The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 23, 2536

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Leona walked back into the lab. Ramses wasn’t there, at least not in the main area. He did have that room in the back that he asked others to stay out of. Surely that didn’t apply to her, though. They were partners. She contributed a lot to rebuilding his lab, and the slingdrive array, which were their most important assets. She opened the door to find him naked on an exam table, at a high incline, a gaping hole in his abdomen. “What the hell are you doing?”

The robosurgeon stopped moving out of an abundance of caution since Leona did not step into this room decontaminated, or even very recently showered. Ramses wasn’t under anaesthesia, though, so he was annoyed. “Get out!” he demanded. He looked at the little surgical arms. “Get back to work!”

“Belay that order!” Leona countered.

“You don’t have control over this thing,” Ramses dismissed.

“Tell me what you are doing to yourself.”

Ramses sighed. “This was incredibly tedious and irritating. I cannot lose my forge core again. So no more pocket dimensions, no more bags of holding. This thing is being stored safe and sound inside of me, and if I lose that? Well, that means I’ve lost my entire substrate, so I don’t know what else I could try.”

“This is insane. You don’t have room to spare. What are you taking out to make space?” she questioned.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m sick of repeating myself! What will you have to take out!”

“Just some of my voltaics, and my sleep regulator. Okay, most of my voltaics. And my nutrient booster, and my water recycler, and two of my metallic oxygen reservoirs. But that’s it.” He stopped, but it looked like he wasn’t done yet. “And part of my liver, but it’s fine. I’ll just have to sleep more, and eat more, and I won’t be able to survive the vacuum for as long as normal people do. Not a big deal.”

Leona shook her head. “I know that this was hard on you, but this is not the way.”

“I’m already using an upgraded body,” Ramses reasoned. “It’s not like it will reject it, or go septic, or something like that. People have all sorts of implants, and some even use artificial organs all the time, mixed with their organic ones. It really is okay.”

“Do you know why we aren’t telepathic, Ramses?”

“Because I couldn’t figure it out.”

“That’s a lie, and we both know it. You didn’t give us telepathy, even though it would make a lot of the things we do easier, because you decided that that was a bridge too far. Every posthuman has their line, and that was yours, whether you’ll admit it or not.”

“It’s not a spectrum,” Ramses argued. “It’s an array, so if your claim were right, it would be more like excluding something from the array.”

“Metaphors aside, you’re not a mech.”

“And this isn’t cybernetic. It’s a...flesh pocket.”

“That’s not what that term means,” she warned.

“A storage cabinet,” he amended. “I appreciate your concern, but I’m doing this, so you can either squirm and watch, or get out and breathe.”

“It’s a slippery slope. That’s what I’m trying to say. Because there will come a time when you have to escape this body unexpectedly, and it will prompt you to try something more drastic. You could lose a part of yourself trying more and more. You could lose our pattern. You would be off the team.”

Ramses frowned. They stared at each other for a while. “It wouldn’t be the first time a version of me lost the team.” He looked at the arms. “Keep going, surgeon. Take out the legacy parts.”

“There’s a better way. I think you should take more time to think of it.” Leona opted to leave. She didn’t want to watch the procedure. She didn’t know if she was in the right, or if there was nothing wrong with what Ramses was trying to do. She just didn’t want him regretting it, or doing something that couldn’t be reversed. She stood in the main lab for a couple of minutes, hoping that he would change his mind and come out. When it looked like he wasn’t going to, she started to walk away.

Ramses came out, still pulling his shirt down over his bandaged incision site. He set his forge core on the counter.

“Ah!” she screamed, “I changed your mind!” She reached out and took him into a bear hug.

He pulled away, still rather sore. “Careful, careful.” The local anaesthetics conflicted with the liquid bandage, so he would have to switch to painkillers. “Yes, you did change my mind.”

“What was it? Tell me what did it exactly...in case I need to say it again.”

“You told me I should look for a better way, and I think you’re right,” he answered. “I think I have one.”

“Lay it on me,” she encouraged.

“Bioprinting.”

“Bioprinting?”

“Bioprinting.”

“What does the method of substrate fabrication have to do with anything?”

“The science wasn’t there before, but it is now. What we need are brand new upgrades, complete with new parameters. Instead of just a handful of nanite implants, they will be evenly distributed under the skin, ready to emerge and form even faster than now. The forge core is still a part of the plan, but I don’t have to take anything out to make room for it. I just need a new design. I’m going to work on it now.”

“We were hoping to leave now,” she reminded him. “We need to take Meyers to his new home on the other side of the galaxy.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Ramses said. “Someone else can handle that. I need to focus.”

“I thought you didn’t want this to be a permanent lab.”

“And it won’t be. I have a new idea for that too. But I can’t waste time going off on a side mission for some hermit that I have no strong feelings about. You can go if you want to, or collaborate with me on my new projects. But from where I’m standing, the other five can handle it without us.”

“Four,” Leona corrected. “We need at least three at each location.”

“Sure, sure, sure, let’s do that. You make that call, but I’m not going to be on the away team. Not this time.”

Leona studied him as he turned around, and started pulling down tools, preparing his workspace for his new plans. He was instantly engrossed in the flood of ideas, he wasn’t paying attention to her, and didn’t notice when she snagged the forge core before teleporting away. She jumped to Olimpia, who was alone, but she wanted to talk to everyone. Well, most everyone. She tapped and held onto her comms disc, opening up for a voice command. “Group call to all team contacts, except for Ramses.”

“What?” Olimpia questioned. “Why?”

“All team contacts except for Ramses Abdulrashid. Channel open...” the operator announced.

“Everyone convene at my location. Don’t tell Ramses.”

“Why are you leaving him out of it?” Olimpia asked. “What’s going on?”

Leona waited for everyone else to arrive before explaining herself. “Ramses is obsessed. He’s working on a new project, which places him in danger. He wants three or four of us to take Mr. Meyers to his new home, but I am not comfortable with that. I know what’s going to happen. If we use our new slingdrive array for the first time ever to separate, we will stay separated for an extended period of time.”

“Did you speak with a seer, or something?” Marie asked.

“It’s not that I know it for a fact. It’s more that that’s how our lives always go. We don’t really know where we’re going, and I’m formulating a hypothesis about how the slingdrives work, which I don’t even think Ramses has noticed. I believe that their scope is smaller than we once thought, and every time we use them, we risk running into someone that we don’t want to. I would rather we all be together when that happens. I’m sure you won’t like it, but I have admin access to the array, so we’re going to sling, and Ramses is coming with us, whether he wants to or not.” She held up the forge core. “Wherever we end up, we’ll at least be together, and we will rebuild from there. Even if that means ending up back here anyway, I would prefer not to take the chance.”

“You’re the captain, honey,” Mateo pointed out.

“I’m not asking you to be on my side about it,” Leona went on, “but I wanted to tell you ahead of time, because after we land, he’s going to be angry, and he’s going to have questions. I don’t want to have to answer to you five while I’m dealing with him. So ask your questions now, so when we do go, we’re only worrying about him.”

“I have a question,” Romana said, holding up her hand.

“Okay...” Leona prompted.

“Can I go warn Ramses?” Romana couldn’t keep a straight face with that.

Leona scoffed. “Any serious questions?”

“Yeah, when is this happening?” Angela asked.

Leona asked her husband. “Is Meyers in stasis?”

“He is,” Mateo confirmed.

“Then we’ll leave right now, or as soon as you all have everything you need.”

“Our pocket dimensions are back in order,” Angela said, “so I suppose there’s nothing more to pack.”

Leona’s gaze drifted over to her wife. “Oli?”

“I don’t agree with this. We don’t keep secrets from each other. We don’t trick each other. We have enemies, and we treat them how we must to survive, and protect others, but we’re only able to do that because of the trust that we’ve built within the team. I wouldn’t have asked you to marry me if I thought you were capable of something like this.”

“You didn’t see what I saw,” Leona tried to explain. “He was mutilating himself.” She shook the forge core. “He was going to stuff this thing under his liver, and take out a bunch of his transorgans to do it.”

“That sounds like his call,” Olimpia argued.

“And this is mine. I’m still the captain here, even without a ship. You all spent a great deal of energy convincing me of that. So which is it? I’m your leader until you don’t like a decision I make?” Leona questioned.

“Yes, exactly,” Olimpia concurred. “That’s what good leaders do. They listen to their people, and change their minds when reasoned with.”

“I’ve not heard a good reason not to do this,” Leona decided.

“Then you’re not listening. Captain or no, I have my own agency, so I’m going to go talk to my friend. I agree that we should stick together, but we’re not going to do it as a surprise. Thank you for making sure he keeps his forge core with him, but he may want something else, or he may need to turn off some machines, or place an AI in dormant mode so it doesn’t go insane in the void of time. This is irresponsible, and I won’t stand for it.” And with that, she disappeared.

There was an awkward silence in her absence, which Mateo broke. “She has a pretty good point.”

“I know that!” Leona snapped back. She tapped and held on her comms disc again. “Team lurk mode. Admin authorization Dolphin-Racecar-Kangaroo one-niner-three.”

She listened to the conversation between Olimpia and Ramses in secret. The former wasn’t selling Leona out. She just appealed to the logic side of Ramses’ brain, reminding him that the slingdrives were brand new and untested, and it was too dangerous to let them go their separate ways. They all had to go together. She promised that they would find a place for him to continue on with his projects, either here, back on Castlebourne, or somewhere else entirely. Ramses was understanding, and persuaded. While everyone was making sure they had everything closed up and secure, Ramses shut his lab down, and gathered the last of his belongings. He told Leona to go ahead and keep the forge core that she had taken as it was only one copy, and he had another. He was considering making five more of them so everyone could have their own. They were fairly user-friendly, and getting easier to operate with each iteration. Their main function was to rebuild his lab, but they could also just construct some other structure, which could come in handy if they did ever end up getting separated, and stranded somewhere hostile.

Pribadium glided into the room. “All ready to go?”

“Thank you for your hospitality,” Mateo said to her.

“Is that what you would call it? I was pretty combative,” Pribadium noted.

“Let’s just call it passionate,” Mateo decided.

She smiled. “Thank you for doing this. If he wants to be a hermit, I don’t have a problem with that. I just don’t want him to go back into the system, and try to scrounge up the energy credits. He’s not much of a contributor. He’ll never save enough if he relies solely on passive income.”

“Energy credits?” Romana asked Leona in a whisper.

“I’ll explain it later,” Leona whispered back. “We don’t worry about credits. We generate our own energy.”

“No problem,” Mateo said. He pressed a button on the stasis pod so it started hovering over the magnetized floor. Rambo, could you take the other end? Leona can drive.”

“Yeah.” Ramses held onto the pod, just enough to make sure it was transported with them. He was still a little perturbed, but hopefully he would be able to return to his work quite soon. Perhaps they would carve a chunk out of Linwood’s new celestial body, or something nearby, and stick around for a bit while they rebuilt.

“Wait,” Pribadium said. She went over, and planted a kiss on Mateo’s lips. “I know you like the ladies.”

“What has become of my reputation!” he questioned rhetorically.

“Better step back, Pri-Pri,” Leona suggested.

Pribadium saluted them, and then disappeared.

“Prepare to sling,” Leona said as she was tapping on her arm band. “Yalla.” They left.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 11, 2524

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It wasn’t until the next year when Mateo, Leona, and Angela could safely reactivate their tandem slingdrives. They technically could have left shortly before midnight, but they decided it was for the best. They left a message with the Vitalie who lived on Vitalemus, to relay to the Vellani Ambassador if she ever heard from again. She hadn’t, but had kept apprised of Goldilocks Corridor news, and no one had reported seeing them lately, so no one knew where they were at this point. With nothing left for them here, they made the jump, and returned to the beacon floating around in the space where Castlebourne once was. They weren’t alone. They quickly picked up comms from Ramses, Marie, Olimpia, and Romana. They only had to make a few jumps to rendezvous with each other.

“Gang’s all here,” Mateo mused.

“How did you get back here?” Angela asked the other half of their team.

“You were taking too long,” Ramses began to explain. “We decided to come back here to see if you were stranded after failing to track Castlebourne’s new location. The rest is obvious. We were just about to come find you on Vitalemus.”

“Did you put a pocket dimension in the buoy thinking Romana would be able to use it?” Leona asked.

“No, that didn’t occur to me,” Ramses replied. “It was just a failsafe if something went wrong. With no other habitable structure around here, there needed to be some way to survive, like if you had a stranger in tow with a less advanced vacuum suit, or no suit at all. As it turns out,” he went on while tapping a piece of the buoy that he had separated from the rest, “it was necessary.”

“Is someone in there?” Leona questioned.

“You’ll see.” That was a weird way to put it.

“Can we all go back to Castlebourne together now?” Mateo asked.

Ramses shook his head. “I’m afraid this was a one-way trip. Hrockas scrambled the tracker from his end. Where they are by now is a mystery. I could probably write an algorithm that could predict their movements using their last known location. The choosing one he’s using to push the host star around is powerful, but she has her limits. They can’t be all the way to the outer arm of the Milky Way, or something. But we would have to leave something behind to keep trying to track them...”

“Or I could do it again,” Romana volunteered.

“No,” Mateo countered decisively. “I don’t want you breaking your pattern ever again.”

“Do we really need to find Castlebourne at all?” Marie asked the group. “We were trying to leave it at one point.”

“That’s true, I remember that now,” Mateo affirms. It was the closest thing to home they had ever had, but it was always going to end eventually. It was supposed to end a long time ago, but they got sidetracked with all that Pacey-Underburg stuff, which kept them tied to Castlebourne for a bit longer.

“Do you want to try another aimless jump?” Romana offered.

“And end up back in that hellhole?” Leona added. “No, thanks.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Romana reminded them. “I liked the outfits.”

“You could always wear that kind of outfit, whenever you want,” Leona said.

“True,” Romana replied. She shed her suit, and shifted her nanites to a 1950s-esque dress, not exactly like the kind she wore when they were oblivious and trapped in Underburg, but similar.

“Put your suit back on,” Mateo shouted.

Romana couldn’t reply in the vacuum, but she could still hear via conduction, yet she pushed the back of her ear forward as if she couldn’t even do that. After her father pointed at her with stern determination, she switched her suit back on. “Geeze, Papa Bear,” she joked. “Rambo’s got me covered. That man knows his way around a woman’s body.”

“Goddammit!” Mateo complained. “Don’t say things like that!”

“Okay, okay,” Leona jumped in, as she usually had to do when those two were at it. Romana knew how to push her dad’s buttons, and Leona knew how to put a stop to it, which was to change the subject as quickly as possible. “Let’s just go back to Earth. I’m feeling a little homesick. And it was home for all of us at some point, though not technically the same version of it.”

“That’s a good idea,” Marie concluded.

Ramses looked at his forearm readout. “My coherence gauge is in the Orange, where are you?”

“We just arrived, so it’s still Red,” Leona answered. “We won’t be ready to jump until nearly the end of the day, probably.”

“I’m doin’ a bottle episode!” Olimpia suddenly shouted.

“I was just thinking about that,” Angela said. “Not the bottle episode thing, that’s nonsense. “We should call it slinging. Why are we calling it jumping?”

“Seconded,” Romana agreed.

“All in favor,” Mateo posed. They raised their hands. “Motion passes. New lingo established.” He paused for a moment. “Great, that entertained us for all of ten seconds. What do we do in the meantime? And don’t say RPS-101 Plus. I don’t like playing in my suit. I can’t control my objects right.”

“You just say that because you consistently lose!” Olimpia teased.

“Mah-ri?” Angela began, “why are you looking around?”

“Oh, we just made a decision to go to Earth,” Marie replied. “That’s usually when God laughs and intervenes.

That was true. Everyone started to look around too, but found only space. The sudden intervention she was talking about didn’t usually happen when they were actively looking for it...kind of a watched pot never boils sort of thing, but it was still prudent to check.

“Do you guys realize there are three wars?” Angela offered. She opened the floor up to anyone, but no one responded. “The Exin Empire, the Sixth Key conflict, and those dragonfly aliens. I don’t know if you’ve realized this, but we’ve been switching between them. Once we close one chapter of one book, we start the next chapter of one of the other two books.”

Ramses glanced down at the piece of the buoy he attached to his chest. Only Mateo noticed, and he chose not to address it.

“Yeah, you’re right about that, aren’t you?” Leona asked rhetorically. “We just closed one of the books, but we don’t know which one we’re about to open, if either of the others.”

“I am curious about what’s going on with the Sixth Key,” Marie admitted. “It’s been a long time. I spent some years in one of those worlds.”

“So did I,” Romana said, referring to having grown up in ancient Third Rail.

“But the Ochivari are so fascinating,” Angela insisted. “We could end up in any universe, dealing with any new, unfamiliar culture.”

“Well, we might be able to trigger the Transit to show up if one of us makes a declaration that we want to fight in a cosmic war, or join the military,” Marie suggested.

“Let’s not do that,” Leona volleyed.

“Then the Sixth Key it is,” Angela responded. “Raise the sails! Navigate us to the aperture!” She pointed in a random direction. It was a little funny, but nobody laughed. They just fell silent for a time.

“That lasted us another five minutes. How’s everybody’s coherence? Mine’s still in the Red. Do we all have to be Green, or...”

“Maybe not,” Ramses explained. “I would feel safer if we were, though. I would feel even safer with Violet.”

“If you’re bored, we could just go into stasis for a few hours. It’s not bad in here. I found it easy to wake back up when they found me.”

“Well, yeah, Rambo knows his way around a woman’s body,” Olimpia echoed Romana from earlier.

“I want a divorce,” Mateo said, joking, but...clearly not happy for real.

The seven of them continued to hang out there while they waited for their coherence gauges to rise up to acceptable levels. They mostly held onto the buoy to stay close to one another, but occasionally, one of them would push off and float around. They could always return by utilizing their maneuvering thrusters, or just teleporting back. That was what gave Romana the idea to play hide-and-seek. It was a dangerous version of the game, which not everyone in the galaxy would be able to play. Because space was empty and black, the chances of finding someone just by the naked eye were incredibly low. They could use their heat signatures instead, but then detection would be incredibly easy. The only way to do it was for each hider to shut off their own life support systems, and stay in one place for long enough for the seeker to find everyone else first. They could still use their comms, but they would be untraceable. Some of them could withstand the cold for longer, and were better at hiding. Others were caught when they just couldn’t take it anymore. At this point, they could try to teleport away, but the seeker could always jump right to them wherever they ended up.

They played the game for a couple of hours before noticing that the same people were winning each time. It was always either Mateo or Ramses, which made this whole thing feel very unfeministic. Even though Ramses supposedly built their superstrates equally, it seemed as though the women got colder faster, just as they would if they were simply wearing business clothes in an office. The coherence gauges still weren’t Green for everybody, but they were sick of playing around, so most of them just took naps. They floated aimlessly there in the black, mostly apart, though Mateo and Olimpia held together like the two lovers they were. Leona was working on the self-destruct sequence for the buoy. Instead of bringing it with them, they were just gonna blow it up, so no one could have any hope of finding any information on it. It took a lot of time and work to engage the explosives. This was by design, so it couldn’t be switched on incidentally, or when the user wasn’t thinking rationally.

Finally, the last of them turned Green, and it was time to leave. Ramses woke everyone up with a calm, but crescendoing, song. They teleported back into a group, and magnetized their suits so they could watch the explosion together. It was a bit anticlimactic because of how fast and efficient it was, but still something worth seeing. They synced up their slingdrives, and with one final goodbye to the Castlebourne that was no longer there, they slung away.

They landed on the surface of what they assumed was Earth. They quickly detected a breathable atmosphere, and were able to recede their nanites into regular clothes. This did look like Earth, but perhaps one from long ago. Earth didn’t really have any cities anymore. They just lived in arcological megastructures, and some seasteads, if they weren’t just orbiting from space. They were on a street, though. The buildings were sleek and advanced, but just too dense for Earth in this time period. People were staring at them, including parents trying to hold their children close. A man approached them cautiously. “Do you mean us harm?” he asked.

Leona stepped forward. “Absolutely not. We’re travelers, attempting to return to Earth.”

The man looked over his shoulder at the crowd, and then back at Leona. “Never heard of it. How did you do that thing with your clothes?”

“Have you heard of other...” Leona trailed off. She slowly darted her eyes side to side, looking for the right way to word this. Unfortunately, the beginning of her sentence might have painted her into a corner. No, she could figure this out. The Prime Directive applied here until she determined otherwise. “...other cities.”

“You mean on the other side of the tunnels?” the man guessed. “Yes. We don’t interact with them, except to exchange some technologies sometimes.”

Tunnels. Leona looked up at the sky, or what appeared to be a sky anyway. She pulled a small swarm of nanites over her eyes, and used them as sensors. “Yeah, that was definitely a hologram, and they were under a dome. Goddammit, they were back on Castlebourne, and in some kind of simulation. Wait.

The man looked up at the sky too, trying to figure out what she was so baffled by.

The dimensions were off. This wasn’t one of the Castlebourne domes. It was too small. Not by much, but other than the ocean caps, and a few rare exceptions, all Castlebourne domes were pretty much the exact same skeletal design. Where would they be where people would be living under a dome, but alarmed by their use of nanite technology. She looked back at the stranger and breathed. “Have you heard of Proxima Doma?”

“Yes,” he replied. “We don’t know what it means.”

Leona looked back at the rest of the team. She just regarded them for a moment, trying to decide the best course of action. There was really only one. They couldn’t teleport, and they couldn’t explain their odd behavior. The locals wouldn’t understand, and it would break their worldview. “Run.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 10, 2523

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They should have realized that Ramses!324, a.k.a Tok’ra’s responsibilities and loyalties would remain with the people of New Welrios. Apparently, the two factions there had managed to become one cohesive peoples since the rest of Team Matic—including a different version of Ramses—was there. When they sent Old!Bronach back to the Goldilocks Corridor to reclaim his throne, they asked Team Kadiar to ask Tok’ra for his assistance in this matter. It would be his job to make sure that Old!Bronach became a decent leader, and started treating his people well. They never really found out how Tok’ra took it. They didn’t even know how the crew of the Vellani Ambassador broached the subject; whether it was more a command or more of a request. He apparently accepted his new role out of some sense of guilt, which wasn’t what they wanted. More recently, however, he put his foot down, and returned to his roots on New Welrios.

They had become a powerhouse over the last century, armed with a plethora of technologies that Tok’ra built for them. They were completely untouchable, much in the same way that Vitalemus was. Even The Oaksent was reportedly scared of getting near it, or even sending troops. Also like Vitalemus, they had evidently stayed out of the politics, and were satisfied with being independent and isolated. They were living proof that Oaksent’s hold on this sector of the galaxy wasn’t as strong as they once believed. The movies made it look easy, but it was probably pretty hard to keep control over so many worlds. Things had only gotten harder since the team showed up. They hadn’t realized how much of an impact they had had, but things were looking up.

Leona managed to convince the other parties to let the New Welriosians speak. They didn’t want to be so distant anymore. They wanted to participate in the community. The negotiations started back up again. Some of the agreements they had come up with last year had to be scrapped or replaced, but many weren’t rendered obsolete by this development. They pushed forward, and were almost home free. All that was left were signatures of all parties involved. It may have taken a long time, but they seemed to be able to agree that they wanted peace. That wasn’t possible just a couple of years ago. It was going to be a perpetual struggle, just as it was in the Sixth Key, but they should be able to handle it.

There was just one more thing before the deal could be finalized, at least according to everyone but Tok’ra, Dubra and Kivi, and Team Matic. The other negotiators had evidently come up with a new demand during the interim  year, which they decided not to bring up until the New Welrios situation could be resolved. Korali volunteered to be the one to speak for the group. “We want slingdrive technology.” She smiled, thinking that she had them right where they wanted them. “Nothing gets signed until we get it.”

Mateo stared over the table at her. “There are seven of us in total. We are in this room for you. This is not to our benefit. If you fail to sign these agreements, the VA will continue to ferry refugees to their new rightful home on Castlebourne. And in the midst of all that, the rest of you can fight it out all you bloody want. It’s sad, and we feel for the people of the Goldilocks Corridor, whether they identify with the Exin Empire, or otherwise. We won’t feel bad about our decision to bug out, however, because we did everything we could. And again, there are only seven of us. No one would blame us for failing to fix the whole universe. We will not let you get your hands on this technology. There is no threat you could make to change our minds. So sign it, don’t sign it; I don’t care anymore...our job is done. You never had any leverage against us. We came to this world in good faith to help, but we’ll only let that go so far before we hit our breaking point.” He stood up. “Let’s get out of here, ladies, back to Castlebourne.”

Bronach stood up as well. “If you leave, we can’t guarantee the safety of your new homeworld. Even if we do sign this, nothing we agreed to in the document bars us from attacking your region of the galaxy.”

“Do what you must,” Mateo responded. “We’ll take care of our people.” He looked over at his old friend. “It was nice meeting you, Tok’ra.”

Tok’ra nodded back respectfully.

Mateo, Leona, Angela, and Romana disappeared in a flash of technicolors.

They found themselves floating in the middle of outerspace, rather than on a planet, or even near one. Mateo laughed. “Slingdrive still slingin’.”

“That was a good speech you made, love,” Angela said to him. It was up to Leona to figure out what was going on, and to see if they could determine where they ended up, and they all knew it, so there was no point in vocalizing the plan of action. They just let her do her thing.

“Do you mean it?” Mateo asked.

“You said what we were all thinking,” Romana noted.

“Constellations are the same,” Leona interjected.

“They use constellations here?” Angela questioned.

“Well, they’re not named constellations, like Taurus or Leo. It’s just a map of the firmament as seen from our coordinates. We could be a couple light years off course and still be in the right vicinity, but...I would also be able to see the host star, which I can’t. The whole solar system is missing.”

“Wait, I’m getting a message.” Mateo tapped on his wristband.

“So am I,” Romana confirmed.

They listened to the message together. “Friends. This is Ramses. I can’t tell you what it took to get Hrockas to let me drop this buoy in the water for you to find. He hooked up with a powerful time traveler, who agreed to literally move the star system. This is to prevent any enemy from ever finding us. Ever. Depending on when you return, we’re probably only five or ten light years away at this point. Please retrieve the buoy, so no one else can find us. It includes an onboard tracker, which will pinpoint our exact location. Don’t leave it there, please. Rocky’ll have my ass.”

“I see where the beacon is,” Leona said. “It will only take us one normal jump to get there.”

They all teleported away, and took hold of the buoy. Leona popped the access panel open, and started working on the tracker. It wasn’t just there for them to consult on the first screen. She had to log into the system using her credentials, then go through this whole security system to prove her identity. If she made one little mistake, the entire thing would apparently self-destruct, so she had to be very careful and methodical.

“Do we have enough power for a second jump?” Romana asked. “It’s looking a little low to me.”

“It’ll be pretty short compared to where we just came from,” Mateo said to her. “I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

“We’ll wait several hours to be safe while our safety levels rise,” Leona said as she was still working. “They will not have traveled very far at all in that time.”

“Wait, what about the Vellani Ambassador?” Angela realized. “They need to find Castlebourne’s new location too. In fact, if it’s constantly on the move, they’ll need constant updates to keep up.”

Leona stopped and sighed. “That’s a good point. We can’t leave this here, though. Hrockas will be mad. I’m sure he went to great lengths to hide. The new coordinates cannot be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. But we have no idea when Team Kadiar will come back too. We just left them behind, and we cannot communicate with them from this distance.”

“We have to go back,” Romana urged.

“Correction,” Leona said. She tapped one more button, like it was the last one she needed. “We’ll go back. You need to stay here to protect the buoy. We don’t know what the VA’s quintessence levels are. They might not be able to return until tomorrow. We also may not be able to find them at all, so you can be our back-up messenger.”

“Leona, we’re not leaving my daughter here alone.”

“There’s a pocket dimension attached to this buoy. She can rest in stasis, and wait for someone else to arrive.”

“What if that someone else is an enemy, who blows this thing out of the sky?”

“They won’t be able to find it,” Leona reasoned. “I’m turning off the beacon. Only we or the Ambassador will be able to reconnect with it.”

“It’s okay, dad, I can do this. I’m the only one who can turn off my pattern.”

“I don’t like you to use that loophole all the time,” Mateo argued. “It’s so...lonely. I was never lonely. I met Leona right away after I started slipping time, and it wasn’t even two weeks before she joined my pattern. You shouldn’t have to keep doing this for us. We shouldn’t keep putting you in this position.”

“What’s the point of a loophole if we can’t use it to loop holes?” She winced. “You know what I mean. I won’t really be alone, I’ll be asleep. And I’ll only wake up if my sisters show up.”

He reached out and hugged her the best he could with their suits on. “Argh!”

She smiled at him, then receded her nanites so she was just wearing jeans and a t-shirt. He did the same, so they could hug each other for real. I love you, she mouthed.

I love you too, he mouthed back.

They each reengaged suit mode, then Romana had Leona help her access to pocket dimension. They could still hear her in there through comms, so she was able to promise that everything was okay. It was pitch black, but her suit was equipped with everything she needed. She said her goodbyes, then initiated stasis. Leona needed to watch her vitals, and run diagnostics on her behalf, before they could leave her behind. Once she was satisfied that Romana was going to be all right on her own, it still wasn’t time to leave just yet, because their own slingdrives weren’t safe enough to make another jump. Finally, though, after the waiting period, the three of them synced up their tandem slingdrives, and jumped back to Vitalemus. They were floating in orbit, though, not on the planet anymore, so hopefully no one would even notice their return. It was kind of embarrassing, to make such a dramatic exit, only to come back because they forgot their keys.

They tried to reach out to their friends, but no one was responding. After a few tries, they shifted gears, and made a call to the version of Vitalie on this planet, who informed them that the Vellani Ambassador had already left, but she didn’t know where they were going. Cool. So now they were stuck in the Goldilocks Corridor with nothing to do, and no way to go back home until their slingdrive came back online.

They just hung in orbit for a few minutes, having no better plans as of yet. They certainly weren’t going to try to land back on the planet.

“Wanna make out?” Angela joked.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 13, 2465

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Angela was on the observation floor of The Waycar, resting her elbows on the railing. That was what this section of The Transit that they managed to this universe with was apparently called. In all the fuss, they weren’t able to do a very thorough sweep of the thing before, but now they were going all over it. Of course Ramses was spending a lot of time in the engineering sections. There were two of them. The front end had a very low ceiling; too low when you remember that the average Maramon stood at around 200 centimeters. They must have considered it more of a crawlspace. It housed the machinery that kept it running, while all the interfacing happened near the back, underneath the briefing theatre. The rest of the levels had everything that a good squadron needed to live while they were training for war. Personal quarters, lavatories, mess hall, other communal areas. Training rooms, armory, command center. Despite it only being one car of 56, it was clearly always designed to be self-sufficient. They had seen everything by now, but didn’t know everything about it. Case in point, a weird remote floor that Angela was staring at right now.

Her sister, Marie walked up from behind her. “They’re almost ready for us.”

“Okay,” Angela replied solemnly.

“What are you doing up here?”

She was facing the back of the car, towards the smaller window. But she wasn’t looking through the window. To the left of it was a platform of some kind, a little bit higher than the floor they were standing on. She pointed to it. “Look around, Mar-Mar. There’s no way to get to that. No ladder, no elevator. It’s too far away to leap to. What the hell is it for? Is it just decoration? It does vaguely look like a giant sconce.”

“Well, I mean, we could just teleport to it.”

“Yeah, we could, but...this wasn’t engineered for teleporters.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“I guess not.”

Marie smiled at her alternate self with her eyes, but not her lips, as she offered a hand. “Let’s go together.”

They took hands, and cleared the nine or ten meter gap with ease. Only now could they look down to see what was here. The floor was flat, but there was a seam running all the way across, and a handle. They exchanged a brief look, then Angela reached down, and opened the trapdoor. They looked apprehensively at what was there. “Get Leona,” Marie said.

Angela didn’t go anywhere. She just tapped her neck to activate her comm disc. “Boss, better get up here. Just you, though. Not much space on this.”

“On what?”

“Let’s call it the perch,” Angela replied.

Leona quickly figured out what she was referring to. She too looked down at the stasis pod. “Either o’ you recognize this guy?”

They shook their heads. “Nope.”

“Should we wake him up?” Leona asked.

“You’re asking us?”

“I want your opinion.”

Marie consulted her watch. “We have to get to the negotiations.”

“You go,” Angela suggested.

“What?”

“They don’t need both of us. Go facilitate. I’m curious.”

“So, is that a yes from you?” Leona pressed.

“If not us, then who? If not now, then when?”

Leona chuckled. “Fair enough.”

“Go,” Angela encouraged her sister. “I love you.”

“Mateo,” Leona asked through her comm.

“Yeah?” Both Mateos answered simultaneously.

“Who gave him a comm?” she questioned.

“I did,” Ramses answered. “It seems like he’s gonna be with us for longer than we presumed.”

“I want it out of his neck,” Leona ordered. “He doesn’t have one in the past, and we have no idea when he’ll end up going back. Carlin could find a reason to relapse him any second now.”

“Understood,” Ramses replied.

“You had a question?” Future!Mateo asked.

“Is that Stoutverse doctor still helping us with inventory in the infirmary?”

“Sure is,” Future!Mateo replied.

“Tell her she may have a patient on the way.”

“Understood,” he echoed.

Leona cleared her throat, and got down on her knees to start tapping on the stasis pod interface screen. “Cassius Hoffmann. Is he on our known list?”

Angela tapped on her arm to access their personal files. “No. Only a Cassidy.”

Leona tilted her head. “Maybe they’re related.” And with that, she released the hatch, and lifted it open. There were two kinds of stasis technologies; one which used magical powers to slow down time, and another which Earth developed. Induced cryptobiosis didn’t manipulate time, but slowed the subject’s metabolism down to almost nothing. There were complications with this technology, such as a build-up of radiation in the body, which had to be periodically purged, and a limited operational timeframe. To avoid these pitfalls, true stasis was one of the technologies that the Shortlist agreed to provide for the stellar neighborhood to make their lives easier, under the condition that it would only be used for long-term space travel, not for any other reason. It could scale into a weapon if harnessed by an abusive or nefarious party.

This Cassius guy was just in a tun state, like a tardigrade. It was more difficult to maintain, and required more maintenance, but he could have been in here for centuries. One of the downsides of cryptobiotic stasis was the length of time it took to revive the subject. Water filled the pod to rehydrate him, and an electrical charge was delivered to revitalize his nervous system. They waited there for minutes before he finally opened his eyes, and looked at them. “Can you speak?” Angela asked.

Cassius blinked twice.

“Does twice mean no?”

He blinked once.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

He blinked yes again. Then he struggled to adjust his gaze towards his feet. His eyelids fluttered. When they expressed concern, he stopped, suggesting that it was a voluntary gesture.

“Are you trying to point to something?” Angela asked him.

Yes.

“They screen?”

Yes.

“Can it expedite your recovery?”

No.

“What does it do? I mean...ugh.” She thought about what binary question that she could ask. There was none. “A, B, C, E, E, F...” She kept going until he blinked yes at M, then she started the alphabet all over again until she got to I.

She only ended up having to elicit M-I-N-D-R-E before Leona decided to guess mindreader, and realized what he was going for. “Oh my God, of course. He wasn’t just asleep. His mind was probably in a virtual environment.” She tapped on the screen some more until she found what they needed.

A tiny hologram of Cassius appeared on the glass. The physical Cassius looked at it for a second before closing his eyes to continue his recovery. “Hey, folks!”

“Cassius Hoffmann?” Leona asked.

“That’s me!”

“What are you doing here?”

“How long has the Transit been active?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” Leona replied. “Maybe a few weeks? We’re no longer connected. The Waycar is now free and independent.”

“I see. Who’s on the Transit?”

Leona didn’t know who he was, or whether he could be trusted, but he appeared to have been in some control of this machine before anyone they knew was, so there were probably some things he knew about it without their help. “The beginnings of the Transit Army.”

“Good,” Cassius decided. “They don’t need us. I was only placed here to make sure that they were the ones who found it, instead of just any rando astronaut who happened to land on Hyperion.”

Leona shook her head tightly.

“It’s one of Saturn’s moons,” Cassius explained. “That’s where the Transit was.” Now he was getting suspicious of them. Who are you?”

“Captain Leona Matic of the Vellani Ambassador.”

“Oh, okay. Whew.” He was relieved. “Yes, my name is Cassius Hoffmann, Second Lieutenant to Nereus Jolourvedin, Thief of the Transit Bulk Traveling Ship. Together, we and a group of other humans escaped Ansutah, and made our way back to Salmonverse. Most of them went off to live their own lives in peace. Nereus and his First Lieutenant claimed their destinies. I was left here with only the one job, and I didn’t even have to do it.”

“Something must have gone wrong at any rate,” Leona imagined. “You should have been awakened either way.”

“Nah, the machine has a mind of its own. If Freya or Azura stepped foot on board, it would have recognized them, and left me alone. I’m not surprised it’s taken weeks for you to find me. This car was invisible. You see, this was more of a punishment than anything. Don’t worry, I’m not a killer or anything. I just didn’t always know my place as Second L-T. I was a bit of a nuisance.”

“Nereus Jolourvedin now serves as The Repairman,” Leona told him, not knowing whether he knew that or not. “He doesn’t seem like the type to hold a grudge.”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t wanna see me again.”

“Then he’s in luck,” Angela clarified. “We’re not even in Salmonverse anymore.”

“I see.” Cassius placed his hands on his hips, and looked around as he was nodding. “Do you lay claim to the Waycar?”

“We need to verify your story,” Leona began. “If it checks out, then this here vessel is yourn. We have our own.”

“I need to get to the negotiations,” Angela suddenly decided.

“Okay. Thanks, Angie,” Leona said.

“Thanks, Angie!” Cassius echoed before adding after Angela left, “she single?”

“She only dates corporal people,” Leona joked.

“Touché.” After a beat, he added, “I only need another hour.”

An hour and a half later, Cassius was able to return his consciousness fully to his body, and go see the doctor for an examination. By then, the diplomatic discussions were over. They turned out to be a lot more complicated than anyone could have guessed. It wasn’t only about letting Kineret leave with her daughter. It all had to do with the Waycar, the consolidator, and a new crew. “They want this?” Leona asked.

“No, they want to create a crew for the Waycar. Any of us would be welcome to stay and lead them,” Angela explained.

“I see. I have no intention of leaving the Ambassador.”

“Neither do I,” Angela replied. “But someone who knows a little about this stuff should become part of the executive crew. I don’t think the Stoutversians could handle it on their own. Do you know how many people can fit comfortably?”

“Maybe almost a hundred by our calculations,” Ramses answered.

“I’m sure that Cassius will be staying, no matter who else comes aboard,” Leona clarified. “He can lead them, I guess. He knows this thing better than any of us. We brought them the quintessence consolidator. I suppose our job is done.”

“We still need them,” Future!Mateo reasoned. “If we want to get to Verdemus to find the timonite for my past self, Carlin can’t do that.”

“True,” Leona realized. “It will take weeks at best to form the crew of this new ship. We can’t leave until then.”

“They’ve already agreed to take us back to Salmonverse,” Marie revealed. “But we won’t be able to call upon them if we end up needing something else later.”

“That should be fine,” Leona decided. “But Carlin, we will need you in the future. Past!Mateo has to get back to his time in the Third Rail. I can see your eyes, though; you wanna stay here on the Waycar.”

“I do,” Carlin admitted, “but I’ll help you in any way I can.”

Leona looked at the Walton sisters. “We gave them the consolidator, and in a way, we’re also giving them the Waycar. Did we happen to get anything out of these talks?”

“The new crew,” Angela began. “It won’t be as hard to form as you might believe. They don’t have a very large pool to pick from. Our one condition was that no one who leaves this universe is allowed to be a carrier for the deadly dragonfly flu. They made their choice in exposing the majority of their population to it, but they can only use it to protect their world. They’re never allowed to leave.”

“I guess that’s something,” Leona figured.

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Orthogradient: Azura and the Transit Army (Part I)

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Azura of Ansutah ran towards the crowd that was forming to overwhelm her ward, Treasure, Treasure’s bodyguard, Quino, and the native historian whose name she couldn’t recall at the moment. Before she could get close enough to help, Treasure screamed, and disappeared. She was a natural-born bulk traveler, who could travel to any nearby parallel universe, and as the only one here who was able to power the Transit, her disappearance came as a great loss. Azura looked around in case Treasure came back. Bulk travel inherently meant time travel, and there was no reason why she couldn’t spend countless years elsewhere, and still return to this very moment. But she didn’t, and she might never. Azura and her new makeshift crew might have to get out of this predicament on their own. Before the bewildered mob found her too, she ran off, and ran back to her spacetrain.

The man who was quickly becoming her second in command greeted her at the entrance. “Where are they?” Kaolin questioned.

“They’re gone. She screamed,” Azura answered.

“We thought we heard that.”

“Yeah.” She walked past him, and headed down the car.

“Well, is she coming back?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” she answered.

“How the hell are we gonna get out of here?”

They had power, they just had no way to escape this brane, and travel to another. This thing was built with the ability to process the bulk energy required to perform the operation, but it was intentionally stripped of some vital components, by someone who didn’t want the machine to fall into the wrong hands. It was not yet clear whether theirs were the right hands, but they were the only ones here at the moment. Azura reached for the nearest intercom. “Harbinger crew of the Transit, and founding members of the Transit Army, we are trapped in this brane. Our power source was forced to flee a potentially deadly situation without us. We have to move on under the assumption that she will never return. Her destiny is taking her on a different vector. But all is not lost. The engineers have been working on a contingency. They’ll need a little time to complete diagnostics, I believe, but we will get out of here...eventually. For now, please pilot us off of this planet. I at least want to get away from the natives. Once we’re in space, I’ll lead an official briefing for details. Thank you.” She hung up.

“What’s the contingency?” Kaolin asked.

Azura took a breath. “Time,” was all she said.

As explained, the Transit wasn’t designed to need Treasure Hawthorne in order to work. But without all those missing parts, it was not capable of accumulating enough energy to make even one trip in any reasonable amount of time. Fortunately, time was relative, and they had untold amounts of it, as long as they took precautions. The crew was placed in stasis while the ship wandered through space. Bulk energy was constantly popping into existence out of nowhere. This was, in fact, what explained the persistent expansion of the universe. With the right equipment, the energy released during these infinitesimally small events could be harnessed and stored.

After thousands of years of waiting, which only felt like seconds to everyone who was asleep, they finally had enough to make one jump. They had to make it count. Unfortunately, they had already exhausted their two best prospects for some real sustainable power. She was going to have to resort to the third. She got back on the horn to make another announcement. Most of the crew was in the same car as her already. “As you’ve already learned, I am a hybrid, made of human DNA, as well as Maramon. It explains why my skin is so pale, but real Maramon aren’t just pale, they’re white. They’re very white. The majority of my traits from that side of the experiment are internal, such as my physical resilience, and virtual immortality. The only Maramon I’ve personally met already knew what I was, for they were part of the program that genetically engineered me and my brothers and sisters. So I’m not sure whether a regular Maramon would recognize what I am, nor what that would mean for their impression of me. They may treat me as one of their own, or an abomination, or anything in between.

“My creators provided me with certain data regarding my world’s history, as well as their adventures throughout the bulkverse, but I don’t have the coordinates for every single brane they’ve ever recorded. I really only have one left, and it’s populated by Maramon. Their mission was to log new worlds, and move on, so the best one could be chosen for future settlement, but they decided to just take it for themselves. This is a last ditch resort. Our one fusion reactor that we stole has helped, but it is not enough. The time we spent on stasis will help us at least escape this universe, but we won’t be able to go anywhere else. Providence might not help us, and they may take the Transit for themselves. Unfortunately, it’s our only option. Anyone who wants to take their chances where we already are may leave in one of the pump shuttles that we discovered. For those of you who don’t know, they run on bulk energy too. It’s not enough to pierce the membrane, but it can jump to just about anywhere in the universe near-instantaneously. We’ll be crossing over to Providenciaverse soon, so if you’re leaving, let me know now.”

No one left, so Azura ordered that they use the last of their main power reserves to cycle up to lightspeed and pierce the membrane. The way the Transit was designed, it should be able to refuel while in the outer bulk by absorbing bulk energy through specialized ramscoops. Unfortunately, most of these were removed by the man who originally stole the machine. They either needed to be replaced eventually, or they would keep having to find other sources of power from the likes of the people they were on the way to see now. The journey this time took two weeks to reach their destination. To avoid being detected—at least right away—they entered the brane far from where Azura predicted the Maramon would have settled the solar system. She planned on going the rest of the way on one of the pump shuttles. These were large enough for a passenger load of around 24 people, but that number would shrink with gear, and other equipment, depending on the mission. The interior could be reconfigured as needed. She was intending to go on the away mission herself, but that was not possible. They found themselves coming through right next to a local ship. It was only about 40,000 kilometers away; more than close enough to be picked up on sensors.

They reached out immediately. “Unidentified operator of the Transit, this is the Providence Mining Explorer Denojuge, please respond.”

Azura cleared her throat. “PME Denojuge, this is Azura of the First Transit Army. We’ve come seeking power sources. Our siphon array was removed, so we require alternatives. Anything you have would be quite helpful. We’re not here to cause trouble. I was genetically engineered and raised by a secret sect of Maramon who were originally formed to protect your location from the general population, and the government. Whether you help us or not, we will not betray that directive.”

“Relax, half-breed, we’re not worried about being discovered anymore.” Half-breed. They knew who she was. “Prepare to be boarded peaceably.”

“Do we do that?” Kaolin questioned. “Do we accept them?”

“We’re stuck here,” Azura began. “Waiting in stasis for thousands of years isn’t going to work this time. They know how to find us, and they will find us eventually if we try to run. Yes, we do this peaceably, like she said.”

They synced flight paths, then the Denojuge connected to the docking car. It was no surprise that they used compatible technologies, since the Providentials originally came here through the Crossover, which was designed by the same team as the Transit. Captain Ouheliydi led a boarding party in, and down the cars to meet Azura and her people halfway. She nodded at them respectfully. “We hear great things of the Transit Army. I must say, there are fewer of you than we imagined.”

“This marks the beginning of it,” Azura explained. “We’ve not yet recruited.”

“We guessed as much,” Ouheliydi said. “Obviously, you find some way to repair this thing, or you would not become multiversal legends in your future.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Azura agreed.

Ouheliydi sized up the first members of the army. “Verteans. The records do not explicitly state that they were the first, but the implication is that they were from the Biverse. I suppose it’s half true. Anyway, we have what you need.” She snapped her fingers at a masked soldier behind her. He handed Azura a metallic cylinder.

It proved to be heavier than Azura expected. She was stronger than the average human, but since her outside had to appear fully human in order to blend in, she couldn’t be as strong as a full Maramon. She had not seen anyone on that side of her ancestry in a long time, and forgot how much stronger they were.

“Apologies,” Ouheliydi said. “We forget how much weaker you are.”

“I understand,” Azura said as Kaolin was helping her stand up straight. She was capable of holding it on her own, but she had him open it for her. Inside was one of the longest coils in the multiverse. It had to be in order to taper down from a millimeter to an angstrom. “An atomic lance.”

Ouheliydi smiled. “You’re welcome.”

“We appreciate the sentiment,” Azura replied, “however most of our lances are functioning within normal parameters. It’s our aether siphon array that is missing.”

“Yes, well,” Ouheliydi began, “my people are strong, but not that strong. We have that for you as well, but automators will have to affix it to the front for us. It’s being couriered from the inner system as we speak.”

Azura narrowed her eyes, and looked down at the lance coil. “How much is this going to cost us?”

Ouheliydi smiled again. “Three cars.”

“We can’t remove three cars from the Transit,” Azura contended. “We need them. As you know, this machine is paramount in the war against the Ochivari.”

“You misunderstand,” Ouheliydi said. “We’re not asking for you to remove them. We’re asking for you to integrate a team of elites into the three cars. We’re asking to join the war as your first recruits.”

Azura was surprised by this. Obviously the whole point was to recruit for the impending war, but she had spent all this time just trying to get the Transit to work in the first place that she hadn’t been able to devote any bandwidth to that aspect. Who would she ask to join, how would she know who might agree to it, and how was she going to find them? She was able to travel to the last few universes because she had specifically memorized their locations. She wasn’t even supposed to do this, but every day while growing up, once she was finished with her studies, she would take it upon herself to conduct some unauthorized independent research. She could also get to the other universes that her brothers and sisters were dispatched to, but only one other beyond that. Probably her first stop once this machine was fully operational would be to Treasure’s universe, where a woman lived who could help them. She was not planning to recruit anyone until then. But if this was the price, could she say no? “I don’t know about this. Yes, I’ll need an army, but... Hold on, I need to ask, do you know who Thack Natalie Collins is?”

“No,” Ouheliydi answered.

“She’s a psychic who can witness events throughout the bulk. She could be listening to this conversation right now. If I’m going to do this; if I’m going to build this army, I need to be in her good graces, and she may have her own recruitment plans, which may or may not include you. I honestly don’t know, but I don’t want to upset her before I even meet her. You understand.”

Ouheliydi nodded. “No recruitment, no aether siphons. That’s the deal. This is not a negotiation. Why do you think we have this technology? We chose to stay in this universe, and let our brethren take the Crossover back on mission. We’ve never seen the Transit before. We don’t use bulk energy to power our ships. So why did we build them? For you. We didn’t know that you would be coming. We didn’t know that it would be you specifically. But we hoped, and we’ve been preparing for decades. The Ochivari already came here, and we fought them off, but we suffered losses. The only thing we regret now is not getting a single Providential out of here during the Ochivari’s retreat, who could have sought further retaliation for us. We probably want blood more than you. We’re not letting you go without us, so you have to decide whether this Thack lady is more important to you than skilled fighters. I may not know much about what’s out there, but I know that she’s not the only person who can help you recruit. Statistics don’t allow it. But there is no one like our elites. No one. They have been training for this for their whole lives, I don’t know if you know this, but we’re not immortal here. The proper physics forced our ancestors to give it up. We die of old age, just like humans. So time is valuable, and we’re not going to waste it like our ancestors’ ancestors did.”

Azura sighed and looked back at her own crew. None of them appeared to be against this idea, though to be fair, the only Maramon they had ever encountered before was herself, and she was only half. The Ochivari were the true bulkverse enemies, but make no mistake, Maramon could not be trusted either. That was why she ignored her initial mission, and tried to live her best life in Universum Originalis. Still, this was an impenetrable ultimatum. They were at these people’s mercy. But maybe she had one card to play. Maybe this was a negotiation. “One car.”

“Two.”

Azura nodded with a sigh. “Two.” She reached out for a handshake to seal the deal. “Welcome to the Transit Army.”

Ouheliydi reached back and shook it as she laughed. “No. You...welcome to the Transit Army.”

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