Microstory 2475: Fashiondome

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If you’ve ever been to Bot Farm, you know how much work goes into creating all the androids that populate the domes to make them feel real and lived in, even when there aren’t very many visitors. Eventually, I believe the droid population will begin to decrease as more and more people move here, but for now, production does nothing but ramp up. That’s not about the bots themselves, though. It’s about their clothes! It’s also about your clothes. Every garment worn anywhere on the planet—unless you brought it with you—has been manufactured here. We’re talkin’ IMS units. We’re talkin’ themewear. We’re talkin’ bathing suits. If you go to Wild Wild Dome, you’re gonna see a lot of cowboy outfits, won’t you? Well, they made those here, and shipped them off when they were ready. You get it, I don’t need to list any more examples. You know what clothes are. In one sector, there are just rows and rows of industrial printers, fiber class. In another sector, there are rows and rows of racks where the finished products are stored. It’s precisely what you would expect out of a place like this. They don’t only make 3D printed clothes. It’s not even just about the products that need to go out to other domes. You can actually come here to design and fabricate your own clothes, at whatever level of technological advancement you prefer. They have electrical sewing machines, mechanical machines, and even just needle and thread. You can knit a scarf or crochet a hat. It doesn’t even have to be good, it just has to be fun. They also have fashion shows. Some of them are recreations of real shows from the past, while others are entirely original. They’re all produced by visitors like you. Nothing is made by a superintelligence, because that wouldn’t be very interesting, would it? If anything you can think of is even remotely tied to the fashion industry, both past and present, it’s here somewhere. Come here, and find your bliss. Funnily enough, however...clothing optional, just as it is anywhere.

Microstory 2348: Vacuus, April 30, 2179

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Dear Condor,

These outfits look great. I’ve selected the one that I think will look right on me, and sent the specs off to the garment fabricator. She says that she’s a little busy right now, and one of her machines is down. It will take a few hours to print since the design is pretty intricate, and she probably won’t get around to it until tomorrow, so thanks for sending them early. I don’t have my own aug mirror, which would allow me to see what it will look like on my person before she fabricates it. They don’t make them anymore, because they’re considered a waste of resources, and the people who still have theirs are pretty protective of them. Fortunately, it’s a pretty small fee if I have to return it, since an alternate would use all the same materials, and like I said, I have plenty of time. I’ve run the conversions, and it looks like the best time for me to use the local observatory without getting in anyone’s way is about 20:15 Australian Eastern Time. I’m assuming that you’re somewhere along Queensland, and will be on May 17, but if you’ve already started heading west around the continent, you may have to adjust accordingly. I hope that’s okay for you, I really can’t change it unless we’re willing to schedule the parties for a different day. I’m still fascinated by the idea of mountaintop living. We don’t really have shifting weather here, or significant geographical changes without heading towards the equator, or something. We’re close to the north pole, because that’s how we maintain contact with you. That might change with our new relay system, but we’ll see. I doubt it will affect me, since I’m just monitoring the sun. I’m curious about other alternatives for your world. It sounds like most people live under land domes, but you’re on a floating platform, which takes some level of creative thinking. Has anyone ever thought of living in an aerostat? It might not be better—per se—but it could give people more options. It’s best not to put all your eggs in one basket. That’s why we have multiple bases, not because we don’t like each other, but for safety. If you don’t use those specifically, are there other types of habitats that you’ve not mentioned before?

Wearing something chic,

Corinthia

Microstory 2347: Earth, April 23, 2179

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Dear Corinthia,

Yes, some people live above the toxin line, on top of mountains, but it’s not like every sufficiently tall mountain is inhabited, because not every one is habitable. The really tall ones are too high and too steep. I mean, you might find a cavern to survive in with your family somewhere lower down on a given mountain, but you couldn’t build a civilization there. I should clarify too that the air on top of Mauna Kea isn’t great either, it’s just not fogged enough to stop them from using the telescopes. They don’t have domes, since that would interfere with the views from the telescopes, so they built compartmentalized vestibules to keep the fumes from getting inside the buildings, always keep the doors closed, and only go outside in hazmat suits. All told, I think there are about forty mountain top safe zones, which take varying degrees of precautions. Some of them still require that people wear filtered masks, and on some of the higher ones, they wear oxygen masks because it would be hard to breathe whether the apocalypse had happened or not. Yes, we had a number of jobs that took us to these mountaintops. In fact, earlier ones involved us transporting people to ones at lower elevations, then later having to evacuate those same people, because the toxins started rising. No one really knew how the gases would settle, since the poisoning of our air was a gradual development, not a sudden burst. There was a lot of chaos in those days. I’m sorry to say that we lost people because there wasn’t enough room, nor enough time. Or we just weren’t there, because we were busy somewhere else. I would say that we settled into some stability about five years ago? It’s not perfect, and obviously things are always changing—as we’ve talked about, we just picked up some new friends from Australia—but it wasn’t an urgent need. We’re now in a place where we’ve mostly accepted how things are, and are doing our best with the cards that we’ve been dealt. Observatory access is one aspect of that. Earlier this decade, there was no registering for viewing. No one was concerned with granting people access to information. It was only about survival. That’s all anyone had the bandwidth for. I wouldn’t say that things are great nowadays, but they have certainly been worse. Anyway, I don’t want to get too depressing here. Attached is the file for the outfit that we could wear for our imaginary joint birthday party. Well, it’s a collection with a few options. We can keep talking about it, but we don’t have much time before the date rolls around. Let me know when you’ll have access to your telescope so we know when to schedule our own festivities.

Trying to find Vacuus through the smog,

Condor

Microstory 2346: Vacuus, April 16, 2179

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Dear Condor,

I think it’s a lovely idea for us to celebrate “together” and to be looking at the same stars at the same time. From where I’m standing, Libra is as good of a selection as any. I don’t otherwise have any favorite stars or constellations, and it sounds like you don’t either. I do like to look at them, and didn’t even think about the fact that you can’t unless someone gives you access. So I guess the toxic gases in your atmosphere sit low enough that there are pockets of clean air above it. According to my research that I just did ten minutes ago, Mauna Kea isn’t even the highest peak in the world, so there must be a decent number of these undomed safe zones. Did you and your father transport people to and from these places too, or just the domes? To answer your question, we do have our own observatory that I can access through a tunnel. If we time it right, I won’t have to worry about registering for remote viewing, or anything. There will be a sliver of time where no one’s using it, and I’m sure I could ask for permission. It was one of the first things they built, so they could track the Valkyries, but it’s not as good as the one you’ll be seeing through, and isn’t all that important anymore. I never said, but our settlement is not the ideal location for a large telescope, so our main one was built at an outpost several kilometers away. A small team operates there in person while researchers use the data as needed, and allowed, remotely. Since our local observatory doesn’t serve that much purpose, I doubt I would have much resistance if I just ask to set up my little one-person birthday party there. As far as the clothing goes, send me the design for the outfit, and I’ll have it made. I’m in need of some new clothes anyway, so it won’t break my budget to buy something. In fact, I usually get myself something special around my birthday anyway. I obviously get a discount if I return material for recycling, and I’m done with some of my old stuff.

Searching for Australia through the telescope,

Corinthia

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 12, 2464

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Using a communications array that the Maramon built, Leona was able to make contact with Hogarth Pudeyonavic. She was aware of the membrane thickener that the Angry Fifth Divisioner had deployed, and was working on a way to get rid of it. In the meantime, there was another way out of this universe. Like many other places, time travel was illegal here. And like all other places, there were exceptions. The way A.F.’s machine worked—which Leona now believed should be called a quintessence multiplier, or maybe a concentrator—what used to be known as dark matter would consolidate over the boundaries of the target universe. It would seal up any dark energy leaks, and tighten the borders. What was unclear as of yet was whether this happened like blood platelets clotting a wound from the inside, or more like a bandage wrapping it up from the outside.

The fact was, this process happened in realtime, starting from the moment that it was initiated. It did not extend backwards in time, which meant that the kasma was still accessible from any point in history. Hogarth agreed to send them back just long enough to let them cross over through the aperture, where they could go on their merry way. The only condition was that they not attempt to change the past in any way, even to stop A.F. from completing his mission. If Hogarth ended up solving the problem using such a technique, then that would be her decision, and it would happen on her timetable.

Hogarth could not, or would not, send them back in time in the little ship that Leona had engineered for them. The suspicion was that Hogarth wanted to use the skeleton key that it was equipped with for herself, which was surely okay, and a fair tradeoff for them. In another deal, they also agreed to take the hybrid, Aclima with them. She didn’t want to give them her reasons, but she promised that she harbored no ill will towards them, nor any nefarious plans for the multiverse. As payment for her ticket to the past, she gave Past!Mateo his own suit; helmet and all, so he too could survive wherever they ended up going.

Once they returned to May 30, 2451, the group was free to leave Fort Underhill. They were planning on crossing the kasma, and entering Salmonverse through its own aperture, but decided that they wanted to reunite with the rest of the team first. Now that they were already in the kasma, it was better to return to Stoutverse now, or they may never get another opportunity. They would still find a chance to help Past!Mateo complete his mission on Verdemus, even if that meant having Carlin relapse them to the Goldilocks Corridor in the 2420s and 30s. That was assuming the Maramon wasn’t lying about its significance anyway.

They were floating in the kasma now, listening to their past selves in the Transit deal with A.F.’s wrath. “We have to get on that train,” the present day version of Angela determined. She was speaking through the laserlink. They needed to be able to communicate with each other without interfering with the timeline, so outgoing signals from their comm discs had to be disabled. Laser communication was a great way to send a signal to a specific target—or in this case, targets—without worrying about anyone else intercepting it.

“All right, we teleport to the caboose,” Leona decided. “Stay on the outside for now, and find something to hold onto for a few seconds. I’ll teleport in while invisible, and scope out the car, then signal the rest of you.”

“We don’t have much time,” Marie pointed out, realizing that their past selves were nearing the end of their argument with A.F., and would be bugging out soon.

“We don’t need it.”

Past!Mateo took Aclima’s hand, and they all teleported to what they believe to be the outer hull of the rear car of the Transit. Instead, they found themselves inside of it. They had gotten pretty good at precision, so it didn’t make much sense that they would be off target. Sure, it was only meters too far, but it was weird just the same.

Future!Mateo pulled his helmet off, as did everyone else. “What the hell happened?”

“Let’s just be happy that no one is in here to catch us,” Marie said.

Leona started to look up and down the car. “No, this is weird. Hold on.” She looked through the window. “There’s the next car.” She jogged over to the other end. “There’s the equilibrium. I gathered information about this thing while we were on our way to Stoutverse. Every car is the same size; roughly thirteen by fifty-five by twenty-one meters. This is much shorter. I would have seen it on the floor plans if this were a thing. I think...” She trailed off.

“We’re invisible,” Aclima guessed.

“I think so. There are meant to be fifty-five cars, but this could be the fifty-sixth.”

“It’s like it was made for us,” Angela mused.

“Check out this caboose!” Past!Mateo joked.

They felt a lurch as the Transit flew into overdrive in a desperate play to escape the kasma. Olimpia would soon use the Sangster Canopy to cleave a canal between the two universes to avoid being captured by A.F. All the future versions of the team would have to do now was sit tight, and wait to catch up with their own time period, effectively closing their loops. If they lay low, and waited patiently in secret, they could reveal themselves in four days, and get back to work with the knowledge of the quintessence consolidation machine. They could also engineer a new skeleton key, which should allow them to somehow return to Salmonverse, and make their way to Verdemus. Navigation was going to be the biggest issue, but that was a problem for tomorrow. For now, they just had to be concerned with life support for Aclima for four years.

The secret fifty-sixth car was shorter than all the others, yes, but it was slightly taller. At twenty-four meters, instead of twenty-one, they were able to look through a window to see the rest of the Transit. Wow, it really was inspired by trains. This would be called the cupola. It also had a window in the back, which was showing them what was happening behind. While most of them were watching the ship race through the kasma canal, Past!Mateo was looking in the opposite direction. “Uh, guys? Something looks wrong here, so maybe you oughta look?”

“What is it?” Leona slid over to check out what he was seeing. Brilliant technicolor lights were illuminating the walls of Salmoverse and Fort Underhill. Olimpia’s magical powers were separating them only for long enough to let the Transit pass through. It wasn’t ever meant to be a permanent canal, and in fact, that was probably not physically possible. The walls were closing back in on themselves, and this appeared to be happening faster and faster. She lifted her watch to her face, and kept an eye on the timer. “It’s accelerating. We’re not gonna make it.”

“That’s impossible,” Angela said. “We already know that we’ll make it. We’ve done this before.”

Leona shook her head. “The Transit will make it, but not every car...not this one, and maybe not the next one over. I don’t know. There is a margin of error in my head math that I am not comfortable with.”

“We need to teleport to the next car,” Marie assumed.

“I’ve been trying,” Future!Mateo said. “We can’t do it, not now. I think it Olimpia’s power is blocking us.”

“Or the kasma, or the canal, or the bulk, or the quintessence. There’s no way to know what the problem is.”

“Fine, then let’s just walk over there,” Marie offered.

“Can’t do it!” Aclima declared from one level down. “The door’s locked!”

Leona looked back at the advancing walls of doom. “Brace for impact!”

 Suddenly, the door that Aclima was trying to get through opened from the other side. A man stepped through. “What’s going on in here?”

Before anyone could answer, a burst of technicolors flooded the room from the outside, and threw him across the car, and down a couple of levels. Everyone else fell down too, though not quite as hard. Leona got herself to her feet, and raced down to shut the door, but it didn’t seem necessary. They were exposed to the harsh environment of the equilibrium, but doing just fine. The atmosphere wasn’t trying to escape. Well, there had to be a reason it was called an equilibrium in the first place, right? Still, she closed the door, and reached down to check on Aclima, who had hit her head, but was conscious, and recovering quickly.

Everyone checked on each other, and seemed all right as well, having suffered only superficial wounds. They found a cot in a nearby compartment to lay the man down. Leona looked down at him with a sense of familiarity. “I know him.” She pulled her handheld device out, and started swiping through their list of known persons.

“That’s not important right now,” Marie told her. “We’re drifting.”

“So go check the systems,” Leona ordered. You’re tech-savvy enough. I shouldn’t have to do everything.”

“I know who that is,” Past!Mateo said as both Angela and Marie were walking down to the control terminal. “I remember him from your memories, back when I didn’t exist. That’s the guy in the secret seventh pocket dimension on the Elizabeth Warren. His brother was the one who killed Annora Ubiña.”

Leona nodded. “Right. But it wasn’t his brother. It was his cousin.” She found what she was looking for in the list. “Jarrett. That makes him Hadron.”

Hadron’s eyes were still closed while he swallowed, and adjusted his position on the cot slightly. “That’s me, Hadron Grier.”

“What are you doing here?” Leona asked.

Aclima slipped her hand under Hadron’s head, and pulled it back out. There was a little bit of blood on it. “No more questions.”

“That was one question,” Leona clarified.

“I’m fine,” Hadon said, sitting up, and allowing Aclima to move the pillow up to the wall for him to lean back on. “My medical nanites will heal the wound. To answer your question, I never thought I would see you again. My cousin was sent to prison for murder, but since he did it for me, it was decided that I wasn’t completely innocent. I was sentenced to house arrest for three years. That was fine, I was finally free of the tyranny of Durus. Still, when a magical door suddenly opened up on a wall that wasn’t supposed to have a door, I took the opportunity to cross over.”

“You worked in The Crossover,” Leona noted.

“For a while, until I found myself taking up a righteous cause in Universum Originalis. I should have known that I would end up in a place like this. What goes around, comes around, eh?”

Aclima pulled her suit’s drinking tube past her neck, and hovered over him to let him have some water.

“Thanks, love,” he said. “Are you gonna take me back to jail?”

Leona scoffed. “Ha, what? That was, like, 280 years ago.”

“Oh.” Only now did he get a look around. “I don’t understand what this is. I was in the caboose. I thought maybe you were a boarding party, but this appears to be of Transit architecture.”

“This is the real caboose,” Future!Mateo explained to him. “It was invisible for some reason.”

“I see.” Hadron took another sip from Aclima’s water tube, which from the right angle, looked a little like he was breastfeeding from her.

Angela came back. “Interestingly, this thing can operate on its own power. We think that we can follow the Transit to Stoutverse, but we’ll never catch up. It doesn’t go fast enough.”

“That’s okay,” Leona said. “Time ain’t nothin’ but a thang. Plot a course, and yalla.”

“We’ve already done that,” Angela replied.

“Great. Mateo?” Leona asked

“Which one of us?”

“Both,” she answered. “Go explore this place. Find out how many cots we have, and see if you can find a food synthesizer, or anything else we can use.”

They did end up finding a food synthesizer, as well as a number of cots, though they didn’t really need them all that badly. The most important discovery was an advanced industrial synthesizer, which was compatible enough with the datadrive that Leona already had with her regarding the skeleton key. She was able to build a new one in a matter of hours, which allowed them to cross over into Stoutverse without having to piggyback on the Transit proper as it entered. They didn’t even have to worry about laying low until they closed their loop in this world either. That navigation issue randomly spit them out of the bulk on June 12, 2464, which wasn’t that much later than when they left.

They were able to reconnect with Ramses and Olimpia, who updated them on everything they had been dealing with. The government wanted to use a Westfall visitor as a human bioweapon, and since they couldn’t accomplish that, they just took his blood to develop a serum, which they distributed to the whole population. Despite it seemingly being over, Westfall still wouldn’t let the man go home. They offered to try to take him back instead using their new bulk traveling machine. That seemed to be enough to break reality, though. When Dutch Haines attempted to follow them through one of the doors of the bunker, he disappeared, hopefully back home where he belonged anyway. But there was no way to know. Oh well. They were still going to leave, but they weren’t going alone. Kineret asked to tag along, but this was a complicated situation, because technically, due to her position as the Primus’ lieutenant, it was considered going AWOL. They needed to approach this with care and caution.

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Microstory 2204: Data Synthesist

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My Data Analyst would like to change his title to Data Synthesist. I was surprised when he came to me with that title, because that’s precisely what I wanted to call it in the beginning, but I was overruled at the time. You see, there’s a difference between analysis and synthesis. An analyst will take data, and break it apart into its smallest parts. They will examine each one, and figure out how it works; how it contributes to whatever it’s there to do. But a system is more than simply the sum of its parts. You, for instance, are not just a collection of organs, bones, blood, nerves, and muscles. You are a full person, and you cannot be rightly defined simply by listing every aspect of your self. What a synthesist does is take the system as a whole, and looks at how those parts work together to form that whole, in all dimensions. There’s an old parable in the systems thinking field that asks whether you would have the best car if you researched the best individual parts in the market, and tried to put them together. The answer is no, you wouldn’t; you wouldn’t even have a car! They wouldn’t fit together correctly, and would not add up to functionality. There is a time and place for analysis, but that time is not now, and that place is not here. I’m all in favor of my team member changing his title, but it’s a lot more complicated than just making the declaration, and printing new business cards. It has to go through human resources, and executives in our company. Our client has to approve it too, because they have the right to decide who they contract with. Compliance and legal have to be involved, as do departments that you might not immediately think of, like payroll and benefits. We don’t need their approval, but they still need to know that it’s happening so they can adjust their systems accordingly. And with all this comes the paperwork. Oh, the paperwork. We went through all this when the process was just getting started, and I was pleasantly surprised at how fast it went, but they might not be interested in undoing their work, and starting over from scratch, even if we’re just talking about one title. It may sound like I’m complaining, but I’m confident that we’ll figure this out. It’s the right move to make, even if it may sound small and inconsequential. It’s important that we state our intentions in all relevant ways, so our clients understand what kind of value we add to their businesses.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 25, 2446

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There was a small gap between the outer layer and the second layer down of the IMS. Tiny valves could form on their own, and suck in air from the environment to inflate this gap, turning the whole thing into a very thin lifejacket. They could form nearly anywhere on the suit, and heal themselves once the job was complete, or if they became submerged in water, and would replace each other accordingly until buoyancy was achieved. This function triggered in all four of their suits automatically, and sent them down river. They had to paddle with their hands and feet to avoid rocks and branches, but that wasn’t the problem. They didn’t know where they were, or how far they had gone. Ramses was not answering his comms, but maybe this was some kind of massive biodome inside Ex-42, which might be shielded in various ways. Their comms were supposed to break through anything, but for every solution, there was the potential for a counter-solution. After they rounded the bend, they found themselves coming up on a very large tree.

The current tried to take the team in different directions. This appeared to be some kind of confluence. They had to swim to stay together, and agreed that they should stop at the central tree to speak with the other people standing underneath it. As they drew nearer, they realized that they recognized about half of them. This was the crew of the X González; Goswin Montagne, Weaver, and Eight Point Seven, plus their prisoner, Briar de Vries. The last time they saw these people, they randomly popped up on the Vellani Ambassador, had a brief argument about Mateo’s supposed death, and then disappeared with Angela. There were five other people standing in the tiny conflux island, but Angela could not count herself amongst them.

 The team crawled onto the island, and approached the other nine, Leona taking the lead. “Report.”

One of the strangers stepped forward. My name is Storm Avakian, and I am the Ensemble Conductor of the Garden Dimension. That is where you are.”

“What year is it?” Leona asked.

“We don’t worry about time that much,” a man said. “Hi, I’m Pinesong Shadowskin, Dimensional Composer.”

Leona stared at them a moment. “We just came from the Goldilocks Corridor. It’s 16,000 light years from Earth. Have you heard of it?”

“We’ve not,” Storm answered.

Goswin’s crew shook their heads too.

Leona focused on the captain. “Where’s Angela?”

“That’s not her right there?” Goswin asked, pointing at Marie.

“That’s her twin sister,” Leona explained. “You took Angela from us, or you will anyway. But no, that had to have happened for you already, because that’s when Briar learned that Mateo survived his first death on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. He doesn’t seem surprised right now.”

“Ah,” Weaver realized, “you met a group of our shifted selves. They’re like alternates, but...different. We’ve absorbed their memories, but our respective brains are still consolidating the discrepancies. We’ve not really had any time to sleep, which will help us remember such things.”

“We know where she’ll be,” Eight Point Seven said. “We’ve experienced your reunion, and remember it just fine. We can send them there.”

“I thought you were the one who didn’t want to help any more people,” Briar reminded Eight Point Seven.

“Well, it’s Leona. We’re gonna help Leona,” Eight Point Seven contended.

“Of course we are,” Goswin agreed. He held his palm up towards Leona, but then he became confused. “Are we not syncing? What’s going on?”

“We all want the same thing,” Briar said. “I still feel you three, but...”

“But we don’t feel the cosmos anymore,” Weaver determined.

“Could someone please explain what’s happening?” Mateo requested. “Ya know, for the dumber people in this group. Not me, obviously, I’m a genius.”

“No, I don’t know what’s happening either,” Leona clarified.

“We were in the Nucleus,” Goswin began before stopping. “I mean...Weaver?”

Weaver nodded, and took over the story. “We were in the Nucleus, where our minds and bodies were split into an unknown number of what we called our shifted selves. We found ourselves with the ability to jump to any point in spacetime, as long as we did it together. We had to sync up our brains, and focus on a singular goal. We also realized that we could do this to others, which is what surely happened to your missing friend, but there was a learning curve. Recently, we used the power of this tree to merge all of our selves into a single body and brain each. As I said, our minds are still working through that. To protect the tree, we removed it from Bida, and transplanted it here. That literally just happened, and...our power is gone now?” She looked over at the Garden Dimension people. “I don’t suppose any of you can explain that. It couldn’t be the dimension itself. We shifted back and forth before, and it went just fine.”

“Princess Honeypea,” Storm said simply.

A young woman hopped over to the tree. It was a giant magnolia with blue flowers and blue fruits. The bark had a sort of indescribable glow about it, and the roots reached into the waters. In fact, some of the roots seemed to be growing before their very eyes, searching for nutrients in the conflux. Princess Honeypea was inspecting the tree now. She gave it as big of a hug as she could, though it was a stretch to use that word when her arms were just about flat with her whole body pressed against the trunk. She sniffed at the branches, and licked the base before pulling one of the leaves off, stuffing it in her mouth, and chewing thoughtfully. She nodded, and went over to Briar, taking him by the hand, and causing his to blush. She led him over to the tree, and placed his hand upon it. “All three of you, come on and do the same thing,” she instructed.

The other three members of the crew went over to touch the tree.

Honeypea nodded again. “Just as I suspected. Their power is not gone, it’s just been moved into Riverbell.”

“Riverbell?” Goswin questioned.

“Riverbell Hallowheart,” Honeypea went on. “That’s her name.”

“Well, I like it,” Briar decided.

Goswin laughed mildly. “No one said we didn’t like it.” He took a breath. “So, it’s over. We can’t help them.”

Honeypea plucked a fruit pod down. “Maybe you can’t help anymore, but Riverbell here could take over for you. She would be honored.”

“Does it have a consciousness?” Weaver asked, like that wasn’t one of the craziest things one could say about a tree.

“Not in the way you would think,” Honeypea began to explain. She walked over, and handed Leona the fruit pod. “But I’m assuming that you do...have a consciousness?”

“I do,” Leona confirmed. “You want me to eat this?”

“One fruit, one trip. These are immature, though, so each one won’t last long before it pulls you back to origin. You’ll have to keep eating them if you don’t finish what you’re trying to do, and need to go back. If you’re looking for your friend, but you don’t know exactly where she is, it might take the whole pod.”

“What happens when I finish the pod?” Leona asked. “Can’t I just...eat another?”

“You could try, but that might kill you,” Honeypea said. She was no longer her usual bubbly self. “They’re not poisonous, per se, but too much of a good thing is still bad for you. You can even drink too much water. Your body might eventually learn to metabolize it, allowing you to start eating again, but that would take time. In fact, I’m not sure that it would even be safe for you to finish the pod. Fewer is recommended.”

“My body’s pretty strong,” Leona explained. “I’m not like regular people.”

“I can see that,” Honeypea said, “but you’re not invincible. Like any plant, Riverbell wants to propagate, but unlike normal plants, it doesn’t do it by replicating itself. It’s more complex than I can say with words, but basically, when it sends you somewhere, you’ll be taking seeds with you. Seeds of time. You’ll be changing history just by being in the timeline with the fruit in your system. That’s what the four of them did before they came here, and that will continue with you, and anyone else who partakes. This is why we must protect it, because that can’t be allowed to get out of hand. The most beautiful of organisms can become an invasive species, and an ecosystem—even one as extensive as all of space and time—demands balance, not homogeny.”

“I need one too,” Mateo said. “Ramses is missing now. You can protect the fruit all you want after that.”

Honeypea nodded. “I understand, and accept your terms.”

“Now, hold on,” Weaver jumped in. “That private detective we met. He was looking for the fruit. He thought that it would make his client young again.”

“He was wrong,” Honeypea said. “The fruit doesn’t do that at all. I can see why his client believed that, though. The source of the Fountain of Youth is right there.” She pointed at the ground.”

Everyone looked down. “What?” Weaver asked.

“The Fountain of Youth? In Florida?” Honeypea continued. “It’s there. This conflux marks the crisscrossing of five rivers, which branch off in ten directions. The eleventh branch goes down.” She shrugged, her eyebrows, as well as her shoulders. “And then up again. It flows into a spring in mithgarther.”

“When did this happen?” Weaver was still shocked.

Honeypea looked at her bare wrist. “Like, ten minutes ago.”

“This was inevitable,” Leona realized. “The Fountain of Youth has existed in every timeline I’ve ever heard of. It dried up many centuries ago. It’s one of the immortality waters. Do all of the other waters come from here?”

“No.” Honeypea was certain of this.

Storm stepped closer to Honeypea. “Are you sure about the properties of this new tree? The fruits, the roots, the leaves; everything.”

“I’ll need a little more time to finish the full synthesis of data, but I’m quite confident,” Honeypea replied.

“Okay, coordinate with Onyx for his catalog.” Storm turned to Leona and Mateo. “He’s our Botanical Orchestrator. We don’t do anything with the plants, including eating them, until he’s done his due diligence. You’ll have to wait, I don’t know how long.”

“I suppose we can hold off for another year,” Leona decided. “Will that be sufficient, Madam Avakian?”

Storm bowed her head respectfully. “More than enough. For now, allow me to show you to our guest quarters. I hope they are to your satisfaction.”

An airboat came up to them automatically, and after they climbed into it, sped off down one of the rivers. It stopped and dropped them off at Citrus Inn. It was a small and simple building, but it came with a beautiful view, and the air smelled of lemons and oranges.

“You have citrus here? How does that work?”

Storm smirked. “Trade secret. I can’t tell.” She left it at that, and left them there, assuring them that everything they might need would be in the rooms, the kitchen, the bathrooms, or the closets. They were allowed to pick anything from the orchard, but could not touch any of the other plants.

There was no electricity here, which meant no TV or music. There was a small library down the hall for entertainment, but beyond that, they were limited to whatever they had managed to download to their handheld devices. They first sat down in the sitting room together, but were thinking of just going to bed soon. That wasn’t Mateo’s plan, though. “Ramses is all alone. We don’t know whether the Oaksent died in the explosion, or if he had his own plasma shield...”

“When you eat that fruit,” Leona reasoned, “you’ll concentrate on trying to find him seconds after he purged the hot pocket. You don’t have to worry about what he’s been up to since. He’ll have been up to nothing, for he’ll just jump forward in time with you. I know you’re worried, but it’s going to be okay. Angela is going to have gone through the same thing. I’ll find her moments after those alternates of the crew took her away from us. They’ve not been waiting for us to rescue them; it’s already happened.”

Mateo shook his head. “What if it doesn’t work like that? We may have less control over what that fruit does than that princess would have us believe. What if Angela has been gone for days? Don’t you want to not waste any more time?”

“I know what you’re thinking, and I forbid you, Mister Matic.”

She never calls him that, like he’s just a member of her team, and not her husband. “Oh, you forbid me? You think you can stop me?”

“I can punish you,” Leona volleyed.

“With what?”

“No sex.”

“For how long?”

“Indefinitely.”

Mateo glared at her, and she glared back. Ramses was important. He couldn’t let this be too personal. “Worth it.” He teleported away.

Marie teleported away immediately after, and came back with him. She shoved him back into his chair. “She’s my sister.”

“I was going for Ramses.”

“I know,” Marie said. “I love him too, so I’ll get him back too.” She looked over at Leona. “You and I aren’t having sex anyway.” She disappeared again.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 30, 2399

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Aldona has apparently never heard of the principle of SCR&M, because she didn’t design this rocket to be modular. It’s one giant tube, with living spaces at the top, cargo in the middle, and propulsion at the bottom. It’s a good thing that the first two aren’t switched, because while it’s not modular, it is compartmentalized. With a little bit of effort, they were able to pull it apart to leave one section on the moon, while the rest flew away, using the auxiliary control room as now the only control room.

Ramses and Mateo are heading back towards Earth to deploy their supersecret array of leechcraft. They’ll enter a high orbit, and launch the little leeches as they pass by other objects. Once those are dispersed, they’ll drop down to a lower orbit for another round. They’ll keep doing that until every sufficiently sized object up there has a little piece of hardware on it that Team Matic controls. Is this ethical? One hundred percent no. Is it morally right? Absolutely yes. Aldona and the world leaders are primarily concerned with external enemies, like the other parallel realities, but they know that there are plenty of domestic hostile forces to worry about. That’s what these technologies do. Like Ramses said before, this is more than just a temporal error detector. The software will map the behavioral patterns of everyone in the world, synthesize the data, and model the threats.

No specific individual is going to be targeted through this system. The artificial intelligence that Ramses curated himself will only ever output locational concerns, not people or groups. The AI is not based on the Constance program. The Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez already had its own intelligence, which became dormant when Constance was uploaded for consistency, but Ramses still has a copy of it, so there is no concern of an uprising, like they have on their hands with Constance!Five. That’s something that Aldona doesn’t even know about, which puts civilization at more risk than just aliens from other dimensions. It’s why they’re doing this. Ramses’ little assistant, Mateo is certain that people will thank them for this one day.

While all of this is going on, Leona will be on the moon with the boys. She’s not being sidelined, though. There’s plenty of work to be done here. The far side of the moon is a perfect place to install a vanguard extrasolar incursion detection system. There are others, like the Lagrange points, but it has to start somewhere. The orbital defense grid will protect Earth, but it works best with forewarning. The small container of nanites that they came here with has grown extraordinarily in just a few days. Until now, all they have been doing is replicating themselves using lunar material. Now it’s time to build some stuff. Half will be sent with Ramses to turn into leechcraft during the deliberately slow journey. The rest are for Leona’s special projects.

She’s going to expand what little infrastructure is here now into a full-fledged lunar base. Hundreds of people will be able to move in by the end of next month, and thousands by the start of this future war. This time next year, it could potentially be considered the center of a colony of millions. That’s a long way off, if ever. For now she just needs to focus on making sure she and the kids don’t die in the vacuum of space. That doesn’t mean they can’t have a little fun at the same time, though.

Little Moray’s face is pressed against the glass, watching the nanites work their magic. The shaft is done, and the head is nearly there. “What is it?”

“You’ve never seen one of these before?” Leona twirls the finished one.

“No.”

“You don’t have golf on your world?”

“Never heard of it.”

“Oh, I think you’ll like it. Go get your brother, and meet me in the airlock. I’ll show you how to use them.”

Moray runs off to grab Carlin. When they get to the airlock, Leona helps them into their custom-made vacuum suits, then gets into her own. Then they go out for a walk. “Four hundred and twenty-eight years ago tomorrow—in the main sequence—a man by the name of Alan Shepard landed on the moon. He was there to collect moon rocks, and do a bunch of science stuff, but he secretly smuggled one of these bad boys with him.” She holds up Carlin’s club. “He also had a couple of these.” She pulls several balls out of her bag, and drops them onto the lunar regolith.

“I assume you’re supposed to hit the balls with the sticks?” Carlin figures.

“Clubs, and yes,” Leona confirms.

“Farthest one wins?” Moray asks.

“Well, in regular golf, you would want to aim for a tiny little hole that’s hundreds of meters away. It’s never just a straight shot, and they put all kinds of hazards between you and the hole, like water and sand traps. I don’t have time to build all that, so yeah, farthest hit wins.”

“How far did Alan Shepard hit it?” Carlin asks.

“About thirty-seven meters, but his suit was extremely cumbersome, and he could only hit it with one hand.”

“How are you supposed to hit it?” Carlin presses.

“I’ve never played. So let’s watch a video.” She taps on her wrist device, and releases a hologram for them all to watch. It’s a tutorial from some famous golf player that was being stored in the AOC’s databank of main sequence knowledge.”

They had to modify their grip, because even though these suits are a lot more streamlined than the early Apollo missions ever could have dreamed of, they still weren’t designed for extreme dexterity. Even so, they were able to make it work. To no one’s surprise, Carlin was the best at it. He barely tried, and he hit it as far as an experienced player would, though maybe without too much accuracy. Given more time and practice, he could play it for real. They evidently have to get through this war first. Once all of the balls are gone, they head back for the base. Perhaps she’ll build a rover on her downtime that can go retrieve the balls later for another competition.

That night, the three of them are trying to eat their freeze-dried dinner when they hear a banging coming from down the hallway. “Do you remember when I showed you reclamation?” Leona asks.

“Yes,” the boys reply in sync.

“Go there, and find somewhere to hide,” she instructions. After they run off, Leona heads in the direction of the banging, holding the longer club. They come in a pattern, suggesting an intelligence behind them. The exterior security cameras aren’t showing anything, but there’s a blindspot right against the hatch to the airlock. She steps inside, and peeks out the viewport to find a man. He’s not wearing a suit, and is casually tossing one of the golf balls into the...moon air. “Can I help you?” Leona asks.

He nods, and slaps his free hand against the viewport. Written on his palm in black marker reads HERE FOR CEDAR.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: December 9, 2398

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Arcadia has her own life, so she hasn’t had time to learn how to use the equipment in the lab. She and Ramses came up with a code phrase in case he ever suspected himself of being psychically compromised again, but that’s about as far as they got with the protocols. She and Vearden drove there from their house yesterday, and they’ve been here ever since, reading the manual that Ramses prepared in case he was ever indisposed. He didn’t write all of himself. He got a lot of help from their new AI, Constance. Actually, it was more like him helping her. The text is well organized, and easy to understand for the less educated, like Arcadia, but it’s still a lot, so she didn’t want to rush this. “Okay, I’ve found Alyssa’s most recent scan.”

“Okay,” Ramses replies, still inside the containment chamber with Alyssa. It was awkward after their conversation, but they took turns on the cot, and made it work. He might install multiple cots after all this, but on the other hand, he doesn’t want to plan for another crisis.

“And I see her history. It’s definitely changed.”

“Good, can you look at my history?”

“Yeah, I see it right here.”

“Okay, run a scan on both of us, it’s fine, just make sure you tell the scanner that it should be expecting two consciousnesses, instead of one.”

“No, I think I know how to scan you and you alone.”

“All right.” Ramses grimaces. That’s not a very high level function, but it’s not completely obvious either.

“Just please go to your separate corners,” Arcadia requests.

Ramses stays near the front while Alyssa goes behind him, thinking she’s getting out of the way.

“No, um, different corners.” The chamber is more circular than it is round, but Alyssa figures it out, and ends up catty-corner to him. Now that the two subjects aren’t too close to each other, the machine scans Ramses’ brain. Arcadia watches the data come in. She’s seen enough already by comparing the new scan with his scan history. “Constance, sequestration wall.”

A wall comes down from the ceiling, physically separating Ramses from Alyssa. “What? Why did you do that?” Alyssa questions.

Ramses sighs. “I’m not infected. She’s trying to protect me from you.”

“I still need to keep you contained,” Arcadia says. “I’ve only run one test, so you can’t leave, but I don’t want to risk further cross-contamination.”

“It’s gonna be okay,” Ramses says to Alyssa.

“Get it out. Get it out of my brain,” she begs.

“It’s not that bad,” Ramses assures her. “Erlendr can’t control your actions. It’s more like he extracted a piece of his consciousness, and implanted it in you, so everything you’ve experienced since then can be his. But don’t worry, you only uploaded yourself into the Insulator once to see if he would respond better to you asking for help with Leona’s bounty. You haven’t been back, which means he can’t have downloaded anything from you yet.”

“How do you know he didn’t download anything from me from my life before?”

“We would have seen that,” Ramses tells her. “We would have seen him doing that as it was happening. He hasn’t gotten anything from you, and we’re gonna figure out how to get the infection out before it can do any harm, right?” He turns to face Arcadia at the last few words.

“Yeah, I can do this,” Arcadia replies confidently. “With my new knowledge of this tech, combined with my naturally psychic abilities, this will be easy. I just need to know more about what we’re dealing with. I have to analyze Alyssa’s scan history.”

“Synthesize,” Ramses corrects. “You need to synthesize it. It’s far more complicated than just pointing to an area of the brain, and saying, that’s been taken over by Erlendr.”

“I know, I just...don’t know all the lingo yet,” Arcadia says. Yikes, she thinks. Is she going to be able to do this?

After Arcadia completes one more scan for good measure on Alyssa’s brain, Alyssa sighs, and plops herself down on the cot to wait. Arcadia works on the problem for the next few hours. She scans her own brain with an external unit to figure out why it is that her mental defenses weren’t able to protect Alyssa from this intrusion. She asks Ramses for a little guidance throughout, but doesn’t want to involve him too much as she’s not one hundred percent sure that he’s not also secretly infected. Vearden, unable to do anything, becomes the errand boy for all three of them. He goes out to get them food, and other amenities. He also dotes on Arcadia, and tries to make sure she has everything she needs to be comfortable, like a lumbar pillow, and ice chips. She’s fourteen weeks pregnant, not in hospice, but if he can’t stop her from working, he’s at least going to make sure she doesn’t overexert herself. She accepts the support, because arguing would make it worse, and it is helping her focus on Alyssa.

Finally, Arcadia is certain that there is nothing wrong with Ramses, which is probably what she should have been most worried about the entire time. With him back in commission, she doesn’t need to be responsible for Alyssa’s psychic restoration. She lets him out of the containment chamber, and steps aside so he can take over. She doesn’t want to leave while he’s working, though, because now she’s invested.

“Hold on,” Ramses says. He pulls up Alyssa’s scan history again, and puts them all in a row. “Constance, loop these images in rapid succession, chronologically.”

The AI performs the request.

“What is it?” Alyssa asks.

“It can’t be.” Ramses peers at the screen, and watches the loop a few more times while Arcadia watches it over his shoulder, not sure what she’s seeing. He stops, and looks inquisitively up at Alyssa. “This is going to be an odd question, but I need you to really think hard about it. Before you met this team, did you have any other interaction with someone who may have been a time traveler, or a psychic, or something? Thinking back, was there someone who you now realize may have been a little...different?”

“Not that I can think of,” she answers. “Why? Have my scans always been weird?”

“Well, I first scanned your mind a long time ago, when we were figuring out how to do your illusion powers, and I always took the data as what we in the business call baseline, but maybe they never were. I don’t think this is Erlendr. I think someone else put something in your head, and it could have been a long time ago.”

“What do we do about that?” Arcadia questions.

Ramses takes a breath. “More tests.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 16, 2398

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It was annoying to spend a whole other day just sitting around, waiting to do anything to fix this problem. If even one of them had an identity in this reality, they could have gone to check on their friends, but it wasn’t worth the risk. Marie actually wasn’t sure if the authorities would ask for identification or anything, but they most likely would, so there was nothing they could do. They watched the news, which wasn’t reporting the incident. It was a minor infraction, all things considered, so they wouldn’t expect anything to be up there, but there was a small chance, so it was nice to see this was all being kept fairly quiet. The downside was they weren’t entirely certain where Heath and Angela were being held. Based on the location of the arrest, they could guess, but that wasn’t a sure thing either. It should all be resolved in the next couple of days, but they’re finding it hard to wait.

Marie is sitting at the kitchenette table, chin resting on the palm of her hand. “What do you think Olimpia is doing right now?” The two of them had a thing back when there was only one version of Angela. Mateo is unaware how serious it was, or if they had time to attempt to navigate the duplication that complicated matters. She has Heath now, but obviously still feels something.

“Hopefully she doesn’t exist,” Leona decides. “If Dalton accidentally created a shortlived pattern, then we were each delivered to our respective realities a year and a day apart. That would put Olimpia on April 9, 2398.”

“That was a week ago,” Marie laments.

“Yeah, but she should have only been alone for a day,” Leona figures. “We can try to retrieve her in 2399. That gives Ramses and me a lot of time to solve the issue. I think our main obstacle is a lack of accessible temporal energy. But we are still living in salmonverse, and salmoverse still has time travel. If somebody has a way of suppressing it, then they have to be using it for themselves.”

“What does that mean for us?” Mateo asks.

“It means that there is a source of temporal energy, be it a person, a special object, or even a location. If we find it, we can just take the energy we need for ourselves. We’ll have to rebuild the devices that Ramses got from the Parallel, but like I said, we have a year. We will probably want to try it on April 10, 2399.”

“How do we know that Olimpia isn’t on our same non-pattern, wherever she is?” Marie complains. “Maybe she’s been alone for as long as you’ve been here, or as long as I’ve been here.”

“We just can’t think like that,” Mateo tries to say in a comforting voice. “Let’s try to be positive.”

“Well, I’m A-negative,” Marie argues. She stands up, and tries to climb up the narrow steps, but Ramses happens to be coming back down.

When he gets to the bottom, he doesn’t realize right away that she’s trying to get past, so he just stands there for a moment, looking amongst the others to gauge the tone of the room.

“Please!” she says plainly in a raised—but not yelling—voice.

“Sorry.” He steps to the side, and watches her leave in a huff. “Is everything okay?”

“No,” Leona answers, “but...she just needs some time alone.”

“It is safe up there, right?” Mateo asks him.

“I didn’t see any activity. They chose this site well.”

Ramses sits down where Marie was, bored after his forest walk. “What are we gonna do now? We can’t even play RPS-101 Plus.”

“No,” Mateo agrees with a smirk, “but we can play regular RPS-101.” He pulls the wheel from his bag, unfolds it, and presents it to the two of them.

“Where did you get that?” Leona questions.

Mateo shrugs. “I had the industrial synthesizer print it out forever ago. That’s why it’s made of metal instead of paper.”

“How would one even go about playing?” Ramses asked.

“You search the wheel for the gesture you want. Then we pound and shoot just as we would for Rock, Paper, Scissors. Then we consult the outcome list to find out who won. It’s etched on the back.”

Leona stares at the wheel. “I can’t believe you’ve been lugging that thing around this whole time.”

“It’s made of graphene, so it’s light,” Mateo contends.

“That’s not metal.”

“Whatever. Do you wanna play a game?” Mateo offers.

She stares at it some more. “Whatever. Just be careful of choosing Sponge every time, like you usually do.”