The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 28, 2398

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Ramses is doing great at his job on a professional level, but not so much personally speaking. Two people on his work team hate him: the guy whose job he apparently usurped, and the guy who had been trying to usurp it since before Ramses was even in this reality. He doesn’t even care, but this gives him access to the resources his team may need to escape to the main sequence, and barring that, survive here. First and foremost, they need to understand the laws of physics. Is there something that’s constantly suppressing their powers and patterns here, or were they stripped of these characteristics upon arrival, and now they could theoretically get them back using some other avenue? He needs to run tests, and being in charge of this department should afford him the appropriate opportunities. All he needs to do is help his people do their jobs on their own, and not bug him all the time, or try to sabotage him.

“Bruno, can you come in here, please?”

“Is he in trouble?” Stockboy asks. That’s not his real name, but he started working here as a stock associate, and worked his way up to this position. He’s just biding his time until he can climb even higher.

“He’s not,” Ramses answers. “Bruno. Double time.”

Not only does he not speed up, but he actually slows down to a snail’s pace.

“You’ll be in trouble if you don’t get in here, though. I partially wanted to talk about the fact that my paperwork finally went through, so now I have full dismissal privileges.”

Now scared for his job, Bruno hops in, and closes the door behind him. “Sir,” he says through actual gritted teeth.

“Bruno, how long have you been working here?”

“Exactly 452 times as long as you have.”

“You believe that your six-year tenure here imbues you with some kind of...entitlement?”

“Sir?”

“You think you deserve to be in charge.”

Bruno looks like he’s considering his options, and ultimately decides to stand resolute. “Yes, I do. I’ve already proven myself.”

“Mr. Castillo, I am not a leader. My best friends tell me what to do, and I do it. Repair this, build that, invent something that has never existed before. And I love it, because it means I’m useful. I haven’t been feeling very useful for the last week, does this surprise you?”

“It does not.”

“I don’t want to be in charge. I don’t even want the money. I just need to maintain my position here. And I need you to stop making that so goddamn hard.” He picks up a stack of papers from his desk, and tosses them onto the floor in front of the man who is meant to be his subordinate. It hasn’t been very long, but he’s already exhausted with this nonsense. Ramses may have had a rivalry or two back in the day, but even a group of radical capitalists generally accepted the idea that one person’s success did not inherently mean another’s failure. This world, however, considers them to be one and the same. “My job is to make sure these time reports are filled out correctly. Your job is to fill them out, not deliberately screw them up to make it look like I’m an idiot. You may have forced others to complete your work, and then taken credit for it, but I’m not like that. I’m not going to try to pass this off as my own to illustrate my value. Nowhere does it say that I have to complete them, I am perfectly within my rights to delegate. So that’s what I’m doing. I don’t have time to do them, and I don’t have time to check your mistakes. So do them right, give them to me, and I’ll file them away. That’s called trust. I can google that word for you if you need me to?”

“You can what that word?”

Ramses sighs. “If you mess these up again, I’m blaming you, and the boss will believe me, because I’ve already told him that you’re continuing to do them.”

“Sir, forgive me, but if you don’t want to be the supervisor, why are you?”

“Because I’m on assignment from the corporate office,” Ramses lies. “In one year, that assignment will be over, and I’ll step down.”

“I need the money now,” Bruno argues.

“You’ll get it.” Ramses pulls a stack of cash from the top drawer, and drops it right on top of the reports on the floor. “Like I said, I don’t need it. That’s a pittance for someone of my calibre. I’ll even let you be my lieutenant. It’s not an official position, but the team will listen to you, and I don’t give a shit. All you have to do to keep making this extra income every month is follow my orders, stay out of my way, and keep this all quiet. Are you capable of that?”

Bruno bends over, and retrieves the cash to get a rough count of it. “I was making more than this when I had your job.”

Ramses rolls his eyes. “You’re not getting all of my monthly pay. The rest is my per diem. They sent me here, expecting me to use all of it in this capacity, but I’m prepared to sacrifice half of it to keep you on my side. You’re still getting your regular wages, dummy.”

He nods. “I can do that.”

“Good. That’s not an advance, it’s a free sample, since I obviously haven’t been here all month. You’ll get another one at the end of May.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Right. Clean that up, get out, and work overtime if you must to fix them.”

Extremus: Year 3

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The original idea was to have the captain of the Extremus make the evening announcements every day, as a way for the crew to stay connected to the passengers. After months of this, Halan decided to change this by having a different crew member do it every day. They created a randomized schedule, which wasn’t periodic, but was still designed to be even, so that no one member was doing it too often. The young tech who was first assigned this responsibility was nervous about the prospect. It wasn’t what he signed up for, and it wasn’t in his wheelhouse, so to speak. He didn’t feel the same way forever, though. The more that Eckhart Mercer did the announcements, the more he fell in love with it, and the more the people fell in love with him. He was charismatic, funny, and entertaining. They became a larger affair, about more than just reporting the general status of the ship. People started thinking about what they could do to end up on the speakers, by inventing a new game, or coming up with a fabulous recipe. Eckhart Mercer became a celebrity, and in the end, the general consensus was that they would be better off with him as their permanent announcer. It was more than that, though. He was responsible for keeping up to date on the goingson of the ship, and knowing what news was important. The Captain was happy to adapt the schedule to accommodate this shift in popularity. The rest of the crew seemed fine with it too.

True to his word, Halan left Omega in hock for an entire year. He approved all necessary organic longevity treatments, however, because he kind of had to. Omega is a different subspecies of human; one that was originally designed to last for tens of thousands of years. Ethical conventions are pretty clear that, when in doubt, the standard procedure when dealing with a socially disruptive entity, is to maintain life expectancy. In other words, he deserves to live indefinitely, because anywhere else, he would. And anything short of that is tantamount to capital punishment, which is illegal. There was a debate amongst the executive crew, as well as the security team, whether they ought to place him in stasis. That was, after all, part of the intentions of Omega’s genetic engineer, Saxon. In the end, they determined that this too would be unethical, as Omega deliberately broke free from his nature to lead a different life. The feelings of the individual in question can’t dictate their fate, but they have to be taken into account no matter what. They cannot just be ignored. So he has remained in there with all the luxury of a normal cabin, but none of the luxuries of public spaces. He can’t even hear the announcements from down there.

Airlock Karen continues to be a headache for everyone. They manage to avoid tearing down a wall for her sake, and eventually get her out of there completely. She was more than willing to relocate back to her cabin once Halan gave up, and threatened to throw her in the hock too. Now that she’s in the general population, it’s become clear just how delusional she is. She is completely convinced that the crew is out to get her, and the passengers are generally on her side. The reality is that no one likes her, and they always try to stay away from her. She’ll latch onto a large group when it forms, and outwardly fantasize about being the center of it. People ignore her as best they can, but she is obviously getting on their nerves, and Halan knows he has to be rid of her soon.

“It’s ready,” Old Man says, “but like I’ve been saying, “there is no way to test this. Even if we give it to your two...victims...?”

“Let’s just call them Gatewood-bounders,” Halan corrects.

“Very well.” Old Man goes on, “even if we give it to your two Gatewood-bounders, and they press the button, we’ll have no way of knowing whether it worked.”

“We’re operating at maximum reframe, which means it’s near-equivalent to realtime. I can send a message back to Gatewood to see if it worked,” Halan points out.

“True. In fact, you could send that message right now, because if it will work, they’ve already been there for three years.”

“Let’s not screw with causality just yet. You’re sure you’ve done everything you can to adapt it, right? Pushing that button will send them, and only them, back to 2170?”

“Again, not sure, but there’s no point in me trying to improve it. It either works, or it doesn’t.”

“Give it to me. I need to discuss it with them.”

“You’re going to ask them for permission?”

“No, but I don’t want to just spring it on them last minute, or worse, not tell them anything at all. They have a right to prepare themselves emotionally. Karen has been begging us to send her back this whole time, but she doesn’t know about the button. It’s entirely possible she just wants to be difficult. When I show her that there’s hope for her actually getting what she wants, she may realize she doesn’t really want that. The more I pass by that service airlock, the harder it is for me to believe she went in there for any reason but to draw attention to herself.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying.” It’s Rita, having come into the lab at some point.

“Good, you’re here. Please have security escort her to the lower deck. Quietly,” Halan requests.

“She’ll be suspicious,” Rita volleys. “We don’t want her causing a scene.”

“Good point. I’ll...invite her to dinner,” Halan decides. “You can take the device down to the interrogation room. Have Omega sent there too, of course.”

“Uh, I think I would feel more comfortable if the Captain handled this by himself.” Old Man lifts the device with two hands, and tries to hand it to Halan.

“Why are you wearing gloves?” he questions.

“Scientists wear gloves,” Old Man replies with a casual shrug.

“So Rita doesn’t need to wear gloves herself?” Halan tries to confirm.

“I really would rather you take it instead. It’s very delicate, and we only have one.” Old Man is insistent.

“Take off your gloves, Old Man,” Halan orders.

“Sir, it’s just...”

“Take off your goddamn gloves,” Halan repeats.

Old Man sighs. He sets the device down, removes his gloves, then picks it back up. He again tries to hand it to Halan.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Halan says to Rita.

“My pleasure, sir,” Rita replies. She’s confused too, but everything has worked out. She takes the device, and heads down to the lower deck.

Halan, meanwhile, goes up to the passenger section, where Airlock Karen is trying to yet again regale her tale of woe to the random people who have accidentally found themselves within her blast radius. He’s going to need to be as charming as possible. “Would you please join me for dinner tonight, Madam.”

The crowd is noticeably uncomfortable, but Airlock Karen is ecstatic. She tries to hide it. “How can I deny my Captain? I will be there in two hours.”

Halan clears his throat suggestively, and makes his eyes wander, almost like he’s looking for someone else to invite instead.

“I suppose I could eat a tad bit early,” she says. “Give me ten minutes to freshen up?”

“Certainly,” Halan says. He points to the nearest security officer. “She’ll escort you when you’re ready.” He turns to leave.

“Thank you,” Airlock Karen says. “I have some great ideas about how to run this place that I think you’ll really respond to.”

He doesn’t turn back, but he retches a little in his mouth. “I’m always happy to listen to my passengers.” He walks away, and heads for the interrogation room. The security guard knows what they’re doing, and what to do with Airlock Karen, even though he didn’t specifically assign her this task.

It was always bound to take longer than ten minutes for her to show up, so the three of them sit in awkward silence while they wait.

“So, how about that local sports team, eh?” Omega asks, evidently trying to break the ice.

“The what?” Halan doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

“It’s an Earthan thing that people say.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“You finally figured it out, didn’t you?” Omega guesses.

“Pardon?”

“You figured out how to send me back.”

How does he know about that? “Who’s been feeding you information?”

“No one,” Omega replies, seemingly honestly. “You run a tight ship. I figured out what you were doing, because I’m a genius.”

“I never wanted you here, and neither do you,” Halan reminds him.

“I dunno,” Omega says, looking around. “It’s nice being outside the hock. Maybe I could be useful. I’m not the same man who went in there a year ago. I promise to be better. You have to understand that I grew up in a sea of other versions of me. We were expendable. Many of us died, I don’t think you wanna hear the statistics. I had no control over my life until I took it. I suppose it’s just been hard for me to take orders since then...it’s never done me any good before.”

Halan leans over the table. “If you can follow orders now, then follow this one. Go back to Gatewood. If I only send the one person back, it will look personal. It will look like I attacked her. If you go with her, I think it will smooth over any disagreements that might arise when this gets out.”

Omega smiles. “Yes, sir.” If he’s trying to find an angle, Halan can’t tell what it is.

Rita shows up with Airlock Karen, who doesn’t understand what’s happening, but she’s become suspicious. Dinner should not be all the way down here by the hock, she presumes. This doesn’t make any sense. “Why don’t you have a seat?” Rita offers.

“I’m not sitting next to him,” Airlock Karen declares. “What is this?”

“I’ll explain, but if you don’t sit down right now,” Halan begins to warn, “you’re going into the cell with him.”

She sits down right quick.

“Now,” Halan starts his speech. “Neither of you want to be here.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Omega interrupts.

“I’ve not,” Halan says. “I still don’t want you here...either of you.” He nods to Rita, who removes the device from her bag, and sets in on the table in front of him. “This will send you back to Gatewood at the exact moment that we left. You will watch from the observation deck with all the others who chose to leave. You don’t have to push it right now. I’ll give you a day to prepare yourselves.”

“Why didn’t you give me this before?” Airlock Karen scolds.

“It hadn’t been invented yet,” Halan answers. She doesn’t need to know the whole history about it being adapted from the undo button. “I don’t need Omega off my ship as much as I need you gone. With him, we would have figured something out, he’s at least useful. I had my best engineer working on the problem...for you. So instead of being nasty, for once in your life, could you just be grateful that anyone worked as hard as we have to get you what you asked for. Keep in mind that, in this case, just shutting the hell up is a good way to show that you’re grateful.”

She clears her throat submissively.

Halan goes on, “all you have to do is pull the string, and press the button. You’ll be doing it together, though, as we only get one shot at this. Like I said, you’ll have a day. We’ll retrieve you tomorrow for departure. Omega, you’ll be released until then.”

Just then, they hear banging on the door behind them. They look back to see Old Man through the window, desperately trying to get into the locked room. “I couldn’t wash my hands! It’s not good enough! Don’t push the button!” it sounds like he shouts through the door, but it’s a little muffled.

“What is he talking about?” Halan questions.

“I have no idea,” Rita notes.

“Don’t push the button!” Old Man repeats.

“Screw that,” Airlock Karen decides. She stands up, grabs the device from the table, and takes several steps back.

“Wait,” Halan tries to reason with her. “I think something’s wrong.”

“I don’t care!” Airlock Karen screams. She pulls on the string. “I’m getting the hell out of here!” She presses the button, and promptly disappears.

So does Old Man.

So does Rita.

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Extremus: Year 2

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Captain Yenant pulls a chair over, and sits down in front of Omega. He closes his eyes, and massages the bridge of his nose. He’s been through this before, and he’s sick of it. He’s in charge of the crew and the ship itself, and not so much the passengers; they have their own leaders. Omega is more of  a stowaway, though, and that kind of falls under Halan’s jurisdiction. “Why am I still dealing with you? It’s been eight months.”

“I was just trying to boost our speed,” Omega answers with a shrug.

“We’re going at maximum reframe. It doesn’t get faster than that. Technically, we’re not exceeding the speed of light. It’s more like we’re going back in time while moving forward.”

“Yes, but if we go back in time faster then we’ll get to our destination earlier.”

Halan gets this close to putting his face in his palm. “We’ll get there earlier, so what? That’s not faster. It will take us 216 years, whether that’s 216 years from the day we left, or 216 years before we left. That doesn’t help anything.”

“The faster I get you to your precious planet, the faster I can get back to my life on Gatewood, and I would like to reappear the second after I last left, so I’m actually trying to send us back more than twice as fast as we are now.”

“I won’t allow that.”

“I’ll do it anyway,” Omega contends.

“You are not entitled to persistent longevity treatments. You’ll die here, like everyone else. I’ll see to it.”

“I don’t need those treatments anymore,” Omega claims. “I make my own.”

“Not in the hock, you don’t.”

“You can’t keep me in hock for the whole journey.”

Halan stands up, and carefully places his chair back where he found it, randomly towards the back corner. “Watch me.” He walks towards the door, but addresses the guard first. “Do it.”

“No!” Omega cries. “You can’t do this! I’ll stop, just don’t lock me away!” He’s probably expecting the Captain to stop, and prove that his words were only an interrogation tactic, but Halan doesn’t need anything from him. He might as well be in hock, at least he can’t cause any more trouble. He’ll leave him in there for a year, and then reassess.

Halan walks down the hallway, and back onto the bridge. He finds Rita by the viewscreen. “Is he ready?”

“No.”

Halan checks his watch. “He’ll have to be.”

“You could always just do it yourself, like you have been,” Rita suggests.

“The passengers have to see that this is not a one-man show. We’re all in this together. He’ll do it several more times before his shift ends. He might as well start now.”

“He’s still practicing, even all this time. That does not suggest a lot of self-confidence.”

“All right, well I’ll get him to that point. I’ll go in alone, so he’s not intimidated.”

“Are you calling me intimidating?” Rita questions, offended.

“I just mean he’s better one-one-one. But if you wanna be the one to coach him through it...”

“No, no, no. That’s fine.”

Rita walks the other direction, while Halan steps into the PA room. A young technician stands up quickly, like he was bitten by a toilet snake. “Good evening, sir.”

“As you were, Tech.”

“Thank you, sir.” He does not look well.

“Breathe with me.” Halan sits down, and begins to breathe deeply and deliberately. “In. Out. In. Out. Make sure you get oxygen to your brain.”

“Thank you, sir,” the boy repeats.

“You can do this. You’ve done it a million times by now, I’m sure.”

“Not when people could hear me.”

“Just pretend they can’t. There are no hecklers here. There’s no feedback. As far as you can tell, when you push that button, it does absolutely nothing. Then just...say your lines, like you have been all day.”

“Is it really that easy?”

“It can be.” Halan checks his watch again. “It’s time.”

The boy breathes a few more times. “Okay.” He tries to convince himself that it is indeed okay. “Okay. I’m ready.”

Halan nudges the microphone a millimeter closer. “You have the floor.”

He clears his throat, and begins. “Uhh...attention all passengers. The bridge crew of the transgalactic generational colony ship Extremus would like to thank you for another lovely day. We are eight months, two weeks, and one days—I mean, day—from launch.” He sighs. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, just keep going,” Halan assures him, not sure whether his own words make it into the microphone.

“Today marks a special occasion. We are now five hundred light years from Gatewood, an amazing feat by all accounts. The Captain wishes to extend his gratitude towards all of you for agreeing to join him on this unprecedented adventure. This would be neither possible, nor meaningful, without each and every one of you. His door, as always, is open to all. Here’s to another two!” This motto refers to the number of light years Extremus is able to cover in the span of about a day.

Halan pats him on the back. “Great job.”

“I messed up.”

“That’s all right. We do this every single day. No one’s gonna remember this one time, and you’ll get better. It won’t be as scary next time, I promise.”

“Thank you, sir.”

An alert from Rita comes up on Halan’s wrist device. “I gotta go try to fix a crisis. You can still handle the calls?”

“Yeah, I can field the one-on-ones. That I have no problem with.”

“Wonderful.” The phone begins to ring just as Halan is leaving the room. He goes all the way to the other side of the ship, where his lieutenant is waiting for him.

“It’s not terrible, but it’s not great.”

“What does she need now?” Halan asked.

“She’s demanding we make it bigger.”

“Bigger? The airlock?”

“Yes.”

“That is a service airlock. It’s just meant for robot EVAs. We can’t make it bigger. The robots are being serviced on either side!”

“Well, actually they’re not. That whole section has been essentially shut down for her. I mean, it would be tough, but I spoke with some engineers yesterday, and they said it’s technically possible to break down one of the walls, but only the one.”

Just before launch, Halan made an announcement that said everyone who had second thoughts, and wanted to leave the ship, could do so simply by entering an airlock. Captain McBride then teleported them out of there, and back into the main Gatewood cylinder, where they could do whatever they wanted with their lives without having anything to do with the mission. One woman thought the service airlock counted, but only the ones near the passenger sections were being monitored for this courtesy. She shouldn’t have been anywhere near this area. Halan partially blames himself for not being one hundred percent clear, but mostly blames her for having wandered off to a restricted section. Well, it was never technically restricted, but everyone else knows where they don’t have any business being. The five other people who chose to jump ship at the last minute certainly knew.

“I don’t have the bandwidth to deal with her tonight, so...”

“I’ll take care of it,” Rita says, “again.”

“Get a second opinion on that wall,” Halan says as he’s walking away. “And remind her that she may return to her quarters whenever she wants. Psychotic break or no, staying in the airlock permanently is not going to help her get home. That was a one time offer!”

“I’ll say it just like that, sir!”

“Thanks! I’m gonna go check in with the Old Man!”

Halan makes his way back to the other side, then down towards the stern. He finds the oldest engineer this vessel has to offer in his lab, tinkering away at his little contraptions. “Ahh, you’re here. Good. Could you place your finger right here?”

“I don’t have time for this.”

“Please,” Old Man begs.

“Are you gonna shock me again.”

“Probably not.”

Halan scoffs, but does as he’s been asked. With the one piece of metal firmly in place, Old Man can now line it up with a second piece of metal. He drips nanosolder between them, and announces that Halan can let go. Halan looks around. “Where is it?”

“It’s over on that table there.”

Halan glances over. “It looks finished.”

“Oh yes,” Old Man agrees. “It’s been repaired.”

“So, it works.”

Old Man lifts up his lenses. “It can do what it was designed to do.”

“That’s not what I asked of you,” Halan reminds him. “I want you to make it do something else.”

“It’s not that easy. The device is tethered to a moment in time. Everything that existed in that moment has to go back where it was. You, me, some rando on Teagarden. Everything just reverts to that moment. It’s a reset button, not a teleporter.”

“She said that if someone who hasn’t been born yet pushes that button, they will return too. They won’t revert to their non-existence, and they’ll retain their memories.”

“Yes, and I don’t know how that works. That is what I am trying to figure out now. It will take time. We can’t mess this up. There is no way to test it. If I do something wrong, that could be the end of everything. It could send us back to the stone age, for all I know. I’m not a time travel mechanical engineer. Now, if you would let me build a new device that’s only been inspired by the original design...”

“No. There is a reason I chose you for this project. I don’t want this technology left on my ship. I want two people to go back to Gatewood, and only those two people, and I want them to take the only device that can do it with them.”

“Yes, and I will soon be dead, unlike someone better suited for this research, so the secret dies with me, I get it.”

Halan knocks on the table twice. “I hope you do get it, because I need this done. I cannot take another day with a self-obsessed narcissist who thinks he’s entitled to modify this ship as he pleases, and a deranged Karen, who thinks she’s entitled to have a team of crew members wait on her hand and foot.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about, sir, I just work here.”

Halan’s watch alerts him to the next issue. He starts to back out of the room. “I have to go put out another fire. Finish whatever that thing is, and then get back to my recall device.” He opens the door to exit.

“Certainly, sir. It’s a consciousness uploader.”

Halan turns back around. “What?”

Old Man has returned to work, and acts like he’s barely noticed that Halan is still there. “Oh, this will upload someone’s consciousness into a reserve, where they can witness the arrival on Extremus, even if they die before we get there.”

“Who asked you to do that?” Halan questions.

He takes off his lens gear, sets it on the table, and interlocks his hands next to it. “You will.”

“I will?”

“No one wants to die, and certainly not the people on this ship.”

“We agreed it would be generational. That was decided a long time ago, before they even made me Captain. Do you know something about the future that I don’t?”

“Goodnight, sir.”

Halans wants to argue, but he’s too tired. He still apparently has to speak to someone about a possible radiation leak on the observation deck. He can tell by Old Man’s progress that this mind uploader is nowhere near finished, so there will be plenty of time to argue about it another day. “Get back to the recall device. Now.”

“Very well.” He knows how important he is, at least until the device is complete. He might be worried about what happens to him after that, though, which is why he’s really building the uploader. In all honesty, Halan can’t be sure the man shouldn’t be worried. It is not off the table to tie up all loose ends.

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Glisnia: Forerunners (Part I)

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Hogarth Pudeyonvic and Hilde Unger were back on Tribulation Island, awaiting some good news. It was time to go back home; or at least the last place they were living before their friend’s memorial services. They were pretty sure they would be able to get back to the Milky Way galaxy, but it might be a little more difficult to reach Glisnia specifically. The intergalactic transporter there was destroyed, and though they asked its mysterious engineer to repair it for them, she seemed hesitant to do that. It wasn’t that she thought it would be bad to help them, but she was very, very old, and none of this mattered to her. Anyway, it wasn’t absolutely vital. They really just needed to get close, and then they could travel the rest of the way by ship.

“Okay, I found it,” the technician said.

“What took so long?” Hilde asked. “That’s not a criticism, I’m just curious.”

“I had to change...a parameter.”

“What does that mean?” Hilde pressed.

“You had to adjust the fourth dimension, didn’t you?” Hogarth guessed.

“That’s right,” the technician confirmed. “I can send you to the recent past, to just before the Nexus replica explodes...or the far future, to just after it comes back online.”

“How far in the future?”

“The year 2400,” the tech replied.

“Why is that?” Hilde asked her wife. “Why that year?”

“That must be when The Engineer finally gets around to fixing the replica.”

“Well, we don’t want that,” Hilde decided. “We’ll go to the past instead.”

“We shouldn’t do that,” Hogarth argued. “We don’t wanna run into our Past!Selves, or do anything else that could disrupt the timeline.”

“What are you talking about?” Hilde questioned. “We’re time travelers, we do that all the time.”

“That’s true,” the tech agreed. “You’re time travelers. Twenty-two sixty-two, twenty-four hundred, what’s the difference? You may as well see the future. You’ve already done that once, right? Aren’t you from 2017?”

“Twenty-sixteen,” Hogarth corrected. “He’s right. We don’t even have to go to Glisnia. We could go to Earth, or Gatewood, or back to that place where we met the Engineer.”

“Oh no, I can’t get you there,” the tech said.

“Didn’t you modify the machine, as I instructed?” Hogarth wondered.

“I did not receive authorization to do that from Transportation Administrator Moss. She says we’re not ready to explore other universes. If you want to return, you’ll need to go to Glisnia.”

“I really do want that,” Hogarth said to her wife. She didn’t need her permission, per se, but every decision they made needed to be unanimous. Their relationship didn’t work when one of them resented the other.

Hilde shrugged. “Glisnia 2400; sounds like a TV show spinoff. Let’s do it.”

The tech nodded, and started pressing the appropriate buttons as the two travelers left the control room, and stepped into the transportation chamber. “Thirty second warning,” he announced, as per protocol.

“Thanks for helping us with this,” Hilde said.

Orange light rained down from the ceiling, and overwhelmed their senses, but then a problem arose. Hogarth thought she had gotten over this, but apparently it was still in her. Back in 2016, she built a machine she hoped would transport her to another world. It went wrong, and ended up sending the entire town with her. Though this would turn out to be for the best, it didn’t not come without its problems. For one, Hogarth began to suffer a time affliction. It wasn’t a pattern, like the salmon had, or a power, like the choosing ones. It was very difficult to control, very unpleasant, and dangerous. The last time it happened to her, she thought would be the last ever, but it was starting again. She was about to explode herself, and be sent to some random point in spacetime. “Wait! Abort!” It was too late. The explosion swelled from inside her just as the machine was reaching its final phase. Both of these energies released simultaneously.

Time slowed down. Hogarth couldn’t so much as blink her eyes, but she could still see. Her explosive power, and the Nexus replica lights, were crashing into each other, and igniting. She could feel her atoms doing the same, and being ripped apart from each other. She always knew this was what was happening, but it was the first time she could actually perceive it. She didn’t detect any pain, but it was still horrific. Then the scene changed, and she could see more than she ever thought possible. The entire network of Nexus replicas, and original Nexa was before her. She couldn’t reach any of them, but she could see them. She could watch them. She could witness them exploding all around her. First, the one on Durus, and then Earth, and then the Metanexus, which served as an entry point to the multiverse. Be it the past, or the future, they were all falling apart, and now she knew why. She was the one responsible for it. She had destroyed them all.

Time restarted, the network faded away, and her molecules reconstituted themselves. She fell to her back, and just lied there a moment. She still wasn’t in any pain, but she couldn’t bring herself to sit up, and get a look around. She and her friends had been trying to figure out who was running around, destroying Nexus replicas. Now they knew it was her. It was all her fault. While she was trying to work up the courage to get to her feet, and make sure Hilde was okay, Hilde did it first.

“Are you okay? Can you move?”

“I’m all right,” Hogarth responded. “You?”

“I’m okay,” Hilde said. “What happened?”

“That’s what I would like to know.” The tech was stepping into the chamber, and approaching them. “The controls are dead. I don’t know where or when we are. It’s not Darius, though, I’ll tell ya that much. That room is of a slightly different design.”

Hogarth finally got to her feet, and looked around. The place looked all right, so if the controls were off, it was probably a software issue, and hopefully easy to fix. “In that case, there’s only one way to find out.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Hilde asked again.

“I’m fine. I’ll explain later, but I need to know where the machine sent us first.”

“And why I came with,” the tech added.

“No, I know the answer to that,” Hogarth told him. “I screwed up.” She led them down the hallway, and towards the exit. There were almost no windows in this building. Glass was both reflective, and transparent, so it was counterproductive to the machine’s need to contain temporal energy. The window between the control room and the transportation chamber came from an unknown source. Whenever a new replica was built, the directions instructed the maker to leave that space blank. At some point by the end of the project, the window fabricated itself, out of an unknown material. It should have protected the tech, but Hogarth’s explosion must have interfered with its integrity.

Before she could open the door to the outside, it opened for her. A mech was on the other side, sporting a disconcerting smile. “The Forerunners. You have returned.” This wasn’t as glorious of a title as it sounded like. A forerunner was a type of ship that flew ahead of a new colony’s first colony vessel. If something ended up having gone wrong with the automated factory ships that were sent even earlier, they would be able to fix everything before the colonists arrived. When Hogarth and Hilde appeared in the Gliese 832 star system, they became the first vonearthans to set foot on Glisnia, which was its only terrestrial planet. This made them notable figures in Glisnian history, of course, but there was nothing else special about them, and they didn’t do anything. The only nanofactory ships that ever malfunctioned did so over a planet called Varkas Reflex. So Hogarth and Hilde used their time alone to build their own little home on the surface. It also gave them time to explore a little, and discover the Nexus replica in the first place, which they had tried to keep a secret. Apparently that plan failed.

“We have,” Hilde said. “Report.”

“It is the year 2400,” the mech began. “The Matrioshka brain is complete, and we’re now working on the body.”

“The whatnow?” Hogarth questioned. “I don’t follow.”

The mech now tried to show them a smirk, but it was even more unsettling than the first facial expression. Artificial intelligences were perfectly capable of understanding both why smiles were socially beneficent, and even also how to make one. Unfortunately, except for the ones that were built with synthetic skin—and, more importantly, lips—the actual execution of a smile was generally extremely difficult.  Their mouths just didn’t look quite right. Eye smiles were generally pretty good, though, so people were taught to focus on them instead. He bowed graciously, and stepped aside, so they could walk through the door.

Here there was a window, showing that they were no longer on Glisnia; probably because it didn’t exist anymore. It was taken apart completely, and integrated into a megastructure surrounding the star. A matrioshka brain was always on the schedule for the future of the star system. They only landed on the planet to get started, but the world wasn’t going to last forever. It was far more valuable in its new form. A dyson shell was constructed around Gliese 832. Most of the energy was absorbed by these artificial structures, and used to power their systems. The rest was bled off into space in the form of infrared light, and a not insignificant amount of visible light. They weren’t opaque spheres like old fiction liked to portray them as. That didn’t mean all the energy that escaped was completely useless. All they needed to do was build another shell around the first one. And then another, and another, and another. They built as many as they needed to maximize the energy input; until building more would be more trouble than it was worth.

They were clearly finished with this process, having been working on it for the last a hundred and fifty years. That was incredibly impressive, even for a group of artificials whose sole responsibility was to make it happen. “Was there enough raw material in this system to do this?” Hogarth asked.

“For the brain, yes,” the mech replied. “We sent refinery ships to nearby systems to get material for the rest.”

“Moar!” the tech exclaimed jokingly. They needed to learn his name.

“Indeed,” the mech agreed. Surely he had a name as well. “We do need even more, and we have to go farther out. That’s where you come in.”

“Me?” Hogarth asked. “What can I do?”

The mech gestured towards the door behind them. “You obviously have a way to travel the stars. We need you to replicate that for us, but on a much, much larger scale.”

She didn’t do that. She didn’t build the Nexa, or develop any other form of faster-than-light travel. That was Hokusai’s deal. She was more about parallel dimensions, and artificial gravity. Still, it should be possible. But why didn’t they figure it out themselves? “Why didn’t you just figure it out yourselves, while I was gone? Surely, with all this time...”

“We’ve been locked out of this structure since we discovered it. A human woman named Azure Vose told us to—and I quote—am-scray.”

“That sounds like her,” Hilde said.

“We just have one condition,” the mech said in a worried voice. “The other mechs won’t let you be involved unless you become one of us.”

“I have to upgrade?” Hogarth asked, though she knew that was what he meant.

“Humans aren’t allowed here. It’s been declared. Upgrading isn’t enough, though. You have to upload.”

This was no huge surprise. Though humans weren’t illegal in the beginning, it was probably always going to end up like this. There were hundreds of billions of stars in this galaxy alone. No one was going to get pissy about one of them being set aside for a particular group of vonearthans. Hell, there could be hundreds, thousands, millions, even billions of them in the future. There were plenty of resources for everyone. That wasn’t really the problem, though. Hogarth wasn’t sure she wanted to become completely inorganic. She grew up in a time before that was possible, and had been so busy as a traveler, that she had never given it any real thought. He was right, however, that she didn’t belong here in her current form. This planet was not meant for her, as it was designed for artificial entities. Perhaps it was time—not to change this fact—but to change herself. The only question was whether Hilde could ever feel the same way. Would she be willing to upgrade as well?

“I’m in,” Hilde said, shockingly. “I wanna see what this matrioshka body ends up looking like, and if nothing else, I need to survive long enough for you to finish it. Let’s do it.”

That was easy.

< > Entire Story

Microstory 1444: Aljabara

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Of course, there was only one town when Springfield fell through the Deathfall portal, and landed on Durus. Over time, people started spreading out, first to Splitsville, and then Parade, and all the way to the unfinished and unnamed sixteenth town. This was what made the Mage Protectorate prosper. People were able to diversify, and go visit each other across the lands, and learn about each other. A real civilization formed out of the chaos and struggle. After the war with the monsters, this dynamic became more difficult to hold onto. The towns were too far apart. Without any powers, and a severe lack of electricity, all repairs had to be completed by hand. Some towns didn’t even have the right technician for a given job, and it would sometimes take weeks before the right person had the time to make the trip. The time monsters were gone, but the world was not without its perils. One thing they did was keep the thicket from becoming overgrown, simply by trampling over it all the time. They also seemed to have another effect that no one could really explain. Where the seed portal once only ever brought useful or innocuous plants, it now brought them poisonous and thorny plants. It could have been completely unrelated to the monsters, but it didn’t matter, because they were here now, and they made life on this planet that much harder. By 2094, people were starting to realize how impractical it was to maintain the status quo. What would they be able to do about it, though? What they needed was someone with time powers.

While the source mages had a law against mages conceiving children, this was no longer enforceable, so people were doing whatever they wanted. They didn’t think it mattered anyway, because Jayde Kovac had stripped them of their powers. What they didn’t realize was that she never removed any abilities, but the energy it took to manifest them. This energy was always restored for new people (i.e. babies). Toddlers were now running around with powers of their own—albeit weaker than their predecessors—having been born with the energy needed to exhibit them. This gave some people hope for a better future, but it would be awhile before they found the right mage. They couldn’t wait that long, for they needed a solution now, before the human race on this world died out. One child looked to be the most promising. She could extract people from the timeline, and place them anywhere else. She could not change the past, so she would always have to put them back eventually—and sooner, rather than later, because of how taxing this was on her—but they figured this would help them realize their goals. It was difficult explaining to her what they needed, since she was so young, but they were eventually able to direct her to the right man, in the right moment. She plucked Baran Avan out of the timeline, and pulled him up to the future, so he could help them conserve resources. He used his mass teleportation abilities to transport every single still-standing building in every single still-standing town, all into one place. He stacked some on top of each other, so they almost looked like high rises, except not really at all. He might have spent more time curating a real city design, but the timeline extractor wasn’t strong enough for that. Once it was finished, the towns were mashed into one chaotic and moderately unstable city, which they later decided to call Aljabara. The end of the Interstitial Chaos, and the beginning of something much, much worse was near.

Microstory 1134: Ellie Underhill

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Eleanor Underhill was raised on a farm near Manhattan, Kansas, and led a very content and carefree young life. She did well enough in school, went to the town’s college, Kansas State University, and earned a bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Communications and Journalism. She was always known to be so charming and well-spoken. She could articulate her point effortlessly, and make anyone feel safe and comfortable with nothing more than her words. She was such a great orator, that her school asked her to come back not one year after her own graduation to speak at the commencement for the graduating class. There were some technical difficulties which the technicians in charge of the event were unable to correct. Fortunately, Ellie’s time power presented itself at the perfect time. She attempted to project her voice as much as possible, to keep the ceremony moving, but soon discovered she did not have to try very hard. With no working speaker system of any kind people in the back could still hear her as well as they would if she were standing right next to them. She could tell that something strange was happening, but she didn’t miss a beat. She continued with her speech, through its completion, and then she went home to figure out what had happened on her own. She realized that she wasn’t somehow booming her voice, because that would make it painfully loud for people who were too close. She was actually teleporting her sound waves to hundreds of different locations at once. She could quite literally throw her voice. Over time, she started learning how to control this ability more precisely, increase her range, and even pull sound towards her, so that she could have a conversation with someone on the other side of the globe. And her strength didn’t stop there.

With even more practice, and greater concentration, she developed the ability to eavesdrop on any conversation in the world. She just couldn’t help herself. She never thought to be a spy, or a blackmailer, but she did often fantasize about being in the room where it happens. It was through these random invasions of privacy that she found out she was not alone. She was the only one apparently who could teleport sound, and sound alone, but there were others who had their own powers. She pushed herself into this underworld, and met these other people in person. She was soon abandoning her old life for the most part, and jet-setting all over time and space. She kept in contact with her family as she explored, but she shed her worldly possessions, and took on a nomadic lifestyle. And her powers grew still. She eventually came to be able to communicate with people in different points in the timestream. This was difficult, and fraught with paradoxical danger, so she didn’t do it often, but it was sometimes necessary when she found herself stuck in a time period without a nearby traveler to ferry her somewhen else. Ellie’s reputation spread as someone with a unique skill, so her services were occasionally commissioned to help cultivate communication amongst others. Her powers grew yet again, when she realized she could bestow this gift to other people temporarily, so that they could be the one to speak to the crowd, or a remote friend. As far as powers went, it wasn’t the most useful on a regular basis, so she spent most of her time not using it at all, but just enjoying her life, and seeing everything the universe had to offer. Her powers then grew once more, and she was able to use them to help people in the best way possible...through music.

Microstory 972: Medicine

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I’ve talked a lot about the future of medical science, but I haven’t much gotten into how it pertains to me specifically. In my younger days, science was everything. I figured I might help cure cancer, and travel to other planets, and be one of the first to know about every major scientific breakthrough. Over time, these interests waned, making room for new ones. As time has continued even further, however, some of this has returned to my mind. I never thought I would become a doctor, or a nurse, or a pre-hospital technician, but I realize now I shouldn’t have rule out the possibilities. During the years I spent looking for a permanent position, I seriously considered a number of jobs in the medical field. From pharmacy technician, to surge technician, to emergency medical technician (all the techs, apparently) I looked into a lot. The thing that always kept me from going for these roles was the amount of time and effort they take. It’s not just that I didn’t want to spend the time getting educated, but I was always worried I would end up not liking it, and then it would have been a major waste of time, and money. I’m happy where I am, and never watch an ambulance racing down the street with a sad look on my face, wondering about what could have been. I do know that, if alternate realities existed, a number of these include me taking the chance. I did end up taking a free emergency medical responder class a couple years back, because it was available, and risk-free. I even used this as an inspiration for two completely unrelated characters in my stories, which I only now discovered when I ran a search on my own website. I suppose medical science is important to me because it’s one of the few professions I believe totally necessary to the world. We don’t truly need vehicle manufacturers, or telephone sanitizers. We would be able to survive without them, but we can’t survive if we have no way of treating traumas and illnesses. That’s just basic, and that’s what makes it so beautiful. It took a long time for our species to invent the telephone when you think about how quickly we started thinking about how to keep going after getting hurt. It’s not the oldest profession, but it’s older than what everyone thinks is the oldest. Hunting, by the way. Hunting is the actual oldest profession. The first thing humans did was figure out how to kill other things.