Microstory 2661: Destratified

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Resi Brooks has feet of stone, and his legs are on fire. His torso sloshes around, spilling drops of water on the steaming ground. His headwinds pull upwards, trying to force him into the sky. He takes another step. His left leg begins to harden, but it doesn’t last long. The fire beats against his knees, and takes back over. That’s his mother, trying to bring him over to her side of the island. That would be okay. Any of the Houses, he would be proud to be in. He just doesn’t want to end up in Kinkon. His family would be so disappointed. He can feel the stars in his eyes. They’re a smaller part of him than they are for some. Many have willingly crossed the ocean, and joined the colonists and their descendants. And they have returned, bringing their new bloodline with them. He does not come from a family of bigots. He welcomes his brothers and sisters, and the strangers. He just does not want to become one of them. Kinkon isn’t a real House. It’s just what they call it when you don’t fit in anywhere else; when you embrace the colonial lifestyle. Again, there’s nothing wrong with it. He’s been known to partake in their technology, and enjoyed their media. They make good stuff. He would miss his loved ones too much, though. He would have to leave to learn their ways, and while his family members have completed their Mori journeys, and would be free to visit him, they wouldn’t. They like it here too much. God is the one who brought their ancestors here in the first place, and they want to stay close to Him. Of course, everyone knows that it was The Mirror, the Flyer, and the Bird who actually rescued them from the Ash Death, but they believe that he was working through them. They still thank him for this world.

Resi has been so much in his head this whole time, he didn’t even notice that the wind has begun to take over his body. It’s down to his shoulders now. It’s not strong enough to lift him from the ground, but it will happen soon if he’s not careful. But does he want to be careful? House Enaiyo would be a perfectly acceptable selection. He doesn’t have any family there, but his parents would be just as proud of him, and they’re not too terribly far away. It feels like this Kidjum is taking a long time. When he would watch the ceremony as a child, the sleepers would reawaken much faster than this. Perhaps that has all been an illusion. After all, when he’s just having a regular dream, time passes differently inside than on the outside. Still, he doesn’t want to be the last to wake up with his declaration. The others won’t tease him for it, but he doesn’t want the spotlight to be on him, and he doesn’t want to waste anyone’s time. Kidjum ceremonies are boring for anyone who isn’t in it, or doesn’t personally know someone who is. He remembers that from childhood. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. The way they described what it was like to be in the dream sounded fascinating, but not something worth watching from the outside more than once. It’s only interesting now.

He wakes up. No warning, no final decision. He’s just awake, and it wasn’t even finished yet. The audience is clapping. Oh, no. He really is the last one. Oh, how embarrassing. He rolls over to see the cot next to him. The dreamer in it has not awoken yet. He sits up and looks around. No one else is awake. He’s not last? Why the hell are they clapping then? They’re gonna fall silent once he tells them that he never came to a decision. Does he have to pee? Why in the world did he wake up before his time! What is he supposed to choose? He never got his answer! The Kokore walks over, and reaches out to help him up. She has a huge smile upon her face. She guides him towards the audience, who are still clapping and cheering. They know more than Resi does. She holds his hand up triumphantly.

They cheer louder. Resi notices that the kids are clapping too, but they look just as confused as he is. Whatever this is, it must be something that you don’t learn until after your own Kidjum, which explains why he doesn’t understand why he’s being singled out when the other dreamers haven’t even opened their eyes yet.

“Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in over 200 years,” the Kokore begins, “I give you a founding member of House Kutelin!”

House Kutelin? That’s not a thing. It just means five.

“Resi Brooks, First Tongue of Aether, you honor us with your presence.”

Aether? What the fuck is that?

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 6, 2550

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Things were a little awkward at first. Leona was a lot less powerful than Senona originally believed. They didn’t think to ask Echo or Clavia about it at some point, or the truth might have been clarified earlier. Senona lived in another universe, and their access to information about other universes had its limitations. They were aware that one Leona Matic was a time traveler in Salmonverse, but not that there were multiple people who went by the same name. They were thinking of an alternate version of her, who was far more powerful, and therefore better equipped to help with the effort at Origin.

This other Leona was from a different timeline, and only survived the transition because she was the one who went back to the past to save Mateo from torture, thereby creating the new timeline. She had a number of different time powers, which she managed to procure using organ transplants. The exact details of her exploits remained a mystery to this day. Senona didn’t realize the discrepancy. It wasn’t like they hadn’t heard of alternate selves before. It was simply an unknown unknown to them. The issue was that Alt!Leona never promised to aid in the efforts at Origin. To their knowledge, she had never even been there. Once discovering the difference between the two, Senona’s initial reaction was to let this Leona return to her life with the team, but she didn’t want to do that. After she asked for her own wish way back when, Senona mentioned that they would have to call someone for aid. When she pressed for clarification, they explained that that was how it worked. They couldn’t do much on their own, and could not leave Origin themselves, so they always recruited others. Leona volunteered to be one of these agents should the need ever arise. It now had.

For two years, Leona was the boots on the ground of the operation. Even though she couldn’t do as much as the other Leona, she wasn’t powerless either. Besides her normal teleportation, Senona provided her with temporary abilities. These included the means to travel all over the bulkverse on her own, do so invisibly, and with a certain knack for persuasion. She also had a number of ancillary abilities, like stamina and strength, which let her do the job without getting sleepy or fatigued. She did still sleep, and had time off. In fact, she had full permission to travel to any universe she wanted, and do whatever she wanted. But like professional chess, the clock only ran while she was working, and she didn’t want to delay her return to the team.

Meanwhile—if such a concept had any relevance outside the normal passage of time—Olimpia and Ramses were getting to know their son, Echo. They didn’t have to do any work for those two years, though they joined Leona on precisely two occasions, when the wish went beyond her scope alone. Today was the last mission. After this was done, the team members would go back to Salmonverse to be with their friends. Clavia would return here, and rejoin her brother. They weren’t slaves or anything, but they were not allowed to live in Salmonverse. That was something that I decided long ago, and while I gave them a pass on that for recent stories, it was never going to be a permanent thing. They are too powerful. Any problem which comes up here can be solved nearly instantaneously if they’re involved. They got to go.

“We understand,” Echo said, psychically, but also out loud. “But I demand periodic visits.”

That can be arranged. We’ll talk later.

“Oh, are you taking requests?” Sanaa Karimi interjected from wherever she was in the timestream. “I would like a real life pink pony. Sparkly fur. It has to cuss a lot.”

Sure, I’ll get right on that. Hold your breath and wait.

“I’m gonna tear out your eyeballs, and jam your thumbs into them so you can’t type anymore,” Meredarchos added.

You know where I live, asshole.

With the brief and unhealthy transuniversal psychic conversation over, Echo refocused on this last mission. He and his parents wanted to help make it a good one.

Leona was watching him. “Everything okay?”

“It’s fine,” he replied. “What do we got?”

“This is a funny one,” she answered. She had barely finished her last job, and was still wearing her adventure clothes. Since she couldn’t be seen, this wasn’t necessary, but it helped her get in character. “Not funny, ha-ha; more funny, oh God. A young man is playing a game called Scourge of the Valley, and his older sister has asked that we make sure he wins. The way it works, you and your competitors are summiting a mountain. In this world, death is more of a nuisance, and not final in most cases. If you reach the summit first, it’s yours, but only temporarily, unless you made it there without killing anyone. If you killed anyone on the way to get an edge, they will come back as ghosts, and fight you for the summit. If you lose that second round, you will die for good. Our man is not a skilled climber, but he won’t try to kill anyone. He wants to prove that it’s possible to win without violence. She doesn’t think he can do it.”

“This sounds too easy,” Ramses decided. “All we have to do is kill everyone so this man doesn’t have to. He’ll win by default. As long as they really will come back to life, and it’s fine...”

“Senona doesn’t think it works like that,” Leona explained. “If we serve as the man’s agents, invisible or no, he will be technically responsible for those deaths. They will become his enemy ghosts. We have to keep them from winning without killing them. We have to give him what he wants: a clean and bloodless win.”

“That’s impossible,” Olimpia thought. “If this guy’s sister doesn’t think he’s a fast enough climber, he’s probably not. The competition is probably fierce, and they will be killing each other for that top spot. As soon as even one of them makes it, he’ll have no chance. It will be over. We can protect him from attacks, but we can’t help him climb.”

“Wait, what are the physical laws of this universe?” Echo questioned. “Do they have temporal manipulation? Can we just teleport him there without raising eyebrows?”

“They don’t have anything like that. However, according to the sister, they will probably accept something weird. If he’s at the summit, and didn’t kill anyone, he’ll win. The culture is really weird like that. But that’s just the bloodthirsty audience. Apparently, a lot is riding on this. It could potentially change the world, because no one has ever done it nonviolently. But that won’t work if we use tricks. It has to look like he did it the way he claims he will. That’s what the sister is really asking for, not only a simple win.”

They went quiet, and started thinking through the dilemma individually. Every once in a while, one of them would think they had an idea, or even articulate it, but it wouldn’t work. Too many ideas relied on people noticing that it didn’t seem genuine. Finally, however, Olimpia thought that she had it. “Help me understand how this multiverse thing works. Every dream anyone has ever had, and every story that has ever been told, exists somewhere as a real, tangible, universe?”

“Yeah, essentially,” Echo agreed. “Some are more stable than others, though. Dreams don’t last very long. If their laws of physics are weird, they won’t survive past the duration of that dream. Even if they’re mundane, they’ll probably collapse anyway, because of how fleeting they’re being observed and utilized. Branes based on stories are generally more stable, but the less popular ones still don’t last long.”

“I think the one I’m thinking of is pretty popular, so likely stable, but it still might look weird,” Olimpia began. “If all of the other competitors suddenly act confused, and even fall asleep, it will look suspicious, won’t it? It’s not exactly violence, but they’ll assume he poisoned them, and the revolution part of his win might not succeed.”

“Ah, you’re thinking of the Honan Enchantment,” Ramses realized. “You’re probably right about the optics, but it’s still not a bad idea. We just can’t do it to all of the competitors. Fortunately, that would not be the only universe we have access to, and we have all the time in the worlds, right? We need to find out how many competitors there are. A ranking would be great for us, so we’ll know how to prioritize. Then we can come up with a list of ways of slowing people down. One or two of them fall under the Enchantment, another one goes temporarily white blind—we’ll make sure they don’t slip off the edge—and a third—I dunno—gets the runs, or something.”

“That’s pretty gross, father.”

“I’m just trying to get this done without hurting anyone,” Ramses defended. “Diarrhea is only temporary, and everyone gets it. We’ll pick the guy who ate a big breakfast.”

Leona thought about it for a moment. “This is going to take more time than I hoped, but as long as we get back home in 2550, I’m willing to at least produce these two lists, and see if we can come up with enough ideas to avoid violence. The rankings are a good idea. If the brother isn’t the absolute slowest contender, we could leave some of them alone, and let them lose naturally.”

And so, the agents got to work. They really rushed through it, zipping in and out of various branes, taking whatever they needed, even if it was only an ultra-strong laxative. Some of the ingredients were harder than others. For instance, for some reason, they were fully visible to the locals where they were trying to retrieve Honan Enchantment. It took a little time to convince them to give some of it up, but since they only needed a very tiny bit, it was okay, because it wasn’t enough to condemn a large population.

All told, they needed 24 ways to interfere with the brother’s competitors in Flipverse. Six of them were probably not going to win either way, so they were left alone. The competition was still pretty heated. The woman unfortunate enough to be saddled with diarrhea just powered through it, and didn’t let it stop her. It did slow her down, though, which was enough to get her killed by the guy whose ropes they lathered with glue. He accused her of sabotaging him, and freehanded his way up to her, cutting her rope in retaliation, and plummeting to his own death with her.

They severely underestimated one of the untouched competitors, but the interesting part was that he too felt no need to kill anyone. Though, to be fair, that was probably thanks to the agents, and not his convictions. They reached the top at about the same time, and the rule in that case was that they would have to fight to the death. In a twist, despite barely knowing each other, they pulled a Hunger Games, and tried to jump off the cliff at the same time. Normally, the judges wouldn’t care. Suicide wasn’t a big deal for them. But there were no other contenders at that point. Everyone else had failed or been killed. A ghost couldn’t win unless they had someone to best at the summit. They simply could not allow there to be no winner at all, so they were spared, and declared joint winners. A little derivative, but it was ultimately better than one of them winning alone. The world they were living in wasn’t ruthless, and the judges weren’t evil. But society had kind of turned to shit. Even though it was technically okay to die, it was unhealthy to be so casual about murder. Not even Castlebourne was so careless. They were more focused on pushing life to its limits, rather than making death itself feel the goalposts.

“It sounds like it went well,” Senona said once they were back on the platform on the waterworld where they lived.

“I would say so,” Leona agreed. “Our task was to help him win this one game, not the whole revolution. That’s up to the natives now, so I think we objectively succeeded, even if it was a tie.”

“Makes sense,” Senona said. They turned to Olimpia, Ramses, and Echo. “Have you three said your goodbyes? I was unable to procure a daypass for you, Echo. You will be staying right here, while they switch places with Clavia.”

“Yeah, we had a meal together in Moderaverse,” Echo responded. “We are prepared to part ways...for now.”

Now back to Leona. “Did you find some moments of joy during this job, or were you always just itching to leave?”

“No, it was a rewarding experience,” she answered honestly. It wasn’t that way every time, though. Some people asked for not-so-great things, predominantly for military purposes. Senona didn’t discriminate, and Leona tried not to judge. The simple rule was, if they figured out how to get to Origin, and their wish was feasible, it was granted to them.

They nodded tightly. “Perfect. Your commitment is hereby complete. I thank you for your service.” Senona whisked them away.

They found themselves in an unfamiliar place. They had no idea where the hell they were. A gargantuan tree trunk towered over them, and disappeared into the clouds. The rest of their team reappeared before them after a few seconds. “Oh, hey,” Mateo said. “Welcome back...to Ramosus. This here is the Tree of Axis.”

“What?!” Ramses exclaimed.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 5, 2549

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On a scale from robot butter-passer to ecumenopolis, the infrastructure that Ramses’ forge core was able to construct during their interim year sat at about a 5.6. This logarithmic scale was designed by a team of futurologists back in the very late 21st century; not just something that he made up himself. The core’s interface was very intuitive for even the dumbest of dum-dums. It was basically a store, where they added things that they wanted to a shopping cart, and the cost—the time it would take to complete the whole project—automatically calculated in the corner. At first, all they wanted was to build a Nexus, which took a healthy chunk of time alone due to its sheer complexity, outmatching all other buildings on their plans combined in that category. Without it, the starter nanites could have resulted in a continent-wide civilization-ready network of interconnected megacities. But what they ended up with was more than enough. There were only nine of them, including the three on the away mission.

There were several arcological megastructure tripods now. If any Earthan were to move here, they would feel right at home. They weren’t actually expecting that to happen, though. They only built all this because they were trying to maximize the time available by hitting that 365-day mark. They figured it was better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. They had no idea what they wanted to use any of this for yet, but that was where the Nexus came in. People from anywhere in the galaxy, or farther, would be able to travel here near-instantaneously. It only had the capacity of a few dozen people, so it wasn’t suitable for some kind of mass-exodus, but it wasn’t useless either. If Hrockas had had access to this level of technology back when he was building Castlebourne, it could have been completed in under a decade. Now there was the simple question of what to name all this.

“I’ve been trying since we got here,” Romana revealed.

“What have you come up with?” Mateo asked her.

“Nothing good. The best ones are Lorramm, Ramlorm, and Marmorl.”

“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...” Mateo said.

“They’re all seven of our initials.”

“Oh.”

“Not enough vowels.”

“Right.”

“We could add E and C for Echo and Clavia,” Angel suggested.

“Leave me out of this,” Clavia insisted, weirdly offended.

“I thought this planet was named Echo,” Marie pointed out.

“Yeah, on the other side,” Romana agreed. “Firstly, I started thinking about this before the weird interversal portal we went through. And secondly, I was brought up to believe that there is no such thing as an alternate self. We’re each unique, even when we come across people who look just like us, and share our memories. I think that goes for planets too. That’s Echo. This is somewhere else.”

“That’s completely true,” Clavia agreed. “When Olimpia screamed the Sixth Key pocket universe into existence, she based it on the original Milky Way, but it’s not an exact copy. It was just mostly close. You should name it something else. My brother would say the same thing if he were here right now.”

Mateo nodded in agreement. “Well, let’s keep thinking while we explore. We also need names for the various domes and cities, I guess. And there’s still the issue of what the purpose of this planet is.”

“I think it’s whatever it needs to be,” Marie began. “If there are more refugees, we can bring them in. If people want to come here for vacation, we will have recreational facilities available too. If someone is in need of a prison, we’ll build a remote site somewhere here, and house them safely. Even if they escape, where are they gonna go? It’s an all-purpose planet. It will serve as the central hub for the Milky Way galaxy one day, and maybe sooner than you think.”

“Well, if that’s the case, we need someone to host,” Angela said. “We need someone who is here every day of the timestream.”

They all looked over at Clavia.

“Oh, no. That’s not my job,” she contended. “I don’t even live in this universe. I’m just here to keep an eye on you people until your friends and lovers come back.”

“Most of our permanent friends are on Castlebourne,” Mateo pointed out, not expecting her to change her mind. “We would have to poach them.”

“Wait, wasn’t this supposed to be a sanctuary,” Romana argued. “I thought it was going to be just for us; a place that no one else could get to. They wouldn’t even know about it. Whatever happened to that plan? We got so wrapped up in what we could do with the forge core that I think we lost the plot.”

“It was always going to end up like this,” Marie countered. “We don’t stay out of things, even when we try. If we ever do need a real sanctuary just for our team, we’ll use some other distant world that Rambo’s Operation Starframe colonizes for us. It doesn’t even have to be big. It could be a hollowed out asteroid, like Linwood’s.”

“That’s gonna take over a hundred years from these staging grounds,” Romana volleyed. “I’m not saying we can’t build out, but my Future!Dad was warning us about something. Even if this planet had nothing to do with anything in his timeline, there might be an inevitable threat that us coming here only worsens, or at least doesn’t alleviate. We keep making these choices which have lasting consequences for the universe. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for your meddling. I would not exist if my Past!Dad hadn’t randomly ended up on Durus at the exact right moment, but what he and Leona did that day resulted in more than just me. It impacted the future of an entire civilization.” She focused her gaze upon her father. “Present!Dad, you helped make Dardius what it is today. I still believe we hastened the carnage on Proxima Doma. Who knows what we’ve done to Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida just by helping a woman carry her potatoes? Again, I’m not saying we bury ourselves in a hole, but let’s try to think things through. Romana Nieman, youngest one here, unlikely voice of reason.”

Romana was right to be cautious. Despite only living one day out of the year, their actions have rippled out in ways that few could have predicted. They would need someone like Bhulan Cargill to see all the branches. That metaphor gave Angela an idea so she went off alone to unpack it. The rest had their own things going on. Marie left the city entirely, reacclimated to the planet’s natural atmosphere, and took a walk in the wilderness. Clavia accompanied her for protection since they didn’t know what else could be out there, and no one should be alone outside of the controlled environment of a dome. Mateo tried to activate the Nexus for a test. Everything seemed to be in working order, but they had not been given their own term sequence. The gods only assigned it once everything was engineered to absolute perfection, but he didn’t know what was wrong, and obviously could not have fixed it either way. Romana just sat down on the dirt, apparently to meditate. This far out, no grass had been planted yet.

A few hours later, Angela called everyone back, claiming to have figured it out. They didn’t know what exactly she had been working on, but they came anyway. After a moment of silence, she began with a single word. “Ramosus.” She uttered it in an accent a couple of times, like she was getting the feel of it, before returning to her normal voice.

“Is that a band, errr...?” Romana hadn’t gotten the chance to make that joke yet.

“It sounds like a corruption of Ramses,” Marie suggested.

“It is,” Angela confirmed. “But it’s not just that. Romana certainly helped point me in that direction, but your comment about branching timelines is what really led me there. It’s Latin for branched, which I think works because the initial hope for this outpost was to serve as the launch point for Starframe. Plus, it has natural life on it. I love those willow-like trees we saw that we think recycle their water by sending it up the trunk, running it across the stems, which hang down, and dripping it back into the soil.”

“Yeah, I like it,” Mateo decided. “It’s good that he’s not here, or he would argue against it. We need to find ways of solidifying the name so it’s established before he has the chance to come back here and put a stop to it. Maybe we build a welcome sign?”

“We can start to spread the word,” Romana offered. “If we send it out into the universe, what’s done will be done, whether he likes it or not. People in the past will probably even hear about it. Were you able to turn on the Nexus?”

“On?” Mateo questioned. “Absolutely. Power is not the problem. It just won’t go anywhere. It’s a cell phone without service. I think we need him and Leona back for that. I probably shouldn’t have even tried. It was too risky for an idiot like me.” When they were all silent, he added, “wow. Not even gonna argue that I’m not an idiot. Thanks.”

They all laughed.

“All right,” he went on. “Clavia, do you have anything to contribute?”

“Like I said,” she began, shaking her head, “I’m just here to protect you. I’m not a part of the team.”

“Well...” Mateo thought about it. “Olimpia is my wife, and Echo is her son, and you’re Echo’s sister, so whether you like it or not, we’re family. That doesn’t mean you have to help, or even stick around. Romana’s sisters don’t, but we still love them.”

“I have plenty of family,” Clavia reasoned. “Thanks, though.” She didn’t sound pretentious or arrogant, more just trying to keep her distance. That was fine.

“We don’t need the Nexus,” Marie said after the group relocated from the middle of nowhere to a picnic table. The biggest bottleneck in construction was managing heat dissipation. The laws of thermodynamics always slowed rapid deployment down when not utilizing temporal manipulation technology. Life, on the other hand, was a different story. It would take years to make this dome look less artificial or dead, so for now, this park was only a placeholder. It was just this one table and some fast-growing resilient shrubbery. “We have our tandem slingdrives. We should go to Castlebourne. We’ll let Hrockas know what we’ve built, and give him an idea of where we are. If some refugees from the Exin Empire would like to move, now they have a new option.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for the others?” Angela figured.

“They’re making decisions that affect the multiverse,” her sister reasoned. “They can stand to come back to a surprise or two.”

“They’re your wives best friend,” Romana said to Mateo. “I say it’s your choice.”

“Let’s wait until tomorrow,” he decided. “If they’re not back, we’ll pull the trigger. For today, let’s focus on the capital. I think I have an idea of what we should do with the dome. Let’s lean into the branching theme.”

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Extremus: Year 123

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Waldemar teleports right into the room. He aimed perfectly so he’s standing right before the stasis pod. He looks down at the man inside. It’s unsettling to see this, even though he knows it’s not really him. It’s really about what the future holds, or rather what it might hold. When this mission was being planned over 120 years ago, their ancestors decided to ban most transhumanistic upgrades. That was stupid. It was a total mistake. He can’t go back and change that now, because he would not have been born in such a radically different timeline. He doesn’t really even care whether anyone else lives forever anyway. He only cares about himself, and maybe Audrey and Silveon. And this woman too, because she’s so loyal to him, and she practically begged him to be loyal right back. He will be, as long as she does what she’s told, but if she ever steps out of line, she’ll become one of his enemies. She knows this, and probably won’t do it.

“Oh, sorry,” Sevara says from her bedroom in her bad sexy voice. She’s wearing a silky pink robe, and nothing else. It’s hanging open, and barely showing him the goods, which she knows he likes. She’s such a thirsty bitch. “I was waiting for the doorbell.”

“Is it time?”

“It can be. If we revive him right now, he’ll die in a matter of hours. If we wait another couple of years, he’ll only last minutes. So it’s up to you.”

“Why did you call me then?”

She puts on her pouty face as she’s very slowly walking towards him, lifting her legs high. “I wanted to see you. It’s been so long. You’re always with that little whore.”

“Sable is not a whore,” he spits angrily.

“Sable?” Sevara questions with a tight frown. “Who the hell is Sable? I was talking about your wife. Audrey? Are you stepping out on me?”

“I chose you to torture Pronastus for me,” Waldemar argues. “I reached across time for you. This has never been about sex. You mean nothing to me. Once his torment is over, and he’s dead, I’ll be done with you.”

He forgets sometimes that normal people don’t like to hear the truth. She moves briskly the rest of the way, and backhands him against the chin. She is incredibly strong, so he drops to the floor. By the time he stands back up, she’s hovering her finger over a button. “When you contacted me from the future, I felt honored, but I was alone with this thing for years after I stole it from AI!Elder in the Frontrunner, and I have my own allies. Say one more unkind word to me, and I’ll clutch the son of a bitch. He will be just as young as you are today, and can go right back to impersonating you. We’ll put you in this thing instead so you can see what it feels like. Is that what you want? Do you want to throw everything we had away?”

Waldemar stands and wipes the blood from his lips. “Do you know the problem with walking around with only a sexy robe on?”

“That it’s wasted on a psychopath like you?”

“No, it leaves you unprotected.” He reaches for his sidearm, but succeeds only in palming his own hip. He looks down out of instinct, but he already knows it’s because his gun is no longer there.

Sevara swings her arm out from behind her back, and points his weapon at him.

“It doesn’t matter,” he reminds her. “They’re DNA-locked. Only I can fire that.”

She glances down at Waldemar’s clone in the pod, where Pronastus has been going insane for the last 114 years. “I know, dumbass. I have your DNA.” She shoots him in the gut and chest four times.

Waldemar, meanwhile, tips over again, but doesn’t fall to the floor. He’s on a bed, though it is not his own. It’s Silveon’s. He’s the only person he can trust, except for Audrey, but he certainly doesn’t want to bloody up their shared sheets. He’s not very comfortable in this position, and is about to slide off the edge. He pulls his injured body backwards to get more horizontal, then starts to remove his uniform. “Argh! Stupid bitch almost hit my heart! Argh!”

Silveon appears. He’s the only one who Waldemar exempted from the no teleportation rule, as long as he only ever does it where no one is looking. “What are you doing here?”

“I got shot, can’t you see?” He winces in pain. Is this what people feel like when they get overwhelmed by their emotions? Silvy tried to explain it to him once, and likened it to physical pain, but until now, Waldemar had never experienced quite this much pain.

“I can see that. I mean, why aren’t you in the infirmary? I’m not a doctor.”

“No one can know I got shot,” Waldemar argued. “I need you to get me into your parent’s Admiral’s Stateroom. I know you turned it into some kind of shrine, but if you left any surgical instrumentation in there, I need the codes.”

“It’s not a shrine, and there is no medical equipment in there. They took all that back after my parents died, so others could use it. Others...like you. You have privilege. The Chief Medical Officer has to keep your status confidential.”

“Unless my condition threatens the security and continuity of the mission,” he argues. “I need total privacy!” He doesn’t know why he’s yelling. If the locked stateroom doesn’t have what he needs, then it doesn’t have it, and that’s not Silveon’s fault. Waldemar knows that. He’s just in so much pain right now, and can’t think straight. At least one of the bullets is still in there. He can feel it, picking at his insides.

Silveon sighs. “Okay, I’m gonna teleport you somewhere, but it’s probably gonna hurt more than it already does.”

“Just do it!” he commands.

Silveon slides his arms under Waldemar’s back and knees, triggering more screaming. He doesn’t pick him all the way up, he just needs to make enough contact to execute a safe teleportation. They jump to a small room. The lights are only now starting to turn on. They’re entirely alone. Waldemar is lying in a medical pod now. He’s never seen anything like this before in real life, though he recalls studying them in Earthan Developmental History class. His friend is tapping on the interface, starting to run the procedures. “I hope you’re not married to that uniform, because it’s gotta come off.”

Lasers appear from all angles, and begin to burn through Waldemar’s clothes. Claws come out of the walls and pull pieces of the fabric away, stuffing them into a little slot at his feet. He’s fully naked now, and can really see the damage. It’s a huge mess, there’s blood everywhere. It all goes away quickly, though, when more little tools come out and start cleaning him off. What’s left are four little holes which, given the size of a human body, make Waldemar almost feel like it’s not that big of a deal.

Silveon tilts his head at the screen. “It’s detecting that the bullets are ferromagnetic. Most aren’t, but yours are. Did you shoot yourself?”

“Of course not!” He sighs before adding, “but it was my gun.”

“Who shot you?”

“Would you just get them out? Why does it matter?”

“The tool matters,” Silveon explains. A very thin cable with a light on the tip emerges from the wall now, and bobs around like a snake threatening to strike. It dives into one of Waldemar’s wounds, returning rather quickly with one of the bullets stuck to the end. It didn’t even hurt coming out. It’s very precise. It dives in two more times to extract the other two bullets. The fourth must have gone through-and-through. “Ultra-advanced, or advanced?”

“Huh?”

“Do you want the treatment process to be ultra-advanced, or just advanced?”

“What’s the difference?” Waldemar questions.

“They’re both illegal, Silveon begins. “But one involves more probes going in to make repairs, and the other is simply an injection of nanites, which make those same repairs internally, and if necessary, harvest your waste tissue to replicate themselves.”

“How did you find this pod? How do you know about it?”

“Do you want treatment, or not, and if so, what kind?”

Silveon has always had his secrets. Even though Waldemar doesn’t understand emotion, he is a student of behavior. His friend was extremely precocious as a child, which is why they were even capable of getting along despite a significant age gap. Since he’s been so helpful throughout his life, Waldemar generally lets him keep those secrets, but this is a big one. As he said, this technology is illegal on Extremus, and more than enough to put Silveon in hock for the rest of his life. Waldemar doesn’t want that, and won’t let it happen, but he has to give him something. He has to provide answers. First things first, though, he needs treatment. “Let’s split the difference. Let the pod itself fix my outside wounds, but then give me those nanos to finish the job.”

As the glass lid curves around him, more tools come out. One sticks him in the arm, and recedes again. Waldemar begins to feel very hot. Even when cooling nozzles turn the environment into a refrigerator, the instruments are generating more than enough heat to keep him from shivering. He doesn’t know precisely what’s happening inside his body, but he knows that these little machines are doing something.

“The immediate threat will take eleven minutes in your condition,” Silveon tells him through the glass. “As for the deep tissue and muscles, it will take another couple of hours. I know you’re strong, but people will notice if you don’t rest while it’s happening. You just need to be patient. Once they’re done, it will be as if nothing ever happened. Tell me who shot you, so I can remediate the situation out there.”

“I need you,” Waldemar ekes out. Okay, he’s shivering a little now.

“Yeah, I’m here,” Silveon replies, a bit annoyed.

“I mean, I need you to be my personal steward. I should have promoted you a long time ago. No one else has been more helpful. Damn the optics.”

Silveon shakes his head. “We can talk about this later. Who shot you?”

Waldemar smiles. It must come with some kind of pain management drug. “I shot myself. I’m such an idiot.”

He’s irritated. Waldemar recognizes that emotion. “This pod is also a diagnostic tool. It scanned your body, and measured the trajectories. There’s just no way that you shot yourself, unless you have telekinesis, or you can make bullets curve.”

“It doesn’t matter, they won’t get another chance to hurt me.”

“Waldemar,” Silveon warns. “There are other ways to hurt you. Is Audrey safe?”

That’s a good question. “She might not be, but I’m not as worried about her as I am about Sable.”

“Sable? Sable Keen?” he questions. “What does she have to do with anything?”

“She and I have been...” He doesn’t wanna say. Silveon would not approve.

“Jesus. Double-U, she’s 23 years old.”

“Which is an adult,” Waldemar defends. “Don’t tell Aud. She would be devastated.”

“I know. I’ll place them both somewhere safe, but separately. Then we’re having a longer conversation about all of this. Don’t get up. You could do permanent damage to your body if you don’t let it finish the work. You are more than superficially hurt.” Silveon disappears.

The door swings open. “Ugh, I thought he would never leave.” It’s Pronastus. He’s still wearing Waldemar’s clone, but it’s no longer the old version of him. They look virtually identical now. She did it. That bitch Sevara really did it. Now this asshole can go right back to impersonating him. He worked so hard, rebuilding his image, and none of it matters. He made one mean comment to one of his sidepieces, and she completely derailed their plans. Emotions only screw things up. What more proof do you need?

“I should have killed you before. I should have taken the pod from her, hidden you somewhere else to serve out your sentence, and ended it on my terms.”

“That never could have happened,” Pronastus claims. “No paths lead to my death. I will always come back. I will always—” A fist comes out of nowhere, and jacks him in the temple, sending him hard into the floor. He never stands back up.

Sevara chuckles once as she looks down at the guy. Waldemar can see that she’s holding his sidearm loosely towards Pronastus, but he can’t see the man himself from this angle. “Thanks for finding him for me.” She shoots four more times. Waldemar doesn’t hear any coughing or gurgling, so he’s guessing it’s a headshot. She steps over the body, and leans towards the glass to tap on it with her finger. “Hey, there, fishy. Feeling trapped in your little bowl.”

What would Silveon do in this situation? Him, with all his rules about how to behave. He would say something sappy, like forgiveness or compassion. No, that doesn’t sound right. It’s close, but not quite there. Let’s think...right, forgiving her won’t work. She thinks she did nothing wrong. She thinks that Waldemar is the bad guy here, so he needs to let her think that. But how? Again, what would Silveon say? “I’m sorry.”

“What?” She was not prepared for that.

“I am sorry for hurting you. Our relationship means more to me than I was willing to show. I’ve just had to keep people at arm’s length my whole life. You know, because of my mother? She was an abusive drunk.”

“Oh, save it. You don’t have feelings, and you’re terrible at faking them.” She looks over at the control interface. “Let’s see, does this thing have a self-destruct, or can I suck out all the oxygen perhaps? What does this one do?” Music starts playing. “Ah, not that. Oh, whatever, I’ll just shoot you.” She points his gun at him once more.

“Exterior seal complete. Prioritizing internal regeneration,” the pod announces.

“What does that mean?” Sevara questions.

Waldemar pulls the lid open, and grabs her by the neck. “It means you’re dead.”

The fear in her eyes, it’s intoxicating. “I’m sorry for interrupting you earlier. You were in the middle of apologizing?” She gasps for air, but her trachea is being crushed.

“Not anymore. I’m done pretending. The real Waldemar has come out, thanks to you and Prony. Everyone on this ship will get on board with my new rules, or they’ll end up like you both.” He squeezes the life out of her. He forgot how good it feels.

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Microstory 2650: There and Back Again

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Mandica awakens again, but not in a morgue drawer this time. She’s lying on her back in a beautifully pleasant meadow. She has never felt so calm in her life. Oh, that’s right. This isn’t life at all, but death. It feels oddly familiar, even though she has certainly never been here before. Except perhaps she has, after Morgana killed her a few months ago. That must be it. This is where you go when you die, even if you die twice. It’s nice...a bit boring, but at least she maintains a continuity of consciousness. “Oh, God,” she says out loud. “This is exactly what the transhumanists are talking about.” It’s probably not because they want to keep living. It’s because they want to keep thinking. They don’t want their selves to end. And who would? Her family was wrong. It—they had to be. There was no way they could have known there was a legitimate afterlife. They took too much of a gamble, and got incredibly lucky. No, she shouldn’t be so hasty in her presumptions. She doesn’t know anything. This might not be an afterlife at all. She absorbed Elysia’s powers, and while consciousness streaming isn’t technically a special ability, she might have absorbed that trait too. Who knows? She sure as shit doesn’t.

There’s rustling in the grass. A pair of bare feet are walking towards her. They’re attached to bare legs. It’s a woman in a very short white tunic with floral embellishments on the hem, just like Mandica’s. She’s smiling down at her. “Welcome back.”

Mandica sits up. “I’ve been here before, but don’t remember.”

“It is rare that we have the opportunity to return someone to base reality,” the kind woman begins, “but when we do, it is important to clear their minds. The truth of what happens following death should not be revealed to the still living. We could not handle the mass suicide which might ensue.”

Mandica stands now. “Will I be returning again? To...base reality?”

“There is no way for us to know. The technology that you use to resurrect has nothing to do with us. We will facilitate the transition back if it’s necessary. If this world did not exist, we believe you would still come back to life. Pardon, I should reintroduce myself. My name is Ellie Underhill, and this is the afterlife simulation.”

“Another simulation?” Mandica questions. “Like Underbelly?”

“Not like Underbelly. Walk with me.” She starts to wade through the tall grass, smiling up at the sun with her eyes closed. “This is a virtual construct. Years ago, I had the idea to eradicate death. I had not considered the ramifications of the plan yet. I was not given the time to explore the model before someone stole my idea, and implemented it himself. Meeting you last time has sort of opened my eyes, but it cannot be undone. I’m not going to shut it down now. True death has always been an option, for the truly terrible and irredeemable, or for people like you, who disagree with the artificiality on a philosophical level. You were digitized from birth, and I understand now that this robbed you of consent. I suppose that’s why Tamerlane stole my idea, because he knew I wouldn’t go through with it after I thought about it for much longer. He took the responsibility for the questionable ethics for himself, so I never had to shoulder the burden. The choice is still yours. If that’s what you still want, I’ll zero you out, and—”

“I’m not sure I want that anymore,” Mandica admits. “I’m starting to see things in a new light. If this is a manmade simulation, that means there is no real afterlife.”

“It does not mean that,” Ellie contends. “No one yet knows. It is that uncertainty that led to the creation of this place. Those who choose Black Oblivion do so at the risk of total consciousness cessation. We inform them of the risks. It hasn’t happened in a long time. But before you try to make a decision that may or may not be permanent, there are two people who would like to speak with you.”

“Someone wants to meet me?” Mandica questions. Who could that be?

“Yes. It took a lot, getting them here. You can’t hug them, but I made the executive decision to create a window to the other side. I am glad that we have this opportunity this time. We weren’t prepared before.” Why would she want to hug them?

They’ve come across a giant tree. It is impossibly large. She only even knows that it is a tree because of the bark, but from here, it appears only as a wall, it’s so wide. How did she not see it before? It towers all the way up into the clouds. A fog or cloud begins to swirl right before them, against the face of the trunk. Once it settles, it does appear as a window. Two people are on the other side of it. They are Mandica’s mother, and her father. She runs up to them, but remembers what Ellie said. “When you said I couldn’t hug them, was that a procedural rule, or a physical impossibility?”

“The second one,” Ellie answers. “I would let you if I could, but they are not in the simulation. This is kind of like a long-distance video call. I won’t clarify the mechanism.”

Mandica turns back to her parents. “I’ve missed you. It’s been so long.”

“Longer for us,” her mother says. Oh, yeah, they died nearly 120 years ago.

Mandica places her hand upon the window. It just feels like bark. “I’m sorry you’ve been waiting. I never wavered in my convictions.” She tilts her chin away in shame. “Until recently. I think I might be immortal now, but not by choice. I promise, I always planned on dying. I just...wanted to live a different life before I did.”

“We’re not mad,” her father assures her. “In fact, it is you who should be mad at us.” He pauses, appearing to feel his own shame. “We are the ones who summoned you to Castlebourne. The world we are in now, it—”

“Careful,” Ellie warns. What the hell?

Mandica’s father sighs. “We were able to communicate back to base reality. We regret our decisions to die. It worked out, but...we still don’t want that for you. We should have held onto life so much tighter. We thought it was only precious because it ended, but we were wrong. It’s precious only for as long as you have. Once you lose it, it doesn’t mean anything. We wanted you to transmit your mind to Castlebourne, and begin to stream your consciousness, like most everyone else, not travel there physically.”

“But it obviously doesn’t matter,” Mandica argues. She gestures towards Ellie. “Even the undigitized are evidently digitized.” She shakes her head. “If this stone makes me go back, it will be tearing me away from you. Why would I want that?”

“Because that’s where you belong,” her mother insists. “Where we are is not hell, but it’s not exactly living either. We wish we could go back too. You are an adult. You can find happiness on your own, and should. Whatever stone you’re talking about is a gift. Don’t disrespect that. Let it do what it does, and I hope you can forgive us for manipulating you. We just didn’t want you to share our regret.”

Mandica’s back feels knotted. “I think it’s pulling me back. If you want me to stay alive, I’m a dutiful daughter, so I will, but I’ll find a way to see you again too. I love you.”

“We love you,” they say simultaneously. Then they disappear. It all disappears.

Mandica resurrects in Reagan’s lair. She doesn’t know how or why, but she has made a decision. She will accept her newfound immortality, and live a life of adventure.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 3, 2547

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Ramses was unable to track the location of the missing slingbelts, and there was no recourse for this. He designed the bulk map so that, while most of the dots were showing non-specific points, the belts were distinct, and stood out. If they were anywhere out there, he would be able to spot them. Their two top hypotheses were that they were either destroyed, or taken through time. Whoever did it knew exactly what they were after. They weren’t just a couple of random kids swimming in the ocean, who happened to feel something invisible in the water. Their prime suspects were the Spiral Station crew, but they didn’t want to assume. They had plenty of genuine enemies, and since time travel was inherently involved, it could have been someone they hadn’t even crossed paths with yet. Instead of wasting pointless effort on figuring it out, Ramses just programmed his forge core to build three replacement belts during the interim year. Mateo, Leona, and Olimpia had lost all of their belongings, but that wasn’t a big deal.

It was interesting that the married trio were the ones whose belts were stolen. Ram calculated a 2.85% chance that this was entirely unintentional, but the more practical odds said that it was vastly more improbable. Just the fact that the other four belts were left behind made it unlikely to have been random. They were magnetically linked to one another. It was actually more difficult for them to take only some of the belts, than to have swiped them all in one go.

The next day, the missing belts appeared on the bulk map. They had been transported halfway across the Milky Way, for reasons yet unknown. “Have we been there before?” Olimpia asked. “Do we know anyone there?”

“That is part of the nuclear star cluster, which is relatively close to Sagittarius A*, our galaxy’s central black hole” Leona explained. “It’s not the farthest we’ve ever been, but as you can see, no one else is there. It’s only our belts.”

“No one has ever been there,” Ramses added. “They’re on Southside. Extremus crossed over the black hole on the north side of the galactic plane. When the Matrioshka Body was studying time, it too was on Northside. The whole stellar neighborhood is on Northside, so we just don’t know too much about this region.”

Romana giggled. “They’re a gift.”

“Huh?” Mateo asked.

“We were just talking about Operation Starframe,” Romana said. “If we want to reach every corner of the galaxy, it’s best to start in the center. Now we can do that. Now we have something to lock onto. This will be our staging ground.”

“We don’t know that the thief did this as a favor,” Marie pointed out. “It could be a trap instead. I’m guessing this region is naturally fairly hostile, if it’s so close to the chaos of the supermassive black hole.”

Ramses made a facial shrug. “It’s not as dangerous as, say, the s-star cluster, which is much closer to the singularity, but it’s not particularly safe, like it is for Sol. I’m inclined to agree with Romy. It’s too coincidental. If I were the thief, I would put a trap around Sirius, or some other close but barely settled region. It took them too much work to get to where they are. Yes, I’m sure they are trying to lure us there. It’s irrational to believe that they hid the belts from detection last year, but forgot to shield them today when they would know we’ve returned to the timestream. But based on our track record, does anyone here really think that we’re not gonna go?”

They all laughed a little. “Yeah, we’re gonna go,” Mateo decided. He commanded his nanites to wrap him up in armor, leaving his face unprotected for now. “What did you say before, Romana? Boot ‘n’ rally.”

They all armored up too. “Yalla,” Leona ordered.

“Give me a minute,” Ramses defended. “I need to make the calculations.” He turned away and paced a little as he was tapping on his wrist device. “Okay, do it again.”

“Yalla.”

They slung to the nucleus, and landed on a rocky planet. It wasn’t heavily vegetated, but not barren either. The plantlife was clearly alien, but decidedly alive. The sky was a beautiful sunset orange. Snowcapped mountains towered in the distance, and it looked a little greener on the foothills. They turned to find three dress form mannequins on a display curve. A slingbelt was fitted to each one.

“Yeah. Definitely brought here for us,” Romana agreed with herself.

“That’s not all,” Ramses said, looking at his interface again. “It’s breathable. For us, anyway. I’m seeing 83% nitro, 11% oxy, 5 for CO2, and a half percent each for hydrogen and trace gases.”

They decided to open their visors but keep the rest of their armor on, except for Romana, who chose to end up in a gray sports bra and yoga shorts. It still could be a trap. The atmosphere was indeed breathable, but it took a few minutes for their bodies to acclimate to the suboptimal environment. During this time, they were mildly suffocating before their carbon scrubber organs caught up to compensate for the extra toxin.

“Carbon load back down to manageable levels for everyone,” Angela announced. She had expressed an interest in serving as the closest thing to a medical professional the team had.

Romana instinctively walked around to the other side of the mannequins. She reached up to one of them, and pulled something off of it. “Sorry for taking these, but now you have extra, in case you need them. You won’t have to worry about us again. Don’t screw it up this time,” she read.

“They didn’t sign their name?” Mateo asked her.

“Not exactly,” she answered.

“They...initialized it?” Mateo couldn’t think of anything else that was close to a signature.

“They hand-wrote it, or I should say, you hand-wrote it.” She showed him the note, and she was right; it was in Mateo’s handwriting.

“Well, I suppose I can trust myself, can’t I?”

“No,” Leona replied bluntly.

“Fair enough.”

“Any other anomalies besides these belts?” Leona asked Ramses.

“No artificial signals,” Ramses began to answer from his interface. “No satellites, no power generators, no signs of life in the immediate vicinity...” He looked back up and regarded the horizon. “There is no way to know if we’re alone, but we seem to be.” He took out his forge core, and appeared to be in thought as he separated himself from the group, and also looked at the mountains.

“Are you considering building something here?” Mateo asked.

“Something?” Ramses returned. “Maybe everything.”

“Like a new lab? You just built a new one in your pocket,” Mateo reminded him.

“Yeah, I know, and I would still want to keep it with me as a mobile office.” Ramses turned back around. “But a real home base might be nice too. I once thought that that was Castlebourne, but there are too many people there. I think we should be more like Linwood Meyers, and take full ownership over a remote territory. No one else is here, it would just be ours. It will take tens of thousands of years before Project Stargate reaches this region. That’s more than a hundred and fifty years for us. This could be a safe place. We would really only have to worry about Spiral Station.”

“It’s not the farthest man has ever gone,” Olimpia said. “You just mentioned Linwood, who is even more remote on the far end of the galaxy. The Extremus isn’t too far from there. The Exin Empire has reframe engines, and several decades to kill.”

“They would have to find us,” Ramses continued to list. “This is a central location. It’s a great place to stage Operation Starframe. It’s uninhabitable by even some other posthuman models.”

“Still,” Olimpia pushed back. “Shouldn’t we go as far as we can? I agree, it’s perfect for Starframe, but not the best place for a home if we truly want to be hidden and remote.”

“The slingdrives have power constraints. Being ultra-distant has its disadvantages too. We’ll still defend our home. We’re not just gonna live like pioneers.”

“The note, it’s warning us about something,” Romana jumped back in. “We don’t know what. Did we come here in another timeline, or is that what changed? What exactly are we hoping to not screw up this time?”

“It’s doubtful that we were here before,” Leona determined. “We came here for the belts. That and the note probably mark the point of divergence. I think this planet is meant to change whatever issues Future!Mateo faced that he’s trying to fix now.”

“You just said we couldn’t trust him,” Marie contended. “Handwriting means nothing. Anyone could have forged it.”

“True,” Leona admitted.

“I’ll do my surveys,” Ramses reasoned. “I’ll build satellites and probes. We’ll map this whole star system, and beyond. Infrastructure will not be a problem. If we change our minds later, we can always leave. That is entirely what Starframe is even about. It gives us options, and this world gives us those options faster.”

“Anyone opposed?” Leona posed to the group. When no one said anything, she looked at Romana. “You’re our navigator, but you didn’t bring us here. Do you object to staying?”

“No,” Romana answered. “Like he said, we can always leave later.”

Leona nodded. “Okay. Let’s do some quick surveys before the infrastructure can be built, just to get some idea of what we’re dealing with. No one has to participate who doesn’t want to. What I’ll be doing is teleporting high up into the atmosphere, taking readings and images on my way down, and then popping back up over a different swath of land to image that area next. Anyone is welcome to spread out and do the same. But if you just want to stay here, that’s fine. If three of you would rather go back to the stellar neighborhood, that would be acceptable too.”

“No, we’re not gonna do that,” Olimpia promised. “We’ll stick together, as we always try to do. I had to argue against the plan to make sure it was a good plan. I’ve seen this movie before. This planet has monsters on it, and that’s the whole plot.”

“It would not be crazy if we did find complex life here,” Leona concurred. “With carbon dioxide levels this high, I’m more surprised that there’s even a desert. I suspect the majority of the surface will be fairly lush.”

Leona was correct. While Ramses camped out at their landing site to synthesize the data, the other six jumped around the atmosphere to serve as living survey probes. Their onboard sensors weren’t advanced enough to take highly detailed readings, but it was enough to generate a crude globe. They saw some more yellow and red, but they also saw green and blue. It looked not unlike Earth, though the night sky was a lot prettier. There wasn’t any light pollution, and this region of space had a denser cluster of stars to admire.

They found almost no manmade structures besides the display mannequins, but they didn’t find none at all. “Everyone jump to my position,” Marie requested.

“Even me?” Ramses questioned.

“Especially you,” she replied.

They all converged at Marie’s location. They found her standing on a grassy hill, elevated above a surrounding forest. They weren’t quite sure what other thing they were seeing here, though. It was a sphere of warped space, rotating so fast that they couldn’t even tell which direction it was moving. It reminded Leona of a black hole, but not exactly. “It’s not black,” Olimpia sort of joked, sort of really didn’t understand it at all.

“Back up anyway,” Leona suggested.

They all took several steps back because their guess was that it was a portal, and of course, they had no idea where it might take them. But like the gravity regulator machine back on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, it wasn’t going to give them any choice. It suddenly expanded, and engulfed them all.

It didn’t appear to have done anything to them. They were still standing on the same hill. The same forest was still surrounding them. “Is everyone okay?” Mateo asked. “Roll call.”

They took their turns declaring their respective statuses. They had settled on an order ahead of time, so it was predictable, except in any hypothetical situation where something actually was wrong with one of them. Everyone was fine this time; no currently detected health or temporal issues. The swirling portal was still there, so they elected to turn around and walk back down the hill to avoid any further issues.

“Mother,” came a voice from behind them. They turned to see a man standing near the top of the hill, right in front of the portal. No one recognized him.

“Who do you believe is your mother?” Leona asked in a way that implied she hoped it wasn’t her yet again.

The man slowly pointed at Olimpia.

“Me?” Olimpia questioned, shocked. “If I look like your mom, then she must be from a different timeline, because I don’t have any kids.”

“No, it’s definitely you. I was hoping we would meet sometime, but I didn’t want to push it. It had to be your choice. I left this reality portal here in case you ever came looking.”

Olimpia shook her head. “I don’t know how it would be possible.”

“You’re sometimes called The Echo, right?” the man pressed.

“Not so much anymore,” Olimpia countered.

“Well, I’m always called Echo. I’m your echo.” He took a deep breath. “Welcome back to The Sixth Key.”

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