Microstory 2464: Hivedome

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There are all kinds of hive minds, and some are more dangerous than others. According to the Core World definition, however, all hive minds are dangerous, because they have the potential to destroy all individuality in the entire universe. I used to think that that was an exaggeration, but I feel differently now. I am a former member of the Baileribo Colony. Founded by a man whose last name you can probably guess, the Baileribo Society first formed in the year 2062. At the time, mind uploading and consciousness transference were still in their infancy, and a true hive mind was beyond our grasp. Archaea Baileribo died before his dream was realized, but the hive mind honors his name to this day. I used to believe in that, but what I didn’t understand was that I didn’t believe in anything. The collective believed in it, and I was forced to agree. I won’t go too much into what my life was like before, but I was born about 300 years ago in a libertarian lunar base. It was a hellscape, and I wanted to get out. Everything was about individual liberties, but nothing was about community. I yearned for something better. Then along came a group of Baileriban recruits, and I was instantly hooked. The promised to take me out of the dystopia, and into paradise. I believed them, I trusted them. Now, I’m not saying that Baileribo is an evil entity, just that it could stand to be more honest and transparent. I didn’t have the chance to learn all the facts before it was too late, and at that point, I wasn’t myself anymore. The Baileriban are telepathic, but the means of telepathy is not something that can be genetically engineered. I don’t know why. It wasn’t my department. That might sound paradoxical, but I’ll get into that. In order to join the collective, they implant a special telepathy organ called a baileriboport, which allows forces you to share your thoughts with everyone. It takes a few weeks to get used to, but then it’s a magical sensation. I won’t lie to you, I was the happiest when I was connected. Then I saw something that I wasn’t meant to. The hive mind isn’t the only entity in Hivedome—which I should have told you before, we fled to recently to avoid persecution by the Stellar Neighborhood establishment. It’s only one layer of the lie. It’s run by a group of individuals who can share their thoughts with each other, but don’t have to. They can block their own signals, keep secrets from each other, and can even disconnect at will. They are the elite. They make all the decisions while making it seem like a group idea. They were walking amongst us without the rest of us knowing. Seeing this truth broke my brain, and allowed me to override my own baileriboport just enough to start behaving erratically. They didn’t know why I wasn’t conforming, but it was disruptive, and I had to be stopped. I wasn’t the first to exhibit idiosyncratic conduct, and I won’t be the last, but I do believe that I’m the only one whose memories weren’t successfully erased after expulsion. Again, I don’t think that the Baileriban have any plans to hurt anyone, and they don’t technically coerce recruits. But they certainly don’t tell you everything. The Castlebourne government has granted me this opportunity to write a review of this permanently isolated dome which no one else has been allowed to speak on, because anyone who knows anything wouldn’t dare reveal our secrets. I implore you, if a recruiter comes to you, remember that they’re not really part of the hive mind. They’re just part of the people who control it from the outside. They can’t be trusted.

The Seventh Stage: Foundation Rock (Part VII)

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Echo and Clavia both teleport out of the water, leaving every molecule of it behind, even the drops clinging to their skin, so they’re completely dry now, on the ground. They also apport clothes around their bodies so they can continue the conversation. “Aristotle Al-Amin,” Echo begins, “son of Maqsud.”

“That’s right,” Aristotle says. He was leaning against a tree. He pops himself off it, and saunters around, vaguely in their direction.

“You’re the one who made the Sixth Key?” Clavia asks.

“I didn’t make it,” he clarifies. “I did transport everyone to it, though.”

“How did you do that?” Andrei asks, still piloting the original Clavia body.

“A magician never reveals his secrets,” Aristotle answers anticlimactically.

“That’s okay,” Echo decides. “The only question is, can you do it again? Mostly the same people, and their descendants. Comparatively, the population isn’t all that much higher, and they’re all in the same place now, going to the same place. Here, actually. But. We also have to figure out who wants to go, and who doesn’t. They’re getting a choice this time.”

Aristotle nods like he knows something they don’t, which he surely does. He continues to pace around a little, admiring the peaceful surroundings. “I should clarify, I didn’t do it alone. I had enormous help, from a god.”

“Some people call us gods,” Andrei says.

Aristotle’s eyes dart over to him, but he doesn’t move his head. “You may be gods in this universe, but I spoke with those who live on a higher plane of existence. Now, that doesn’t mean we need them this time. Maybe you could supply the power instead. I don’t know who any of you are. All I know is that I can’t do it at the scale you’re asking for without some serious might.”

“Well, how did you contact these higher gods?” Clavia asks.

“A special term sequence that you input in a Nexus,” Aristotle answers.

“Can you remember the sequence?” Clavia presses.

Aristotle snorts as he laughs. “Yeah, I think I can recall.”

They stare at him blankly.

“It’s one glyph long,” he clarifies.

“Then why doesn’t everybody do it?” Andrei asks him.

“Because it’s only one glyph,” Aristotle reiterates. “Most people don’t think to even try it, because most term sequences are longer. Besides, it can only be used once at any given Nexus, and if you’ve ever done it before, you can’t do it again. You can tag along, but you won’t get another wish. If we go this route, I won’t be able to do it, because mine has already been asked and answered.”

“A wish?” Clavia questions. “Are they gods, or genies?”

“Both, I guess. They don’t use either of those words. They just have names.”

Andrei looks around. “Does anyone know of a Nexus in the Sixth Key that might be so rarely used that no one has tried this oddly simple single-glyph term sequence? Can you even call it a sequence?”

Echo shakes his head as he’s beginning to walk away. “No need to find a needle in a haystack. I’ll just conjure a new needle.” He waves his arms. The trees before him sink into the ground as if it’s made of mud. Once the clearing has formed, an artificial cube materializes atop it. It looks just like any other Nexus, on the outside, and once they step inside, they find it to be typical there as well.

Aristotle looks around. “Are you sure you need my help to do what you ask, or the gods’ help? Might wanna save your wish if you can. As I said, you only get one.”

“No, we know we can’t do it,” Clavia explains. “But that’s a good question. Which one of us should go and ask?”

Aristotle shrugs. “We can all go. It’s one question each. The only thing is, whoever literally inputs the sequence can’t ever do it again. Just like the wish itself, I’m disqualified for that too.”

“I’ll handle it,” Echo volunteers. They all step down into the cavity. “Which is it?”

“Zero-enter,” Aristotle replies. “We’re going to a place called Origin.”

Echo kicks the glyph that translates to zero, and then the enter button. Technicolors rain down from the drum above, and spirit them away.

They find themselves on a dock, floating on a dark and mysterious ocean. It’s eerie, but beautiful. They feel safe here, like nothing can or will hurt them. A rowboat approaches. A person steps out of it, and ties it on. “Welcome to Origin. My name is Senona Riggur.” They turn their head to look at Aristotle. “You’re back. You know the rules, though.”

“Of course,” Aristotle answers. “I’m just their guide.”

Senona turns back to address the other three, but ends up focusing on Andrei in particular. “There are more here than there appears to be.”

Andrei is surprised. “Uh, yeah. We are six in one.”

Senona breathes deeply, and considers the situation. “Six consciousnesses, one body. Six wishes.”

“We appreciate the accommodation,” Andrei says with a slight bow. “That’s very magnanimous of you. A lesser god would not see it that way.”

Senona laughs. “We don’t use that term. Anyway, it’ll make it easier for us to talk if I separate you out first.” They lift their hand, and wave it towards the Clavia body. It disappears, only to be instantly replaced by Ingrid Alvarado, Onyx Wembley, Killjlir Pike, Andrei Orlov, Ayata Seegers, and Debra Lovelace. They’re all in their own bodies, just like they’ve wanted for so long.

And they’re surprised too. They inspect their new substrates, confirming with each other without speaking that they all look exactly as they’re meant to. “Whose wish was that?” Ingrid asks.

Senona is taken aback. “That wasn’t a wish. That was just...maintenance. You still have six.” They address the group as a whole. “To clarify, there are eight qualifiers here. You get eight wishes. You don’t really have to decide whose is whose. I’ve had people come here in groups who collectively all want the same thing, so it’s been more collaborative than individual. It’s all up to you. To further clarify, it’s not magic. What I just did for you, I did with the aid of someone with the tools to make it happen. Just because you can imagine it, doesn’t mean there is anyone in the bulkverse with the requisite tools. If I cannot accomplish what you ask, we’ll work together, and determine something that I can. You have all the time in the world to come up with your ideas.”

“A benevolent god,” Clavia decides.

“A benevolent person,” Senona corrects, “with, as I said, a set of tools. My tools are to find other people’s tools. I sense great power in all of you. I ask, on the side, that you make yourselves available to lend your talents to me in the pursuit of other people’s wishes. I don’t demand it of you, but it would be appreciated.”

“Maybe this is where we’re supposed to be,” Echo whispers to Clavia.

“Maybe,” she whispers back.

“Can we ask questions without them being wishes?” Onyx pipes up.

“Sure!” Senona agrees.

“His wish.” Onyx jerks his head towards Aristotle. “How’d you do it? And can you do it again?”

“Oh, that. I hooked him up with one of the most powerful entities in the bulk. You call me a god...”

“You did?” Aristotle asks. “I don’t remember that.”

“You wouldn’t,” Senona contends. “You didn’t actually meet him. I more just passed the message along.”

“Who was it?”

Senona smiles, but doesn’t answer.

“I think I know who you’re talking about,” Clavia guesses. She too doesn’t say it out loud, though. It would explain everything. He has omnipotent power over everything that happens in Salmonverse, all of its child universes, and reportedly a number of other branes beyond those. It’s a bit of a deus ex machina for him to exercise that control to the degree he needed to in order to make the Reconvergence happen, and to rescue everyone from four of the five original realities. So it’s unclear why he wouldn’t simply make it a non-issue, but she can’t question his judgment, lest he use his authority against her in some way.

It’s probably for the best that she not investigate further, the man she’s talking about concurs from his bed on a Thursday night. The only question now is whether he would be willing to do it again. Honestly, he’s still debating it.

Okay, it’s been a few hours for him, and he’s ready with his decision, but they’re not going to be happy about it. They’ll do it, though, because that’s what it’s going to take to end the Reality Wars once and for all. Senona receives his message telepathically, and they don’t like it either. “That is not how it works here. It goes against the spirit of everything that we’ve built.”

It’s a sacrifice.

“It’s unreasonable!” they shout back.

It’s too big for one wish.

“Someone once asked me for a sandwich!” Senona argues.

That one was too small for a wish. I can’t control their choices.

“You literally can!”

“Should we try to help?” Killjlir offers.

“Shh,” Ingrid warns. “It’s far too dangerous for us to get involved.”

“It’s not just about the number of wishes,” Senona goes on. “You’re asking them to leave everything they’ve ever known behind. You’re asking them to never see their loved ones again.”

They all hail from a universe where death is less profound, and more of a joke. From my perspective, as much as I’ve put them through, they’ve had it easy. Everyone I’ve ever known has either died for good, or will relatively soon. I shed no tears for these people, and neither should you. Are you going to do it, or make eight sandwiches instead?

Senona frowns with a level of rage that they have not felt in a long time. “I’ve had enough of your editorializing. You can stop inserting yourself into the story, thank you very much. I’ll talk to them myself.” They take a breath, centering themselves. “Based on the half of the conversation that you could hear, I’m sure that you can mostly guess what the stipulations are for your wish. He’s turned me into a liar, because if you ask for the wish that we’ve already discussed, you won’t get seven more. You won’t get any more. This one wish counts for all eight.”

“We understand,” Echo says. “It’s up to the whole group, though. It must be unanimous. Even Debra has to agree.”

“That’s not all,” Senona goes on. “You can’t live there, in your new universe. You can’t live in Salmonverse either, or any of its other offshoots, in fact. You’ll either be staying here, or going somewhere else.”

“Can we...stick together?” Ayata asks, glancing over at her love, Andrei.

“Truthfully, I don’t know,” Senona says. “I’ve become little more than a mouthpiece. It’s all up to him this time. And he reserves the right to change his mind at any time.”

“What a dick,” Debra muses.

“Debra! Jesus Christ!” Clavia shouts. “You’re gonna get us all killed!”

“He wouldn’t do that,” Debra dismisses it with a flick of her hair.

Senona clears their throat. “I’m receiving a new message. I’m told to ask if any of you know someone by the name of Ezqava ‘Effigy’ Eodurus.”

No, they all answer in one way, or another.

“He says...exactly.” Senona finishes.

Echo literally shivers.

They’re all tired of arguing about this, so they put it to a vote. To everyone’s surprise, what they figured would only be the first attempt turns out to be unanimous. They all want to avert the Reality Wars, even if it means not being around to witness the fruits of their labor. They have all been working towards this end for so long, it’s absolutely worth it. It would be selfish of them to try to find some kind of loophole. Debra doesn’t really have this same sentimentality, but she goes along with the plan, because she believes herself to be powerful enough to find a workaround later. And the reality is that she might be right. That has not yet been decided.

They don’t know where the others are gonna end up yet, but Echo and Clavia are going to remain here at Origin. They can do a lot of good, fulfilling visitors’ greatest desires, and making countless worlds better. It’s a great use of their gifts now that their primary goal of saving the Sixth Key is complete. They only asked for one thing in addition to the wish itself, which is to be given some kind of proof that this hasn’t all been for nothing, and that the wish will indeed be fulfilled. I can agree to that. I don’t need any more pushback from any of them, and would like to remove myself from the narrative. Clavia is right, that it’s a deus ex machina, and while that’s a very useful trope in some cases, it’s not something that should be overutilized, or the story essentially becomes meaningless, and a waste of time.

The Reality Wars will be stopped, and everyone who wants to live in the new universe will be automatically transported to it without fuss. All year, I’ve been trying to figure out what its name should be, and I think I’ve finally settled on the right one. In keeping with the motif of placing them in numerical order, it must necessarily follow The Seventh Stage. The result is unremarkable, and strangely simple. I’m calling it...The Eighth Choice.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 1, 2483

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After adjusting to the lights of the infirmary, Romana looked over at her father, but seemed to be focusing on her own breath. It started to look like she was trying to speak, but she was home now, and everything was going to be fine, so there was no reason to rush this.

“It’s okay. I’m here, and you’re safe. Only talk if you can,” Mateo encouraged.

She struggled to bring her lips closer together to formulate words. She didn’t look like she was in any pain, though, and the pod didn’t indicate that there was any medical issue to be worried about. She didn’t make a sound until she was ready to produce the word, fully and clearly. “Report.”

They told her what had happened, and asked if she remembered anything.

“Nothing,” Romana answered. “Ramses turned his new machine on, and then I woke up here.”

“That might be for the best,” Olimpia hoped. It didn’t appear that she was ever tortured or abused, but there was no telling how difficult it was to be trapped in Buddy’s particles. They might try to find out more information later, but for now, they were just grateful that she was back.

Romana needed physical help getting out of the pod, and then into the tub to be washed up. Olimpia graciously assisted with that. Mateo didn’t feel comfortable participating, and Romana probably preferred it this way too. While she had no apparent memory of the dark particle prison, she still looked traumatized. Perhaps the ordeal had a nuanced impact on her psyche, or maybe her mind was repressing it to protect itself. This gave Mateo an idea, to find a way to let her use his rendezvous card, so she could speak with Dr. Hammer. That was against the rules, but if it could improve his mental health, the Center might make an exception. And anyway, once he made sure that Romana was better, Mateo probably wouldn’t need the support group anymore.

He gave the two of them space, and went back to the bridge. “What’s the word with this thing? Are we in danger of another tangent?”

“Probably,” Leona replied. “But the risk can be mitigated with some careful planning.”

“Two jumps,” Ramses added. “I can probably only muster two good jumps a day, though it’s best that we spread them out by several hours. And I’m only guessing that due to our past experiences. We’ve obviously pushed the limits before, but it hasn’t always worked out, so for the sake of a successful jump, we should probably consider that the safety margin. That doesn’t mean I know what’s causing it. It could be a design flaw, an inherent limitation from the ship that the slingdrive has been retrofitted to, or it could be because of the quintessence itself. Perhaps it doesn’t like people to mess with it until it’s had time to settle down. I need more time, and more tests...again.”

“Before, when we were testing the navigation function,” Mateo began, “it was to save Romana’s life. Now we’re okay. Now we can afford to take a little time. Do what you need to do, but take the pressure off.”

Ramses nodded with a frown.

“And don’t feel bad about what happened,” Mateo continued, noticing that this was not his friend’s real concern. “Buddy is an antagonist who took advantage of an accident that you even predicted. We all knew the risks, including her. I’m not holding it against you, and I would like to see the day when you don’t hold it against yourself. Romana will be fine. She’s back now, and the tethers are holding. We’ll never lose her again. I love you, man.”

“Love you too,” Ramses replied.

“There’s something else,” Leona said, now that the serious conversation was over. “It’s about the Insulator. While he was getting us back, I was conducting my own research.” She stepped to the side to reveal the glass object sitting on the console. “As you can see, it’s missing the dome that’s supposed to go on top. Glass insulators have no moving parts, yet it’s been removed as if it could be popped off like a snap fastener. We scanned for the dome out in the black while we were at our last pitstop, but it might be lost forever.”

“Cool,” Mateo said. “I don’t care about it, though.”

“You should,” Leona insisted. “I was able to make minimal contact with the inhabitant. I can hear her, but she can’t hear me. Mateo, it’s Dubra.”

“My sister?” Romana was here, totally naked, but not worried about it.

Olimpia rushed up, and wrapped a towel around her body. “Sorry, she suddenly hopped out of the tub, and ran off.”

I could hear their conversation in their minds,” Romana explained. “If Dubra is in there, I can turn that minimal contact into a real conversation.”

“Be my guest,” Leona agreed, moving away even farther.

Romana stepped up to it, took a deep breath, then lifted her arms, apparently to prepare to touch it. Her towel fell right back off of her.

“Maybe you should get dried off and clothed,” Mateo asked.

“I got this.” Olimpia was wearing a splash tunic, which was a hydrophobic garment caregivers used to aid someone in bathing, whether as a family member, friend, or medical professional. She pulled it off of her own body, and dropped it over Romana’s, since the latter didn’t seem to be bothered by the mixed company. Now Olimpia was the one without clothes on, but that was fine.

Romana adjusted the shoulders of the tunic, then refocused on the task at hand. She placed fingers from both hands upon the Insulator. She stood there for a few minutes, occasionally showing mild signs of active listening. She nodded definitively, and separated. “Okay.”

“Okay, what? Is she all right?” Mateo asked.

“Yeah, she’s fine.”

“Is that all she said?” Leona pressed.

“No, she said quite a bit.” Romana was acting like these were perfectly complete responses.

“Such as what?” Ramses asked.

“Oh, uh...sister-sister confidentiality.”

“That’s not a thing,” Mateo argued.

“Yes, it is.” Marie was walking onto the bridge, followed by her own sister.

“I’ll just talk to her myself. How do we get her out?” Mateo questioned.

“I’ll have to build her a new substrate,” Ramses reasoned, “but I don’t have her DNA, so I can’t make her look as she did.” He consulted his watch. “And it will take me a real year.”

“Go on and get on it,” Leona said. “Just give her something temporary, and we’ll transfer her to something else later. She might know how we can acquire a sample of her DNA somewhere in the past.”

“Let Romana ask for consent first, please,” Mateo suggested.

“Yes,” Romana said. She went back to briefly speak with Dubravka. “She’s in. Something temporary is fine. It will take some effort to make her the real thing, and she wants to be involved in that. I’m so glad I won’t have to wait a whole year to meet her for real. I really don’t care for telepathy.”

Romana had to wait an entire year before she even had a chance to meet her half-sister in person. She was sixteen years old when Mateo and the team returned to the timestream. Instead of jumping forward like she was used to, she found herself stuck in realtime. She spent that year trying to stay busy by helping Hrockas to prepare for the Grand Opening. There was nothing else she could do. Ramses and Leona were the only ones with any hope of figuring out what might have gone wrong, and more importantly, how to fix it. She certainly couldn’t understand it herself. She didn’t have a whole lot in the way of a formal education. She knew what little she knew thanks to books that her family was able to procure for her over the years, but her unstable lifestyle was not conducive to studying in a classroom. She didn’t have access to Ramses’ ground lab either, or she might have tried to initiate Dubra’s download process herself.

She was depressed, and feeling left behind, but she had all year to come to terms with missing the bus, and the delay in the big family reunion. She also grew up hearing stories of Team Matic’s fantastical adventures, with their top-notch engineer and captain. Together, they could fix anything. So she was confident that they would solve the problem quickly.

“You noticed these, right?” They were back in the realspace infirmary on the Vellani Ambassador. The patient was sitting on the exam table, legs hanging off the edge. Leona was no doctor, but she had a penlight, and she knew how to point it at someone’s eyes.

“Yeah,” Romana replied. “I’ve tried to flush them out, but they’re not exactly...tangible.”

“What are you talking about?” Mateo was standing off to the side, arms crossed, and thinking about the most painful way to tear Buddy’s limbs off of his body.

“The dark particles,” Leona answered. “There are still some in there, floating around. I can’t tell exactly where; behind the cornea, maybe? Or they’re in another dimension...”

“Then figure it out!” Mateo cried.

“Stop it,” Leona instructed. “We’ve talked about your anger.”

Mateo took a deep breath. “I know it’s not your fault, I’m sorry.” He pulled the rendezvous card out of his sleeve pocket. It was red, just as anyone would expect out of someone this angry.

“What are you thinking?” his wife asked.

“I’m thinking that Dr. Hammer is not just a psychiatrist. She has diagnostic equipment that Ramses wouldn’t be able to develop, or know how to use properly. She may have even seen this before.”

“That’s not what that card is for,” she reminded him.

“My daughter’s back, I don’t need therapy anymore. I need her to be healthy.”

“Maybe it’s a good thing.”

“No,” Romana jumped in. “I know what you’re saying. But Matics are time-skippers. It’s what we do. I don’t wanna lose that.”

“I’m just making sure you understand your options,” Leona told her.

“My options,” Romana began before a pause, “are to find the man who did this to me, and make him fix it.”

Mateo shook his head. “I get the impulse. Believe me, I want to ring his neck. But Rule Number Fifteen is probably the most important one when it comes to us, so if you’re going to be a part of our team in any capacity, you will need to learn to follow it. Buddy is powerful, fragile, and whimsical. In my experience, that combination equates to sudden outbursts of excessive retaliation. His objective is to bring a fruit from the past into the future. He has the power to simply go back to the past, and pick one whenever he feels like it. He’s going to extreme lengths to accomplish something stupid and pointless. You can’t reason with someone like that, and we certainly can’t fight him. We try to handle this on our own. Locating him is a last resort.”

“Okay,” Romana agreed. “Then can someone help me get back down to the planet? I want to be there when Dubra wakes up.”

“Okay, but then we’re talking about Snake Island,” Mateo called to her as she was trying to leave.

“Whatever, just let me get this gown off!

Leona sighed. “We’re not going to Snake Island.”

“Leona...”

“We’re not going to Snake Island. We like Dr. Hammer, but we don’t know her all that well. Your own cousin became an adversary in the Third Rail. We need to be cautious, and follow the rules. Now go get your daughter, and go down to see your other daughter.”

Ramses’ ground lab was a lot bigger and better than the one he had in the pocket dimension attached to the ship. He had been wanting this forever, and finally found a place to build it. Starter nanites constructed it for him while they were gone, with the first room being dedicated to the Insulator of Life, as well as the equipment necessary to produce a new body.

Mateo peered at it, floating there in its amniotic tank. “What DNA did you end up using, since we don’t have hers. I assumed it would just be one of those public-use template things.”

Ramses was running through his tasklist before the download procedure. “Uh...don’t worry about it.”

“I wasn’t too terribly worried before, but now I really am. What did you do?”

“It’s fine, don’t—it’s fine.”

“Ramses Abdulrashid,” Mateo enunciated like a disappointed parent.

“Yours,” Ramses answered. “Yours and Leona’s. I mixed them together, like what would happen if you had your own kid.”

The room grew extremely tense. “Oh,” Romana said quietly and accidentally.

“Ramses. Leona and I did conceive twins. She lost them.”

“This isn’t either of them,” Ramses reasoned. “Couples have multiple kids, they don’t look the same. The DNA always combines differently.”

“Ramses,” Mateo said once more. “You can’t give my daughter that I had with Serif a body created from what might have become the daughter that Leona and I had together. It will remind her of that trauma.”

“Well, I can’t undo it.”

“Make her a new one.”

“What?”

“Make a new body.”

“Well, what am I meant to do with this one?” Ramses questioned.

“Whatever you do with it, don’t tell anyone; least of all my wife. Start over, and just use one of the templates.”

Ramses breathed deeply, and looked over at Romana as if she would somehow be able to alter the outcome of this situation. It didn’t matter how either of them felt about it. This was Mateo’s decision, and nothing was going to change it. Mateo shut his eyes and nodded. “Okay. It will be another year for us. I’ve obviously developed a method of accelerating time to expedite the maturation process, but I still don’t have it down to less than a day.”

“Sorry, kid,” Mateo said to Romana. He then looked back over at Ramses. “Get it going, and automate the process. Then focus on my other daughter. Let her jump with us. She shouldn’t have to wait a whole other year.”

Ramses got to work on the second major project, but couldn’t figure it out. The team jumped forward without her, and came back to a seventeen-year-old. Fortunately, she wasn’t alone. Now with access to the lab, she was able to initiate the download process herself, and meet Dubravka for real. They had grown quite close over the last several months.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 21, 2398

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Bridgette is about to leave her room when realizes that she put her skirt on backwards. “Chey!” No response. She spins it around, glad she didn’t leave the apartment looking like that. Cheyenne would find it funny. “Chey!” Still no response. “Cheyenne, have you seen my bracelet! I don’t remember when I last wore it, but it’s not on my nightstand!” Why isn’t she responding? She needs to sleep a lot, even with the Insulator of Life, there’s no way she beat her out of bed this morning. She opens her door, and reaches over to knock on Cheyenne’s. “Are you there?” What is up with this? She takes the liberty of opening Cheyenne’s door. At first, it’s like she doesn’t see what she’s seeing. That’s not her, hanging there. It’s a big decoration for some kind of holiday that she’s not that familiar with. It’s a...it’s an illusion. There’s nothing there at all. This is some kind of trick. That Alyssa girl can make you see things, right. But why would she do that? Why would she make her see her best friend hanging from the rafter? That’s sick. This is sick. It’s a sick joke. “Help!” She flips the upturned chair upright, and jumps onto it, holding Cheyenne by the waist as high as she can. “HELP!” she screams again.

“The door is locked!” someone on the other side of it muffles back.

“Break it down!”

“Mateo!”

Mateo suddenly appears in the common area of the apartment.

“Get a knife!” Bridgette orders.

Mateo grabs a kitchen knife from the block. He runs into the room, squeezes himself onto the chair with her, and slices through the bedsheet. He tosses the knife to the corner just in time to catch them both before they fall to the floor.

Bridgette scrambles to remove the sheet from Cheyenne’s neck. She doesn’t check for a pulse, or a breath. She goes right into chest compressions and rescue breaths. By now, Leona and others have rushed into the apartment, having retrieved the master key.

Leona kneels down and takes Cheyenne’s wrist for some reason. “She’s gone.”

“No!”

“She’s cold,” Leona explains solemnly.

“So? It’s a little cold today. It’s the first day of fall, isn’t it?” Bridgette keeps going.

“Bridgette, stop.”

Bridgette stops. Her hands come off of her friend’s dead body, and land on her own knees as she leans back. “She’s so cold,” she agrees, tearing up. “She did this last night. Either I was here, or I came in, and didn’t check on her like I usually do. Why didn’t I check on her? If I had just...”

“Where is the Insulator of Life?” Mateo asks, looking around the room.

“Is that all you people care about?”

Leona takes both Bridgette’s hands in hers. “If it’s not here, where would it have gone? Would she have put it somewhere else?”

Bridgette wipes the saltwater from her eyes, and looks around too. “No. You were done with it, so she would have brought it back here, where it belongs.”

“She did,” Kivi says. “We were chatting, so I followed her in. I saw her set it on her desk.”

“And she wasn’t suicidal, right?” Leona asks.

“No, of course not.”

Leona looks up at Ramses, who sighs, and shuts his eyes in sadness and fear. “The boo-boo cage is on, right?”

“Yes,” Leona answers.

Ramses takes a little remote out of his pocket, and presses a button, dropping the remote in time for it to not teleport with him.

“Angela, check the security feeds. I want to know everything that happened in this building since I let who we thought was Ramses out of that cage.”

“You have a client meeting today,” Alyssa points out.

“You take it,” Angela requests.

“I’m not qualified or experienced, I’m just the receptionist.”

“You helped me edit the discussion notes. You know the material. I trust you. I need to watch the feeds. My mind can absorb the footage better than normal people.”

“Shouldn’t Kivi do it instead?” Alyssa suggests.

“Kivi needs to find someone for me,” Leona says, standing up.

“Who?” Bridgette questions.

“Erlendr Preston,” Leona answers with a burning hatred. “We may be able to rewrite history.”

Mateo wraps Cheyenne’s body in her blanket, and carries her out of the apartment. Bridgette doesn’t know where he’s taking her, or what they’re going to do with it. They’re not really a part of society anymore. Would they even be able to call the authorities on this matter? No, they have to handle it in-house. When they find out who did this, be it Ramses, Erlendr in Ramses’ body, or a random burglar, Bridgette is gonna deal with it herself. She’ll hurt anyone who tries to get in her way. They’re going to answer for their crimes, and she’s the only one who gets to determine what that means.

Leona doesn’t feel like it’s good for Bridgette’s mental health to be at The Lofts right now, so Marie escorts her to the condo. Heath has been sleeping in his old master bedroom, and Arcadia and Vearden sleep together, so that leaves the smaller room free for Bridgette’s use. She woke up well-rested this morning, but she’s feeling so tired. She can’t even keep her eyes open. She passes out on the bed.

She doesn’t wake up until night has fallen. The other four, including Marie, are sitting in the living room. “I’m hungry.”

“We’re warming a dish for you,” Vearden says, standing up, and heading for the kitchen area to retrieve it.

“What is it you people like to say,” Bridgette begins, “report?”

“Please, sit,” Marie recommends. “Angela finished with the security footage. The whereabouts of Ramses’ body has been accounted for all day yesterday, and all this morning. He fell asleep in his lab, having missed out on a lot of work, so a camera was always on him.” She hesitates to continue.

“Say it.”

“Andile Mhlangu was seen leaving your apartment, going down the stairs, and exiting through the side door.”

“I can’t remember who was in her body,” Bridgette admits.

Marie nods. “It was the man we’ve been looking for, Meredarchos.”

Bridgette nods. “That’s good,” she decides.

“Why would that be good?” Heath asks, afraid of the answer.

“Andile doesn’t need her body anymore, unlike Ramses. That means I can kill it.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 20, 2398

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Leona is back from Orlando. She was supposed to return last night, but there was just too much to do. She’s here now, though, and she’s ready to move on to the next issue. They have to somehow get Erlendr’s consciousness out of Ramses’ brain without also removing Ramses’ consciousness, and they have to somehow know that they have been successful. Erlendr is not the best actor in the universe, but he’s been convincing enough before, and he doesn’t have to be the one in charge of the body to be in it. He could go dormant, let Ramses take over for a day or two, and then bubble back up to the surface. What they need is a way to confirm that there is a consciousness inside of the Insulator of Life, that it’s the person they’re expecting it to be, and that no one else is in there with him. Unfortunately, the reality’s foremost expert on the temporal object is Ramses himself, and he’s not a reliable source right now.

Cheyenne doesn’t know very much about it, but she’s agreed to help in any way she can by looking over Ramses’ notes on the Insulator in the lab, just in case something catches her eye. “I can’t find page three from the sixth.”

“The sixth of what?” These notes aren’t exactly organized. This is unlike Ramses. Erlendr must have scrambled them on purpose.

“September.”

Leona hunts for the page elsewhere on the table.

“It looks important,” Cheyenne says. The page before references a breakthrough

Arcadia comes into the lab with a big dumb smile on her face. “Hey, there!”

“I thought you were wiping your hands of all this,” Leona points out.

“I had to make something for you first.” Arcadia slaps a tablet on the table.

Leona picks it up. “What is this?”

“A personality test,” Arcadia explains.

“I see that. Do you prefer round or squircular watches? Does cilantro taste like soap? What is this for?”

“It’s the only way to test for a psychic invader,” she claims.

“How exactly?” Leona presses. She swipes down to the second page. “By asking them to describe the perfect April 25th of 2001?”

“It’s not the questions themselves that matter, it’s how the responder answers them. You know Ramses. You know how he talks, how he behaves. Ask these questions, and pay attention to his micromovements.”

Cheyenne looks at the tablet over Leona’s shoulder. “So if he were a stranger this would be useless?”

“Yeah, that’s why it’s so important to have friends and loved ones,” Arcadia lectures as if she hasn’t spent thousands of years not believing it.

Leona sighs and swipes through more of the questions. “Do you ever smell fudge where there is no fudge? You stole that from Warehouse 13.”

“Well,” Arcadia scoffs jokingly, “if you’re gonna steal, steal from the best.”

“Can you help with the Insulator at all?” Leona asks as she puts the tablet down.

“I’m honestly not that familiar with it,” Arcadia admits. “I can tell you that it’s psychic, so you’re going to need a strong mind to control it.”

Leona widens her eyes, and sticks her turtle head out towards her.

Arcadia mimics the gesture. “Yeah, what?”

“You’re the psychic here, dummy,” Leona reminds her in a tone.

Arcadia shakes her head profusely. “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You’re not tricking me into being responsible for helping Mister Abdulrashid. More to the point, I won’t let myself be the one to fail at it.”

“We need someone strong of mind. There is none better than a Preston.”

“You’re thinking of my sister. I’m an asshole, remember?”

“I remember,” Leona agrees. “Look, you’re the closest thing we have to a telepath, Third Rail power suppression system notwithstanding. If you can’t do it, no one can. I need you, Arcadia. I need you to go up against your father...one last time.”

“What makes you think I would do that?”

Cheyenne takes a half step forward. “You’re the one who put him in there in the first place.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Arcadia questions.

“I can’t tell you how I know this, but the reason he’s in this reality is because you trapped him in that thing for billions of years.”

“I haven’t done that yet,” Arcadia explains.

“I know,” Cheyenne tells her. “But you will. You do it in your future, which means you can do it now.”

Arcadia frowns, and looks back over at Leona. Her face gives in even more. “Okay, bring him up here. I’ll try to transfer his consciousness out, but you have to run the Turing test, and you can’t blame me if it doesn’t work.”

“That sounds fair,” Leona says. She holds her hand out.

“What, you want a cookie, or something?”

Leona just shakes it once.

Arcadia reaches out and shakes it too.

Mateo escorts Erlendr upstairs, keeping him in chains the whole time. They place him in the boo-boo cage that Ramses built for anyone trying to teleport in or out of the area. Leona connects the Livewire to the Insulator of Life, then hands the other end to Arcadia, so she can work her magic on it. The latter takes deep breaths to center herself. She doesn’t have much psychic power here, so she concentrates what she does have, and focuses on a singular objective. When she’s ready, she plugs the wire in, and commands Erlendr’s mind to come out of the body he stole, and into the Insulator. Leona then sticks the Insulator away in a miniature Faraday cage, and the Livewire in a separate cage. Mateo takes the wire away, and Cheyenne takes the Insulator. Leona proceeds to test Ramses on his behavior. After running through the questions twice, she’s as satisfied with the results as she’ll ever be. It will never not be a risk.

That night, Cheyenne takes the Insulator back upstairs to her apartment, happy to once more have it in her official possession. She was all right lending it out to these people, but she really needs it so she can get back to the future. She sits down to craft a thank you and goodbye letter to them that she plans to have delivered after she leaves to restart her life. Halfway through, the Insulator begins to glow. It doesn’t normally do that; not unless it’s being used to store a consciousness...or free one. The glow expands into a light, which sharpens into the shape of a human. When the light fades, Andile Mhlangu is standing before her, except it’s not Andile; it’s Meredarchos. This is where he escaped to. Before she can scream for help, he rips the topsheet from her bed, and wraps it around her neck. He squeezes tightly until the lights go out.

Microstory 1746*: Heart of a Lion (Excerpt)

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The crowd gathered and whispered as Cordelia prepared herself. Chris tried to step up and stop her a few times, but Clay always held him back. Neither of them wanted her to get hurt, but Chris could not bear to see her in pain; not even for only three seconds. She lifted her hand, and everything stopped. The whispers, the mindless fidgeting—even the howl of the wind was waiting for her. She placed her palm on the handle, and wrapped her fingers around it. She cringed, but did not scream. One second passed. Chris lunged forward, and again Clay pushed him back. Two seconds. Chris was starting to feel a pain in his heart; empathy for a loved one. Three seconds. She had beat his record. Four seconds. Five seconds. She had beat the world record. Six and seven, still holding on, but the baton stayed in place. Chris made his most valiant effort to reach her and pull her back, but Clay still would not let him. It didn’t matter how strong she was. She wasn’t going to be able to do it. Even without the pain, it was in there too deep. Only the owner could remove it from the stone. That was their true mission, to find the owner and kill him. Had it been anyone else, they might have asked for help. But Chris realized who the owner had to be. Only one both had lived long enough, and possessed a soul twisted enough, to construct such a sinister trap. He didn’t know where to find the evil telepath, but at least he knew what he looked like. How many seconds had it been? Too many to count. The crowd stared in both fear and awe. She was doing the unthinkable, but could not quite make it all the way. That was the sickest part. It would be one thing to torture a hopeful wielder with pain, but another to cause that pain and still not reward them with what they deserved. Chris thought his empathy was growing stronger as the heat reached his face and stung his eyes, but he was wrong. It was real.

The heat from the burning baton was expanding. With it came powerful gusts of wind, which drove the onlookers back. A few persisted to show support for the elf who took the brunt of the flames, but most gave in. Chris and Clay were one of the steadfast. Even the rain felt like it was at a boil. They squinted, put their hands up in pointless protection, and struggled to walk forward. “Let go!” They took turns yelling to her. If she could hear, she was not listening. “Let go of the baton! It’s not worth it!” They reached her, and what they saw was more horrific than they could have imagined. Smoke dribbled out of her pores, and faded up into the air. Her hands, which were both now pulling on the handle, were literally on fire. It was the hottest Chris had ever felt. With Clay’s help, he tried to pull her away by the shoulders, but she was as stiff as the statue—petrified, at least for the moment. Chris quickly realized what he had to do. He took a few seconds to prepare himself before cupping his own hands around hers. He could feel her blisters as his own skin began to bubble. Clay tried to help as well, but he was unable to get closer than a few inches. The baton slid a few millimeters out. But only a few. Then it slid out a few more, each one easier than the last. More and more it gave as Chris felt a scream at the top of his lungs. He would later be told that he had not uttered a sound. Centimeters more, and it was just about free. Time froze. The pain went away. No blisters were on his hands. The whole world turned a purplish-blue. He could recall seeing this before, but could not place where. The fire was gone, but everyone else was still there. Next to him stood Cordelia, just as confused as he was. Their former bodies lain at their feet.

Microstory 1611: The Psychics

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Every human is born with telepathic potential. The ability to communicate with others using psychic signals is built into our species, and that is not something that can be removed from someone without killing them. It’s just part of who we are. You might be wondering how this is possible. You personally may have never experienced anything resembling telepathy in your life, and you’ve never heard of other people doing it either. How could it be true? Well, there are a number of factors that are operating against you, if you are such one of these people. Some universes are more hospitable to these psychic signals than others. They facilitate the transmission of them easily, whereas some just straight up block it. In other worlds, the signals transmit just fine, but there’s some sort of suppressant in the residents’ biology, neurology, or genetic makeup. There’s also a psychological factor. You have to know that you’re capable of it, and truly believe in yourself, and the people around you have to believe. They have to believe in you, and in themselves, and convincing a significant enough population that it’s all real is a real challenge. Because it has to start somewhere, and there’s no decent way to prove it to them unless they’re inclined to trust in it in the first place. These restrictions can be limited to whole planets, or even regions, and many places never get over them. Earth Prime, for instance, has little problem with psychic signal transference, though it’s certainly not the smoothest. The real issue is that these humans, in particular, don’t generally believe in any of these things. Even those who do only do so out of hope, but you have to have some understanding of the true mechanics, rather than simply relying on your intuitions, and exposure to fictional representations of such phenomena.

Like I said, some universes are better with this than others, and this is no truer than it is for a little place that I like to call Psychoverse. It’s a bit of an offensive term, yes, and I would never say it in front of someone who is from there, but it’s not entirely untrue either. This Earth has a major problem with what essentially boils down to racism. Some people are psychic, and some people aren’t, and those who are enjoy an unreasonable and unfair advantage over the lower class normal people. Attempts at regulation have always been met with heavy resistance, and often end in bloodshed. The psychics consider themselves to be superior to all others, and eventually decide to start referring to their supposed inferiors as The Braindead. Now that really is an offensive term, on multiple levels, and of course, it’s also completely untrue. Psychics aren’t smarter, or better. In fact, they lack a lot of very normal human skills, like independence, critical thinking, and true leadership. The Ochivari are antinatalists, but they only go after populations that are destined to destroy their own planet. The Psychoverse residents were bound to die out, which would have allowed their Earth to thrive, so I’m not sure why the Ochivari invaded. It’s, I guess, a good thing that they did, because the humans adapted quickly, and completely transformed their way of thinking, in order to combat this external threat. They shed their bigotry and injustices, and rose up against their attackers. Luckily, the Ochivari are not immune to psychic attacks, and this is a case of one of the few times when a planet managed to push back the invasion without the help of any of the teams dedicated to winning the Darning Wars across the bulkverse.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Sunday, July 28, 2143

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Mateo decided that there was no need to rush off back to his home universe. Leona would still be there waiting for him, and theoretically, no time will have passed for her. He possessed some of her memories, which meant he could recall her meeting his daughter, Dubravka, but he had never actually met her himself. She grew up in Ansutah, and spent her latter years in a different universe that he had never heard of, so this was a gift he would never get again. She couldn’t return with him since she had work to do, along with her cousin, Dar’cy—though they had never considered themselves related to each other, due to some timeline discrepancies.

They spent the whole day together, getting to know each other, and catching up. By the time it was over, Mateo was so calm and confident that he only needed to meditate for a few hours to be ready to slip back home. Meliora was impressed, having often spent days priming passengers to go with her. She was not born with the natural ability to travel the bulkverse, like Limerick, and she didn’t use technology, like The Crossover. It was something she learned to do after centuries of study and discipline, and even then, it wasn’t something she could simply do at a moment’s notice.

Things weren’t quite what they should have been when the two of them made it back home. It was indeed 2141, and only seconds had passed since Past!Mateo left the group with Nerakali and Imzadi. Those he left behind looked around for him for a bit, hoping he would come back immediately, but that wasn’t what happened. Mateo and Meliora were stuck in some kind of observation dimension. Time was moving at the same speed, and they could hear everything their friends were saying, but they couldn’t talk back, or interact with them in any way. “It’s okay,” Mateo assured her.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Meliora lamented.

“I’m not worried about it,” Mateo said. “We’ll get out of here eventually. Until then, let’s just watch over them.”

“Like a creeper?” she asked.

“If that’s your truth.”

“What is going on with you?”

“I’m a new person. Amber didn’t just give me my memories back, she helped me let go of my insecurities, and my guilt. Even though Hitler was a terrible person, I always felt a little gross killing him. I spent my whole life never having murdered someone, and then it happens. And then it happened so many times afterwards. I buried my feelings, but they were always there...until now. Now they’re gone, and I feel totally good about it. I no longer hold a grudge against Zeferino, or Arcadia. I’m no longer mad at the powers that be for having turned me into this. I’m just...”

“Chill?” she finished.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I’m just chill.” Intellectually, he knew that not being worried about anything could get him into trouble. After all, risks were still there, as they were a part of life. But it was a nice change of pace, knowing that everything would turn out okay, if that wasn’t true. “I have you to thank for it. I was already feeling a lot better after I got my soul back, but your meditation technique really pushed me over the edge. Meeting my daughter helped too, I can’t forget that. She’s where she needs to be, as is Imzadi. They’re good, Leona’s good, the two of us are good. It’s all good.”

“Is Leona good?” Meliora questioned. “She looks depressed.

Leona was lying in bed on the mobile home, fully clothed. She wasn’t sleeping, or reading. She just lied there, still.

“Nah, she’s good. She’ll be fine.”

It was true, Leona was fine. Ramses showed up, and asked for her help engineering some time travel something or other for The Sharice Davids. It was something that needed to be on the ship, but also needed to be kept secret, or something bad could happen in the future. This proved to be slightly more difficult than they thought, so they had to come back a year later to finish the job. Mateo and Meliora continued to watch them, as if they were stars in a really boring television show. Nothing interesting happened until they were finished with the temporal displacement drive, and someone showed up to complicate matters. Only one of them seemed to recognize him. “Tal’at?” Sanaa questioned.

“Hello, sister.”

“Sister?” Leona gasped. “You have a brother?”

“Yes.” Sanaa was regarding Tal’at with moderate unease, but not hatred.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why don’t you ever talk about him?”

“Do you talk about it every time you poop?”

“You don’t really think that’s the same thing, do you?” Leona asked.

“She’s always been jealous of me, and my life,” Tal’at explained.

Sanaa nodded ever so slightly, and made no move to contradict her brother’s statement.

Tal’at went on, “I was born with a freedom she always wanted. I didn’t have any psychic powers, and that allowed me to pursue whatever life I wanted.”

“I live the life I want now,” Sanaa argued.

“I know,” Tal’at agreed. “It’s not come without consequences, however.”

“What do you mean?” Sanaa asked. “What consequences?”

“Our great grandmother,” Tal’at started to explain. “She’s the psychic in this time period, and your presence is interfering with that.”

“Oh, yeah, that makes sense.” She was never supposed to become a time traveler, but the consequences from her having done so were always assumed to be limited to her having lost her telepathic abilities. At some point, she got them back, and it would appear this caused more problems. “I didn’t mean to.”

“We all know that,” Tal’at acknowledged. “The problem still must be corrected, however, and I was dispatched to see that that is carried out. We’ve let you go on for a while, because we didn’t have very many options. We didn’t want to solve a time travel problem with more time travel—that felt so...hypocritical—but now we think we’ve found a good compromise.” He looked at the walls of the ship’s corridors, almost like he was admiring them.

“The Sharice?” Sanaa guessed. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“It has an interesting future,” Tal’at replied.

“Yeah, it’s destined to be destroyed,” Sanaa confirmed.

“We’ll program you to be released before that happens.”

“You’ll program me to be released from what?”

Tal’at grinned, and banged on the wall twice with his fist. A secret door fell open, like a broken grade school locker. “I had it installed before you guys got here. That’s why Ramses had to wait until last year.”

“What is it?” Sanaa asked, getting annoyed about this whole thing.

“It’s a temporal stasis pod,” Leona answered.

“You won’t even think five seconds have passed,” Tal’at said, like that should give her comfort.

“I was here in the future,” Ramses began. “I was here when this ship is destroyed. She wasn’t rescued.”

“You sure about that?” Tal’at widened his grin. He reached into the pod, and flipped the ceiling down, revealing a bunch of mechanics that most people couldn’t recognize.

“It’s also an escape pod,” Leona realized. “If programmed appropriately, it should clear her of the blast and debris.”

“Then what?” Ramses pressed. “This isn’t going to get her back to Earth, or even Proxima Doma.”

“It will take time,” Tal’at said, “but that doesn’t matter. In fact, we want it to take time. The other Sanaa is destined to travel through the time cave in 2254. This Sanaa can’t wake up until after that, or she’ll just end up interfering with her own past self’s psychic responsibilities.”

“This is crazy, it’s crazy. It’s stupid, and I’m not doing it,” Sanaa complained.

“It’s either this, or you’ll be shunted.”

“Do you mean shunned?” Ramses asked.

“Time shunting,” Tal’at clarified. “You don’t have that in your reality? She’ll be placed in a pocket dimension, where time loops every day, or even every minute. And she won’t be let out until 2255. Do you want that? That’s your only other option. Either you jump right to the future, or you let yourself be tortured while you’re waiting. Kai Parker did it, and it made him even crazier than he already was. So I recommend...the pod.”

Sanaa huffed. “What do you think I should do, Mateo?”

“Mateo?” Leona asked, looking around. “You’re communicating with Mateo.”

“Yes,” Sanaa answered, acting like she had already been over this, which she hadn’t.

“Have you been able to connect with him this whole time?” Leona pushed.

“Of course,” Sanaa said. “You knew I could reach out to The Superintendent’s universe.”

“Well, yeah, but you didn’t say anything. How is he? Is he okay?”

“He’s fine, don’t worry about it. He’s here, he’s been watching us from an observation dimension. Meliora doesn’t know why they’re stuck there, but the barrier weakens every time we jump to the future, so they’ll probably be free next year.”

Mateo didn’t know that she could read his mind from there, but he wasn’t surprised, and he wasn’t shocked, and he certainly wasn’t going to let the development harsh his mellow.

“I’m not tryna harsh your mellow, dude-broh,” Sanaa said. “Just give me your opinion about the time pod, broh.”

“Do you trust your brother?” Mateo asked. “I mean, would he possibly be doing this to hurt you?” They were both talking out loud, but technically she couldn’t hear him. She was just listening to his thoughts.

“Yes, and no,” Sanaa answered. “He would not do this to hurt me.”

Mateo shrugged. “Then get in the pod, man. Sounds fun.”

“You get in the pod,” Sanaa snapped back on instinct.

“All right, cool.”

“Get out of the pod, Mateo,” Meliora ordered, shaking her head in disappointment.

“Did he get in the pod?” Leona asked Sanaa.

“He’s just screwin’ around, he’s out.”

“What about you?” Tal’at asked her. “Are you out?”

“Who am I to question the wisdom of Surfer!Mateo?” Sanaa reasoned. Poorly.

“I don’t know what that means,” Leona said, “but you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. We’ll find another way. Hell, the easiest way would be to just call Nerakali, and have her ferry you to the future.”

“I can’t read Tal’at’s mind like I can other people’s. All of our family’s non-psychics learn to ward their thoughts. Still, I can tell that he’s keeping something from me. There’s something he can’t say.”

“Is it that his intentions aren’t entirely pure?” Ramses figured.

“It’s that there’s more to this plan than just getting me to the future,” Sanaa corrected. “It’s where this pod ends up that’s the point. I do have to do this. I don’t know why, but this is where I get off.” She stepped into the pod, and stood there, waiting.

 Tal’at nodded gently. “Seal it up, make sure no one finds her, just like you did with whatever it is you built here.”

“Wait, you don’t know?” Ramses asked.

Tal’at stepped over to another wall, and reached down to open a portal like it was just a really big zipper. “We understand the value of discretion. It is your secret to keep.” He stepped through, and sealed the portal zipper behind him.

“Go ahead, Lee-Lee,” Sanaa said to Leona. “Start this thing up, and...let me go.”

“Do you have any idea where you’re going?” Leona asked. “July is almost over. For us, it’ll be 2256 in three weeks.”

“I don’t know,” Sanaa said honestly. “I don’t know if we’ll ever see each other again. But that’s okay. You helped me become a better person, and now maybe time will give me the chance to use what I’ve learned to help others.”

Mateo smiled and nodded, like a proud big brother who had to help raise her.

“Don’t give yourself so much credit, Matty,” Sanaa said.

Leona and Ramses inspected the pod, and made sure it would do what Tal’at claimed it would. Sanaa trusted him, but they didn’t know him, so they needed to see for themselves. After some more farewells, they closed the hatch, engaged temporal stasis, and covered it up with more walls, so no one would ever find it.

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