repeats. “I thought you were a Kansas City girl.”

“I went to a fake finishing school in Kansas City, but my family owned a farm outside of Springfield. That’s where the slaves worked.”

Kivi doesn’t really wanna talk about the fact that Angela-slash-Marie grew up owning human beings. Fortunately, she has a different line of questioning to go down. “What is a fake finishing school?”

“Do you know what a finishing school is?”

“No, I guess I don’t know what that is either.”

“It’s where young ladies would go to learn how to be proper women. Ya know, cleaning, finding a good husband, doing whatever the hell he tells you.”

“What made yours fake?”

“It was a real school,” Marie explains. “They taught us math, science, history; everything the boys were learning. In fact, once historians realized what had really been going on there, they also discovered that it was actually better than most traditional educational institutions in the area at the time.”

“Fascinating.”

“My father sent me there on purpose. He was one of the few men who knew it to be fake, and he wanted me to have an education. Of course, there were ways for me to do that. It’s not like there were no women in regular schools. He needed to maintain the family reputation, though, so this was perfect, since it had to be kept secret.”

Kivi nods, and stays silent for the next minute or so. “Are we going to the farm to see if you can teleport in the area?”

“Oh, God no. It’s not special at all. In fact, maps were different back then, and it was in a different reality, but I do believe that the location of our farm is now the nearest airport.”

“I see. This is just for nostalgia.”

“I don’t know what this is for,” Marie answers honestly. “I just felt compelled to get in the car, and go this direction.”

“And I’m here, because...”

“Because if I go alone, the others are gonna freak out, and try to come save me.”

“You want to be alone, so I’m the next best thing?”

Marie throws the car into autolaning mode. It’s not full autonomy, but it can stay between two lane markings, and not run into the car ahead. If it does notice itself approaching another car too quickly, it will come off the gas, and beep at the driver. Now she can look directly at Kivi without drifting into the ditch. “Not at all. I brought you, because I trust you. You know what it’s like to suddenly come into existence, and learn that you’re a copy of someone else.”

“No one knows who the original Kivi is.”

“Your father wasn’t born to the Third Rail. Do you think you’re the original?”

“No, of course not.” That was a little mean, but Kivi’s fine. “I can see the connection between us.”

“Like I said, I don’t know why I decided to go this way. I just woke up today, and felt like it was the most logical next step. I asked you to come, because I didn’t want to be alone. I just didn’t want to have to explain myself to the others. I think you’re better at understanding that I can’t quite explain it.”

“That’s probably true. My whole life is a question mark.”

“I’m glad you’re here. I don’t know what we’ll to find, or how close we’ll be able to get without plane tickets, but either way, it’s an experience that will always be just between the too of us.”

“I like that.”

Marie returns to the steering wheel. She could let the car drive itself until it’s time to exit, but right now she feels the need to exercise control over everything possible.

Extremus: Year 31

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It took a shockingly long time for Omega to realize who the photographer, September was, and what her weird cryptic messages meant. Her name was no random coincidence. There is a woman from Earth with the ability to travel through time—fittingly, through pictures. Sometimes when she does this, she will just be completing a loop of destiny. She hasn’t changed anything about the timeline; she stayed in one reality, and did everything she was destined to do. Other times, however, she’s able to change the past, and when that happens, it will generate a brand new timeline. The problem is, now there were two versions of her in this reality. It’s unclear how it occurs, but there are a few options to deal with this situation. Her method is for all the alternates to coexist in the same timeline. They usually avoid any confusion or complications by going off in different directions, and the traveler will give herself a different name to distinguish themselves. The original was and is named Paige. The second one is Dyad, the third Trinity, and so on. September is the seventh incarnation. How and why she ended up on Extremus, and how involved she is in its goingson, is something that Omega isn’t cognizant of. That’s not his concern right now, though. He’s on a mission of great importance, and the key to completing it lies in the comments that September made just before the detachment team left.

Omega was a clone. The original, Saxon Parker, was given his own mission, along with a few others. They were tasked with installing an outpost in every single star system in the galaxy. His superiors decided that they wanted a human touch to the automated ships. Thusly, the clones were grown. They were each given a number, Omega’s being the last, which inspired him to name himself accordingly. Omega also didn’t want to go through with the mission, so Saxon was forced to fill in for him. But this isn’t about Omega’s number. It’s about number 83. That’s what September offered them, so to the location of number 83 is where they’re going.

The team doesn’t want to travel through time, and Captain Leithe strongly suggested that they not anyway. Still, they needed to cover over 20,000 light years, and they needed to figure out how to do it in a matter of years. So instead of sending their whole ship back in time, they sent the original time shuttle on its own. Once there, it would take the long way around to finally reach the location of Anglo 83, which shouldn’t be too far from the border of what was deemed Earth’s stellar neighborhood. This neighborhood spans a radius of fifty light years in all directions, and the True Extremists have decided—without telling anyone, naturally—that everything beyond it belonged to them.

Surely they would claim that they were protecting fragile Earthans from the existence of their distant cousins by not actually telling them about the border, but this is a ridiculous stance. Sure, it’s fine for when the people of Earth were young and naïve, but when they began to try to spread out to the stars, the True Extremists should have made themselves known. As explained by famous futurist Isaac Arthur, if you don’t want people to come to your backyard, you don’t hide from them. You warn them that you’re there, and you do it loudly. No civilization capable of galactic colonization would ever dare trespass against a neighbor who has proven themselves strong enough to be seen for as long in years as they are far away in light years. That is, if the Earthans could witness the might of the True Extremists, they would know how powerful the aliens were based on their ability to be witnessed from 50 light years away at least 50 years ago. It’s even in the freakin’ handbook. According to protocols developed by Earthan scientists before they so much as passed the heliosphere, first contact with a superior alien force is to be made at those aliens’ discretion; not the other way around.

“Is it finally ready?” Captain Moralez asks.

“Yes, it’s arrived at the destination, currently pilot fishing Voussoir Splitter Seven,” Valencia answers.

“Any explanation for why it cut it so close? We have been ready to cast for over four years.”

Valencia shakes her head as she’s looking over the data. “Best guess, it went slow. It wasn’t traveling at maximum reframe. I’m not really seeing that in the logs, though.”

“Did you do this?” Yitro questions Omega.

“Why would I do that?”

“Your little riddle that the photographer had for you. She must have given you the impression that we shouldn’t arrive until now. So you programmed the shuttle to go just a little bit slower than it could have.”

“September told us to find clone 83. She didn’t say when. This had nothing to do with me, I don’t know what went wrong.”

The Captain isn’t convinced.

“He’s telling the truth,” Valencia argues. “Stop looking at him like that.”

“I’m still not convinced he should be here,” Yitro says to her. “It’s his brother out there on that ship. That could be a conflict of interest.”

Omega can’t help but laugh.

“What?”

“We don’t have the split schedule,” Omega tries to explain, “but we know that Anglo 83’s module hasn’t had time to split apart that much yet. There could be as many as 1100 people on that thing right now. They should all be asleep, but...we don’t know that.”

“Even more cause to be concerned about you going on this mission,” Yitro reasons.

“No offense to you, honey,” Omega says to the mother of his child before switching his attention back to the Captain, “but I’m the smartest person on this detachment. You need me.”

“Someone has to stay here anyway,” Yitro contends, knowing it to be a weak argument.

“Yes,” Omega says with a condescending nod, “the navigator, and the casting engineer, as well as the medic, and our amazing auxiliary crewmember. The rest of us are on the away team. This was decided long ago, why are you fighting it now?”

“I don’t know,” Yitro admits. “I’m just worried about what’s waiting for us on the other side of that quantum casting pod. I don’t like that we’re four years behind. But you’re right. Intelligence aside, having a clone on the team is an asset. Let’s go.”

“Not quite yet.” Kaiora wanted to send a doctor with them, but Extremus couldn’t afford to lose anyone right now. The crew was having a surprisingly hard time backfilling medical positions. Dechen Karma was the best medic currently licensed, so that was the compromise. “You need a fitness approval from me.”

“And I need to finish running diagnostics on these pods,” engineer Hardy Gibson adds.

“Oh, good,” Yitro says sarcastically. “Anyone else? Navigator Trimble?  Yeoman?”

They shake their heads, a little in fear.

“Great, then I think we’ll just be going. It’s been four months, there’s nothing wrong with the pods, or our bodies.” Yitro starts taking off his uniform.

“You don’t need to do that,” Gibson assures him. “It just hooks up to your brain.”

“I knew that, I’m just...getting comfortable.”

“Is he okay?” Omega whispers to Valencia.

“A lot can change about a person in four years,” she replies. “This is a small detachment ship. Cabin fever, if I had to guess.”

“Maybe he should be staying behind.”

The three of them climb into their respective pods. Gibson and Karma link them to the computer, and prepare to cast them thousands of light years away. “It’s just like playing Quantum Colony,” Gibson says, “except we’ll be sending your consciousness there intact, rather than having you pilot a surrogate.”

“Very well,” Yitro replies. “Do it.”

Omega tries to give Valencia another knowing look, but they can’t see each other from inside their pods. So he just closes his eyes, and lets himself go.”

Omega awakens in the destination pod, but it’s not what he expected. His new body ought to be tilted at a 135 degree angle, just like his real one. Instead, he’s fully flat, and fully encased. This looks less like a casting pod, and more like a stasis chamber. No, this doesn’t make sense at all. He slides the hatch above him open, and pulls himself up to look around. This doesn’t look like the time shuttle either, but it does look familiar. He tries to speak, but it’s always a little difficult at first, so he clears his throat profusely. “Computer, report.”

“It is February 12, 2300 at closest estimate to realtime. Cruising at point-nine-nine—”

“I get it,” Omega interrupts. “We shouldn’t be time dilating yet. We should still be at reframe speeds.”

“I’m afraid I do not understand,” the computer says.

“Hey, computer! I wasn’t talking to you.”

“Okay, well I’m sorry to have bothered you. Sorry, Anglo Eighty-Three. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help.”

“What did you just call me?”

“I was programmed to recognize your designation as Anglo Eighty-Three. Would you like to provide me with a different name?”

“Where are we?”

“This is Voussoir Splitter Seven of the Project Stargate Quantum Seeder Program for the Milky Way Galaxy Colonization Initiative.”

That’s not right. He’s not supposed to be on the modular ship yet. He was just supposed to be cast to their time shuttle, where they would investigate from the outside, only intending to board the splitter if necessary. Omega has to work through this logic with the computer. “Why am I awake?”

“I’m afraid I do not understand.”

“Anglos are not meant to wake up unless something is wrong with the ship, so why am I awake?”

The computer took a moment to respond. “Unknown. Revival process triggered from inside the stasis chamber.”

“Doesn’t that seem a little odd to you, since I was asleep, and couldn’t have prompted said revival process myself?”

“Hmm.” That’s an interesting response.

“Computer, did you detect a quantum casting event prior to my awakening?”

“Checking logs. Yes, recent casting event detected.”

“Okay...”

“You’re not Anglo Eighty-Three, are you?”

“No, I’m a different Anglo.”

“This...is a problem.”

“Yeah. Do you detect any other vessels in this region of space?”

“One, traveling at incongruent relativistic speeds. Communication impossible.”

“Not impossible, just a shorter time frame. I’m gonna teach you how to reframe your communication protocols. I absolutely must connect with my Captain, and my...Valencia.” They never really did fully define this relationship. They have the same last name now, but never married.

Valencia sits before the computer, staring at the camera. “Engineer’s log, February 14, 2300. It has been two days since I arrived alone on the time shuttle. Still no word from the Captain, or Omega. I cannot reach the Perran Thatch. I have been monitoring the progress of Voussoir Splitter Seven, which is traveling at maximum relativistic speeds. So far, nothing has gone wrong. I am detecting no other vessels in the vicinity, nor any reason to believe that the True Extremists are anywhere near here. I have been able to make short jumps to confirm this. If they’re planning to come here at all, they’ve not arrived yet, though I can’t rule out the possibility that the casting problem is the result of some kind of sabotage. I may end up becoming the victim of survivor’s guilt, with my two crewmembers lost to the quantum void.” She sighs.

A message pops up on the screen, reading turn off the reframe engine, love.

“Computer, turn off reframe. Match relativistic speed with the voussoir splitter.”

After the computer complies, another message arrives, but video this time. “Valencia, you made it.”

“You’re on the splitter. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“It’s only been a few minutes.”

“It’s been a couple days for me.”

He shrugs. “I’ve heard it both ways. Where’s Captain Moralez.”

She sighs again. “Shit. I was hoping he was with you.”

“No. Hopefully he’s just back on the Thatch.”

“Are we ever that lucky?”

“We found the source of the meteor chain.”

“That took us twenty years.”

“I’ve heard it both ways.”

“We need to find him.”

“We will.”

Not too far away, but still out of sensor range, Yitro wakes up to find two weapons trained on him. They wait as he coughs profusely. “Oh, man, pardon me. Good day, I’m Captain Moralez of the Perran Thatch Detachment Ship. Got any water?”

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Microstory 1820: Sudden Death

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They’re wrong when they say that your whole life flashes before your eyes when you die. It’s true of some, but there’s usually no time for it. I know, the word flash implies rapidity, but really, if the thoughts are moving that fast through your brain, then you’re not really seeing anything. I know, some people do die slowly. Most people will just be awake one minute, and not awake the next. Now, when this happens, if they get the sense that their life is ending, something will cross their mind. It may be more of a general memory of who they were, or what they went through. It might be a defining moment in their lives. It could simply be about the circumstances that’s getting them killed. That’s what I’ve been relating to you for the last several weeks. All the people destined to be the first to die in 2022 are finishing this journey in different ways, and for different reasons. Most of them will have time to come up with one story that they can send to me a few hours in the past—to before it actually happens—but one of them didn’t make it. I’m not sure what happens to her, but it must have been incredibly sudden, with absolutely no warning. No sensation of danger, no concern for her life. I got the message; she’s going to die, but sadly, I don’t know how, and I don’t know who she was.

Microstory 1814: Walking on Water

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My parents owned a ship-building company—specifically, barges—so I’ve been around the ocean my entire life. I know how to row, sail, tie knots; everything that’s associated with ships and boats. It pretty much consumed my being. It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I started to get into hiking. I was kind of sick of the water, so I wanted to do something land-based, and that was the best I could come up with. I loved it, so I started doing it more and more. Meanwhile, my parents were trying to put themselves on the map by constructing the longest barge in the world. At 500 meters, it surpassed all others by a great deal, and they were proud of themselves for it, even if there weren’t many uses for the darn things. They were also faster than most ships of the day. With no cargo, they could reach a cruising speed of nine knots, which was pretty impressive. Oh, and they could move on their own, so that was cool. The company spent most of its money on these three giants, and they weren’t shaping up to give us much return on the investment. They needed to show the world what they were capable of. They needed to market themselves. They needed a big show. So I came up with a plan. It was ridiculous and silly, but if I could just get people to hear about the company, it would have been worth it. I decided to try to walk from my home country of Russia to the Nation of Alaska. Crazy, I know, but with these barges under my feet, I figured that there was no reason I couldn’t get this done. It’s good that there were three of them, because I don’t know if it would have worked with just two. They could be attached to one another back to front, allowing travel between them. They weren’t meant to move across the water like this, but they could stay together just fine for long enough to allow me to step from one to the next. Again, we were all well aware of how crazy the plan was, but it worked.

After I stepped onto the second barge, the first one would be detached, and propelled past the next two. By the time I reached the end of the third barge, the first one was attached in front of it, and the second one was already on its way to getting in front of that one. It took a lot of fuel to make this happen. The idea was for me to walk all the way from the Easternmost tip of Russia to the Westernmost tip of Alaska by foot. If the barges moved  significantly forwards, it would have defeated the purpose. The drivers had to be really good at not letting them drift too much, and keeping the undertaking as authentic as possible. In total, I walked over 83 kilometers. I probably walked farther than that actually, because the rule was for the drivers to err on the side of Russia, meaning that if the ships drifted at all, they would have to compensate, and usually that meant they were overcompensating. The distance itself was obviously not that big of a deal. Fifty miles is a relatively easy trek for even an only moderately experienced hiker. Still, the barges weren’t the most comfortable surfaces to walk on, and it was pretty boring most of the time. Even so, I’m proud of myself for having accomplished it. The barges themselves didn’t get much use after that, since they were still so absurd, but the publicity stunt worked. I mean, just hearing about it put my parents’ ship-building company in people’s minds, and when they were in need of a ship, they thought of us before all others. The company thrived after that, and they were able to sell it off for a pretty penny. They knew that I didn’t want to inherit it from them, but I still got a decent cut of the sale, because they considered me so instrumental in its value.

Microstory 1702: Air Pump

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I cannot find my bicycle pump. My Aunt Leah is going to kill me if I’m late, but that’s not the worst part. She bought me all this nice equipment so I could go green, and sell my car for some extra cash. If I don’t show up to her office with the bike, it’s going to break her heart. It doesn’t matter that the flat tire isn’t my fault, or that her son has been staying with me for the last couple weeks, and he keeps moving my crap around. She can’t even be allowed to see a hint of the possibility that I ever go anywhere without it. Of course, I take public transportation all the time. The movie theatre is too far away, and I like to buy all of the groceries I’ll need for a month. She cannot know this. She is too unreasonable and frantic about everything that happens to her. The more time I spend looking for the air pump, the less time I have to resort to the alternative solution. And I do have another solution. It’s just not particularly ethical, and could come back to bite me in the ass later. It’s better than having Aunt Leah ice me out. She controls a lot about the family, and even though she won’t have much inheritance to give me when she croaks, she holds a lot of sway with the grandparents. That’s it, it’s already taken me too long. I’m going to have to do the other thing. My neighbor isn’t going to like it, but I can deal with her later, and she can’t threaten me with hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yes, my family is quite rich. I’m not, but they are, and if I wanna become like them when I grow up, I have to play ball. I may sound selfish or materialistic, but I hate working, and I don’t have very many marketable skills. I was made for the simple life.

Fortunately, my neighbor gave me her garage code in case of emergencies, or when she gets packages during her time away. Also fortunately, she has a very similar bike. It’s not exactly the same, but I’ve gotten quite good at amateur bike repair, so I should be able to make it work. I think I can do it. I enter the code, and slip under the door before it’s all the way open, as if my other neighbors somehow won’t notice if I’m quick enough. I turn her bike over, and start to remove the wheel carefully, but as quickly as possible. It’s off in minutes, and I’m halfway there. Well...I’m halfway there to being halfway there. I close her garage behind me, and walk back over to mine. I still have to take my bad wheel off so I can replace it, but that goes a lot faster, because I’m so much more familiar with it. I get the new wheel on, and I’m surprised at how nicely it fits. Hmm. It almost looks like it actually belongs. An enthusiast could tell the difference, but it should pass Leah’s inspection. After all, she has no reason to believe I had to cannibalize someone else’s property to get it in working order. She might not even see it in the bike rack from her third story office. This was always a precaution. I take a few laps around my driveway, just to make sure, but I can’t waste too much time on it, because now I’m really running late. I can still make it, but I’m going to have to haul ass. I close my own garage, and race out into the street. There’s a lot more traffic than I would like, and drivers are getting pissy with me, but they can suck it. I’m more important to them in this moment; not in general, but right now. They would understand if they knew what’s at stake. Finally the streets clear up. I’m also at the top of the hill, so if I just let it ride without being careful, I can make up time. I pedal as hard as I can to give myself even more of an edge. I smile as I check my watch. Yeah, I’m gonna make it. Except I don’t. A bus makes a right turn in front of me, and I’m moving too fast to brake. I die instantly.

Microstory 1701: Project Andromeda

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When the Ansutahan refugees were successfully transported from the brink of war in their home universe, they were relieved. They could finally stop living in fear of the white monsters who roamed the majority of the continents on their home planet. The Gatewood Collective was their home now, at least for now...at least for most of them. Decades later, a portion of the refugees, but mostly their descendants, would choose to begin a journey to the other side of the galaxy. This was the largest exodus that the Ansutahan humans had experienced so far, and probably the most ambitious, but it was not the most far-fetched. A transgalactic journey was nothing compared to what happened 15 years earlier—or only 10 years, for that matter. One of the last major ventures that the leaders of Gatewood endeavored to complete was Project Andromeda. While reaching the other side of the Milky Way would take a couple hundred years at reframe speeds, Andromeda would take thousands. If they only traveled at relativistic speeds, any observer inside the ship would still only experience a few thousand years, but millions of years would pass them by before they arrived. Unlike Operation Extremus, Project Stargate was designed to spread across the galaxy at such speeds, so that when they began to send data back to the stellar neighborhood, people would understand how it was possible that a ship had made it so far away. That was what they thought the maximum speed was. Faster-than-light travel was relegated to  science fiction for them. For people living 3500 years from now however, surely they would have long been introduced to FTL, and even other forms of time travel. They probably wouldn’t freak out to learn that someone was already exploring Andromeda. In fact, there was a strong chance that humanity would have already reached it even faster.

So Kestral and Ishida came to the decision to make Project Andromeda travel much faster than most people living in 2255 thought possible, under the assumption that the truth would eventually come out, and be fine. They constructed 11 small vessels. One would act as primary, while the others were backups. This would give them a greater chance of succeeding, since so many things could go wrong in transit. The original plan for Project Stargate was for the ships to be entirely automated, with no organic lifeforms on board, except for human DNA samples, which could one day be used to seed life on other planets. One of the team members chose to go against this mandate, and clone himself millions of times, so that a human touch would be available to negotiate any crisis that might come up. Inspired by this, Team Keshida decided to allow volunteers for Andromeda. Anyone who wanted to make this trip, which would potentially be only one-way, could submit an application. They figured that if no one applied, then they would just revert back to the original plans. They received thousands of requests, and had to narrow it down to 24 people. Two would be in each of the backups, while four would be in the primary. They would remain in stasis for the whole trip, and only be awakened if it was absolutely necessary. They all had extensive knowledge that would help them effect repairs, yet they received additional training to ensure that these were undoubtedly the best candidates for the job. Once they were ready, the ships launched, each one a month behind the last, until they were all gone. Again, the ships were still automated, so now the only thing to do was wait, and hope that everything worked out.

Microstory 1620: Limerick’s World

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There is nothing particularly special about Limerick Hawthorne’s universe. There is no defining characteristic, or historical anomaly. The only thing truly remarkable about it is that Limerick is from there, and he’s one of the most special people in the bulkverse, so it’s worth mentioning. There appears to be no known cause for his unique ability. I suppose it really just comes down to probability. There is an extremely, extremely, extremely low chance of someone being born with the ability to open a portal from one universe to another, but that probability is not zero. It could never be zero. Limerick seems to be the winner of this lottery, because out of the infinite number of people who exist, if it has to be someone, it might as well be him. He didn’t realize what he was when he first started showing signs, but I did. I saw the power, and I had to make sure this information somehow got to him. Otherwise, he would have never realized, because his ability takes a lot of work, and it’s not something that would happen completely on its own. A lot of what The Prototype, The Transit, and The Crossover do is about navigating the outer bulkverse, and figuring out how to enter a different universe than they left. But before that, they have to break free of the first universe, and once they arrive, they need to find a way in. The walls of universes are called membranes, which is why I sometimes refer to them as branes. They’re thick, tough, and practically impossible to pierce.

There are three major ways of accomplishing this. The Prototype goes in surgically, using its small size as an advantage. The smaller the object that needs to pass through, the smaller the portal can be. Of course, it’s not that easy. You still need the technology to access and channel the bulk energy that keeps the portal growing, and then keeps it open, but that’s how it can work on a smaller scale. The Transit uses speed to open a bulk portal. Again, it takes more than that, or everyone who approached the speed of light would randomly be transported into the bulkverse, but that’s how it’s done when you’re using a ship with propulsion. Meanwhile, the Crossover uses intense pressure and heat. Limerick... I don’t know what Limerick does. He can quite literally punch what are called shatter portals, which are stable enough to allow crossover for him, and a few of his closest friends, but I’m not sure why it’s possible. Each time you crack a leak in the membrane, you let a little concentrated bulk energy into your universe, which you use to power another strike to make the leak larger, which powers your third strike, and so on, until it’s large enough to pass through. But each strike is harder than the one before it, and even then, it doesn’t explain how Limerick is able to come up with enough force to make the initial leak in the first place. It’s not like he completely vaporizes people when he hits them in one of his many, many fights. It’s not like he can punch a hole in the bare ground, or stop a speeding train in its tracks. I suppose it’s just something we’ll never fully understand. We just have to be both grateful that he can do it, and regretful that this ability passed down like a virus to the ancestors of the Ochivari, ultimately leading to the multiversal conflict known as the Darning Wars.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, August 4, 2150

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The clocks were moving about four or five times faster than they should have been. Leona started tapping on her cuff to see if there was any way to fix that. “That pause button you pressed,” she said after apparently discovering no remedy. “It has a wider range than we needed. We’re all frozen now.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Jeremy pointed out. “Angela is frozen from our perspective. Time is moving even slower for her?”

“Because I pointed the remote directly at her I guess?” Mateo said.

“Well, we have about six hours before our jump to...” Aeolia began.

“To 2153, Leona filled in. If we don’t break free of this by then, we’ll miss whoever it is we’re meant to transition. We may have already missed our chance.”

“I can’t press this button again,” Mateo said. “Angela is hurt. We need time to help her. More time than we have. We gotta find a way to unpause only us.”

“I can try a few things,” Danica revealed. “Miss Sarai, could you please assist me? The rest of you just keep an eye on her.”

Once Danica and Aeolia were gone, Leona knelt down, and pulled the mask off of the intruder. “I know this man. He’s younger, but it’s definitely him.”

Bran unmasked the other intruder. “This one isn’t younger. He’s about the same age that he was when we last saw him.”

Mateo peeked over at the older version. He never met the guy himself, but Leona and Bran had a hostile encounter with him in 2161. They were trying to retrieve the Escher knob, but he was hoarding it, along with several other temporal objects, under the false belief that they would protect him from the Deathspring.

“The scar on his hand,” Bran noted, “it’s where I shot the lockbox out of his grasp. Why does the younger version have the same scar? That makes no sense. It doesn’t happen for another fifteen years.”

Leona stood up, and checked the older version. Then she went back to the younger one, and cross-checked them a few more times. “It’s not exactly the same. It’s very similar, but...oh my God, he shot himself.”

“Excuse me?” Jeremy questioned.

“He came back in time, found his younger self, and shot him so they would match,” Leona posited, knowing how weird that theory was.

“That’s insane.”

“Uhh...yeah,” Leona agreed. “We don’t know who he is, or what his deal is, but it was clear from the start that he is not well.”

The older version started waking up, so Bran shot him with his stunner. “What are we going to do with him?”

“Can we take him to that time traveler prison?” Jeremy suggested. “Beaver Heaven?”

“Beaver Haven,” Leona corrected. “I’m not sure they would take him. As far as we know, he never threatened to expose us all to the world. The Warden doesn’t care about time criminals unless they risk the secret of the underworld.”

“They made an exception for Reaver and Ulinthra in an alternate timeline,” Mateo reminded her.

“Yes,” she concurred. “But they didn’t place them at the facility. They each got their own special prism, far removed from everyone else.”

“They had to,” Mateo realized. “Because it was against their code. And technically, none of the staff ever worked there. They outsourced the entire thing to distance themselves from it.”

“What does this all mean?” Jeremy asked.

“If we want to keep these two locked up,” Leona decided, “we’ll have to do it ourselves.”

“How do you lock up someone that no one can remember?” Jeremy asked. “Who’s gonna feed them, maintain their cell, or cells?”

“We’ll do it,” Bran decided. “We’ll stay with them until...well, they’ll both die eventually, right? Aeolia and I don’t seem to age, so what’s a few decades?”

“Kallias...” Mateo urged vaguely.

“Don’t worry about it,” Bran urged, less vaguely. “We’ll see each other again at some point. Time ain’t nothin’ but a thang. You may not even remember us.”

When he first started jumping forwards in time, Mateo realized he would have to say goodbye to everyone he loved. This truth has held despite the fact that half his friends are time travelers, and the other half are immortal. Everyone leaves eventually. Leona is the only one who has stuck by him. “If he’s in prison,” she began, “he won’t grow up to attack us in 2161. Even if we let him go, we wouldn’t have even been able to see him. This is a new reality, it has to be. We’ve changed things. What is the world going to be like in the future?”

“That’s not the biggest question,” Mateo said. “The real question is, how do we deal with our alternate versions when we run into them? If they’re not predestined to one day turn into us, what will we do?”

Like an ominous answer from a mysterious God, the lights all shut off at once, following that familiar thump from the main power switch. The darkness lasted about thirty seconds, at which point Mateo discovered Bran to be gone, along with the two versions of the man. Danica walked in from the back alone, and showed no signs that she should have been anything but. No one else seemed to have the sense that they were missing two members of their group. When Mateo checked the stash of Cassidy cuffs, he found all five extras. Not even Danica was still wearing hers, for she only needed it so she could interact with the retgone coiners. Why was he still able to maintain his memory of their friends? What had changed in him that didn’t change for Leona, and for that matter, why not Nerakali?

“Thanks, everyone,” Danica started, “for helping me fix the power.” They did what? What did these people think just happened?

Angela sat up on the couch. “What happened? Why do I feel both energized and tired at the same time?”

“The answer is...don’t think about it,” Mateo said to her. They all seemed cool with this nonexplanation.

Their cuffs beeped. “Well, this was a nice break,” Jeremy said. “We have to get back to it, though. It’s not far from here.” A break?

“Beaver Haven Penitentiary,” Leona noted. “Oh, it’s 2150.”

“What’s the significance of this year?” Mateo questioned.

Danica took this one. “The prison is designed to hold those they deem guilty for the duration of their entire lives, and these people are taken from all over time and space, both the past, and the future. So it doesn’t need to exist throughout all of time. It just needs to be big enough to contain all those people until they die out. Based on minimal turnover, a hundred and sixty-three years is that figure. It will soon be shut down, if it wasn’t already earlier this year.”

“We’re already in the main sequence,” Angela pointed out, “so let’s just go find out what’s happening. I’m not a huge fan of prisons, so I wouldn’t mind seeing one close forever.”

The four of them left Danica and the dimensional destroyer behind, so the former could help the latter get back to wherever it was she belonged. Mateo was the only one acutely aware that they never needed her to do anything for them. The others only had a vague recollection that they recruited her to stop some disaster in The Constant, which apparently never took place. They didn’t know why, and they didn’t wonder about it either. While they were on their way to the prison, Mateo felt like there weren’t enough people in their group, and not just because they suddenly lost two of them. Four was too low a number, but they only ever had more than that for organic reasons. Never before had they attempted to recruit anyone else into the mission, so this was liable to be their current maximum, at least for a while. Again, the three others didn’t seem bothered by this.

They arrived at the prison to find it eerily empty. All the cells were just left open, and it was mostly silent, except for some noises coming from the offices above. They headed for them, and walked into the Warden’s lobby area. “Oh, God,” she said. “What are you people doing here?”

Jeremy checked the time. “Someone is about to be transitioned to an alternate reality from here. Know anyone whose life needs saving?”

She plopped herself on her chair, amongst all the half-packed boxes, and small piles of trash. “There’s one. Have you ever heard of a man by the name of Ambrosios?”

“Yeah.” Mateo looked at his wrist. “He’s dead.”

“Not quite yet. He will be come midnight.”

“You’re executing him?” Leona questioned.

“I can’t keep doing this,” the Warden explained. “I can’t keep the prison open forever. I certainly can’t keep it open for only one immortal.”

“So you’re just gonna kill him?” Leona pressed. “For convenience?”

“He doesn’t wanna be trapped forever. This is best for everyone, including him.” The Warden leaned forward, and rested her elbows on the desk. “Unless you have some way around it? That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“Who are we talking about?” Jeremy asked.

“A true immortal,” Leona answered. “At least, he should be. They’ve come up with some way of making his power wear off. We never found out how.”

“There’s only one way,” the Warden said. “It has nothing to do with making his immortality wear off.”

“That’s how it was done in the reality where I come from,” Mateo explained.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“I saw his body,” Mateo replied.

The Warden nodded. “Did you see it just once, or did you check in on it after a few years?”

“Wull...I guess it was just once,” Mateo revealed.

“Then he probably wasn’t really dead. There are ways to suppress some aspects of true immortality, but not all of them, and they will eventually come back and survive. Unless...”

“Unless what?” Leona was suspicious.

“Lucius Carlisle has agreed to help us in this matter,” the Warden finally said.

Leona scoffed and shook her head. “You’re gonna make him do that.”

“Like I said, he agreed.”

Leona was in the mood to fustigate. “Lucius Carlise is a good person who does everything he can to do that right thing. And people like you keep exploiting him, and ruining his progress!”

“He agreed.”

“Stop goddamn saying that!”

“It’s okay, Leona,” Lucius said from the doorway. “I’m okay.”

“No!” Leona continued to fight. “We’re not doing this! We’ll take Ambrosios to The Parallel, where they will help him in their own ways. They can probably treat his mental issues.”

“We can’t keep relying on the natives to fix everything for us,” Angela reluctantly reminded her. “They’ve made too many exceptions to their noninterference policy already.”

“I don’t care!” Leona went on, her voice still raised.

Mateo didn’t want to listen to this anymore. He turned around, and took Lucius by the hand. “Come on, we need to talk.”

No one followed them, either because they didn’t guess what Mateo was planning to do, or didn’t notice. He led Lucius down the steps, and into one of the empty cells. Once they were there, he retrieved one of the extra Cassidy cuffs, and handed it to Lucius. “You’re going to teach me how to use your power.”

Lucius regarded the cuff, but didn’t reach for it. “You don’t have to do that. I really am fine.”

“You say that now, but every time you kill someone, a little bit of your soul flakes off. I’ve seen it in your eyes.”

“And that won’t happen to you?”

“I’m an alternate version of Mateo Matic. No, my soul doesn’t matter.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“It does in my case. I know what my options are. At some point, the real Mateo and I are gonna have to make a decision about how to proceed, and I fully intend to...just die.”

“You say that now,” Lucius echoed.

“People always make excuses for me, so when I kill, it’s an aberration. When you kill...” Mateo placed the cuff on Lucius’ wrist, and was met with no protest. “...it’s Tuesday, and a little racist. So you have to avoid it every chance you get. Besides,” he said with a smile. “I can erase people’s memories if I want.”

“Thank you,” Lucius said. “I owe you a favor.”

“This will be the last we see each other.”

“How do you know?”

“I just feel it. You have your destiny, and I have mine. They’re in opposite directions. Now. How do I molecularly teleportize someone?”

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