The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 14, 2496

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“Anything?” Mateo asked.

“Nothing,” Leona replied.

“Where could they possibly be?” he went on. “You need at least three people to make the new slingdrives work, if it even works at all.”

“Maybe he was wrong about it,” Olimpia offered. “Maybe it works with only two.”

“We should still be able to detect them,” Leona reasoned, “wherever and whenever they are.”

“Unless they’re shrouded in dark particles,” Mateo pointed out.

“Yeah, that’s my hypothesis,” Leona agreed, “but Ramses’ systems are being finicky with me. I technically have access, but it’s...argh!” She didn’t want to have to explain the complexities of it all, and she didn’t have to.

“If it is dark particles, you know who we can call,” Angela said.

“Won’t work,” Marie countered as she was walking back in from the other room. “Buddy was here. He disappeared with them.”

“How do you know?” Leona questioned. “The surveillance was garbled.”

“I didn’t look at the footage from the lab. I looked at the recordings from the drone in Dome 216.” She lifted her hands, and projected a hologram of the video recordings from Dome 216 last year. They could see Buddy standing there with Romana and Ramses. There was no sound, and it wasn’t detailed enough to read their lips, but their body language appeared nonconfrontational. None of the others remembered experiencing angry emotions from this moment, though there was some agitation leading up to it, if they were remembering correctly. As the three of them were standing there in the desert, the dark particle creature appeared out of nowhere, and seemingly tried to kill Buddy. It kind of looked like Romana was trying to save him, further reenforcing the idea that they were not at odds at this moment. Marie closed the hologram with a drop of her hands after the creature grabbed Romana and disappeared, and the other two left, presumably to rescue her.

“You gotta fix that machi—” Mateo began.

“I know,” Leona interrupted. Then she sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“I know that you love her too,” Mateo acknowledged. “I’m just sick of worrying about her.”

“I don’t think that ever goes away,” Olimpia said.

“There’s another possible way to find her,” Angela began. “Maybe we don’t need Buddy. Ramses has given us all we need.”

“You wanna use the tandem slingdrives, and hope that they take us where we’re trying to go, even though we don’t know where exactly that is,” Leona guessed.

“If it doesn’t work, we’ll try again,” Angela reasoned. “If we can’t navigate back here for another attempt, it probably means that it never mattered if we knew where they were, because they’re probably out of range, and the tandem slingdrives don’t work right.”

Leona sighed, and looked back over to the screen. The computer was trying to find them just as it had when Buddy abducted Romana years ago. “I don’t know if this thing is good enough. That seems to be an entire person made out of dark particles. It could be orders of magnitude more powerful than the stasis field that Buddy put Romana in before.”

“Is that a yes?” Angela asked.

“I would have preferred to test the tandem slingdrives in a more controlled situation, but you make a good point that that doesn’t really exist. The whole purpose of these things is to push the boundaries of intergalactic travel. If we get lost, that was always going to be the result, and we’ll be no further from locating Rambo and Romana than we are now.”

“The great thing about these suits he made for us, we’re never not ready to go.” Mateo mused.

Olimpia interlocked her arm with his. “As long as we have each other.”

“They could be in a harsh environment,” Leona warned. “Suit up.”

Mateo released his emergent nanites, and commanded them to turn mostly green. He now looked strikingly like Green Arrow. When Leona looked at him funny, he shrugged and said, “she loved this show.”

“She had time to watch it?” Leona questioned.

Marie looked at the time readout on her interface. “Eleven, ten, nine...”

Everyone shut themselves up safe in vacuum mode, though Mateo kept the superhero costume on over it to keep things light. If he didn’t laugh, he would cry. No one lost track of their children as many times as he had. Put a bell on her, he thought to himself. Well, she had a bell. A psychic bonding bell, which should always let them know where the other one was. These dark particles were incredibly frustrating, and how funny it should be that they would come into their lives around the time the quantum connection was too. Their fates were sealed, whether they were aware of it or not.

Marie finished counting down, and they all slung away, concentrating on nothing but Ramses and Romana’s location. It looked like they were still in the lab, but it was very different. It was a hell of a lot darker, and these flashlights that looked like forearm weapons weren’t doing them much good. They couldn’t make out any details in the room around them, it just had the vague shape of everything back home. The right angles of the tables, desks, and chairs; the curve of the gestational pods in the corner; the height of the ceiling. They were here, but not here, kind of like the Upside Down. Everything was just a shadow of its true self, nothing more than a slight hint of its presence. Shadows, really. They could call this a shadow realm. It was very much like that in more ways than one. This was seemingly where the dark particles lived. They were swarming all around them, not paying the humans much attention, but clearly aware of their sudden appearance, however complex their intelligence might be.

Something was coming at them from the darkness. It was moving steadily, and maybe a little threateningly, but not too quickly. Before it reached them, it split in two. Shortly after that, they could be recognized as people; people wearing EmergentSuits. It was Ramses and Romana. Nice, it worked. Ramses took Mateo by the hand. He was already holding Romana’s. She took Marie’s, and together with everyone else, they completed the circle. With nothing more than a sense of homesickness, and no words exchanged, they reactivated the tandem slingdrives, and left this place as quickly as they had come. They were back in the lab; the real lab, complete with light and solid objects.

Ramses collapsed his helmet, and fell to his knees, sliding on the floor a few centimeters. At first, they thought he was hurt, but he was positively ecstatic. He was laughing and crying simultaneously, holding his arms up and to the side like he had just won Olympic gold, panting, both relieved and proud. No one had a clue what was going on. Romana was just as perplexed as the rest. “Oh my God. Yes! Yes! That’s it! I finally figured it out! I saw it! Me! Well, Romana and I, but I understand it. Whew!” he whooped.

“What happened in there?” Mateo asked his daughter.

“I don’t really know,” she replied. “We couldn’t talk, but he was super excited the whole time. He kept tapping on the interface modules of his suit. I’m guessing he was taking readings, but who knows?”

Ramses was still laughing. “Yeah. I was taking readings, all right.” He stood up, all giddy and cheerful. “I know what it is. I know what it all is.” He squealed. “I have to write it down.” He rushed to find the nearest device.

“Care to share with the class?” Leona asked.

“Yes, class first. Then the paper.” He clapped, then started gesturing with his hands as he prepared his remarks. “Neutrinos.”

“Neutrinos?” Leona echoed. “Are you saying that that’s what the dark particles are?” She didn’t seem to believe him. She was the only one who was following him even remotely.

“Yes.” Oh, Ramses was still so jazzed about this whole thing, whatever it was.

“That doesn’t make any sense. They’re subatomic particles. You can’t see them.”

“I was wrong,” Ramses went on. He kept talking with his hands. “I thought that they were lifeforms, which were replicating, but that’s not it. They don’t breed, they congregate. They form masses. They’re like...snowflakes; water adhering to a mote of dust, and clumping together until it becomes too heavy to stay up.”

“So, a dark particle isn’t a neutrino. It’s billions of neutrinos.”

“Exactly. But not like water forming on a mote of dust—”

“You literally just said that that’s what it’s like,” Angela reminded him.

“I know, but not really,” Ramses insisted. “It’s more like...a whole bunch of neutrinos who happen to be on the same trajectory as each other. They emit some kind of energy. Individually, it’s negligible, but combined, we can actually see it. We perceive it. It’s dark, because neutrinos don’t interact with photons very well either, but these bursts of energy, firing in rapid succession, do occasionally repel light like a solid object would. Again, it appears dark, because it’s a minuscule amount, but it is technically visible. For fractions of a second, but as I said, when they get close enough to each other, these bursts are happening all the time. Normally, you don’t see it, because we can’t see the neutrino dimension, but Buddy can...call them forth.” He pointed while adding, “and so can Romana.”

He was talking real fast, but no one bothered to ask him to slow down, because they didn’t understand him either way. Except for Leona. She knew what he was saying, she just  couldn’t believe it. She crossed her arms, but didn’t say anything else for now.

“So, they’re not alive?” Romana asked.

“No, as I said, I was wrong. They just seemed to be that way, because baryonic matter freaks them out. No, that’s personifying them again. They’re not used to baryonic matter, because they usually pass right through it, but in these clumps, and with some sort of weird charge that Buddy can artificially generate, they do find themselves running into us.”

“That doesn’t make any sense either,” Leona pointed out. “The particles move around people. That requires some level of sentience.”

“Yeah, I was thinking about that. I don’t think they’re diverting with any semblance of intent. I think as soon as this energy comes into contact with normal matter, they split off into different directions, ultimately colliding with other clusters, and forming new temporary trajectory masses. It only looks to us like they’re swarming, because we can’t effectively track one clump at a time. They don’t have to hit us directly, because a sufficiently concentrated layer of air is all around us at all times. To us, it’s meaningless, but it’s like a wall to them. I thought they were disappearing and reappearing, and I was sort of right. They don’t hold together for very long, but they do form clumps constantly during this charged condition. I would really love to get my hands on Buddy, and see how he does it. I may have learned all I can from Romana.”

“Where is Buddy, by the way?” Olimpia asked. “We saw you with him on the drone cam in Dome 216.”

Ramses brushed it off. “Oh, I dunno, we lost him in there. He could still be trapped for all I know, or he knew exactly how to escape. I’m sure he’ll show up again at some point.”

“Hold on,” Leona said, still unconvinced. “Where were we? What was that place? The neutrino dimension? That’s where they live? Why? Seems random.”

“It’s not,” Ramses continued his lesson. “Let’s say you have a vacuum-sealed room with two doors. There’s a screen door, and then the fully sealed door. When you open the sealing door, only the screen door remains, which allows the air to rush through the screen, and into the room. That’s because nature abhors a vacuum. As you know, neutrinos don’t interact with electromagnetism, or the strong nuclear force. The dimensional barrier is apparently made up of one or both of these, which is why the neutrinos pass into it. It’s just like entropy, where a state of order naturally flows into a state of disorder. It wasn’t made for neutrinos specifically, but those are the particles that go into it, because nothing can stop them. And they don’t usually come back out, because there’s so much space in there.”

Romana tapped on her arm interface. “Yeah, that was my interpretation too.” She lifted her arm up. “That’s what it says here, neutrino clumps.”

Mateo laughed. “You’re adorable. Like a young me.”

“Why are you dressed like Green Arrow?” she asked.

“Why aren’t you dressed like Speedy?”

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Microstory 1966: Safehouse School

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Reese: Sergeant?

Sachs: Sachs.

Reese: Sachs, right. You searched the safehouse?

Sachs: It’s secure. We can start setting up.

Reese: *into his radio* Bring the equipment on in, Sasho. *to Sachs* Sasho and Sachs. Those two names are uncomfortably close. Hey, what’s your middle name, Sasho?

Sasho: *lugging luggage down the hall* Risto.

Reese: Really?

Sachs: Reese and Risto. That’s better.

Micro: Oh, this room is fine, Sachs Reese—I mean Sasho Risto—you can just drop that stuff anywhere. I’ll sort it out.

Ophelia: What does all this stuff do?

Micro: Everythings. All the thing. Surveillance, tracking, ordering pizza.

Reese: You two set up the computers. Sasho, follow me. I need you for something. Grab that bag. No, not that one. Yes, that one. Sachs, you know which case to grab. *leads them up to the attic* Okay. There’s a lot of space up here, which is good, but you could technically do this in a bathroom. Sasho, if you’ll open that up, you’ll find a projector and screen. Go ahead and lay everything out on this table.

Sachs: Is that what I think it is?

Reese: State of the art.

Sasho: I don’t understand. What is all this stuff for?

Sachs: *picking up a small object* This goes on the trigger?

Reese: Yes. Sasho, this is a sniper training toolkit. It’s a highly advanced altered reality system, which simulates real-world conditions for targets in any environment, at a distance up to four kilometers. It’s basically a simulation game that teaches you how to shoot without firing any real bullets. We’re limited by resources and space here. We can’t teach you how to spot in the middle of downtown Memphis, Mississippi. Don’t worry, we don’t expect you to learn everything in a few days, but you have to start somewhere. The training program is generally eight months, and if you would like to do that, we can discuss at a later date, but while others on the team are trying to locate our target, I figured you might as well get a taste.

Sasho: Yeah.

Reese: You did want this, right? You told me on the plane you wanted to branch out from your experience as a jailer.

Sasho: Yeah, I do. I just didn’t expect to start anything so soon. This all looks expensive. Is it all for me?

Sachs: It’s for me too. I’ve always wanted to learn with something like this. You can do it anywhere, anytime. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I’m out of practice, but I’ve not been in combat for a few years. This can reportedly simulate just about anything.

Reese: You wanna try it? The stakes are incredibly low. That’s why scientists and engineers designed it in the first place.

Sasho: Okay. Start at the beginning. What do I do?

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 31, 2398

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They’re moving. They’re moving out of the lofts, and not just for their residential needs, but also for Ramses and Leona’s lab. This building was built to last, but it doesn’t belong to them anymore. They’re giving the whole thing to the new owners of Angela’s company to do with it what they will. Maybe they’ll expand, or rent out the upper floors. Or perhaps they’ll demolish the whole thing and replace it with a mini waterpark. Whatever they choose, it will have nothing to do with Team Matic. They should have known that something like this was going to happen. Their whole thing is an ephemeral, nomadic lifestyle. They don’t stay anywhere for too long. Best to not get attached.

A moving company is allowed to handle some of the generic equipment, like tables and beakers. The sensitive materials, however, must be done in house. Ramses is here today, directing Mateo and Alyssa on this task. They’re not in any sort of rush, though. The government-run lab where this will all be moving to is not quite ready for them. Well, the space itself is reportedly totally ready. Winona claims that they keep such future-use places primed in the event of an pandemic, or some other emergency need. That’s what’s holding up the opening process. They have to secure approval from about seven different departments to use one of them, because another emergency venue will have to be developed to replace it.

Mateo holds up a computer monitor stand. “This?”

“Green box, storage” Ramses responds.

“And this?”

“Also green box.”

“Should we really be trusting these people?” Alyssa questions. “I mean, consider everything that you did to make sure this place was yours, and not even the agency that gave it to you had access to it. All these lava lamps and security cameras. Now you’re just going to work in a place built by them, for them?”

“Yeah, I can see how strange that seems,” Ramses admits. “Past!Me probably wouldn’t understand, but things have changed. Our relationship with the government has changed.” They have already given them tons of data and technology so far that they never would have dreamed to do for any government in the main sequence. Trying to keep whatever’s left a secret seems futile at this point. A better facility is more important. “I would rather have unfettered access to an advanced mass spectrometer, and an MRI machine, than my own place. It’s time to grow the operation. I have a lot of things I want to do, and this new place gets me all that. Plus, I think it makes them happy, and we need to keep them on our side.”

Alyssa rubs a lava lamp like a genie might come out of it. “But I love these. I’ve grown accustomed to staring at them during my parking lot surveillance shifts.”

“Blue box,” Ramses says. “We’re taking them with us, not just for storage.”

“You will have some privacy, though, won’t you?” Mateo asks.

“Yes, that is the very first project on my list. They may think they’ll have free and full access to my work, but with the right resources, I can protect anything that we feel they don’t need to know about.”

“What resources will you need for that, and how will you be accomplishing it?”

“I need a submarine. We’re retrieving the AOC from the bottom of the ocean.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 21, 2398

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Alyssa comes out of her room, and looks around at the empty communal area of their hotel suite. It’s been empty for days. Mateo and Ramses are stuck is some sort of something or other. Leona and Winona are off doing whatever, they won’t talk about it, but it kind of sounds more personal than operational. Arcadia and Vearden are dealing with family issues. Kivi never lived here anyway. Marie was the last to leave, and she hasn’t called in since. Seems mighty weird, Alyssa living here all alone. Not only is it too much space for one person, but she has the least amount of experience with any of this. She’s just a farm girl from Central Kansas. That’s the problem, isn’t it? They don’t trust her with anything, so they don’t ask anything of her. At least not anymore. They asked her for a lot in the past. The temporal energy has dwindled, though, so she’s of no use to them as an illusionist. Still, a quick call would be nice.

She has to do something. Living it up in this fancy place is making her feel terrible. Maybe Marie needs her help tracking the other time travelers, but she doesn’t know how to ask. Let’s find out where she is. Alyssa pulls out her device, and looks for Marie’s location. Her device hasn’t moved in a long time, and it’s not where she had her surveillance nest set up. She zooms into the satellite view of the friend finder app, but she can’t tell what this building is. She has to cross-reference it with the regular map. It’s showing those coordinates to be a mental hospital, which doesn’t sound good. No one else’s device is on, or they’ve switched off location tracking. Either way, they’re not picking up. She can sit here alone and be useless, or she can try to help.

Seeing no better option, Alyssa looks up the number to the hospital, and dials. “Hello, English?” she confirms. “Yes, I’m looking for a friend. We share our location history, and she’s been there since yesterday afternoon.” She waits for a response. “Her name is Sydney Bristow?” It’s the alias that Marie has been using, and apparently the name of an agent on a TV show from her reality called Alias. “Oh, really? Well, does she have outside communication privileges?” She does, but Marie will have to call her if she’s feeling up to it. “My name is Alyssa, she’ll know me.” She hangs up, and waits.

Ten minutes later, her phone rings. “Sydney, are you okay?” The phone may be tapped, she doesn’t know what kind of laws they have over there, so stick with the alias. “Yeah, I can see where that might get you into trouble, if you weren’t talking to the right person. Well, how can I get you out of there?” Marie doesn’t want to leave. “You’re happy there? What, are ya gonna stay there forever?” Not forever, just a few days to clear her head. “Your friends need you. I need you, I don’t know what to do.” Marie has one idea. “You think I’m ready for something like that on my own?” Yes, it’s just reconnaissance. “That’s the problem, we don’t know what—or who—I might run into.”

They keep discussing it for a little bit, Alyssa asking to fly to Manila herself, and be there for her. Marie doesn’t want that, and she’s the one controlling the purse strings. The trip would cost about ten thousand dollars, and still, no one else is available to help. Marie has to go, so she leaves the choice up to her, and hangs up. Alyssa thinks about it for a few minutes. This is her moment to prove that she deserves to be part of the team, and she doesn’t always need help from other people. She grabs her coat, and heads downstairs. If she’s gonna do this, she’s gonna do it right. She needs to shop for supplies. Who knows what she’ll find in Springfield, Kansas?

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 20, 2398

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Marie has been staking out this apartment for the last two days. This is the kind of work that she used to do for SD6. She was taken off of all such assignments when her team showed up, and that became her only priority, both on a personal level, and for the government. This still has to do with time travel, but her team isn’t involved. They’re looking for people who have experienced an inordinate amount of time for a normal living human, or just have unusual brain chemistry. The orbital scanner that Ramses built, and which Mateo installed on a Snowglobe satellite, only mapped where these targets were at the time of the last scan. This information is now over a week old, so if any of them were just on vacation, or something, they’ll probably never find them. This may all be a waste of time. She hates this now. She hates everything she used to love or like. She’s just bitter and angry, and nothing seems right anymore. She shouldn’t take it out on the team, though, and she knows it. Hopefully they understand, and won’t hold it against her. Maybe getting herself a win will raise her spirits.

She has the extra mobile scanner that Ramses left in his hotel room. He didn’t have time to write up a manual, and the data burst he was able to send from the time bubble he and Mateo are presently trapped in didn’t say much about it. Even so, it seems pretty self-explanatory. Marie was able to adapt it to a tripod, and place it next to her other surveillance equipment. She doesn’t know which unit in the apartment complex is housing the target, but they’ll have to go through the front door at some point, and when they do, this thing should beep to let her know. It starts to beep. The scanner doesn’t communicate with the digital scope, of course, so she has to cross-reference the time codes to find who she’s looking for. Three people entered the building at about the same time, but two of them appeared to be together, and the scanner only caught one unusual brain. That’s not a guarantee, but it’s a safer bet. She pulls up the photo, runs downstairs from her surveillance nest, crosses the street, and enters the building.

“English?” she asks the lobby supervisor.

“Yes,” he replies. “But my shift is over. Divina will be out soon.”

Just as he’s saying that, the woman she was looking for steps out of the back office in her uniform. The scanner beeps. The two of them exchange a few words in Filipino, and then the man leaves. “Yes, can I help you?”

Marie isn’t prepared for this either. She doesn’t know what to say, so she just goes with the tried and true code words. “Yeah, thank you. Listen, I’m in the mood for some fish. Do you know of a good restaurant that serves salmon?”

The lobby supervisor starts to consult her computer. “There is a really great seafood  restaurant down the street, but I can pull up a comprehensive list for you.”

Hmm. That didn’t work. Marie holds up her scanner, which thankfully, doesn’t look like a weapon. Yeah, her brain is definitely unusual.

“I’m sorry, do you live here? We’re really only meant to help residents.”

“I’m a time traveler from the 19th century, trapped in your reality, hoping to find others like me. We have been looking for a way back home, but we don’t want to leave without first checking to see if anyone else would like to join. I believe you’re one of us.”

“Of course, ma’am. One moment, please.” She calls the authorities.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 31, 2398

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Bridgette didn’t want to tell them who she was keeping alive in the back of her apartment with the Insulator of Life. That’s okay, it’s her business, but it was important they find out where she got it in the first place. She agreed to hand over the information, as long as they left, and left her alone. Mateo wanted to go find his alternate self, so Marie took the documents to deal with it herself. In the meantime, Mateo was able to convince Leona Delaney—the one who lost her version of Mateo after the kidney transplant—to accompany him on the trip to New Jersey. Never mind how he found out Alt!Mateo was there. He probably won’t respond well to anyone’s face but hers, and the other Leonas are busy at the moment.

Mateo looks through the map as Delaney is driving into the city. The internet calls Howell a township, but neither of them really knows what that means, especially not in this reality. No matter, the point is that Alt!Mateo was captured on camera on Aldrich Road, just off the highway. The file that Winona gave them indicates that he doesn’t have access to a vehicle, or at least didn’t have one in Kansas City, because he hitchhiked with truckers all the way there. So he most likely walked to the restaurant from his motel, and there’s only one in the area. That’s where they head first, hoping that someone will agree to help them.

The clerk—or maybe the owner—doesn’t seem pleased about seeing Mateo when they walk up to the counter. “Have you seen a man who looks like me?” Mateo asks.

“You mean you’re not the one in Room Eleven?” he asks.

“No, that would be my brother.”

The guy looks between the two of them. “He in some kind of trouble?”

“Only with the family. It’s important that we find him, though.”

“Could you maybe let us in his room?” Delaney asks.

“I can’t do that. You probably shoulda told me you were him, and lost your key.”

Mateo smirks, and nods over to a notice taped on the glass. “Then I would have had to pay the thousand dollar lost key fee.”

The man shrugs.

“Is he in there right now?” Delaney asks.

“Haven’t seen him all day, ‘cept when he left this morning. I have a great view of all those rooms. I’da seen him if he had come back. He wasn’t carryin’ nothin’ and he didn’t check out, so do what you will with that information.”

“Okay.”

“I can get you the room next door,” the guy says.

“Thanks,” Delaney says, “but we’ll just wait for him in our car.”

Mateo isn’t sure that he agrees. Since his stuff is still here, he’s probably coming back, and if he doesn't, there is nothing more they can do to find him unless they get more updated intel. The only thing to do now is stake the place out. It could take days, they better get a room. “Hold on. Is Room One vacant?”

“Sure is.”

“Book us for the night.” Mateo catches Delaney’s look. “It’s an L-shape. We have a better view of him through the window, and it’s too hot to sit in a car.”

Delaney is nervous, but she appreciates the logic. “Okay.”

The man chuckles at all this, but takes their money, just the same.

It’s an incredibly gross room, but if all goes well, they won’t be sleeping here, or anything. They crack the shades, and position the chair in a good place. Mateo takes first watch while Delaney sits on the bed. They wait for hours, switching places when one of them gets tired of it, but boredom is the real killer. Everything here costs, including so much as turning on the television. They could probably expense it to the government, but then they get audited, and it would be this whole thing.

“Hey, uhh…Mateo?”

He’s in the chair again now. “Yeah?”

“It’s getting late,” she states.

“I know,” he replies.

“What are we gonna do about sleeping? There’s only one bed.”

“He may return in the middle of the night. We have to take shifts anyway.”

“Oh, right.”

“Why? Do you want to book a room in a nicer place?”

“No, it’s…it’s not that.”

“What is it? I know you don’t know me that well, but you can tell me anything.”

Delaney hesitates, but then she really decides to just go for it. “Can we have sex?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, I never got that far with my Mateo, and I was just thinking—”

“Well, stop doing that, I guess.”

“Stop doing what, thinking?”

“If those are the kinds of thoughts you have, then just quit while you’re ahead.”

“If it’s a problem of fidelity, I already asked your wife about it, and she said—”

“You didn’t ask her anything. Why are you lying to me?”

“Will you stop interrupting?”

“Probably not, not if you’re gonna say things like that. I don’t know how much you’ve been told, but I got a lap dance once, and it nearly destroyed my marriage. I’m not going there, and I would ask you to respect that.”

“Your wife sounds like a bitch.”

“What exactly is your problem?”

“My problem?” She’s getting angry. “My problem is that the life of my life died to save my life, and I end up in this reality, only to find—not one, but two—men who look exactly like him. One of them has now asked me to help him find the other, and it’s giving me all these emotions that I’m not allowed to talk to anyone about!”

“I know a good therapist.”

“You know what I mean!”

“No, I obviously don’t. If you need help, you need to find someone who can do that for you, and I’m not that guy. I can’t even begin to understand what you’re going through, because I’ve lost the love of my life too, but I keep getting her back.”

Something clicks in her brain. “Yeah. You did. But I remember your Leona telling us that you were from two different realities. So how did you make that work?”

“Her brain was blended,” Mateo answers, hoping that the fight is over.

Leona tries to guess the meaning by the context. “I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s when someone pulls memories from an alternate—”

“Stop. Hold very still,” Leona interrupts him to say.

“What is it?”

Leona carefully lifts her hands up. “The sun set while we were talking.” She claps, signaling the lights to turn off. She gasps at the sight outside the window.

Mateo pivots to see what she’s so afraid of. It’s Alt!Mateo, and he is not happy. He’s so not happy that he runs away into the night.

Microstory 1734: Draco Total

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Ladies and gentleman, let me introduce to you the new Draco Total Surveillance Security System. Using the latest in artificial intelligence video analysis, and the best cameras this side of the central black hole of this galaxy, we have been able to create a tool that will help businesses keep track of everything that happens in their buildings. This is not just for nefarious agents, you see? It’s for everything. Let’s say you’re trying to figure out if your employees are slacking on the job. Now, you could send the managers to their workstations to check on them. But everyone knows how to quickly switch windows. You won’t catch anyone on social media, because they’ll smell you comin’ from a mile away. In recent years, it’s become trendy to use webcams, keystroke loggers, and remote mirroring to see exactly what they’re up to. But we have found that such intrusive prying actually lowers productivity, because workers get freaked out about the technology, and they start to protest, even if only in small ways. We’ve actually witnessed companies lose great talent, because they quit to look for an employer that doesn’t incidentally capture their personal email passwords. Besides, that’s not really what you’re worried about, are you? You don’t care that someone who works for you occasionally switches over to see what’s in the blogosphere, or watch a quick funny video that a coworker just sent them. You wanna make sure they’re not wandering the halls, or talkin’ trash about their supervisor by the watercooler. Can regular cameras take care of all of this for you? Well, sure, they’ve been doing it for years. But can they do it better than Draco? Absolutely not. We’re more than just cameras. We’re an experience. We can put you right in the middle of the action, and no one will even know that you’re there.

With the new DTSS system, you can immerse yourself in the footage with a 360° field of view. By combining the realtime feed from every camera in operation, plus detailed schematics of the building, our system will generate a perfect three-dimensional model. You will be able to step through a virtual recreation of any area that you have placed under surveillance. Install enough cameras—cover all potential blindspots—and you’ll feel like a ghost, walking through the hallways and rooms unseen...and unheard. The AI will even automatically update periodically with new information, such as a worker turning their desk to face a window, or a new potted plant in the corner by the bathrooms. After the camera network is set up, and connected to the central server, simply place goggles such as these on your face, and enter a secret dimension. From here, you can use the controllers to move your avatar around (or an omnidirectional haptic treadmill, if you sprang for it). You can view from a first person perspective, like this, or second person, where it’s more like you’re a butterfly on the ceiling, watching the goingson below. Third person, which I like to call God Mode lets you do so much more. You’ll fly all over the building quicker, passing through walls and floors with ease. You can delete impediments, like those walls and floors, to get a clearer picture of everything happening all at once. Watch what happens when I zoom all the way out. See? It’s like a cross-section of the whole building. This is in realtime, people. This is what’s happening at our HQ during this presentation. We’re still working out the price, but we expect to be ready for public use by the fourth quarter of next year. Thank you, and I know you’re all really excited, so I’ll open the floor for any questions, comments, or concerns.

Microstory 1659: Self-Sabotage

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I told you about how the people in Area Doubleuniverse primarily use their alternate realities to protect witnesses. Seemingly unrelated to the fact that this universe possess thousands of concurrent realities, there’s a lot of crime on this version of Earth. It’s just rampant and no one really knows why. I mean, they don’t have access to other universes, so they don’t know it’s abnormal, but from my perspective, as I watch history unfold, I can’t explain how it happened. I can say that the prevention of crime is neither a priority, nor technically possible. It’s not illegal to plan a crime, and a lot of things you or I might consider crimes are not actually illegal until certain things take place as a result. For instance, it’s perfectly fine to grow or manufacture recreational drugs. It only becomes a problem once someone tries to sell it, or use it. If the authorities discovered the location of a drug plant, they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, and in fact, they wouldn’t be allowed to surveil the people working there, waiting for them to commit a crime later. Surveillance just isn’t a thing there. Furthermore, physical evidence alone is not usually enough to convict someone of a crime. They rely much more heavily on witness testimony, so the human element is far more important, and that makes it much more dangerous to be a witness. That’s why the Alternate Reality Witness Protection Program exists. Instead of trying to keep witnesses away from the criminals who would have them killed to prevent them from testifying, they just relocate that witness to a reality where the criminal doesn’t exist at all. This is an extremely delicate dance, and there is pretty much no room for error. For the most part, the people in charge of the program know what they’re doing, and they don’t make mistakes. But of course, it wouldn’t be a story if it never happened. Knowing which parallel reality to relocate a witness takes a lot of data, so they can make sure the criminal they’re hiding from doesn’t have an alternate who may want to harm them as well. It would probably be okay most of the time, because even if the criminal did exist, they probably didn’t commit the same crime, or weren’t going up against the same witness. This is what happened once, when a woman named Azalea found herself face to face with the man she was trying to avoid at all costs. Fortunately for her, the alternate version of this man was not the same one she knew in her reality. He wasn’t that bad of a guy, and even wanted to help. This particular case came with all sorts of errors, which resulted in the original criminal figuring out where Azalea was. After breaking out of jail, he snuck into Area W, and traveled through a portal, to search for the one woman who could send him to prison forever. His alternate self, meanwhile, didn’t want this to happen, so he vowed to protect her. But would he be able to do what needed to be done to keep his promise?

Microstory 1654: Wide Eyes

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After Wyatt Bradley retired as White Savior, the world went back to the way it was. Cops were murdering black people, and giving free passes to civilians who wanted to get in on the action. If someone was caught committing a crime on camera, there was a decent chance that they would pay for it, but unlike the way things were handled on other worlds, there was no guarantee. It wasn’t unusual for the judge to just decide that the photographic evidence was irrelevant, and he didn’t care one way, or the other. This was pissing a lot of people off. While Wyatt Bradley’s actions were largely considered counterproductive, both his appearance, and his disappearance, gave a lot of people some much needed perspective. Things actually did get moderately safer for black people while he was around, and the fact that racist crime went back up after he left proved that it was real. To put it another way, as a problem, it was a lot harder to ignore than it once was. He shined a light on the problem, and the afterglow would last forever. No one suited up and became a vigilante, but they did start fighting for change. They organized peace rallies, and protested police violence, and a major surveillance trend began. They called it the Wide Eye Movement, after the product developer that started it all. Cops were not obligated to wear body cams, though they did exist, and they sparked the idea for regular people to wear them. They sold them at an extremely low price, and it was not uncommon to wear multiple ones, to get different angles. Whereas before, everyone had a cellphone they could pull out, and document a horrendous crime, now they didn’t even have to do that. Accountability became this world’s resting state.

Recordings were sent to the Wide Eye servers, and kept for a period of time before being overwritten. Day-length storage space was free to all, and extra storage subscriptions came at an affordable price, though they weren’t usually necessary. Anything that needed to be kept could be downloaded to some other device. If someone believed that something unjust had happened to them, they could post their experience for all to see on the Wide Eye app. They could also technically save a clip of something fun or interesting that happened to them, but they would have to download it to their own device, and upload it somewhere else, if they so wanted. That was not what the app was for, and other users helped distinguish the important, from the less important, or the not important at all. The purpose of this was to make sure no one hurt anybody without being seen. Every customer was required to have at least one trusted buddy, who would receive their footage if they were to be killed, be it by murder, or anything else. The cameras were motion sensitive, so if a user stopped moving for a week—or the cameras were turned off without being suspended virtually using proper procedures—their buddy would end up with proof of whatever had happened to them. If the police weren’t going to police themselves, then the people were going to have to do it for them, and if the courts did not accept such evidence as legitimate, then the offending party was at risk of being crucified by the court of public opinion. The problem wasn’t fixed overnight, but it made it a hell of a lot harder for racism to go unnoticed. Even snide remarks were uploaded to the Wide Eye site. They weren’t labeled as urgent, but people still saw them, and this forced many to be more careful with their words and actions. Of course, this was not without its consequences. Even embarrassing moments could be uploaded to other places, and Wide Eye Services had a hard time regulating this. They tried to exclude such behavior in their Terms of Service, but it was nearly impossible to enforce. As a result, people were afraid to be themselves around others, for fear of being ridiculed for walking around with a stain on their shirt, or tripping on the steps. Fortunately, the age of Wide Eye was limited. Offenders were weeded out of the system, and replaced by decent human beings, with good training in things like sensitivity, and open-mindedness. Policies were changed, and the right people were voted into the right public offices. Twenty years later, Wide Eye Services deliberately shutdown, and ended support for their products. Bad things still happened after that, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it was in the olden days.

Microstory 1533: Forcing the Future

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To be honest, this ________ thing has made my daily life a lot ________ . Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s ________, and I want this to be fixed as soon as ________, but I also can’t hide from the ________ that I prefer this way of ________, on a personal ________. The thing is, there ________ need to be a ________ for me to ________ like this. I just need to get people on ________. I wasn’t surprised at how much ________ I could get done while staying at ________, or how much less work there actually is when I don’t have my ________ breathing down my ________. Virtual meetings, as long as you have a ________ internet ________, are just as good, if not ________ than regular old face-____-face. A lot of ________ don’t think so, but the structure really forces you to prioritize your words. It’s more ________ to get trapped in an off-____ conversation with each ________. My co-____s were always just hanging out in ________, and not in a way that let me ________ out either. We weren’t ________ with business yet, so we all had to _________ around anyway. It was so pointless, really, I ________ it. Meetings are better, but also the normal work that I do. I know, it’s not something I should be ________, but I like to stop and check social ________, and play ________, and watch ________, or maybe just ________ the birds outside my ________. And we’re all doing it, and it’s totally ________. The way I see it, as long as I’m being product____, what exactly is the problem? Nothing. There is no ________, except now there is. My company is thinking about ________ up a surveillance state. They’ll ________ my webcam, and listen to my ________’s microphone, and they’ll hire a ________ of temps to watch me for my full ________ hours. They want to make ________ that I’m not ____ing around, like I do. They think it’ll save them ________, because they’re a bunch of ________. They’re paying people to ________ all these feeds, so they’re actually losing ________. I don’t know for sure, but I’m also sure of it. There’s no ________ it’s cost effective, even though the ________ will probably be at minimum ________. Pay shouldn’t be based on the ________ of time you spend stressed and busy, but the amount of ________ productivity. How much benefit did I ________? Not how much time did I ________ on it? If you give me ________ hours of work every day, I’m going to do it in ________ hours. I’m getting the ________ done, and that should be enough for ________. I think I’m gonna ________. I don’t need this job, I can ________ from anywhere now.

Microstory 1532: Those Nightly Noises

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I’ve never felt safe in this ________, but there’s never been anything I could do about it. It’s rent-controlled, and I can’t ________ to live anywhere ________. Plus, I work right down____, and that’s a perk I never thought I would ________ so attached to. Though, maybe I ought to stop ________ of that as a perk, because I’m ________ with it as long as I’m stuck in this ________. My dad always said that a ________ job is one you can ________ before you find another one. I think he’s probably right about that, because if I ________ tomorrow, I wouldn’t last more than a ________, and then I would really be in trouble. There are a lot of noises in this ________ that I can only hear at ________ when I’m trying to ________. It doesn’t matter when I go to ________; they always start about two ________ later. I suppose that’s what makes it so ________, because it feels like someone is ________ for a cue. Shortly after I ________ here, I was so paranoid about that possibility that I ________ this place apart, looking for surveillance ________. I didn’t find ____ing, but I am not getting my deposit ________, that’s for ________. I didn’t ________ destroy the place, but I did cause a ________ bit of damage. I don’t regret it either. Just because I couldn’t ________ out where these creepy ________ were coming from, or why they were there, doesn’t mean I’m confident everything is ________. I wish I could ask my great ________ what’s going on, but the only reason I live here is because she ________, and passed it on to me. She always took ________ of me, knowing that I needed a lot more help than the rest of the ________ in this family. There’s a little bit of friction ________ us because of it, but most of them understand that I’m ________ a slacker, I’m just not ____ly skilled at anything. I do try, and I give it my ________, and I work ________, and I contribute to the ________ as I can. That just happens to not be very much.

Anyway, back to those nightly noises. I’ve tried getting ________ of bed to hunt for them, but it never works. As soon as I step ________ enough away from my bed, they stop. And they’re not coming from my bed, if that’s what you’re ____ing. For some reason, I end up ________ to one of my customers about it, and she suggests there’s some kind of pressure sensitive ________ under my bed, which would be in____, but an explanation of the timing nonetheless. I actually go out and spend ________ on a dummy filled with sand. The ________ tells me I won’t be able to return it, but assures me I’ll find ________ of uses for it over the years. I’m not so ________, but I feel like the decoy should look humanoid, and I’m feeling ________ at this point. I place it on the ________ on the far side of my bed, and go about my day. When it’s time for ________, I wait for the ________ to begin, then carefully pull the dummy up to the bed with ________. The noises stop for a ________, apparently wondering why the bed is so much ________ now, but I gracefully step off, and move away. The noises restart, apparently satisfied with my ________. I quietly leave the ________, and go off to look for the noises. The sound leads me all the way ________, to where I ________, and into my boss’ ________. He’s crouched on his ________ like an animal, staring at the upper corner, and kind of purring, but also making gurgling ________. He’s watching this weird hologram that’s ________ in the air. It’s showing an image of my bedroom, using a ________ I could not find, which is somehow pointing directly at ________ bed. It appears to be quite soothing for him. The ________ feed seems to activate when the bed is occupied, but I still have no ________ why, what my boss is, or what exactly he’s getting out of this. Tomorrow, I’ll ask a ________ to come over to be the ________, so I can ________ what happens to my animal boss when the bed is empty. I wish I had ________ of that before.