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The thing about these magical tethers was that there would be no more
sneaking off alone; to protect the others, to escape from them, or for any
other reason. Mateo was famous for this, breaking free from the group, and
that was no longer an option, for they would always be able to find him. It
was funny how one of the first things that happened to him was that he came
into possession of a metal business card that could whisk him away whenever
he needed it to, but he couldn’t do that without telling anyone. Either way,
it was really important that he give this support group therapy thing a
chance. So he decided to tell them about it. He didn’t tell them everything,
though.
“Do you even know where it takes you?” Leona asked.
“Dr. Hammer seems to be more comfortable in the 21st century, so I’m
guessing sometime around then,” Mateo answered.
“Who gave this to you?” Ramses had his arm outstretched, waiting to receive
the rendezvous card for examination.
“I’m not at liberty to say...and I’m not giving it to you. It doesn’t need
to be studied, I know what it is.”
“No, you don’t,” Leona argued. “It could deliver you to a special prison
where we couldn’t track you, and wouldn’t be able to teleport into if we
ever did manage to find it.”
“It’s not that. I trust the person who gave it to me,” Mateo explained. “And
if it is, we’ll deal with it. We always come out on top.”
“Yeah, because we’re cautious, thoughtful, and prepared,” Angela said.
“You’re being neither of those things right now.”
“I’m wearing my suit, aren’t I?” Mateo defended.
She rolled her eyes.
“If you trust it, I trust it too,” Olimpia decided. She gave him a kiss on
the lips. Besides, you need a range test, don’t you, Ram?”
“Well, I guess, but I wasn’t gonna—”
“Asked and answered!” Olimpia declared. “No further questions.”
“I need this,” Mateo said to the whole team, but mostly to Leona. “I’m
losing my mind. I’m willing to take the risk that it’s a trap, especially
since I really don’t think that it is. The way it was given to me...it would
have been easier just to abduct me right then and there. I wouldn’t have had
time to say goodbye.”
Ramses sighed. “Hold it up, balancing it between your fingers on the edges.”
Mateo did so.
“Turn it around,” Ramses added. “All right, I have at least
some data. Proceed.”
Mateo gave Leona a kiss, and then gave another to Olimpia. As he turned
around to give himself some space, she slapped him on the ass. He was going
to say one more thing, but the slap made him drop the card, which activated
it, and spirited him away.
He found himself standing on a gently sloping rock floor, inside of a glass
tunnel. He was facing the ocean, which made him feel centered and calm. He
stared at it through the window, noticing how there was no door leading to
the outside. After a few moments, he turned around, and headed for the door
to the building.
A vaguely humanoid, but still very mechanical, robot was sitting at what
resembled a reception desk. “Hello, and welcome to the Center for Temporal
Health on Ilha da Queimada Grande. My name is Defghij. Please present your
rendezvous card, so that I may check you in.”
Mateo padded his suit, even though he knew it couldn’t be there. “Oh, crap.
Where does it go when you use it?”
“Usually the ground.”
“Lookin’ for this?” It was Leona, holding up his card. What was she doing
here?
He carefully took it, maintaining eye contact with her as he handed it to
the robot. “How are you here? Why? Who?”
“I’m not your Leona,” she replied. “I’m from an old timeline.”
“Our twins,” Mateo realized. That was why she needed the therapy.
“My twins,” she corrected. “You had nothing to do with it.”
He dropped his gaze, and deepened his frown. “We can’t be in the same
session.” He looked back up to her to see how she felt about that.
“I agree, which is why we’re not. You still need to go through orientation.”
“She’s right,” Defghif confirmed, presenting his card back for him. “Down
the hall, to the left, through the door that leads to Dr. Hammer’s office.”
He couldn’t stop staring at the alternate version of his wife. “You don’t
think we should talk, about what happened?”
“About how your wife lost the children that I had,” Alt!Leona asked.
“No.” She handed Defghij her own card for check-in. It was black, rather
than silver. She noticed that he noticed. “It’s like a mood ring, except it
actually works. Once yours is tethered to you, it will change colors
accordingly.” Another goddamn tether. Great.
Mateo finally took his card back. “I’m sorry. I’m guessing black isn’t
good.”
She watched it in her own hand as she flipped it around between her fingers
like a magician preparing to make it disappear. “It doesn’t mean sad,
it means...empty.”
He couldn’t help himself. He took her hands in his, and leaned forward to
kiss her on the forehead. “Even though you’re not my Leona, you can
always count on me. Whether we’re in the same group session, or not, I can
be here for you. You don’t have to feel empty.”
Her card was still mostly black, but specks of blue began to shine through
like stars on the firmament. He noticed that she noticed, and he saw her
tuck it away up her sleeve. “I have to go. Good luck.” She walked past him,
down the hall, and to the right.
Mateo looked back over at Defghij. “Your name is part of the alphabet.”
“My creator wasn’t particularly creative.”
“Have a nice day,” he said as he was walking towards Dr. Hammer’s office.
“Hey, that’s my line!”
Mateo knocked on the door. After a few seconds, it opened on its own.
Dr. Hammer wasn’t at her desk, but someone shorter was filing something in
the cabinet, facing away from him. “Have a seat, Mister Matic.” She finished
what she was doing while he sat down. When she turned around, he saw that he
knew her.
“Siria Webb. It’s been a long time for me.”
“As well as for me,” Siria said. She sat down on the other side of the desk.
“Could you tell me what year it is?”
“It’s the year 216 of the common era,” she replied.
“That’s early.”
“That’s the point.”
“What’s this place? Where are we?”
“Snake Island,” Siria began. “As you can imagine, there are a ton of snakes
here. There are no doors to the outside, so if you were a teleporter, we
would caution you to not even try.”
“I am a teleporter,” Mateo corrected.
“Oh. You are? I think we need to update your records.”
He nodded. It didn’t matter to him either way. “What are the next steps?”
“First, we must link you to your card. This will prevent anyone else from
using it, and allow you to access all of its features.” She walked over to
the side wall, and opened what Mateo thought was just a cabinet. She pulled
a sort of morgue drawer from it, having to move the second visitor’s chair
out of the way. “I promise, it won’t hurt.”
“What other features does it have?”
Meditation apps, coping skills, and other lessons. It can hold photos of
your loved ones, even if you don’t have any to upload, as it can pull the
images from your memory. There’s also a, uhh...”
“A what?” Why was she nervous to answer?
“It’s an orgasm button.” She was still rather uncomfortable to be explaining
this, but was holding it together. “Sometimes a sexual release is all you
need to get through the day, and this is quicker and easier. I should warn
you, though, that it keeps track of when you use it, and Dr. Hammer can see
the logs, so she may bring it up if that’s, like, all you do all day. It
also tracks your vitals, which she’ll use to tailor your treatment.”
“I was to understand that this was more of a support group, and Dr. Hammer
would be less involved than all this.”
“I don’t know how you ended up with that card, and it’s none of my business,
but they may have been misinformed, or withheld information on purpose. I
couldn’t tell ya. This is all about consent, which you may revoke at any
time. You can turn around and leave right now, and even keep the card,
though some features may not work.”
“No, it’s fine. I want to talk to people who aren’t my friends. They’re
supportive, but...”
“They’re too close?” Siria guessed.
“Yeah.” Mateo removed the armor and response modules of his IMS.
“You don’t need to strip down completely,” she informed him. Once he was on
his back, she went back over to the computer to begin the procedure. She
slammed on the keys with purpose, stopping to click through menus as needed.
Shortly after announcing that she was starting, the dull hum of the machine
stopped. “Something’s wrong.” She removed the card from its dock, spun
around in her chair, and stuck it in some other device. “Card seems fine to
me, unless I’m reading this wrong, so it must be you.”
“What’s the error?” he asked.
“It can’t get a clear reading.” She turned to look down at him. “Do you have
multiple consciousnesses in your brain, or has it been recently blended?”
“Oh. No, but I am spatio-temporally tethered to six other people. And
I have a neuro-emotional bond with five of them.”
“That must be it. One or the other would probably be fine, but if you’re
permanently linked to them, then the machine can’t calibrate to your
emotions, and yours alone.”
“So I’m SOL?”
“I wouldn’t say that, but I’m neither authorized nor trained to proceed. It
would be up to Dr. Hammer to decide what she’s willing to do, because my
guess is, if we move forward, all six of the bonded people will be able to
use this card. You may be okay with that, but she may not. I really couldn’t
say for sure.”
“Can I bring my team here, so she can speak with all of us at once?” he
offered.
She chuckled a little. “The card is designed to transport only one person at
a time. It’s not an inherent limitation, but an arbitrary one which Dr.
Hammer imposed to prevent someone from abusing its power.”
Mateo chuckled back. “We don’t need the card. They just need to know where I
am.” He took a breath, and prepared himself. Then he removed the
microinjector from a compartment hidden in the back of the armor module.
“What the hell is that?” Siria questioned.
“A break-glass-in-case-of-emergency serum.” Before she could stop him, he
jammed it into his own neck. He was overwhelmed with an intense feeling of
fear. It wasn’t that it gave him images of things that he would be afraid
of. It was more like he became acutely afraid of the terrible danger that
the whole world around him posed. This machine he was in, the office
furniture, the window, the walls. Everything felt like such a profound
threat to his safety, and he knew for a fact that it would never end. He
would feel this sense of loneliness and dread for the rest of his life.
Nothing could stop it, no one could help him. He was lost, alone, and would
soon die of the panic in his twisted and tattered heart. He began to
hyperventilate. Siria tried to help, but there was nothing she could do,
except make it worse. She was the scariest threat of all. This was his life
now. It was always going to end like this.
She stood back up to run for help when Leona appeared out of nowhere in
front of her. “What did you do to him?” she demanded to know.
“Nothing! He did it to himself!” Siria insisted.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Leona warned. She jammed a second microinjector into
her husband’s neck.
Mateo immediately felt a sudden sense of relief. This room was the best,
safest place in all of histories. The furniture was soft and comfortable.
The walls were welcoming and warm. The window was showing them the coolest
island that ever rose out of the sea. The machine was exactly what he needed
today. Never again would he feel the cold emptiness of a life alone.
Everything in the whole world was perfect, and he felt so much love in his
bright, shining heart. His happiness could know no end, and he would never
die.
“Don’t blame her, it’s not her fault,” Mateo assured Leona. “I’m fine, I
just needed you here, and this was the fastest way to do it.”
“Matt, the fear serum was only to be used in emergencies.”
“This was an emergency,” he decided. “We were worried about the range
of our tether. Now we know that we can find each other across a hundred and
twenty light years, and well over two thousand regular years.”
Leona gave it some thought. “I guess that’s true. So, you’re okay? You’re
really okay? You can be honest.”
“Really, I’m fine,” Mateo reiterated. “Call off the dogs of war.”
“Okay.” Leona took a look around. “Where’s Dr. Hammer?”
“She’s in a session,” Siria replied. “They’ll be done in about ninety
minutes.”
“We can wait,” Mateo determined. “Ramses needs time to look through the data
from this last jump, I’m sure.”
