Microstory 2439: Dome for Pioneers

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Pro text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3

Ha! Dome for Pioneers. That’s so on the nose. That’s really what it is. You’re almost starting from scratch here. You don’t go all the way back to the beginning, like Paleodome, but you’re not provided with much. Like other lifestyle domes, you’re expected to stay here for an extended period of time, like years; not days, not even months. You’re here to get an idea of what life was like for people in 19th century New World. Everything you need is here, but you have to process it yourself. There’s wooded areas, arid desert, prairies, some small lakes (maybe ponds?) and rocks. They dress you in very simple clothes that look like they’re handmade, but I’m guessing they weren’t really. They give you a metal bucket, a few basic tools, and one wagon per ten or eleven people I think? I don’t remember what they said. If you have too few people, you don’t even get a wagon. There are some cows of some kind wandering around nearby, so if you do get one of the wagons, you have to put those two things together yourself. Good luck, dude, I actually think they’re real cows. While they’re not aggressive, they don’t want you tying ropes to them, and do you even know how to put a cow before a wagon? Didn’t think so. It’s the year 2500, we don’t have to do stuff like that anymore. That’s what’s so interesting about this place. If you wanted to know how the real pioneers survived with what little they had, and while enduring everything they had to, you had to have done your research ahead of time. There is no education here. I understand what they were going for, but that was probably a mistake. There should be a museum where they give you such education, not so you’re better equipped, but so you have a real appreciation for what you’ll experience in the simulation. What were their goals? What mistakes did they make? What kind of class divide was there, if any? I mean, you could turn your lot into a mountain man survivalist situation, and stay there for just as long, but that’s not what the pioneers were trying to do. They were digging in, founding towns, making a legacy for themselves. If people start using it right, given enough time, it’s possible that Dome for Pioneers might have to change its name to Dome for an Extremely Advanced Civilization. All the tools are there, it will just take time for us to relearn how to use them, just like our ancestors did. I think that it’s a really interesting social experiment. I just think it might not accomplish the right goals if management doesn’t guide the narrative in a proper direction. But don’t listen to me, I’m nobody.

Microstory 2418: Paleodome

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 2

This is a fascinating historical dome, but I think it can be better. I think they can make it more realistic, and more immersive. What’s the premise here? Well, it’s the paleolithic age, which is part of the stone age. Cavemen are working with stone tools, trying to figure out how to build societies, and engaging in the first (loose) definitions of war. I mean, it depends on how you define war. Were these organized, formal conflicts fought on distinct battlefields? No. But they were more than just two guys swinging clubs at each other during a disagreement. Their language was minimal, but they did make plans, and they did go out to fight together, so I would say that qualifies. The androids have been programmed with very low intelligence, but heightened curiosity, leading them to try all sorts of experiments, many of which don’t go too well. For now, these androids aren’t aware that you’re there. They’re literally programmed to ignore you while you watch from up close. I think they can do more with this. I think they can adjust the visitor’s intelligence as well. I know they do this with that zombie dome, where you can actually be transformed into a zombie. They seem to understand how people can bring themselves back to normal once they’re done with that. I don’t see any reason why the same principles can’t be applied here. It’s cool to watch the cavemen, but I want to be an active participant. I want to feel what it would have been like back then. In this regard, it’s an excellent reenactment. I don’t know exactly what year it’s supposed to be, but it moves in real time. I watched a guy learn how to cut a rudimentary axe-sort of thing out of stone, and that was a unique experience. That android will never do that again. He will never need to learn it again. Fifty years from now, if I go back, he will be “dead”. I’m sure his grandchildren will be starting to conduct their own tests, and learn their own lessons. That’s so cool to me, that we’re watching history unfold—albeit as a best guess based on archaeological evidence alone—and if you miss something, you miss it. There’s no going back to see what someone else saw before you. I think that’s really special. So if you’re interested in getting a glimpse of what Earth was like millions of years ago, you better come now, because it never stops changing.

Microstory 2305: Not Some Big Scam

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 3

I finished this stage script, and that’s what I’m mostly concerned about now. The novel is great so far, but I think that has more to do with Nick’s own imaginative mind. The musical, on the other hand, is a tool. It’s one last gift from him to us, and according to these version logs, he’s been developing it pretty much the whole time he’s been here. There are certain people in the multiverse who can travel to other branes, as he calls them, but there’s no way to contact most of them out of the blue. Could you imagine how difficult that would be? I mean, none of us even knew that the bulk existed until he showed up. But this musical, it’s our one chance. It’s an opportunity to prove that he was right all along, and this was not some big scam. A man by the name of Joseph Jacobson has a magical multicolored coat, which allows him to cross these dimensional barriers. Normally, he goes wherever he wants, whenever he wants. But he can sort of be summoned if you please him with a performance that depicts his life. His story has evidently been altered and adapted so many times, it’s not a hundred percent accurate of what happened, but that’s apparently not an issue. He just wants it to be good, and worthy of his time. This script is the first step in that endeavor. With Nick gone, it will be up to us to put it into production. That’s the next chapter in my life. I’m gonna produce this play, and prove once and for all that Nick was right. So...who’s with me?

Orthogradient: Quino and Rosalinda (Part III)

< > Entire Story

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2

Quino and Rosalinda covered their ears as Treasure screamed her way into a portal, and disappeared, hopefully back home. They held their hands in place, because the plan was for her to return to this very moment. If she had listened to Quino’s pleadings, she would be a few years older, and a little more age appropriate for him. Something must have gone wrong, though, because they waited for a couple minutes, and nothing. He dropped his arms in defeat. Rosalinda smiled at him sadly, and patted him on the back. They didn’t speak. They could only hope that Treasure moved on with her life, and forgot about them, not that she had gotten hurt, or worse, and couldn’t come back. They were going to be stuck here forever, but it wasn’t going to be that bad. There weren’t any dangerous people or aliens, and the Strongbox was stocked with enough supplies to get them through the next few weeks. They both stepped forward to admire the view. They were on a grassy cliff, overlooking the beautiful scenery below, and in the distance.

“Wait!” a masculine voice shouted to them from down the hill behind them, and through the trees. “Don’t leave without me!” He came out of the forest, running as fast as he could, and struggling with it.

“It’s okay!” Quino shouted back. “Catch your breath!”

The man stopped, grateful. He rested his hands on his knees, and panted. He squinted at the sun, and held up one finger.

“We won’t leave without you,” Quino added, “...and also can’t.”

“What?” When Quino tried to explain that they were just as trapped there as him, he dismissed them. “Hold on.” He mustered a second wind, and started running again, but quickly fell into a jog.

They might have gone down to meet them halfway, but even though Quino wasn’t a real soldier, one thing he learned from the ones he worked with was that the first rule of warfare was to always maintain the higher ground. The other first rule of warfare was to force your enemy to come to you. They didn’t know if this man was an enemy, or not, but they had to assume as much for the time being.

The stranger finally made it up to them. “What did you say?”

“We can’t leave,” Rosalinda clarified.

“That thing behind you can’t do it? I guess I assumed that that’s how you got here yourselves. There’s no one else on this planet.”

“It only works with a particular pilot,” Quino said, obviously not about to mention Treasure by name, and hoping that even this wasn’t too much information.

“Well, shit.” He set his hands on his hips, and looked out at the view as he finished the last of his panting.

“How did you get here, friend?” Rosalinda asked. “We were to understand that this world was not populated by any intelligent species.”

He looked back where he had come from. “I sure hope not. I was trying to figure out how to make a campsite when I saw your ship fly overhead. I dropped the sticks, and started running right for it. Then I heard someone scream? Was that your pilot? What happened to her?”

“She had to go somewhere else,” Quino said.

“My name is Rosalinda James. This is Quino Velsteran.”

“Adalwin Tillens. Welp, if I have to live here for the rest of my life, at least I won’t be  here alone.”

“We’re not staying,” Quino assured him without offering him a way out of here, which should come eventually.

“Neither am I...hopefully.”

“How did you get here in the first place?” Rosalinda asked him.

Adalwin sighed. “There’s this group of people who can do what your friend can. They...leak portals out of their skin, and fall into them. They can bring people with them, and I was in need of escaping a dangerous situation, so I asked for help. I was with them for a little bit before I failed to get back to them in time, and they left without me.”

“They didn’t wait for you?” Rosalinda questioned.

“Yeah, there must be something wrong with you,” Quino added, thinking that he and Rosalinda were on the same page.

“I meant,” Rosalinda began, “if there is nothing dangerous on this world, what was the rush?”

“Oh, they don’t have control over it,” Adalwin clarified. “It just happens. They have to stay close to one another if they want to go to the same place. They’ve become separated from friends that way. I don’t know what it’s like when you do it, but for them, it’s like this psychedelic waterslide, which branches off into different directions, so you have to hold on and be careful. Stay with your sliding buddy, they would always say.” He sighed again. “I should have listened.” He perked up. “But you’re here now, and everything is going to be okay again...right?”

Rosalinda was hoping that Quino would agree, since she was obviously on board with helping this man. “Right,” she said herself, giving up. “We’ll get you out of here, one way or another. Come on, Qui-qui, let’s see if we can figure out whether this thing stores bulk energy, or what.”

“Yeah, come on, Qui-qui,” Adalwin encouraged jovially.

“You don’t call me that,” Quino warned as they were walking up to the Strongbox.

They stepped inside, and started looking through the computer. There actually was a little bit of bulk energy in the reserves, but none of them knew enough about how this stuff worked to know whether it was enough. Besides, Treasure wasn’t only essential to the operation of the machine because she could power it, but she also navigated it. According to Treasure’s teacher back in her homeworld, Thack Natalie Collins, traveling the bulk either required extremely precise mathematical calculations and-or foreknowledge, or psychic capacity. Anyone could figure out how to go where they wanted, as long as they had the right tools at their disposal, but people like Treasure had this gift naturally as an extension of their ability to utilize bulk energy. Quino and Rosalinda were not practiced enough to be comfortable navigating on their own, even if they could figure out how to get this thing running. Or maybe it wasn’t practice at all, but mental zen, or whatever. See? They didn’t even know.

“I’ve done it a few times myself,” Adalwin said. “Perhaps I can be your navigator.”

“Navigate us where?” Quino pressed. “Back home, or to one of the worlds you were on before? We’re not trying to go to any of those places. We’re trying to go to...” Quino trailed off before he said something too specific about Treasure.

“Salmonverse,” Rosalinda said. “That’s where we should go. Only there will we find someone who can help. They have all sorts of time travelers there. Someone will know something. If we try to go where...our friend is...” She gave him a look.

Quino understood. She wasn’t an idiot. This man was a stranger, and he couldn’t be trusted. Voldisilaverse was vulnerable to attack. Treasure’s mother’s home brane, however, was equipped with people who could combat a threat, including an unknown one. “Yeah, you’re right.” He kind of kicked at the console, but not angrily. “We still have no way to get this moving, though, if there’s even enough of that stuff.”

“I may have some on hand,” Adalwin volunteered.

“Bulk energy?” Rosalinda questioned. “Why would you have any of that?”

“As I said, we’re watersliders,” Adalwin started to explain. “And water is sticky. It stays with you. That’s why the originals can’t stop falling into their portals, because their bodies just keep producing it against their will. They think they could be free if they drained themselves of literally all water, and replaced their blood from donors, but I don’t think that’s medically possible. Anyway, I’m not like them, but just by accompanying them a few times, I have some liquid bulk on my body. It’s not enough to turn me into a full slider, but it may be enough to add to what you already have.”

“How would you go about doing that?” Quino asked, even more suspicious of him. “You gonna pee into the engine?”

Adalwin laughed. “No, it’s nothing crazy like that.” He kept laughing for a moment before dropping into his serious face. “No, I would bleed into it.”

“We’re not going to let you do that,” Rosalinda contended. “Neither of us is a doctor, and I’m sure that Tr—our friend is on their way.”

“It’s okay.” Adalwin slipped a knife out of his pocket, flung it open with a flick of his wrist, and chuckled when they tensed up into defensive positions. “It will all leak from one cut. All I’ll need is a bandage. Surely this Strongbox has a medkit.”

Quino tensed up even more. “I never told you what this was called.”

“What?” Adalwin asked.

“The Strongbox. I literally just named it. I only told two people.”

Adalwin dismissed it as a concern. “Heh. Time, right? I’ve heard of it before.”

“Funny, five minutes ago, you were just guessing that it was a means of escape,” Rosalinda pointed out. “Which is it, you’ve heard of it before, or you were only hoping that it would save you?”

Adalwin dropped the act, and tossed the knife from one hand to the other.

Quino took out his sidearm, and trained it at Adalwin.

“The blade really is for me,” Adalwin insisted. He turned the tip downwards, and sliced his own forearm open. It was small, as he promised, but that wasn’t the point.

It was not worth the risk. Quino would rather die here than put Treasure in danger. This man lied about who he was, and that alone was enough to make Quino wary of him, even though they would never learn the truth. He had to protect his love, whether she would want him to or not. She may never look at him the same again, but she’ll be alive. He would always shield her from danger. He squeezed the trigger, and let the bullet strike right into Adalwin’s lying throat.

Adalwin—or whatever his real name was—reached up and tried to push the blood back into his body as he was choking on it. A lot of it spilled out anyway, and dropped to the floor, as did the blood from the cut on his arm. The lighting in the Strongbox intensified slightly, and the engine revved up. He was right about one thing, his body had some bulk energy in it. And apparently this machine was designed to absorb it no matter where it came from, or where it landed. Adalwin backed himself against the wall, and slouched down towards the floor before he died.

Quino breathed heavily through his nose. “I’m sorry.”

“I can’t blame you,” Rosalinda replied. “I couldn’t have done it myself, but—but, hey.” She turned his chin towards her when he tried to look away in shame. “But I wanted to. Like he said, time has little meaning for our lives anymore. We’ve already met people who knew who we and Treasure were before we showed up. He could have done the same thing, but he played dumb. He was hiding something, and something tells me it wasn’t that he once called his neighbor a dirty word. He was hiding something big. Big and bad.”

Quino nodded, but still wouldn’t look her in the eye. “I’ll bury the body and clean up the mess.”

“You can bury the body,” Rosalinda agreed, “but I’ll clean up. We’re in this together.” She eyed the bulk reserves, which had gone up slightly. “Actually, you go ahead and go out to dig the grave. I have to do something first.”

“Okay.” He didn’t see what she was looking at, or guess what she was thinking. He grabbed a power shovel from the storage locker, grateful that someone thought to pack tools. He probably wouldn’t have thought of it since he had never once set foot on real soil until he met Treasure. He was going to dig a shallow grave to make it easier, but this dirt was soft, and not too difficult to cut through, so he decided that it was better to go the normal depth. The shovel’s motor did a lot of the work. When he was finished, he went back to drag the body down the hill. It was waiting for him outside the Strongbox, propped up against the exterior hull. It was a lot lighter than he expected. There was something unusual about the skin, and as he inspected it, Quino realized that the hole in the neck was bigger than it should have been. “What did you do?”

Rosalinda was still scrubbing the blood from the floor, and she didn’t stop. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“His blood. It’s been drained. It’s all gone.”

Rosalinda stopped scrubbing, but still didn’t look up. “I did what I had to to get us out of here. Treasure is a time traveler. If she were ever coming back, she would have done so already. It doesn’t matter how long she spent out there, she would be here now. I’m sorry, but we both know that.”

He looked up at the bulk reserves, which were now full. “We still don’t know how to navigate this thing.”

She went back to her work. “We’ll figure it out. I don’t care where we go, but we’re not staying here.”

Quino stepped back through the hatch, but stopped for a second. “There are worse worlds than this. If we do manage to leave, I’m sure we’ll become acutely aware of that.” He left again, and carried Adalwin’s body to the grave. He gently placed it down on the bottom, and then climbed back up to fill it up. He scattered the excess around, so no one would suspect that anything was here, and even planted a few grass seeds to cover up the evidence eventually. He didn’t say a few words, and Rosalinda never came down to visit the unmarked grave. Once they were both showered, they quietly went back to the controls to see if they could do something productive with them.

They found Treasure Hawthorne standing at the entrance. “I’m back. Sorry if you were waiting and worried. Thack told me to return eight hours late. She wouldn’t say why.” She smiled as she was taking a trinket out of her pocket, then extended her arms towards Quino. “Here. I made you something.”

< > Entire Story

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 4, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

It’s impossible to estimate how long Mateo has until he can no longer teleport, or how many times he can do it, or even how far he can travel altogether. Ramses ran every test he could come up with multiple times, and couldn’t come to a solid conclusion. Mateo is not losing the ability little by little. It’s fluctuating unpredictably, and will likely only become more unreliable with time. He may start to have trouble aiming at his destination, or lose a lot of time in a given attempt. Where he is when he’s not at Point A or Point B is unclear, but the answer could be incredibly dangerous, whether he knows what it is, or not.

“What about the timonite that’s stuck to my hands? Is that dripping off, or what?”

“I don’t know,” Ramses admits. “I don’t know enough to figure out how to detect it. I’ve scanned your hands, and it can’t tell whether there’s any timonite there at all. It can’t even detect the weird telekinetic outer layer that the god dude gave you.”

“I guess I’m more worried that I’m going to lose that, and go back to midasing everything I touch, dispatching it to an innocent, unsuspecting universe.”

“The guy who gave that to you was wildly powerful, based on Leona’s descriptions, and what I’ve witnessed for myself. I doubt that it has a time limit, and if it does, it’s surely based on the integrity of the timonite that it’s there to contain.”

“I sure hope you’re right,” Mateo says.

“I’m sorry that I can’t do anything about the other thing.”

That’s okay. Having that power back felt nice, but it’s not like he was used to it. He spent most of his life without the ability to teleport, or do anything like that. He was born to be a salmon—he’s not supposed to make his own choices—so anytime he has is gravy. “Don’t sweat it. We’ll get out of this reality, and go back to the way things were.”

“You’re mighty confident these days,” Ramses notes.

“I’m trying not to be so stressed out and worried. Everyone else is having a really hard time right now, and the best thing I can do is stay calm, and help where I can.”

“That’s a very mature thing for you to say.”

“Well, I am hundreds of years old, or thousands, or just a regular adult, depending on how you’re measuring time,” Mateo muses.

“I measure it with this.” He takes a wand from his cabinet, and waves it around.

“What is that?”

“It’s a temporal...a temponeural, umm...”

Mateo laughs “What? What are you trying to say, guy?”

“I’m not sure what to call it yet. A neurotemporal something something detector.”

“What exactly does it do?”

Ramses hovers it over Mateo’s forehead. It makes a noise. Once it’s finished, he inspects the readout. “Hmm. It says that your consciousness is a few seconds old.”

“So it needs work.”

“Yes.”

Mateo thinks that he might possibly have a halfway decent idea, which he hopes won’t sound stupid. “Could you scale that up?”

“How big?” Ramses asks.

“Big enough to scan the whole world?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 12, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

Apparently, the radio tower they were hoping could put them in contact with someone who might be able to help them is more of a decorative piece. It worked at one point, but the locals never used it, and didn’t maintain it through storm after storm. Now it’s so damaged that Ramses probably couldn’t cobble together a fix, even with parts from The Olimpia, or the other way around. He didn’t really even want to try. The more they thought about it, the riskier the idea felt. They don’t have any allies out there, except in the penal colony. In order to protect Amir, and his whereabouts, they have to get out of the region themselves, and they pretty much have to do it in secret.

Ramses decided to keep trying to fix the Olimpia to get them closer to home, or at least so far away from Amir that no one thinks to look for him in the village. He takes this as an opportunity to try out his new lantern as a source of light when looking into an access panel, and that’s when he makes a startling discovery. The lantern illuminates everything around it uniformly, but there are also points of light in various places. One wire here, a circuit there. When he checks these places, he notices an issue that’s contributing to all the problems that they’re facing with the full operation of the vehicle. As he works through it, the points of light adjust in a pattern that he’s had to learn to understand, which guides him to a solution.

The lantern is obviously special, but he doesn’t know exactly how. He’s tried to come up with a temporal explanation, but there isn’t one. Nothing about time and space would lend itself to such a function, and nothing about the advancement of more traditional technology would either, except maybe some very fancy augmented reality. That has to be it, even though he’s never encountered such tech before. The locals of this little bit of land on this island obviously know more than they have conveyed, though it’s unclear if they’re intentionally keeping secrets, or if the language barrier between the two parties is simply too hard to see over.

Marie has kept trying to communicate with them, using body language drawings in the dirt, and demonstrations. From what she can gather, a boat comes around from the cities on the other side of the island once a month to deliver supplies, and occasionally transport people. They could get on it, and from there, make their way to anywhere in the world. This would be a great option—despite the sadness that would come from having to abandon the Olimpia—but the problem is that it’s not due for another two weeks, and sometimes, when the weather is bad, it ends up having to skip a month. Unfortunately, that may be their only hope if Ramses can’t get the Olimpia back in full working order. Even with the lantern, he might not have the tools he needs to accomplish this. There are a lot of missing parts here, strewn all over the North Pole.

Mateo climbs down to the engineering section with a certain smile.

“What?” Ramses asks, knowing that look.

“Nothing. Just. What are you missing? Like, what’s a part that needs to be replaced? A cable maybe, or a bolt?”

Ramses picks up a small, clear object. “This is called a crystalatis. It’s supposed to be glowing blue—”

“Yeah, I don’t care,” Mateo sets the crystal-thingy on a step, and stabs it with his new knife. A blue-glowing duplicate of it pops out of the handle. “Ta-da!”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 19, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

The LIR Map, yeah, that sounds interesting, but Angela is going through something right now that she feels she can’t talk to anyone about. It was her idea to take Marie’s place at her job, but the situation has turned out to be a house of cards, and she’s worried about ruining the whole thing. At some point, when this all dies down, Marie is going to want to return to her life, and it’s Angela’s responsibility to make sure it still exists when that happens. She thought it was a great idea to use the artificial intelligence that Ramses took from The Constant, but it’s placed her in an awkward position. She thought she was being so clever, carefully utilizing the powerful tool in such a way to prevent others from noticing. Notice, they did. Apparently, her employer has been utilizing an AI of their own. To make sure the code that their programmers write is created by a human, and is not some kind of virus, they scan all submissions. No one is in trouble, but her superiors are very interested in how her code keeps failing the scan tests. They’re just too perfect.

She finishes the video call with the Prime Executive of the company. It’s a pretty big deal. This guy doesn’t normally talk to people like her. She keeps downplaying her work, indicating that she simply spent a lot of time bulking up her library of repeaters, which would explain why her new programs are so sophisticated and bug-free, but he’s not buying it. He can’t force her to do anything, and he’s being really nice and patient about it, but this is why Marie’s life could all just fall apart.

A knock on the door. Heath is on the other side. When did he get home? “Is everything okay?”

“It’s fine, why?” Angela replies.

“I couldn’t help but hear part of the conversation. Evidently, you’re doing quite well at Marie’s job?”

As far as she knows, the people on this team don’t lie to each other. Of course, she may just be ignorant about it, and it’s certainly no good reason to lie to them herself, but in this case, she probably has no choice. They have enough on their plates. This is her problem, and she has to fix it, no matter the cost. “Yeah, it’s not that hard once you get the hang of it.”

He’s giving her the same face the exec was when she was trying to lie to him. “It actually sounds like you’re too good at the job.”

“What are you saying, that I’m better than your wife?”

“What?”

“You want I should call her about that? Could I get a quote?”

“What are you talking about? How did this become hostile?”

“Are you accusing me of something?”

“No, of course not. What kind of accusation might that be?”

“Just...I need to be alone right now.”

“Okay, that’s fine, I just—”

She closes the door, and leans up against it, trying some breathing exercises. This isn’t going to work. She needs help, even if she gets in trouble for what she tried to do. He’s still standing there when she opens it up again, like he knew she would. “All right. Let me tell you the truth.”

“It’s okay. We’ll figure it out. I have an instinct to help people with your face.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 18, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

Leona is sitting on a stool in her new lab. She normally just works in an office, or remotes in from home, but she’s waiting for the item to arrive. She’s been asked to make a preliminary assessment on a mysterious object that Ramses and a band of mercenaries “liberated” from a transport team just outside of Munich. As of yet, no one has been willing to tell her what this object is, or even hinted at what it could be. They just hope she can figure it out, and give them some scientific advantage. She’s bored, because she was required to leave all communication devices outside of the room. It’s actually a room inside of a highly insulated room with blast doors, which the executives hope will insulate the rest of the facility, should the object explode. When she pointed out that this was a way of telling her that it was a bomb, they seemed to not quite agree with that.

Petra walks in. Behind her are two military men in black uniforms, carrying a plastic grayish case between them. “Over there,” she orders, pointing. They set it down on the table.

Leona gets up to get a look. “Okay, now can you tell me what it is?”

Petra clears her throat suggestively. The military men leave, but even after they do, Petra hesitates to respond.

“Okay, I guess I’ll just open it myself.” Leona places a hand upon it. She doesn’t hear anything, but she can feel something inside click, and rotate.

“Good luck,” Petra says. “Let me know what you find.”

“Wait, what?”

“That’s your first task, to get the case open. We’ve already tried, and it appears to be impenetrable. That’s why you have so many tools and equipment at your disposal.”

Leona looks at her, and then the case. “You don’t even know what this is?”

“No.”

“Why did you steal it?”

She hesitates again, but gets on with it. “It appeared to be rather important to the people we recovered it from.”

Leona just stands there. “It could be a nuclear bomb.”

Petra nods. “Yes.”

“It could be a biological weapon.”

Petra nods again. “It could.”

“And you want me to just open it without question.”

“You’ll be handsomely rewarded.”

“If I live,” Leona amends for her.

Petra nods once more. “Correct.”

Leona sticks her tongue inside her bottom lip. “Thank you. You can go now.”

“Like I said...good luck.”

Leona scowls as her boss leaves the room, and then the other room. She places her hands on her hips, and looks around a moment when one of the observation cameras catches her eye. That’s what she’s calling them now, because they’re obviously not there for security. Petra and Senator Honeycutt are in a room right now, watching everything that happens. She’s not going to give them the satisfaction. She removes a giant freakin’ wrench from the wall, and smashes it against one of the cameras, and then another, and then most of the rest. She leaves the last one up for a second. “I’ll let you know what I find...if I feel like it.” With that, she destroys it, then sits down to wait for someone to arrive in anger, but no one does. So maybe they have a hidden camera that she can’t find, or they’re willing to take the L on this one.

Now that she’s alone, she can finally get to the bottom of all this. It could be anything. It could be dangerous. She’s just grateful that the thing didn’t pop open as soon as it found itself in her presence, because she doesn’t need any more questions. It is unlocked. It reacted to her touch as if she were always destined to have it. Wasting no more time, she goes back to the table, and lifts the lid. Inside is a large, blank piece of brown paper. Parchment, she might call it. “This is weird,” she says out loud. As she speaks, lines and colors begin to form on the page. In the top left corner is a square, displaying an image of this moment right here of Leona standing in her lab. Another square forms next to it, showing the observation room she predicted would exist. Petra, Honeycutt, and a few other people are watching her on a monitor, but they can’t see anything noteworthy, because the hidden camera is pointed at her back. The digital clock, that’s where the secret camera is.

She picks up the wrench again, and smashes the clock. When she returns to the parchment, a third square has appeared, illustrating that act, and then a fourth shows the Senator walking briskly down the hall. It looks like a comic strip, but that’s not the whole story. This...is the LIR Map. Lincoln Isaac Rutherford is a man from the main sequence with the ability to know everything about the universe, though not necessarily all at once. He has described time as a painting. Most people are standing very, very, very close to their little section of this painting. They can see some of the past, and blurred images of the future, but mostly only the present—their present. All he does is step back and get a better view, and then he can move over and look at a different section of the grand painting. A different section, kind of like a comic book panel?

Leona wasn’t around when Mateo, his brother, Darko, and Lincoln were charged with figuring out how to create this special map, which mimicked the latter’s ability, but reportedly, none of them ever actually saw it. They realized that the only way to get a clear picture of the universe was to leave it, but they were not asked to participate in this final step. Arcadia returned without showing them that it worked, though it obviously did. How it found its way to this reality, Leona couldn’t say, and neither could anyone else. If there’s one thing she knows about it, though, it’s that the map can’t be destroyed. Well, she doesn’t know that for sure, but due to its immense power, Arcadia probably demanded it to be made indestructible. So she folds it in half, confident that she’s not ruining a priceless relic. Then she folds it in half again, and again, and again, and again. When all is said and done, it’s the size of a quarter, and no thicker than it was before. She tucks it into her underwear just as the door is opening.

“What is it?” Senator Honeycutt demands to know.

“It’s nothing.”

He glowers at her, then steps over to look into the case. All he sees is the protective black foam, and an indentation that suggests that something the size of a desktop computer was in it at some point. “What did you do? What did you do with it?”

“Look around, my friend. Check the badge logs. I never left, and I couldn’t have hidden an object that size anywhere in here. That case is empty, and it has been this entire time. I don’t know why your enemies were transporting it so carefully, but it looks like you’ve been had. Maybe they knew you were coming?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 17, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

Everybody found their own room, and slept in The Constant that night. They didn’t make any plans for the next day, but it seemed as good a place as any. They stayed close to each other, even though they consisted of two parties of strangers. The next day, with nothing better to do, Ramses and Leona start looking into the database, or what’s left of it. There’s a lot still here, but it becomes clearer the more they look through the directories that a lot of data has been stripped. When Danica left, she knew someone else could find this place one day, and she didn’t want them to have access to certain information. The fact that she didn’t just run out all of the sudden, or die without warning, was already obvious. She had the wherewithal to seal up the top of the main elevator, and dismantle the elevator car itself. If she recorded some kind of log that might give them an idea why she’s no longer here, she took that with her too.

The little girl, Trina runs into the room, holding a small black box. “What is this thing?”

Leona isn’t paying her any attention, so Ramses takes it from her, and looks it over. “I have no idea? Wait. It looks like some kind of magnetic memory storage device.”

Leona turns her head. “It’s a video cassette tape.” She turns back.

“Where did you get it?” Ramses asks Trina.

“I think it was a library, but this is the only thing that was in it.”

Now Leona’s interested. “How big was this library?”

“Like, four stories tall, and maybe endlessly long?” Trina ballparks.

“And that’s the only thing you found?” Leona presses.

“Yeah, it was in this thing.” She hands Leona the case.

Jim Carrey is dreaming of himself lying on the snow next to Kate Winslet. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”

“Is it a movie?” Trina guesses.

“Yeah.”

“Is it good? It must be good if they cleared out the entire library, except for this one thing.”

“Did you find it fallen on the floor, as if someone had dropped it, or still sitting on the shelf?”

“It was on the first shelf I saw when I walked in, facing the door. I looked through several aisles. They were all empty.”

Leona and Ramses give each other a look, but they’re not thinking the same thing. “Computer, where do you keep the VCR?”

The computer doesn’t respond vocally. It just lights up the floor and walls to lead them down to the legacy technology sector. Leona follows it, and Ramses and Trina follow her. They find the VCR already connected to a box TV, rather than tucked away somewhere. She expects to blow dust off of the top, but it’s perfectly clean. There’s a robot in here somewhere who’s been maintaining the bunker. Leona inserts the tape, and presses play.

“I love you,” says Joel.

“Meet me in Montauk,” Clementine whispers back.

That’s it. It’s stuck between 1:30:50 and 1:30:55, repeating those two lines over, and over, and over again. The tape keeps skipping. Ramses thinks he might be able to fix it, but Leona stops him. “It’s a clue.”

“It’s a clue for what?”

Leona pauses the video, and echoes the last line herself. “Meet me in Montauk. Meet me in Montauk.”

“Does that mean anything to you?” Trina asks.

“That sounds like a city. Is that where we’re meant to go?” Ramses questions.

Leona tilts her head, considering the words, and what they may mean in a more figurative sense. Thinking she has it figured out, she runs off. The other two follow her again, down the hallways, and into the main living area. Heath, Alyssa, and the boys are already there, chatting about this and that.

“Is everything okay?” Heath stands up to help in whatever way necessary.

Leona ignores him, and heads straight for the corner of the room. She stares at the wall. “Where’s that sledgehammer?”

“Why do you need it?” Heath asks.

She just turns to him and scowls. He’s not really in a position to question her. Intellectually, she knows she shouldn’t blame him—that it could never have been his idea to use a time bullet to blow a hole in a concrete ceiling five kilometers up—but she can’t help but be angry at him anyway.

He steps over to the main elevator shaft, and retrieves the sledgehammer.

“Rambo,” Leona says, “he’s still recovering. Could you do the honors?”

Ramses accepts the tool from Heath. He gets in position, but doesn’t swing. He places the business end against the wall that she’s staring at. “Right here?”

“Yes,” she orders.

He does as he’s told, bashing the hammer against the wall over, and over, and over again. The facility is constructed out of metal, probably graphene, and maybe other metamaterials. There’s no wood, or even brick anywhere. They wouldn’t last very long. Why is this made out of wood? Once he’s gotten through, they find a door on the other side. He knocks the last of the wall out of the way, and wrenches it open. A light flickers on to reveal an upright stasis pod. There’s only one reason to design a pod like that, and it’s if the user is literally kept in stasis. Time is probably moving at infinitely slow speeds, so almost none will have passed since they stepped in. As long as you have power, it’s the only way a normal person could survive for many thousands of years, if not longer. Other methods allow for too much aging, radiation poisoning, and other failures.

Leona uses the touchscreen to command the pod to open. When it does, Mateo steps out. “You’re here!” she exclaims. “You’ve been here the whole time?”

Mateo takes her by the shoulders, and pushes her out. He looks around the main living area to take stock. “Is everybody who came down here in this room right now?”

“What? What are you talking about?” Ramses asks.

Mateo screams in his face, “is everyone here!”

“Yes.”

“Then run!” Mateo sprints across the room, to the little secondary elevator. He holds the door open, and ushers everyone in one by one. First Leona, then Ramses, Trina, Carlin, Moray, and Alyssa. Heath and Mateo squeeze in last, making it a very tight fit. But it’ll be worth it. Mateo pops open the firefighter access panel with a flathead screwdriver that he has in his pocket. He reaches in, but waits. “There are more people in here than I thought there would be. Make sure the young ones are in the middle.

Moray has to adjust a little, but it’s about as good as they’ll do.

Mateo pulls the switch. They shoot upwards, faster than any elevator should safely move. They can feel the g-force desperately trying to squish them into the floor. But it’ll be worth it.

“Oh my God!” Heath shouts.

“Whoopee!” Trina cries.

At some point, the elevator car starts to tip over. Everybody begins to yell in fear, even the little one, because they’ve reached the surface, and now they’re coming back down. They don’t crash, though. They can feel themselves bouncing, rolling, bouncing, and rolling. When the ride finally ends, the door opens automatically, allowing them to see the giant air bags that released automatically, which are now gradually deflating.

“What the hell was that?” Leona demands to know.

Before Mateo can say anything, they hear a boom. A plume of dirt rises into the sky. He runs over, and the rest are compelled to do the same. They hear rushing water as they near the road, and after they get over the hill, they can see the crater. It’s filling up with water, resourced from pipes that they barely have time to see before they’re covered up.

“I say again...what the hell was that?” Leona repeats.

Mateo catches his breath. “It’s Danica Lake.” He falls to the ground, and passes out.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 13, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

It’s too much work. They tied a mess of rope to the ladder, and across the shaft to the metal beam things that were once used to transport the elevator car, back when there was an elevator in here. They still can’t figure out what happened to it, but it’s looking like they’re going to have to somehow build their own. Should teleportation stop being available to them at some point, they don’t want to have to climb up and down a ladder five kilometers at a time. Perhaps a slide? Or a staircase? No, none of this is at all reasonable. It’s just too much work, and neither of them is equipped to take on such an endeavor.

They still have plenty of work that has to be done either way, so they try not to worry about it while they’re digging. The soil level could be piled several meters thick, and they can’t dig straight down, instead opting for a ramp that people can actually walk down. After waking up the next day, having barely made a dent in the job, they decide it’s time to rethink this whole thing.

“Hasting,” Heath suggests without elaborating.

“Hastings...Nebraska?”

“Yes.”

“What about it?”

“Stay with me here. Why doesn’t the ground over the elevator shaft just fall down into the hole?”

Mateo points over their heads. “Because of this ceiling,” he says, knowing that Heath is only asking to support his argument, not because he doesn’t know. They’re standing on a little platform that they installed to give them more room. It was the easiest part of yesterday’s work, drilling holes in cement while hanging over the abyss.

“Right. So what would happen if we took out the ceiling first?”

“I don’t know,” Mateo says, nodding his head. “I get where you’re going with this, but I’m not a civil engineer, or whoever would understand how this all works. Maybe the ground would fall in, or maybe not.”

“We have to break through this anyway. Might as well start from below. All we would have to do is extend this platform.”

“Uhuh,” Mateo begins. “And if there’s a platform, where does all the concrete and dirt fall as we break through it? And if it doesn’t work, and we still need to start digging from above, what happens to us when we destabilize it enough to actually cave in?”

“Oh, yeah.” Heath frowns. “This is impossible!”

They’re silent for a few moments, before Mateo remembers something. “Why did you bring up Hastings, Nebraska?”

“Oh, yeah.” Heath repeats himself, then shrugs. “It’s only thirty minutes away the way you drive, but we could rent a power chisel without anybody asking any questions.”

“Yeah, that’s one option.”

“What’s another one? Everything seems too slow.”

Mateo nods. “It’s gonna storm tonight.”

“Yeah...?”

He rifles through his bag until he finds their salvation. He holds it between his fingers like it’s the most important find ever.

“It’s a bullet.”

“It’s a telebullet,” Mateo corrects. “It may just be all we need.” He smiles, dreaming of Shawshank.

“What does it do?” Heath asks.

“Usually, you shoot it at someone, and it instantly transports them to wherever you want.”

“Isn’t that something that you can do yourself?”

“Yes, but I can’t move a concrete ceiling and hundreds of cubic meters of soil and rock.”

“But that little bullet can?”

“Well, it can be more destructive, which should be enough to destabilize the ground, and cause a cave-in. Or, uh, not should, but could. Hopefully.”

“I guess we might as well try,” Heath figures, “as long as you don’t need that bullet for something else.”

“It’s like you said, I can teleport myself, but only at this special location. It has no other use in this reality. If we ever get back to the main sequence, I could always find myself some more, I’m sure.”

“All right, I’m in. I assume you mentioned the storm, because there could be thunder?”

“Yes, but the sound is not the only problem we have.”

“How does the bullet explode?”

“Right.”

“Well, I can make a little bomb. I assume it doesn’t have to be powerful enough to blast through a mountain.”

“I assume as much as well.”

Fortunately, Heath already owns a six-meter long ladder, stored in his flying carboat. They’re going to stop calling it that, as they’ve come up with a proper name. It will now be known as The Olimpia. Mateo carefully extends the ladder so that it’s resting on the ledge on the other side of the shaft, and ties everything up. He runs planks across it so he has somewhere to stand while he’s working. It’s absolutely not the safest thing in the world, but he has himself tied to the structurally sound emergency ladder with mountain climbing equipment, so it should be fine. It’s his job to drill a hole in the concrete ceiling while Heath rigs up a small explosive to catalyze the temporal bullet. This may not work at all, and it might be a waste of their time, but the way they see it, they either spend a couple hours on a lark before resorting to digging a hole by hand, or they skip it. Either way, the digging will cost them days, not hours, so this is hardly a digression.

While Mateo is constructing his safety platform, Heath goes out and buys a special long drill, and the ten-centimeter bit that they’re going to need, along with his own supplies. The hole doesn’t have to be pretty or clean. It just has to be deep enough to get to the dirt. According to their research, a normal ceiling should only be about twenty centimeters thick, but this one is twice that, presumably to support the weight of the ground above. That’s going to make it harder, but not impossible. That’s why he requested a super narrow drill. Once the hole gets started, it goes surprisingly quickly. Now all they can do is wait until the thunderstorm begins. They’re not sure how loud the explosion is going to be, so it’s best to muffle it as much as possible.

They’re in the middle of dinner when Thor’s battle against the God Butcher begins. They leave their dishes on the table, and run back to the would-be center of the country. Using radio transceivers, Mateo waits for a signal from Heath, who is counting thunder strikes. Once it’s time, Mateo lights the fuse, and tries to teleport out. For a split second, he’s stuck, and doesn’t go anywhere, so he’s afraid the temporal energy already ran out, but then the glitch disappears, and so does he. He meets Heath back on the surface just in time for the temporal explosion. Heath timed it perfectly with the storm, so Mateo feels compelled to give him a high five. At first, it doesn’t seem to have been enough. It definitely shook the earth, but nothing has changed from above. But then it does. The ground begins to sink. More, then even more, until it all caves in. It worked. Holy crap, it actually worked. They high five again.

Carefully, the two of them step over to the hole so they can get a look inside, every once in a while looking up to see if police cruisers are coming down the highway to investigate. They stomp on the ground to make sure it’s still stable, and it seems perfectly safe...until it doesn’t. The ground right under Mateo sinks. A normal person would probably reach out for help, but he has the opposite reaction. He’s died—or come so close to death that he would not have survived without time power intervention—so many times, it feels more natural to let it happen. Instead, he pushes Heath away with as much force as he can muster, which serves to pull him downwards even faster. He slips off the grass, and tumbles down the hole. He spreads his arms out, hoping to catch hold of the emergency ladder, the portable ladder, the little platform, the ledge, the rope web, or some other structure, but nothing meets his hands but dirt and other debris.

Finally, as he’s falling, he attempts to teleport himself to safety, but it would seem that the explosion used up all the temporal energy left in this place. There’s no way out. He’s going to actually die this time, and it’s so incredibly unlikely that someone created an afterlife simulation in this reality. It’s the end. As he’s falling towards his demise, he almost regrets no longer having his faith, but he appreciates that it wouldn’t change anything. Death is death, whether you believe in it or not.

Thirty seconds later, he reaches the floor, but it doesn’t hurt like it should. Did he get his invincibility back somehow? He thought they decided that was a separate phenomenon from the time power blocker. No, that’s not what happened. He didn’t fall hard on the floor, and just not feel the pain from it. He didn’t crash into it at all. It’s more like a magical force sucked out all his momentum, and materialized the floor millimeters under him. He’s landed safely as if he was never moving at all. He turns over, and sees a ceiling above him. This isn’t just the elevator shaft. It’s the elevator. It’s back. Or more accurately, he’s back. He’s obviously traveled to an indeterminate moment in the past. He sits up, and is about to stand up, when he notices people watching him from the main floor. One of them is Danica Matic. The other is Bhulan Cargill. And the third...is Tamerlane Pryce.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 12, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

This is going to be a lot of work. It was hard to tell back when they were using the elevator to get down here in the main sequence, but it’s incredibly far below the surface. According to Ramses—who stuck around long enough to find Mateo and Heath a blueprint—the main floor is five kilometers under the surface, so the first time the two of them climb the emergency ladder, it takes them just over an hour. Subsequent climbs in either direction are going to take significantly longer. This is not a good alternative, but the computer didn’t tell them where the elevator car was stopped, so they had to do the whole thing to find it. Once they reached an obstacle, it took some sleuthing and math for them to realize that said obstacle was not the elevator. It was a ceiling of concrete, or some other strong material, which was constructed in order to prevent the soil above from falling down.

“Well,” Heath begins as he’s digging through his bag, grateful that there is a ledge here for them to sit and rest.

“Well...?” Mateo prompts after a period of silence.

“Oh. Well, we have all the tools we thought we might need to break into the elevator car, but I guess it was removed...?”

Another bit of silence. “Go on”

“Since it’s not here, we’re going to need something else; a heavy duty power tool of some kind.”

“You wanna take out this ceiling?” Mateo questions.

“I don’t see any other way,” Heath says, “not unless you’re sure that your ability to teleport at this specific location won’t ever go away.”

“Nah, it probably will. It would be foolish for us to rely on that.”

“That’s what I figured, which is why I suggested we do what we’re doing right now. I just didn’t know it would entail this much climbing, or that we would run into this damn thing.” He clumsily pounds on the ceiling with the outside of his fist. “Ow, why is it so hard?”

“Well,” Mateo decides, “I can still feel the energy right now. I can jump up to the surface, dig down with the shovel, and then jackhammer this block.”

“You want to what the block.”

“Jackhammer?” Mateo repeats. He pantomimes with sound effects. “Jackhammer.”

“Oh, a powered demo chisel.”

“Okay.”

“Yeah, I don’t have one of those.”

“I should think not.”

“You jump us both up there, I’ll start digging, you go rent one—a hardware store in town surely has one available—and then I’ll operate it.”

“Are you asking me to let you do all the work?”

“How do you mean? I don’t know how else we would do it.”

Mateo laughs. “This is my cousin’s house. If anyone was gonna do it all by himself, it would be me. But no, we’ll do it together. We’ll both go rent the chisel thing, we’ll both dig a hole, and we’ll both break through this ceiling. Let’s hope it’s not made of adamantium, or naquadah, or something.”

“I don’t know what those are,” Heath admits.

“I should think not.” They sit there to rest a little more until Mateo speaks again. “I don’t suppose it’s legal to blast our way through with an explosive.”

“It would be if we owned this land, or secured a permit to conduct such work. Otherwise, they would ask us why we need the explosives. They may even ask us if we try to rent the demo chisel. That’s why I think one will be available, because it’s not exactly something the average household ever needs. It’s a risk too.”

“What about a sledgehammer? Would they question that?”

“A what?”

Mateo growls, though he knows that it’s no one’s fault that they sometimes have different words for the same, or similar, thing. “It’s a hammer you use for demolition, rather than nails.” That’s how he thinks to describe it, but it may be inaccurate.

“Oh, no, that would be fine, though...I imagine it would take a long time. Do you really wanna try?”

Mateo shakes his head. “No one can know what we’re doing here, or that this place exists. We should even move our car to a different location.”

“That’s a good idea,” Heath agrees. “Jump us to the surface, so we can drive to Mankato. There’s a greater population, so we should be able to blend in. I don’t have my own block striker either. Then we’ll park a ways away from here, hide the car behind some trees, and walk.”

“Sounds like a plan, but we may need to get back to the top of the ladder at some point, and I do not want to climb it again, or have to aim at this ledge, so hand me that rope, if you please.”

“What are you gonna do with it?”

“I’m gonna build myself a web.”