Microstory 2501: Mother of the Healer

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You can call me Mrs. Tipton. I always knew that my boy was special. He wasn’t born premature, but he was a very tiny little thing. They had to keep him in that box for so long, it was horrible. But he came out, and he fought for his life. This was long before his literal special abilities. Once I heard about what Landis could do, I was not surprised at what he did with it. He hasn’t always had his life together, but he’s always been a caring and kind person. I think it’s because he had to overcome so much so early on. It wasn’t only that, though. There is so much darkness and sadness in the world, and he hated to see it. I could tell that he felt powerless against all the heartache, so he kind of retreated into his shell. To some, this made it seem like he didn’t care, but it was the exact opposite. He cared too much, and it was so overwhelming. You know he has a lot more abilities, right? He can tell when people are lying, and can kind of persuade people to do things. He can’t outright force them, like mind control, but there’s a lot more that he could do, and for selfish reasons. He could have become quite rich, working for the government or a corporation. They would have paid good money to have him investigate for them, or spy. I’m so proud of him for doing the right thing with these gifts. I can’t tell you where they come from. He wasn’t born with them. Lord knows, his father and I didn’t give them to him. But I know that he’s not the only one, and I know that as soon as he got them, he started doing something with them. Of course now, we’ve started to hear about other people with their own gifts, but I don’t think they would have announced themselves publicly were it not for my son’s singular bravery. How long have they walked among us without saying anything or helping? His father suggests that maybe they have been helping all along, but they’ve had to remain a secret. Maybe that’s true. I just wonder if they could be doing more by stepping out of the shadows. That’s what my son did. He jumped right into the light, and made sure everyone knew that he could help them. He bought himself some real estate, and started churning out cures. It makes you wonder, would anyone else do the same? Was this foundation inevitable? Or is Landis the only one who could have pulled this off? Just something to think about when you’re waiting in line to have your life changed for the better forever.

Microstory 2496: Spydome Network

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This is one of those long-term domes, where you can’t quite get the full experience unless you immerse yourself in the setting, and really forget about your old life. You have to shed your past, and become your character, or you’re playing someone else’s game. The premise is that you are a member of a spy agency in one of eleven nations. Your task is to complete missions for your agency, according to whatever your superiors demand of you. Like I said, this is long-term, so you won’t just instantly become a spy. You will start as a trainee, and work your way up. Or you won’t. There’s every chance that you’ll fail. You have to pass the physical and written exams. I’m pretty sure that they’re easier to take than the real ones on Earth, but I’ve never been a real spy before, so I don’t really know. How well you do is entirely up to your own, natural skills. There is no way to know how far any other player gets, because we’re not technically meant to out ourselves to each other, but my boss may be another visitor. I really don’t know. It really doesn’t matter. What you do is up to you as well. Even though you have superiors, you are not a robot, and you are capable of making your own decisions. If you just wanna lounge about your apartment all day everyday, you’ll probably get fired for that, but you won’t get killed. Unless you’ve done enough spying to put you in danger. You’ll probably only get killed if you go out in the field, or as I was saying, if you’re attacked at home by an enemy. Each nation exists under its own dome, and its backstory is as rich and complex as they are in real life. The relationships between these fictional countries are complicated, and ever-changing. If you were to leave and come back 100 years from now, I’m sure alliances will have shifted. One of them might have been blown up in a nuclear war; I dunno. I couldn’t tell you exactly how far the program will let you take this, but it seems like a pretty decent free-for-all. Each might be one of the eleven most heavily populated domes on the planet, as most don’t need to feel quite as lived in as somewhere in the network. But here, you can go anywhere within your bounds, and if you secure a passport to another country, you can go there too. It’s a really interesting experience, and I’ve only been doing it for about a year and a half at this point. Obviously, I’m writing this anonymously, because there’s no reason a competing agency couldn’t use this information against my own. The android intelligences might not understand where a visitor spy got their intel if it came from an out-of-universe source, but they might act on it anyway. There’s a lot you can learn about the countries, and international affairs, from the comfort of your tablet using the prospectus, but to really grasp what it’s like to live here, you’ll have to sign up, and integrate yourself into this new society. You choose your own adventure. I don’t know the psychological ramifications of starting a new life that could potentially be as long as a standard lifetime, but perhaps that’s part of what they’re studying here. I’m sure the results will be fascinating.

Extremus: Year 84

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Tinaya Leithe was reportedly on an away mission for eleven years before she finally returned home, which is not exactly a lie; it’s just not the whole truth. The passengers of Extremus are aware that there are some excursions away from the ship, and that it always involves some form of time travel. They’re aware that someone managed to go rogue decades ago, and found a civilization millennia in the past. They don’t know who this person was, or how many of his acolytes have infiltrated Extremus, but they know that these people exist. They do know about Verdemus, but they don’t know that the crew maintained a persistent connection to it for years. They also don’t know that a permanent connection has finally been established in the form of two new Nexa that Omega and Valencia built on either end. Given enough time, everyone presently on board could theoretically go there. They could travel back and forth, or abandon the grand mission altogether. Publicizing the events surrounding the colony has been proposed as a viable option, though some are taking it more seriously than others.

Tinaya stands at the bottom of the steps. Everyone currently in-the-know is sitting on them, patiently awaiting the beginning of her presentation. Culture on the Extremus is a hodge podge from all sorts of different originating cultures. They come from Earth, Durus, Ansutah, Gatewood, and Extremus itself. Each time their ancestors moved—or had been moved—to a different place, they adopted new traditions and practices. One of the customs that they picked up from their time in the Gatewood Collective is the concept of a Devil’s Advocate debate. In a stalemate, or a state of ethical dilemma, two opposing forces will settle their differences by arguing each other’s positions. Tinaya believes that they should reveal the truth about the planet to the passengers. They should lay it all out on the table, and let the chips fall where they may. She will thusly be arguing against that. She takes a deep breath as if she’s about to start talking, but she doesn’t.

“Have you not prepared?” Lataran asks in a faux English accent. “She believes in maintaining the secrecy of Verdemus, and their integration into the Nexus network. Not only does it allow them to travel back and forth freely, but it gives them a lifeline to anywhere else in the galaxy that has one of their own machines. People could just go live on Earth, or Teagarden. To her, letting anyone go would set a dangerous precedent. They could lose everything. What they’ve built here could fall apart, and turn the whole mission into a joke...a footnote. Thusly, when it’s her turn to speak, she’ll be arguing in favor of transparency.

“Point of order,” Councilman Modlin argues. He’s serving as the mediator in this debate, because he remains undecided. “The Devil will not speak until the Angel is finished.” It is the Devil’s job to advocate for some sort of change in the status quo, or at least a greater change. In D.A. proceedings, there is no back and forth. Only the mediator and audience members may ask questions, or make comments.

Lataran opens her mouth to apologize, but the rules are clear, and strict. She’s not even allowed to do that. So she just nods, and turns back to face her opponent.

Tinaya is grateful for the delay. She is prepared, but she’s afraid of winning. That’s the fascinating reason for the practice. The better you are, the more likely you are to win, which actually means that you lose. More often than not, it manages to poke holes in everyone’s argument, and the result ends up being the proverbial Door Number Three. It shows people the compromise that they were unwilling to recognize before, because they’re too far on one side of the spectrum. They can’t see it until someone forces them as far to the opposite side as possible. But in this last second, she has changed her mind. “I’m ready.” She clears her throat, and pulls up a list on the smartboard. It contains all the bad things that have happened on the ship since it launched that have been known to be caused by the Exins. “This is what the Exin Empire has done to us. These are attacks and sabotages carried out by agents of the enemy.” She clicks the remote. Sub-bullets appear between the items. “These are the consequences of those actions, rippling out from the attacks in ways that could not have been predicted.”

She gives the group time to read through them. She did not only create this for illustrative purposes. Some people in the audience may need to be reminded of the specific events, and a few, like Aristotle and Niobe, weren’t around to see it, nor study it in school. She clicks again. “This is what time looks like.” On the screen is the name Jeremy Bearimy in cursive. It’s a reference to a popular TV show on Earth, which claimed this to be the shape that time makes in the afterlife, as opposed to the traditional linear model. It’s a joke, really, but still canonical. There actually is a real man named Jeremy Bearimy who was given this name by a fan of the show who found him as an infant, unwittingly playing into what would become the boy’s unusual temporal pattern. Time doesn’t really so perfectly look like this in the real world, but it’s a closer approximation than a straight line. Tinaya points to the r in the surname. “If the Exins find out about Verdemus at this point. All they’ll have to do is wait until time gets back to here to wipe us all out. She traces the loops and curves forward before pulling all the way back to the beginning of the name, and starting over. All she’s really saying is that it doesn’t matter when the Exins find out that Verdemus wasn’t destroyed. They would be able to use this information to change the past.

“So, you’re saying that we have to keep it a secret forever,” Belahkay figures.

“Yes,” Tinaya confirms. “When time travel is involved, there’s no getting past it. Your past might be waiting for you in the future.” She clears her throat again, and sets her pointer down.

“That’s it?” Councilman Modlin questions.

“That is the breadth of Lataran’s position. The only reason to keep it secret from the passengers is that some of them may be spies, if only unknowingly.”

Lataran perks up, and tries to argue, but she can’t. Not only is it still not her turn, but she’s not responsible for her own position. She has to stay on the opposite side until the debate is over. She has to pretend to be against herself.

Spirit decides to help her out. “I think that what the Captain wishes she could say is that it’s more nuanced than that. There’s a lot that you’re leaving out.”

“Madam Leithe, you are failing to understand the assignment. You’re expected to rigorously argue your opponent’s position as if it were your own. You’re expected to act in the spirit of healthy debate, not lose on purpose to win in the real world.”

“I’m not,” Tinaya contends. “I agree with her now.” She looks over her shoulder at the Bearimy model. “This is all that matters. The Exins are the greatest existential threat that we face. And they look just like us. There is no way to know who among us would help them, and hurt us. They didn’t infiltrate Extremus, they didn’t even infiltrate Gatewood. They infiltrated Durus. They covertly landed on the rogue world centuries ago, bred a secret society, the descendants of which would later travel through The Abyss, and into Ansutah. Their descendants maintained this secret society over the course of two thousand years before humans escaped that universe, and came back here. Their descendants then boarded Extremus, and now, their descendants are here. Over a hundred generations apart, and they still act against us. That’s commitment. And there is no competing with it. Honestly, I don’t know if we can trust the people in this room.”

“I must say,” Arqut jumped in, “that we don’t know for sure that that’s how the Exins ever infiltrated us. We’ve just not been able to pinpoint the origin of the spies that we’ve discovered. That doesn’t mean they go all the way back to the Durus days. There are and were billions of people in Gatewood. It would not be that hard to sneak someone aboard one of the cylinders, even only days before Extremus launched.”

“The fact is,” Tinaya stresses, “that they were here, and could still be here, and we’ve never been able to catch them until they’ve done something bad. No one can know about Verdemus,” she says firmly. “We can’t even just not tell anyone about it. We have to destroy the Nexa. And before we do...” She trails off, at first to pause for dramatic effect, but she becomes so comfortable in the silence that she finds it hard to get out.

“Before we do...?” Niobe encourages.

“Before we do,” Tinaya repeats, “everyone here has to go back to the other side, and stay there until death.”

They all scoff or shake their heads. “What?” Spirit asks.

Tinaya shakes right back. “We’re too dangerous. What if, say, Aristotle meets someone special, and mumbles something about it in his sleep? What if Lilac gets drunk, and spills the beans to a random fellow patron at the speakeasy?” She doesn’t actually know whether there is a speakeasy. She just assumes that drinking alcohol is around here somewhere. “We can’t. Trust. Anyone.” She emphasizes. “There are people already on that planet. I didn’t put them there, I didn’t authorize them, but it can’t be undone.” Actually, it could be if they wanted it bad enough. “We’re not just protecting the Extremus mission. We’re protecting them too.” The number of people who are a threat to the safety and security of the planet is exactly the same as the number of people who would be a risk if someone leaked any information. Then again, that has always been the case. They are under constant threat.

“If we don’t trust the people on the ship to not be spies, what the hell are we doing here? What’s the point?” Lataran blurts out.

“The Devil will wait her turn,” Councilman Modlin declares.

“No, it doesn’t matter. I switched sides too. “Tinaya, these people need to know that there’s a choice now. None of us was around when Extremus was first being conceived.” We didn’t choose to go on the mission, but we have a choice now. I’m going to stay as this is my home, but we can’t speak for everyone else. There is a movement,” she admits. “It’s small, but growing. Some people do want to leave. They want to live on a planet. They’re angry that we left Verdemus in our rearview mirror. Some even think that we should turn around. Now that we have a way to go back without turning the whole ship around, don’t we have an obligation to present it as an option? Don’t we owe those people that much?”

“Where does it end?” Tinaya asks. “Do we place a cap on the number of emigrants? What if everyone chooses to leave? What if they change their minds?”

“I’ve thought of that. Everyone will have maybe a week to make their decision, and submit their application for resettlement. After that, there are no take-backs, and no late additions. You go, and you stay gone, and you can only travel to Verdemus. We’ll lock the computers out of all other destinations.”

“Wait, let me get this straight,” Tinaya begins, realizing that this Devil’s Advocate debate has officially gone off the rails. “You want to tell them the truth about Verdemus, but lie about the Nexa’s true limitations?”

“They’re apparently called Mark III Nexa.” Lantern uses airquotes. “Yes, we could argue that they can’t be on the full network; that they can only go to each other. That way, everyone stays out of the Goldilocks Corridor, and even the stellar neighborhood. I’m advocating for transparency, not one hundred percent transparency. There is a line, I believe in lines.”

Tinaya sighs, and steps over to the wall. There aren’t very many viewports on this vessel. Most of them are viewscreens, and even then, there’s usually nothing to see that isn’t fake. Their ancestors could look out a window to see Gatewood, and their descendants will hopefully one day look out to see the Extremus planet. But for now, it’s nothing but the doppler glow, and that’s blinding unless the glass is heavily tinted. That’s what this viewport does; show what it really looks like outside the ship as it’s traveling at the highest fraction of lightspeed at an extreme dimness. She turns the tint down just a little bit to make it a little bit brighter.

Lataran stands up, and approaches—not her opponent—but her friend. She places a hand on Tinaya’s back. “Word will get out. We may both be dead by then, but people will learn what we did. Do you want them to think that we didn’t trust them, or that we believed in them? Would you rather force everyone to stay on a mission that no one cares about anymore than let everyone leave, and just accept that as our fate? Our parents’ parents wanted us to get to the other side of the galaxy. That was their dream. And it’s still mine, even though I won’t be alive to see it. It’s not necessarily anyone else’s though. And I want them to be happy too.”

“I think we both well know that you can be alive to see it if you so wish.”

Lataran nods. “Yes. But it’s still up to us to keep this thing moving, and when we’re gone, regardless of how we answer The Question, we’ll have to hope that our children will keep it going for even longer. But if they don’t—” She reaches up to turn Tinaya’s chin away from the window. “If they don’t, Tinaya...then that will be okay too. It will not be a dishonor to our ancestors. It’s up to us to choose our own fate, and if our grandparents loved and love us as much as they should, they’ll understand.” She looks through the viewport now. “We don’t even know where we’re going. Maybe we were always on our way to Verdemus.”

Tinaya smiles softly at her best friend. “They were right to choose you as Captain. You were made for this job. You remind me of Halan Yenant.”

“I should be so lucky,” Lataran replies. She looks over at the crowd, who all suddenly start to pretend that they’re not watching them. Omega probably has an implant that allows him to hear their whispers. “Don’t be so quick to count yourself out as a good Captain too. You’re not dead yet.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Lataran gives her a hug, then releases. “Come on. This debate is over, but we need to come to a consensus. It’s not just about convincing each other. Everyone has a say. I’m sure Vaska will have a lot to say when she comes back from the planet.”

They return to the group, and keep talking it through. They eventually come to decide on partial transparency, but determining exactly what that entails warrants much more discussion. And some outside help.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 14, 2435

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If Vitalie went back in time, presumably to Ex-741, why didn’t she prevent the planet from being destroyed? Well, there was a logical answer to that, though there was no way of knowing whether it was the right answer. The world suffered a massive matter-antimatter reaction, worse than the one that decimated the refugee world that the team tried to stay on in the Fifth Division. This one was catastrophic enough to tear the whole thing apart, so there was no reason to believe that anyone survived it, and since the chain reaction was obviously triggered by their arrival, they had every reason to suspect that their deaths was the ultimate goal. Perhaps any vessel that tried to land would have triggered the reaction, but since the Exins would have proverbially gotten away with their oppressive ways if it weren’t for the meddling kids, the team decided to assume that they were the specific targets. So they were almost certainly dead, their means of survival being so outrageous that the Exins would not have even considered it as a possible outcome, and the best thing that Team Matic could do was to stay dead. To make that happen without just running away, or pointlessly orbiting a star for years on end would be to start hiding in plain sight.

The old ship that Vitalie apparently programmed to meet them on the asteroid was rather small. Perhaps old wasn’t the word for it...certified preowned, maybe? They didn’t find any auto history report in it, though, so they couldn’t tell what it had been through. Ramses found a database of information in the central computer, but it didn’t say anything about how the vessel was used in the past. It just provided him with the technical specifications, and the implication that it was very, very old. Oh, and they also knew that it was called The Dorsch. It was not a rustbucket, but as mentioned, it was small; smaller than the Dante, though still larger than the little unnamed thing they were using that was just destroyed a few years ago. Ram spent the rest of the day affixing the pocket dimension generator to one of the doors, as well as making some other retrofits. The rest of the team had school.

While the Dorsch was going to shapeshift using exterior holographics, the rest of the team needed to do the same. Fortunately, they were all capable of changing their appearances. The power was replicated from Alyssa McIver, though none of them had used it much. Leona was the most experienced, but the rest had only tried a few times, so she spent most of the day teaching them how to hold convincing and sustained false images. They couldn’t lose focus for a split second, or it would totally undermine the ruse. The next day, only Marie and Angela were excelling at the new skill, so it was decided that the others would not yet face any of the locals at their next destination. So only the three of them would be part of the outreach program.

Mateo and Olimpia went off to find Vitalie!613, but that didn’t take long at all, so they zipped back up to the Dorsch, where Ramses was working. The holographic projectors were not yet ready, but that was all right, because the idea was to always show up to each new planet looking different, and they had never been anywhere else looking like this, so it was fine to use for this trial run. They still didn’t know if their new modus operandi was going to work in the short-term, let alone the long-run. “How long are you gonna wait?” He was tweaking something on some device.

“I’ll wait several months,” Vitalie!613 decided. If she started butting into lives of the Ex-613 natives right after this mysterious trio of women showed up, they might make a connection between them, and if they did that, they may start to suspect some connection to Team Matic, which would invalidate this whole revised plan.

“What are you gonna do in the meantime?” Ramses pressed.

“I’ll just find an island somewhere, and have a nice vacation. That is, unless you can give me your little illusion power, so I can blend in with them.”

“It’s not that easy,” he said apologetically. The truth was that he didn’t want this power spreading like a virus. Eventually, everyone would be able to look like anyone, and then the entire concept of trust could be vanquished from the universe. Was it selfish to hoard the ability, and keep it just within the group? Probably, but he wasn’t going to apologize for it. He would only apologize for the other reasons. “I couldn’t just give it to you as you are. I would need to clone you, and transfer your consciousness, and I don’t know enough about your current powers to replicate those as well. It’s a delicate balance. You can’t just copy and paste powers. You would end up being more than the sum of your parts, and the consequences of that condition are too unpredictable.”

“You don’t have to tell me that,” Vitalie!613 said. “I don’t just have Andromeda’s, Saga’s, Camen’s, and Étude’s powers separately. They’re all mixed in with each other. Étude wasn’t born with the ability to teleport. She was given the ability to be teleported, by the powers that be. The fact that she retained any level of it always felt like a mistake to her. She thought that the PTB forgot to take it away, because they would normally pass it on to someone else, but she was last, so it slipped their minds. I bet if we compared notes, we would find that the way I teleport is different than your way.”

Ramses was working this whole time, but he stopped now to look up. Then he turned to face her as he was lifting the lenses of his magnifying specs. “That’s a good idea. Let’s compare notes.”

“That sounds time-intensive, and it doesn’t look like you have time. I’m not leaving this planet, and you’re not staying.”

Ramses flicked the lenses back down. “Well, we’ll see. Leona may determine that this world is a two-dayer.”

Meanwhile, down on the planet, Leona, Angela, and Marie were pretending to be three survivors from the north. They found two major settlements on the surface, which were on the same continent, but thousands of kilometers from each other. They were not connected by any roads, and the level of technology that they exhibited did not suggest that air transport was a thing here. In addition, multiple mountain ranges separated them, making foot-traffic unlikely, albeit not impossible, which would explain how these three strangers made it all the way here. The northern settlement was in ruins. They found bones, but no evidence of an attack. They probably died out in an epidemic of some sort. All of this gave them a hopefully believable reason why the southern settlement had never seen them before.

“So, you don’t want a parade?” the Director asked them.

“Why would we get a parade?” Leona asked him.

“We always put on a parade for new arrivals,” the Director explained. “The only person who never got a parade was the first one here. She’s the one who planned the parade for the second person. But I guess if you’ve been living here, you already got your parade...unless they don’t do them up north.”

“Uh, we’re not sure,” Marie responded. “We never arrived here,” she lied. “We were born on this world. Our parents might have had parades, though.”

He narrowed his eyes. “We were sterilized. We’re not supposed to have children.”

“It must not have worked for them,” Angela reasoned. “The two of us are twins. She’s our younger sister.”

“Really? She looks older.”

“I’ve had a harder life,” Leona said. They couldn’t make themselves look like one of their friends from the stellar neighborhood, because any of them could be just as famous as the members of the team. But they each knew plenty of people from their pasts that had no connection to salmon and choosers. The easiest way to form a skintight hologram of someone like that was to let your subconsciousness do it for you. Leona didn’t even remember who this person was that she looked like now. She could have been a fifth grade art teacher, or a mother she stood behind in line in the grocery store once. If she looked older than the inspirations that Angela and Marie’s subconsciousnesses chose, it was nothing more than a coincidence.

Marie sighed. “Here’s what happened. She and I were born, and we lived up north. Before we were old enough to keep memories, our parents had to leave. The theory is that everyone else died. We don’t know how. Along the way, she was born, which meant that she was always on the move, and never benefited from the stability of a true home. That could be why she’s aged a little faster. We have been heading this direction our entire lives. Our parents died along the way, and now here we are.”

“Did you see any other resorts?” the Director asked them all.

“Resort?”

“Yeah, that’s what this is. It’s a resort. I am the Resort Director.”

“Oh.” Marie faced Leona. “It was a resort. If it was anything like this place, our parents lived in a resort.”

Leona nodded. “They were so cagey. They refused to tell us much about where we came from. That’s why we’re so confused and uninformed. Please forgive us.”

“What is the purpose of this resort?” Angela asked, doubling down on their excuse to be ignorant.

“It is a reward for a job well-done. We all came from different planets. Every year, the Empire evaluates the merits of every planet under the domain. One planet is selected which has exemplified the values and spirit of the Exin Way of Life. At the same time, a potential winner on each planet is found after its own rigorous evaluations. If the planet wins that year’s round of evaluations, the planet’s winner is transported here from there. On the planet where I’m from, the local winner receives consolation prizes if that planet is not chosen as the above-all winner. On some planets, if the planet doesn’t win that year, the individual winner wins nothing. They just go on with their lives.”

“I see. So you’re all just living here together. All of your needs are provided?” Leona asked him.

“Absolutely,” the Resort Director replied. “We always suspected that there were other resorts, but we have no communication with them. This is big news.”

“Do you have any problems? Any crime?”

“No. Like I said, we’re all chosen after rigorous evaluations. No one with poor psychology, or proven bad behavior, is allowed in. Everything’s perfect. I see no reason why you can’t join us. No one can be here if they don’t belong, so you must belong.”

“Thanks. We’ll, uh...can we talk in private?” Leona asked.

“You may have the room,” he offered before leaving.

“I think we just got our Vitalie back,” Marie determined.

“Why?” Angela asked.

“They don’t need a Caretaker,” Leona figured. “This place is...inconsequential. No one needs to be saved. They don’t need to be stopped from doing anything bad.”

“Leona, Angela, Marie,” Olimpia began through the comms. “Get back up here.”

They all teleported back up to the ship.

“We’ve been listening,” Olimpia went on. “What were you gonna say, Vita?”

“I think I should stay,” Vitalie!613 believed.

“What would you do here?” Leona asked her.

“I would gather information. That’s what you need, right?”

“Well, yeah, but...”

“You have a star chart. You know the numeral designation of every planet you go to, but you don’t know anything about it, do you? They might need your help. They might be trying to destroy the galaxy. You just don’t know. Let me find out for you, so you can prepare for the mission. There could be one person from every single planet in the Empire here. I’ll talk to them, gain their trust, and then relay information to you. Just give me one of those little communication discs.”

“That’s not your mission, though; your self-appointed purpose. You replicated yourself to take care. You’re the Caretaker.”

“Eh, things change,” Vitalie!613 mused. “Have you noticed when you’ve met other versions of me that we all act a little bit differently? Because of stasis, it hasn’t necessarily been very long since we diverged. Before the OG Vitalie started replicating herself through time travel, she prepared herself psycho-emotionally. She essentially trained herself to be flexible, adaptable. Every one of me that you meet is different because the situation is different, because you’re coming at me with different attitudes, based on your own background, which shifts with every new experience that you have. Yes, I came here to be a caretaker, but now as you’ve pointed out, Ex-613 doesn’t need that. It needs a spy.”

“I dunno,” Leona said. “You’re not invincible. People train in spycraft for years. You don’t just wake up one day and start doing it. Infiltrating one person’s life is difficult enough, but you want to infiltrate—and gain the trust of—an entire population. That is a tall order for anyone. Forgive me, but on Dardius, you operated primarily on brute force, because no one could stop you. Subtlety is not something that you needed before.”

“Okay, so let’s start small. I’ll insert myself into the life of one person. What’s the designation for the next planet you’re going to?”

“I have the list,” Olimpia announced. She pulled up her tablet. “The next one over is Ex-666. Hm. Does that have the same connotation for you as it did in my time?”

“Yes,” Angela and Marie answered simultaneously.

“I’ll find someone who lived on Ex-666, and tell you about it,” Vitalie!613 continued. “I’ll have months to get the information out of them gradually before you come back into the timestream. Give me a chance. I can take care of myself. Pun very intended.”

Leona thought about it, and eventually agreed. “But don’t forget that we can come back for you. Not at any moment, but...”

“Thanks.”

The next year, they learned that no one on Ex-613 originally came from Ex-666, and later that it was not given that number randomly. It was a penal colony. Maybe the numbers did mean something.

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Microstory 1976: Nuts or Chips

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Leonard: Did anyone follow you?

Ophelia: Yes. The Mississippian Militia is right behind me, as are all of this guy’s friends, and my sixth grade math teacher.

Leonard: Okay, good.

Ophelia: I know how to lose a tail...which I didn’t have. Nobody is looking for us.

Leonard: Yeah, I’m not seeing anything on the news, but I don’t know enough about this territory to say if that’s typical. This feels a bit like a police state.

Ophelia: Not really. It’s just that, as far as anyone is concerned, nothing happened in that apartment hallway yesterday. There’s a hole in the brick, but I doubt anyone’s gonna notice. Our team may have even literally covered it up by now.

Leonard: We have to get the hell out of this place, and back to the U.S.

Vogel: I can get us all someplace safe, and smuggle us out of the city.

Leonard and Ophelia: *simultaneously* Shut up.

Vogel: Look, you’re gonna have to trust me at some point. I know Mississippi, and I know Memphis. You both are obviously highly capable, but still untrained. Let me help.

Leonard: We can’t trust you. We weren’t in that hallway accidentally. We’ve been looking for you for over a week.

Vogel: I’m not surprised, but you haven’t asked me any questions, except for who shot at us, and why, so whatever you think I did, you’re obviously not certain I’m guilty.

Leonard: We’re certain enough. *to Ophelia* What did you get?

Ophelia: Mostly nuts and chips. There wasn’t a great selection at the inconvenience store. All of the sandwiches looked bad.

Leonard: *tosses Vogel a bag* I prefer nuts. Eat your chips in the bathtub. Turn on the sink faucet. My partner and I need to have a private conversation.

Vogel: *reluctantly heads for the bathroom*

Ophelia: The window?

Leonard: Doesn’t exist. *turns on the TV, and raises the volume*

Ophelia: What the hell are we gonna do?

Leonard: I may have an idea, but it’s risky. I can find us a guy.

Ophelia: You know someone? Aren’t you from, like, another planet, or something?

Leonard: Agent Altimari has contacts here. *points to the bathroom* She found him when the rest of us couldn’t, which made Reese suspicious, so she had to explain where she got the information. I have the name of her supplier here. It’s no guarantee. The last we heard, he was trying to get out of the state himself, so he may already be gone.

Ophelia: Worth a shot, I guess. We don’t have a lot of options. Who is this supplier, and do you have his phone number, or something?

Leonard: I have a dead drop location. Someone is gonna have to stay with our detainee while the other goes out. You got the burner phones too, right?

Ophelia: *tosses him one of them* You sure we can’t reach out to anyone else on the team? Not even Agent Parsons?

Leonard: It’s not that we can’t trust him. We can’t be sure he hasn’t been compromised in some other way, like a tapped phone. Now, how do you work this thing?

Microstory 1975: Team Head

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Investigator Blass: Sir, do you have a minute?

Myka: Sure. Agent Blass, right? What can I do for you?

Blass: Investigator, but just call me Blass. I have some sensitive information, and I’m not sure who I should share it with. I’m hopeful that you’re that person, but...

Myka: You need me to prove myself, which you never expected to ask of a superior.

Blass: Sir.

Myka: I’m not your superior, Agent. I’m just in charge of the building until Agent Parsons returns from assignment. Unfortunately, we have some bad timing, so I’ve had to cover, but I’m mostly only qualified to make sure there’s enough soap in the bathrooms, and pickles in the fridge.

Blass: I don’t like pickles sir, and we can’t wait for Subdirector Parsons.

Myka: Subdirector? Is that his new title?

Blass: He leads the subdepartment of a major government department, so yes.

Myka: I see. Go ahead and tell me what you need to get off your chest. If it turns out you can’t trust me, you probably wouldn’t have had much luck finding someone better. I’m not at the top, but I’m also an outsider, which means I don’t have any interest or experience in internal organizational politics.

Blass: That’s some interesting logic there. *hesitates still* We’ve been training for months. As soon as that first alien showed up in our world, the government started preparing for the second one, and a possible oncoming invasion. We were pulled from all relevant walks of life. We’ve got people with military backgrounds, law enforcement; we even have our own former parole officer, if you can believe it. She’s anxious to meet Supervisory Agent Miazga. As far as I know, I was the only one relocated from the ICC.

Myka: I’m afraid I’ve never heard of that one.

Blass: Internal Compliance Commission.

Myka: Oh.

Blass: While the others were training to fight, I was there to spy on them.

Myka: Did you find something?

Blass: I found someone. Only one, I believe, but it’s a big deal. He has ties to Russia, North Korea...and Mississippi.

Myka: *shaking her head* Don’t say what I think you’re gonna say.

Blass: I didn’t realize before, because we’ve been arriving at these headquarters in waves, but now that everyone else is accounted for, I was able to jump to two possible conclusions. Either the mole was caught by someone else, and extracted, or... 

Myka: Or he was already here. And now he’s out there.

Blass: Yes, there were rumors that someone was put on assignment early.

Myka: Thank you, Blass. I need to make a call. *dials on the computer*

Blass: Sir. *leaves*

Reese: *on the video screen* I can’t talk right now, Mykey. We’re operational. *into the radio* Shoot only on my command!

Myka: Don’t let him shoot anyone, Reese! He’s dirty!

Sachs: *fires rifle*

Extremus: Year 56

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They did not have much time to listen to Nerakali Preston explain what she meant when she claimed that she died and lost all of her powers. They could hear a security team coming down the hallway. Rodari switched off the mirror quickly, so that when the guards opened the door, it looked like they were still trying to figure out how to work the thing. Tinaya was grateful for his quick thinking. There was no way that they weren’t going to get caught, but at least now no one knows that they were trying to reach out to Nerakali. Their lie was that they were trying to contact Captain Halan Yenant. It was believable and not unreasonable. Tinaya wanted to be Captain some day, and even though that dream seems to have fallen right back into the valley of implausibility, it made sense that she would seek counsel from the first Captain.

It’s been nearly a year now. They were all sentenced to as much time in hock for unauthorized entry into a restricted area. The court was not cruel, though. Instead of keeping them locked up separately, they lived together in a sort of prison suite. They had their own rooms, but also a communal area. It was during this time that Tinaya and Rodari got to know each other better as they worked together to take care of Omega and the others. Though Valencia and Lataran grew more independent by the week, being locked up was not doing any favors to their recovery. Today is the day that they’re going to be released, and Captain Soto Tamm himself would reportedly like to come down to see it happen in person.

“Can we talk?” Rodari asks.

“Yeah, is everything okay?” Tinaya replies.

“I wanted to, uhh... I wanted...”

“What is it, Rodi?”

“He shuts his eyes, and breathes out his nose. He starts to whisper, “Bridger spies are not allowed to fraternize.”

“Right,” she agreed. “We’re just friends.”

“Are we, though?”

It is an unwritten rule that Captains do not get themselves into romantic relationships. It’s a sacrifice that they’re all expected to make. Aunt Kaiora broke this convention with Chief Medical Officer Holmes, but they never really made it official. Candidates for the civilian government tend to do better in the elections when they can parade around their spouse, but the crew—particularly the executive crew—is the opposite. It just seems to everyone that it should be like that. Tinaya cares about Rodari, but she made the choice to not even consider dating when she was a child, for this very reason. So it really doesn’t matter how she feels, and it doesn’t matter how he feels either. Then again, everything Avelino supposedly did to restore her reputation appears to have been reversed by the mirror room incident. The chances that she actually does make Captain one day have only gone down. He’s no better off. “We are.” She tries to sound certain, but the expression she slips into at the end of the sentence betrays her.

He pretends not to notice. “You deserve to be loved, Tinaya, on a personal level. You don’t have to be all things to all members of the crew, and residents of the ship. You’re allowed to have your own life.”

She breathes in deeply. “No. I’m not. Captain Tamm is coming today. I have to show him that I’m worthy. Now, my stint in hock does not look good on my record, but I’m not going to stop going for this. I’m not gonna quit. Someone will be replacing him in seventeen years, and I won’t stop fighting to be that person until someone else sits down in that seat.” Ugh, she doesn’t have time for this. They still need to figure out how to fix their neurological issues. She’s been spending a lot of her time organizing the knowledge that she absorbed from the others. Now that she has the tools in her brain, she needs the tools to get back into the Bridger section. They still don’t know who did this to them, but she is pretty sure that she can trust Rodari. They just need to make sure that no one else catches them. The first step is getting the hell out of here, and the last one is total domination. Getting a boyfriend is decidedly not a step on the task list. 

“I understand, I just...wanted to get us both on the same page.”

She nods once respectfully, as if they have just finalized a modest real estate deal.

Tao Li approaches them from the hallway. They don’t even lock the door anymore. None of them is going to try to escape, and even if they did, they would have to get through several more doors before they reached any semblance of freedom, and even then, they’re stuck on a spaceship in the intergalactic void. Where would they go? Tao became Hock Watcher years ago when the first one, Caldr Giordana retired a week before he died. Fortunately, as his health was beginning to decline, he took on an apprentice, so Li knows what he’s doing. “Tamm isn’t coming.”

“Let me guess,” Rodari says with a chuckle. “He’s busy dealing with the longest stretch of peace that this ship has experienced since it first launched?”

“That’s not for me to know,” Li replies, “and it’s certainly not for you to know. Anyway, he has sent his lieutenant in his place. Allow me to introduce you to Second Lieutenant Athan Velitchkov.” He steps away to reveal the man behind him.

Tinaya resists her urge to crack a joke about not being able to swing the First Lieutenant. “Lieutenant Velitchkov,” she instead says with an outstretched arm. It’s nice to meet you.” Second Lieutenants can be touchy about their position. It’s technically more correct to address him with his full title, but leaving out the second part is more likely to make him happier.

He smiles, and shakes her hand. “We’ve actually met, but I doubt you would remember. You were about three at the time.” Every important member of the crew has a reputation that goes beyond what people know for sure about them. His reputation is that he’s quiet, nice, and as sharp as a whip. He’s also known to be a lot more competent than his bosses, though it’s unclear how he feels about that, or about them. He smiles even wider, and faces Li. “Thank you, Hock Watcher, you may go now. You as well, Mister Stenger. I would like to speak with Captain Leithe alone.”

She looks bashfully at the floor. It’s fine when her peers joke about her already being the Captain, but when a real member of the crew says it, it rings a little differently.

He wraps his arm over her shoulders, but does not actually make contact. He just starts walking away for a private conversation, and allows her to follow. “Can you keep a secret, Captain?”

“I would ask you to stop calling me that, sir?” she requests.

“Can you keep a secret?” he repeats.

She nods.

“I’m calling you the Captain, because I know that you’ll be the Captain. I even know when. And I know this, because you and I went to the same school.”

Her eyes widen, and she looks back at Rodari.

“Yes, I’m aware that he too attended said school, but I still wanted to speak with you alone. If you would like to share what we discuss with him later—if you trust him enough for that—spy to spy, then I’m not gonna write you up. I just wanted to touch base with you, because this experience in hock has been what I’m sure you believe to be a setback, but I promise that it is anything but.”

“Sir?” She doesn’t understand.

“Tamm hasn’t gone through anything. He was born to a lot of privilege. He’s never suffered, he’s never lost, he’s never had to work for anything. People are going to get sick of that, if they haven’t already. What you’ve gone through is not what’s going to stop you from making captain, it’s what’s going to get you into that seat. Make no mistake, no one is doing this on purpose. We just see the future, and we’re allowing it to happen. We could stop it. We could protect you. And you would still become Captain. But you wouldn’t be respected, and that’s what we need. That’s what our future needs. Let me ask you this, have you ever heard of the term Eighth of Eight?”

“No,” she answers truthfully. “But it sounds like something that I shouldn’t hear about. It sounds like a temporal issue.”

He nods. “Yenant, Belo, and Leithe were all great leaders. Tamm is an okay guy, if you get to know him. Honestly, your two successors are up in the air, though. We don’t know how they’ll fare, because the future keeps shifting. You keep shifting it. You’re making decisions outside of time that we don’t understand. Now, I’m not going to try to explain it to you.” He looks over at Valencia. “I’m sure you have the knowledge somewhere in there yourself. But what I can tell you is that the eighth Captain...is not shifting. That asshole is written in stone, and it’s looking more and more like there’s a reason for that. Like...another force at play is making him inevitable, despite the fact that he hasn’t even been born yet.”

“Why are you telling me all of this?”

“As I said, he’s inevitable, but you can alleviate the problem, by being the best Captain this ship has ever seen, and making the next two after you even better. People will fight for Eighth of Eight, but they’ll surely win unless people also fight for you. You will become a symbol, an historical figure, whether you want to be or not. The future leaders will cite your tenure as the reason for whatever they think that future should be. You can either let the good guys of that future cite you for your successes, or the bad guys cite you as a failure. The Bridgers, they—we brought you into this; we created all this drama surrounding the years leading up to your rise to power, hoping to make you strong. Now you can give up, and just rest on your laurels, or you can be the source of inspiration for the next generation, and the next. That could be what makes Eighth of Eight’s reign of terror ultimately short-lived, and corrected infinitely afterwards.”

“You’re somehow telling me too much about the future while not really saying anything about what I’m supposed to do about it.”

“That’s my strength as an orator. That’s why the Bridgers chose me, and why Tamm chose me too. I was gonna be Captain myself, ya know. The Bridgers kept trying to put one of their own in that chair, until they realized that their safest bet was to find someone who was destined to sit there anyway.”

“So they chose me? I’m a puppet.”

“Everyone is a product of their environment and upbringing. That’s why I’m here, to give you the scissors to cut your strings. But it has to be a choice. Cutting all of them means cutting yourself off from the only people on your side.” He hands her her skeleton key. “Leaving at least one on, at least lets us keep helping you.” He walks away coolly.

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Microstory 1968: On the Books

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Moenia: Hey, Becca. I could have come to you.

Anaïs: Nice try, Moe. This one’s on the books, but I’m not meant to know anyone here.

Moenia: I get it, you don’t want me to see where you’re camped out.

Anaïs: Are you still in the game?

Moenia: Depends on what you’re lookin’ for. Wadya need this time? I got guns. I got gizmos. I got poisons and easy paper, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Anaïs: You know I’m not. I need to find someone. Reports are that he’s in town.

Moenia: He’s from the states proper?

Anaïs: Don’t know. We don’t know his name either, but we have the phone number he calls from. He doesn’t understand that the point of a burner is to burn it before too long.

Moenia: Who’s this we you’re talking about? You got yourself a new crew?

Anaïs: Somethin’ like that. Can you help me, or what?

Moenia: Nah, man. I’ve been outta Missi for almost as long as you have. I’m not touched in anymore.

Anaïs: That’s disappointing, Moe-Moe.

Moenia: Don’t you worry your pretty little self about it, though. I may know a guy.

Anaïs: You do? What guy?

Moenia: Well...I may know a guy who knows a guy.

Anaïs: That’s reassuring.

Moenia: Word is, he can find anyone in the city. I myself have never had the displeasure of needing anyone dead, but if you’ve got the hitch, lemme hook you up...for a small finder’s fee, o’ course.

Anaïs: I don’t need ‘im dead. I just need to find ‘im.

Moenia: Right, you just wanna talk. *airquotes* I get it.

Anaïs: You’ll get your fee, don’t ask questions. Give me the contact info for your guy who knows a guy. This is time sensitive.  A lot is at stake.

Moenia: You make it sound like the whole world’s in danger.

Anaïs: [...]

Moenia: Ah, shit. You’re on a shady trip. I don’t want no part of that. When you go in, you go in hard, and I don’t wanna hear about this on the books crap. I know you lyin’.

Anaïs: I’m not lying, it’s on the books. It’s just...a different book.

Moenia: Shit, Becca. You’re gonna get me killed. You’re not even under, are you? You got yourself a whole team this time. Where are they? Sniper on the roof?

Anaïs: The sniper’s back at the safehouse. They don’t know about this. Now can you put me in touch with the finder, or not?

Moenia: Yeah, I’ll get you his number, but you didn’t get it from me. I don’t want money for this, I just wanna get the hell out of this territory.

Anaïs: We may need your services later. We brought tools, but somethin’ may come up.

Moenia: Nah, I’m not stickin’ around. Give me your new number, I’ll do one more thing, and then I’m out. I know better than to be in Mississippi when Hurricane Becca rolls in. You need help at the Canadian border, I’m your man, but not here. It’s too hot.

Anaïs: All right, Moenia. You get me what I need, and I won’t bother you again.

Extremus: Year 55

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The last two months have been hell. It turns out that the four-person mind blender machine did more than Tinaya first realized. She’s the only one who can function on her own. Lataran, Valencia, and Omega struggle with simple tasks, especially the latter, who can’t even feed himself. The entity formerly known as Lantaran does okay, which is why she helps him with things like that, but she makes mistakes, and can’t be seen in public. Tinaya can’t tell anyone what’s happened. Not only does their time in the Bridger section have to remain a secret, but either way, she doesn’t know who she can trust. Not her family, not the captain, and definitely not Avelino. Even Lataran herself doesn’t quite seem to understand that something strange is going on. To them, this all seems rather normal. So, really, she’s alone; forced to take care of all three of them all by herself. Which sucks, because it’s not like her life is perfect after all of this. She may have more knowledge than before, but practical application did not come with the package. She now knows everything that Omega, Valencia, Lataran, and probably other people knew and know, but she can’t organize the information properly. She’s learning, but it’s going to take time, and that’s been difficult, because again, no one is around to help.

There’s a knock at the door. Not a ping, or a cam notification. That’s quite troubling, because she’s relying heavily on a makeshift security system that she built herself. It’s entirely isolated from the ship, which is important, because of that trust issue. She and the others are staying in an isolated sector of the Extremus. It’s not totally hidden; she doesn’t have to climb through an air duct to get to it, but the population has not grown into this area yet, so no one comes down here, except occasionally on a walk/run to clear their heads, and get away from the madding crowd. She hears them pass by every once in a while, but they don’t knock on the door. Who is knocking in the door, and why the fuck?

It’s Rodari Stenger. She tries to shut it when she sees that, but he’s too strong. He’s desperate to get in, but the expression on his face is not what she would have expected. He doesn’t look menacing, or angry, or vile in any way. In fact, he looks rather kind. He looks...worried. “It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you.”

Tinaya grabs the nearest weapon, which is a tiny screwdriver that she’s been using to engineer a new skeleton keycard of her own design, patent pending. “What did you do to us? Why?”

“I didn’t do anything to you except get you out of there,” Rodari claims.

She rolls her eyes and scoffs. “Really? You expect me to believe that?”

“Really, it’s true,” he answers, maybe sincerely. “I was trying to repair the memory absorptioner, but I ran out of time. I still don’t understand this stuff very well. Then Omega and Valencia ordered me to leave, and...this happened,” he says, gesturing towards her, and the other three behind her. They’re not as perturbed by this disturbance as she is. That’s probably for the best, or it would get real chaotic in here.

“What are you talking about? Please clarify.” The words are polite, the attitude is not.

Rodari sighs. “That thing was not going to do what you thought it was going to do, and not what it actually did.”

“Qué?”

“What Omega and Valencia told you was right. They would have been able to share their memories with you, and yours with them. But it could also delete all your memories, or it could turn you into a psychopathic killer, or it could make you think that you’re a grouse in Labrador.”

“What is a grouse? What’s Labrador”

“The point is that it was not programmed correctly. Someone tampered with it before I got into work that day last year. They were trying to dumbify Omega and Valencia, and almost completely incapacitate you two. Well, it was more about you. It’s all about you, Tinaya. They only programmed it to affect the two of them so they couldn’t fix the problem, and I think Lataran is just collateral damage.”

“You think?” she questions. “You seem to know a lot, but also kind of nothing?”

He sighs again, but this time out of frustration. “The point is, someone was trying to get you out of the way, and prevent anything from being able to get you back in the way eventually. I still don’t know who it was. I wasn’t supposed to be in that room that day, but I was curious to learn more, because I have a thirst for knowledge, and I noticed that it was reprogrammed. So I tried to fix it.”

“But you failed, and now this is us.”

“Yes, it didn’t even do what the bad guy wanted it to do. It made this tornado of synapses instead. I have been looking for you ever since, hoping that one of you was still smart enough to...help me figure this out. I guess it’s you.” He sounds quite apologetic.

“I don’t understand why you got us out. Why didn’t we all just stay in there to work through the problem?”

“I didn’t know what the endgame was. I still don’t. My thought was that the safest place for you was on the Extremus proper. I went back in to get supplies, and when I returned to the hallway, you were gone. You had shuffled them away. I had no idea where you had gone, and I couldn’t trust anyone enough to ask for help..”

Tinaya stares back at the poor saplings sitting at the table. “Is it possible that...?”

“Either Omega or Valencia, or both, are responsible for what happened with the machine. The thought crossed my mind.”

She turns back to him. “I don’t know if you’re lying,” she says as she’s shaking her head. She falls into a laugh, and not because it’s funny; ha-ha, but because it’s funny; goddammit. “I don’t know if you’re about to kill me. Or them. Or yourself. Or...a grouse! I don’t know anything anymore, which is ironic, because I know more right now than I ever thought I possibly could! I mean, did you know that all non-trivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function lie in the critical line of the complex plane real part one-half? Because I do. I know that. I don’t know what it means, but it’s rattling around up here, along every line from a clearly very stupid movie called American Pie Presents: Girls’ Rules, the number forty-two—for some reason—and how many dimples there are in a golf ball...which I assume is from a game?” She slaps her head demonstratively as she’s ranting. “There’s so much in my head right now, but I can’t do anything with it, because there’s no organization. It all just got randomly dumped in all at once, and mixed together like a blender. My brain is trying to sort it out, but it’s too much. It’s too much, Rodari! It’s too much!”

Something clicked in Rodari’s head when she said that. “That’s it! The Blender.”

“Are you making fun of me now?” she questions angrily. She has trouble tempering her anger these days, and it always frightens the little ones, setting any progress they’ve made back by at least half a day.” She takes a breath, and tries to calm herself down, if only to make the others feel safer.

“I’m sorry. I did this to you. It wasn’t intentional, but I’m still at fault. If I thought that I could trust that it wasn’t either of them who messed up the machine, then I would have alerted them to it. But I got scared, and I ran away. Let me make it up to. You’ve given me an idea, but in order to implement it, I’m going to need help. You know this vessel better than anyone. How do I get into the mirror room?”

“The mirror room?” she asks, not out of not knowing what that is, but not understanding how it’s going to help them. The mirror has the ability to summon and extract anyone from any point in space and time. It’s generally used to pull people out just before they’re about to die, but that’s not a requirement. It can’t extract whole past consciousnesses, though. The mirror room is unguarded, but heavily fortified. Almost no one has access to it, and not many more even know that it exists. Tinaya only does because she’s a nosy hacker. The question is who does Rodari want to summon with it?

Hoping against all hope that this is not all an elaborate trick, the five of them sneak up to the mirror room in the middle of the night. It’s nice to finally have someone to help wrangle the saplings. Truly, unambiguously, hopefully he’s not lying to them. She uses her still-not-quite-finished skeleton keycard to break in, and they shut the door behind them. “Do you really think she can help us...and will be willing to? According to my temporal history classes, she’s not always good people.”

Rodari starts to slowly step around the mirror in the middle of the room, admiring its craftsmanship, and again, hopefully not planning something evil and twisted with it. It could be that all of this was to get Tinaya to let him into this room. “Nerakali Preston is a good person at heart. We will make sure to extract her later in her timeline, after she’s become friends with Team Matic. This will work; she can do this. It’s her whole thing.” He shrugs excitedly. “She’s The Blender.”

“Okay,” Tinaya agrees, still unsure. “But I’ll do it myself.” Rodari could hypothetically suddenly call upon Adolf Hitler or Elon Musk instead, and by the time the sound of his words hit her ears, it would be too late to stop him. She positions herself before the mirror and clears her throat. “I stand at the gate of life and death. Come forward, spirit, come forward. Here is life. Smell blood, smell life; I summon thee, Nerakali Preston of The Gallery Prestons,” she rattles off. The words are in her head because someone whose knowledge she absorbed knew them. Nothing happens, though.

“Once more with feeling,” Rodari encourages.

She repeats the words, but puts more umph into them, using dramatic pauses whenever necessary, and exclamation points where not necessarily necessary. Now it works. The glass shimmers, and shifts to a different place and time. A woman is standing on the other side, hovering over the body of another, who appears to be in a simulation of some kind. The supposed caretaker looks over when she realizes the mirror there. “Oh, hey. What’s up?”

“Are you Nerakali Preston?”

“I am,” she replies. She doesn’t seem evil, so it would appear that they have indeed summoned her at the right point in time.

“My name is Tinaya Leithe of the VMS Extremus. We have some people here whose brains would sure be better if you could blend them with their proper memories.”

Nerakali frowns. “Sorry, I can’t do that. I died. I don’t have my powers anymore.”

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