Extremus: Year 121

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Waldemar Kristiansen is going to whip this ship into tip-top shipshape, and that’s his private guarantee. The turn of phrase makes him giggle, but he doesn’t say it out loud to others. He doesn’t really say anything about it. He’s just going to make it happen, and people are going to accept his changes, whether they like them or not. Or they’ll die fighting it. He just needs to get out of this locked room first. Sure, he’s been in here for several months now, and he has not found any chance to escape yet, but he will. He’ll figure it out. He comes out on top. That’s his real job. That’s why he’s the captain, even though someone else has been masquerading as him since he won the competition for the chair.

Pronastus Kegrigia flashes back into the room after two weeks of no contact. “How’s tricks, my old friend?” he asks in that annoying speedvoice he uses. The guy doesn’t even try to slow his voice down so it sounds more normal to Waldemar.

“Let me out,” Waldemar says simply. It doesn’t feel like he’s talking slowly, but he knows that he is, and he can see how bored Pronastus gets while he’s waiting for him to finish what should be a quick and easy sentence. He recognizes that impatience. He has seen and felt it in himself. Pronastus is wearing his face, and he’s not using it right!

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Okay, that line was too fast. Waldemar could barely parse it. “Just be glad that I didn’t kill you.”

“You still need me,” Waldemar reasons. “You need me to tell you how to act like me. I’m not afraid of you.”

“I won’t need that for much longer,” Pronastus contends. “I only kept you alive to make a smooth transition to your new personality. I needed to start out with a familiar baseline, so people won’t detect a sudden shift in behavior, and grow suspicious, but I’m just about where I wanna be. Admiral Jennings is wary of me. I can’t tell whether that’s because he suspects that I’ve stolen your likeness, or he just knows that you’re a grade A asshole, and I’m stuck with your terrible reputation until I can slowly change people’s minds. That’s what the new personality is for.”

“I am not an asshole, I am the best this ship has to offer. I am not burdened by things like emotion or personal attachments. I only care about the success of the mission. If you will just let me have my life back, I will do a thousand times better than you ever could with my clone.”

“You’ll never get the chance,” Pronastus argues. “You won’t understand this, but I am doing everyone a favor by taking your place, including you. There are things I know about the future. You would have been absolutely miserable, and you would have made everyone else miserable trying to find happiness. Waldy, you can’t be happy. You’re neurologically incapable of it. I doubt you can even grasp the concept. Just stay in your slowmo world, and wait for the mercy of my bullet once I’m finally finished with you.”

“People will notice,” Waldemar tries to say. “Silveon knows me better than anyone. He knows what my brain struggles with. He’s the one who taught me how to act more like an emotional being. When he gets back, he won’t be fooled by you, no matter how gradually you change.” He intentionally didn’t mention his wife, Audrey, who also knows the real Waldemar, and won’t long be fooled by this impostor. Waldemar doesn’t love her, because he doesn’t understand what love is, but he is committed to her, and he genuinely doesn’t want harm to come to her. Pronastus better not be touching her.

Pronastus sighs, but sped up, it kind of sounds more like a cough, which Waldemar finds humorous. “I debated whether I would tell you, but now that I’m confident in the effectiveness of this timehock, I might as well be honest. Silveon doesn’t know anything anymore. Silveon is dead. He knew too much about me, so I had to kill him. He did not leave for an away mission on the Perran Thatch to get his mind off of his parents after they died. He’s been dead the whole time. It happened within minutes. They actually saw each other briefly in The Buffer. It really messed with their heads.”

Waldemar begins to seethe. He doesn’t love Silveon either, but he has been a good friend. He knew what Waldemar was. He knew that he was different, and didn’t feel things like the other kids. But he didn’t run away. He didn’t even just uncomfortably accept Waldemar’s differences. No, Silveon has been his greatest supporter since they were children, and actively put in the effort to make him a better man. It worked. Without Silvy, Waldemar would be an absolute piece of shit. He’s still not a hopeless romantic, but he recognizes the value in others, and that he should treat them with respect, because that’s what people expect out of him. Waldemar would not have become captain without Silveon’s personal sacrifices. He deserved so much better than this. In anger, Waldemar lunges for Pronastus, but as always, he misses. He’s too slow.

Pronastus smirks, and casually steps out of the line of fire. “Good job, buddy!” he jokes. “You almost got me this time, you’re getting faster.”

It’s true. Waldemar has been spending most of his time here improving his speed. If he can learn to move extremely fast, it might be enough to get him on the same level as this jerk.

Pronastus checks his watch. “I’ll have to get you another dose of the timesuck, and increase the potency so you’ll go even slower than before.”

“That will be even more frustrating for you,” Waldemar argues. “You grow impatient with how long it takes me to talk now. If you slow that down even more, our conversations will take forever. You’ll go mad.”

“I’ll live,” he defends. “You won’t.” He races towards the other door. He is annoyingly smart. The first time he came back, Waldemar tried to wait by the door to attack him and escape, but instead, Pronastus simply used the second entrance. He will always use the door farthest from Waldemar. There doesn’t seem to be any weakness to exploit. “Goodbye, Waldemar Kristiansen. I’ll be back at some later date.” He points to the food synthesizer, which he modified to only produce slop. “Better ration your meals from now on. As punishment for trying to hit me yet again, I’m not gonna refill the feedstock today. Good luck with that.” He leaves.

Waldemar sighs, defeated once more. Surprisingly, the first door begins to open again. Did Pronastus really just run down the hallway so he could come back? Waldemar happens to be standing next to it right now. That’s the whole point. He’s not that stupid, is he? No, he’s not, because it’s not Pronastus at all. It’s Silveon. “He told me you were dead. He took credit for your murder.”

“He deserves credit,” Silveon says. He sounds normal. His voice isn’t sped up at all. He’s really good at slowing down to match Waldemar’s slowmo mode. But why would he even think to do that? How did he find him?

“How did you find me?”

“I followed Pronastus,” Silveon replies as he’s rolling up Waldemar’s sleeve, and cleaning the skin with an alcohol pad.

The smell sickens him. His mother drank. He hated her. He hated her so much. Hate is one emotion that he can get behind. He turns his nose away so he can breathe.

“For a pathfinder, he sure is bad at spotting a tail,” Silveon goes on. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner. I had to make preparations first.” He’s sliding a rubber band up Waldemar’s arm now, and tightening it above his elbow.

“Not that I mind, but what exactly are you doing?”

“Fixing you,” Silveon answers. He takes a syringe out of his pocket. Slips the cap off with his lips, which he spits out onto the floor, and injects Waldemar with something.

Months ago, after a doppelgänger abducted Waldemar, and injected him with the timesuck, the effects hit him immediately, but they didn’t affect his body evenly, and not even instantly permanently. His heart felt like it was racing while his arms felt like they were swinging through molasses. His legs felt okay for a moment, but then his heart slew down more than ever. The image on the news erratically changed speeds as his brain was trying to figure out whether it was supposed to be framejacking or framelagging. This is all happening again now, about the same as before, but hopefully to more favorable results.

Silveon shows him a handheld fan. “Focus on this.”

Like the broadcast before, the fan keeps changing speeds. It sometimes looks like it’s running in reverse, and sometimes moving in slow-motion. After a minute or so, it settles into a more reasonable speed. “Okay, I think I’m okay.” Waldemar takes a step back, and performs some deliberate movements. He shakes his arms, kicks his legs, and jumps up and down a little. To him, when he was on the timesuck, everything felt normal; at least that’s what he believed. But unlike how it would be if this were a timesuck room, there was a biological component to the drug. He didn’t realize he was so stiff and held down until this moment, now that he can finally move about at normal speed. “That feels a lot better.”

“So you feel all right?” Silveon presses.

“Yeah, it’s fine. What you said earlier, did Pronastus kill you, or not?”

“He killed me all right, and I recall being dead, but I don’t have any details. All I know is that someone had the power to send me back, and they agreed to do so. I don’t know who it was, or anything else about it. I just know that they had to give me a clone body.” He pulls his cheek down. “My scar’s gone. See?”

Waldemar looks, but then frowns and turns away. He’s the one who gave Silveon the scar in the first place. When Waldemar was still quite young, and Silveon was even younger, it was the latter’s birthday. Waldemar had seen videos from the grand repository of entertainment of pranks where people slammed their friends’ faces into birthday cakes. But he screwed up, and a candle ended up being lodged in Silveon’s eye. The doctor made the necessary repairs to the eyeball itself, but it was days before anyone noticed an untreated secondary wound on the skin that had to heal on its own. It left a permanent mark on Silveon’s face, which could typically only be seen when you looked closely, but also sometimes under the right lighting, at the right angle. Waldemar is particularly adept at clocking it since he was the one who made it.

“Hey,” Silveon says in an assuring voice. “It’s okay. And it’s fixed now. My original body is gone. Probably stuffed into an incinerator. It’s like it never happened.”

“Except it did.”

“That’s good,” Silveon encourages. “That’s called guilt. We talked about that, remember? And this...” He waves his hand around his face. “This is forgiveness.”

He knows. “I remember guilt,” Waldemar acknowledges, “and forgiveness. I don’t need the flash cards anymore. I remember gratitude too, though I still don’t know if my face is capable of showing it, so to clear any uncertainty, let me say...thank you.”

“My pleasure,” Silveon replies. A genuinely good guy. Waldemar sometimes wishes he could be him, but also likes his own efficiency and resilience.

“Now. Where is he?”

“He’s probably back on the bridge,” Silveon begins. “Now, I have a plan to put you back where you belong without anyone ever knowing that it happened. What we’ll do is—”

“No, don’t worry about that. The plan is simple, and I’ll take care of it. You’ve done your part. Thank you again.”

“Waldemar, you can’t kill him. We’ve been over this.”

“No, I’m not gonna kill him. Is that what you’re worried about? You should have more faith in me. You’ve taught me a lot over the years. But this right here is captain’s business, and you don’t have clearance. I’m not going to give you any details, but I assure you, I won’t be murdering anyone. The next time you see me, it will be me again. We’ll come up with trust passwords so you’ll know I’m legit, but I don’t want to do that here, because he might be watching.”

Waldemar and Silveon leave the room to create their shared password to avoid any identification failures. The former then uses his biometrics to enter the Captain’s Stateroom. He has never stepped foot in this unit before, and it has been a long time coming. Audrey is there. “Good morning, wife.”

“It’s the afternoon,” she says.

“Right.”

“Didn’t you have work to do in engineering today? thought it would take all day.”

“When was the last time we had sex?”

“What?”

“When was the last time we had sex, or did anything sexual, really?”

“It was this morning,” she replies. “Did you genuinely forget, or are you mad about something, and trying to pick a fight with me?”

“It’s nothing like that.” He takes both of her hands in his. “I will explain everything, but you have the right to know that you were violated. That was not me, but an impostor.”

Audrey gulps, and stiffens her upper lip. “I understand. I mean...I don’t understand, but I understand.”

“Okay. I’m gonna go take care of something, and then we’ll have dinner together.”

“Okay,” she agrees solemnly. He has said things like this before. She’s a good girl. She knows not to ask questions, argue, or get in his way.

It takes weeks to find him, but Waldemar employs his secret police, and Pronastus eventually runs out of paths where he eludes the might of the true Captain of Extremus. The two of them are back in timehock, but their roles are reversed.

Pronastus is now moving too slowly to get out of his predicament, or fight back. “I have an advantage, though. I see the way forward. I will legitimately find a way.”

“Good luck with that,” Waldemar snaps back. “Unlike you, I’m not without mercy. You kept me in here for six months, I’ll only keep you here for three.”

“And then what? You’ll kill me?”

Waldemar chuckles. “No. Then your real torture begins.”

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Microstory 1924: Blinking Yellow

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Leonard: Hello. My name is Leonard. How’re you doin’? Need anything? They tell me you don’t drink water. You look a little desiccated. Sorry, that’s my big mouth. Let me just find the button on this remote. There. Now you can see that no one is watching us through the mirror. Then I’ll reach up here to shut this off too. Just so you know, in this universe, when the little slowly blinking light is yellow, that means the camera is on. When it’s solid red, power is running through it, but it’s neither streaming nor recording. That’s how they do things here. I’m not sure if you can relate. Do Ochivari have camera technology? Oh, I saw a little reaction there. You didn’t think I had heard of you, eh? You figured that as long as you stayed quiet—which is probably part of your training—they wouldn’t be able to get any information out of you. It’s a fair assessment. I’m assuming it’s not just that you don’t speak our language. Nah, your reaction tells me you understand me. Honestly, I think you lucked out that these people have profoundly strong anti-torture laws. Don’t you find that fascinating? I find it fascinating. Where I’m from, they passed anti-torture legislation too, but you can get away with it if you’re sneaky. If you get caught, you may go to prison, at worst. Here, you’re subjected to the exact same torture that you inflicted on others, compounded by the number of victims. They don’t think it’s worth it, so that’s why you’re fine. Funny how they extend it to aliens, though, right? Seems like that’s a whole other animal. Then again, they probably have anti-animal abuse laws too, and that’s really all you are. You see, the difference between a human and an animal is that a human can communicate with other intelligent beings at a higher level. We can ask for help, and we can provide help, and we can beg for mercy. You’ve not asked for anything. You’ve not said anything at all. They think you’re just an animal. What do you think of that? Any reaction whatsoever?

Ochivar: *says nothing*

Leonard: Hm. I can see that my predecessors have already attempted to torment you with words. That doesn’t count as torture, by the way. They have zero laws regulating mental and emotional abuse. Where I come from, you can get in serious trouble for that, but the way they figure it here, you should either be strong enough to handle anyone’s harsh words, or you should use such experiences to harden yourself against them, which is why they don’t even feel compelled to protect children from it. How does that make you feel? Do you care for your offspring? How do Ochivari procreate? Do you just spit into a giant cauldron together, and then mix it up until a litter of monsters solidify?

Ochivar: Stop! Stop! Dear Limerick, end my suffering.

Leonard: What’s a Limerick? Is that your god?

Ochivar: What is your second name?

Leonard: *pauses* Miazga.

Ochivar: Leonard Miazga of Universe Unlabeled. I’ve heard of you. Am I seeing your origins? This is the first time you traveled the bulk, isn’t it? Wow. What an honor.

Leonard: You could be making this up. You’re not saying anything that proves you know the first damn thing about who I am.

Ochivar: *leaning forward* Get me the hell out of here, and I’ll give you some proof.

Leonard: *leaning forward too* Now you’re speakin’ my language.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 19, 2399

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When Mateo and Constance!Five first returned-slash-arrived in the Third Rail, everything seemed like it was going to be okay. It quickly turned into a horrorfest. A lone fisherman happened to be relaxing on his little rowboat in Danica Lake where the two time travelers came up. His first thought would not have been that they were a transhuman and an organic superintelligence from a parallel reality, but Constance!Five didn’t seem to think it was worth the risk. After taking a look around to check for other witnesses, she pulled the innocent man out of the boat, and drowned him in the water. Mateo was hopeless to stop her. He’s strong, but she’s much stronger. It would appear that she gave herself a better substrate than him. It’s a wonder that she did anything for him at all. She’s clearly completely self-reliant. And also evil.

Once the deed was done, Constance!Five demanded Mateo navigate them to an isolated location, where they would not be disturbed. Not wanting to put his loved ones in danger, he suggested they go to the Walton bunker in the middle of the woods. He didn’t know what she was going to do with him there, but he didn’t think she was going to torture him. After all, what did he ever do to her? She didn’t start right away. She activated a tablet that the team had left on the desk, and got to work. It took Mateo some time, but he eventually came to the conclusion that she was absorbing all the information she could find. History, politics, culture; all of these were unknown to her, and if she wanted to blend in, or complete whatever agenda she has, she’ll need to know everything. When she was done with that, she moved on to gaining personal information about Mateo and his life. She wanted to know everything he had been through, and she was willing to hurt him to get it. He hoped his upgrades would protect him against the pain, but she knew what buttons to push.

When she had everything she wanted out of him, that’s when the true horror began. As it turned out, she was far more advanced than he ever could have imagined. Like something out of the Terminator franchise, her epidermal nanites rearranged themselves, and in a matter of minutes, she no longer looked like herself. She looked like Mateo. That’s why she wanted to know everything about him, because she was going to initiate contact with the team, and pretend to be him. She was just about to clip him off like a loose end when an alert came in over the tablet. Apparently, the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was back in orbit over Earth. She had to get back to the group quickly, so she could sell a lie about Mateo having never died in the first place. He laughed at her, knowing that his people were not going to fall for her ruse. The little argument they had over the matter was enough of a stall to save his life. By the time she was ready to finish him off, her time really was up, and she had to teleport away immediately. That was the last he heard from her.

Mateo opens his eyes, aware that he’s lying on his back, but unable to gather any other information about his surroundings. His vision is blurry. He feels the mucus attached to his lids. “Hegh,” he says, realizing that it’s just an unintelligible noise.

“He’s awake.” It sounds like Alyssa, but he can’t hear very well either.

“Repo,” he tries. “That’s a little closer to a meaningful utterance, but still wrong.

Another figure approaches the bed. “Report?” Leona guesses. “All you need to do right now is relax.”

He feels a warm washcloth rubbing his eyes clean. “Wada,” he requests.

“Right here.” Alyssa says. She holds the strawn in his mouth.

Mateo smacks his lips, drinks a little more, and then clears his throat. “Does this bed move? Can I sit up, please?”

“I got you,” Ramses says, pushing the button for him.

“That’s good.” Mateo blinks and gets a better look at where he is. It’s a double room. There’s another person in the bed next to him. He can’t see who it is at this angle, especially since his vision isn’t all there yet. But he can tell that Vearden is sitting in the chair between them, and upon closer inspection, Mateo realizes that his roommate is pregnant. “What happened to Arcadia?”

Vearden had been staring at the floor. He looks up to find that everyone else is being silent, so he stands. “Constance!Five showed up, looking like you, claiming to be you. They were suspicious of him, so they asked Arcadia to psychically interrogate her. She’s in a coma now. We don’t know what Constance did to her.

Mateo tries to move his legs and arms over at the same time, but he’s attached to an IV line, and other instruments. “Get me out of this, I wanna see.”

“You can’t move.” Leona puts two hands on his chest, and gently pushes him back into place.

Vearden steps forward, and regards Mateo with a really good poker face. “I don’t blame you for what happened, but I’ve seen the security footage, and looking at your face makes me wanna choke you to death.” He turns away, and hastily pulls the curtain closed behind him.

Mateo stares at it. He’s got his own poker face, but it’s probably just from whatever drugs he’s on. He finally turns to face the ceiling. “Where is she?”

“Trapped in a stasis pod on a freezing oceanic island in the middle of nowhere,” Ramses tells him.

“Now that you know that she wasn’t me, you can destroy her.”

The three of them exchange some looks.

“What?” Mateo asks. “Now you’re suspicious of me? You think I wouldn’t suggest such a thing. I’ve changed, Arcadia’s in a coma. Blow that asshole straight to hell.”

“Even if we wanted to do that,” Ramses begins, “we don’t know how to kill her. Her nanites are sophisticated enough to impersonate someone to the smallest detail. She should be able to survive just about anything.”

“She had enough time to build backups too,” Leona adds.

“I don’t think she did,” Mateo contends. “She was with me the whole time.”

“Are you sure?”

“Stop questioning me.”

“We’re not questioning you, we just—”

“Get out.”

“Mateo...” Leona says.

“Get out of my room. I need some sleep.” They don’t move right away, so he appends, “please.”

They start to walk out. “Were I you,” Leona tells him.

Mateo clears his throat, and turns his head towards the wall without replying. When it looks like she’s left, he turns back. “Vearden,” he whispers.

“Leave us alone,” Vearden spits from the other side of the curtain.

“Vearden, I need your help.”

“I said that I don’t blame you, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to help you with anything.”

“Just come here, goddammit. You’re gonna like this.”

Vearden huffs, but does as asked. “What do you want?”

“Take this from my finger, and put it on yours.”

“Your pulse monitor thingy? Why would I do that?”

“Because I’m going to teleport to Constance!Five, and then toss her into the mouth of a volcano.”

Vearden stares for a moment. “I don’t think that’s going to work. You can’t just throw something into a volcano. There’s not, like, this cliff overlooking the hole.”

“Are you sure?”

“I don’t know, but..I don’t think so. You don’t hear about people just tripping and falling into a pool of lava.”

“I think it’s called magma.”

“Whatever!”

“Shh,” Mateo urges. “I don’t want them to know, for obvious reasons.”

Vearden sighs, and gets out his handheld device to look it up. “Okay, it looks like, to be sure the pod gets to where it’s going, you would have to drag it all the way down into a magma chamber.” He shows Mateo the photos on the search page, some of which are probably artist’s renderings. “But the heat will probably kill you before you get that close. I know you have those fancy new bodies, but still...”

“I can teleport into a chamber.”

“No one really knows what they look like, Mateo. You’re not necessarily going to find a patch of dry, safe land where you can stand and watch it happen. The internet doesn’t say anything about that, because normal people don’t ever seriously contemplate getting rid of bodies in a volcano.”

“I can sit on the pod, and then teleport away just before it finishes sinking.”

“What if it doesn’t sink?” Vearden asks. “What if the magma can’t even breach the pod at all. If she remains alive, there’s a chance she comes back. This is an incredibly foolish and ridiculous plan. It’s never going to work.”

Mateo thinks about it for a few moments. “Okay. I’ll send the Bridgette on a collision course with the sun. That’s even better. I can pilot it with voice commands.”

Vearden shakes his head. “They purged everything of AI. They don’t know what’s been compromised, and what hasn’t been. They’re not even living in the lab anymore.”

“Oh. That makes sense.”

“Mateo, I know you feel bad, and I know you want to fix this, but you and I have to face the fact that neither of us can live this life alone. We rely on smarter, more capable people to get us by. If we tried something like this, we would inevitably screw it up. The Two Stooges, they would call us.”

“Let’s take her to the Constant.” Alyssa has snuck back into the room, and could have been listening for who knows how long.

“Why would we do that?”

“Because it’s Danica’ fault, and therefore Danica’s problem,” she reasons. “It’s become clear that she’s not going to help us, so let’s give her the pod that she loves to use so much back, and rid ourselves of the whole thing.”

That’s not a bad idea, but it’s not a good one either.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 18, 2399

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Ramses purged the version of Constance that he had uploaded to The Bridgette. They don’t know if it’s been compromised, but they can’t take any chances. The AI served them well for a long time without giving them any issues, or giving them any reason to doubt it. It’s only when the one from the Fifth Division showed up that they started having issues. The question is, is it even from the Fifth Division? Was that all a lie? Did Impostor!Mateo give them a partial truth? Could it have been an anti-Alyssa who was just using their illusion powers to pretend to be Mateo, while having a backup plan of prompting the wrong investigation if they were even discovered to be an impostor?

Leona, Ramses, and the McIvers are in an SD6 safehouse right now. It’s not completely devoid of electronics, but there aren’t any microphones that could listen in on their conversation, which they are having in the kitchen while the boys play a card game in the one and only bedroom. “Any ideas?” Leona asks. She waits for a response that never comes. “We were all meant to sleep on it.”

“I doubt anyone slept well under these conditions,” Alyssa notes.

“You’re the one who had the bed,” Ramses points out.

“With two smelly boys in puberty,” she counters.

“We heard that!” Carlin shouts from the room.

“I wasn’t trying to be quiet!” she shouts right back.

“All right,” Leona says. “Are we all in agreement?”

“Agreement of what?” Ramses questions, confused.

“We all agree that we don’t know what the fuck we’re doing, and we don’t have any idea how to proceed?

“Heard that too!” young Moray exclaims.

“First we have to decide whether we think that was Mateo, infected by a psychic, or someone else entirely?” Alyssa says. “If it’s the latter, we need to find the real Mateo.”

“It’s not really something we can decide, but yes. I’m not sure how we go about doing that. It’s not like we can look for a scar underneath his right eye, or something. It’s entirely reasonable that he would get himself into a pristine body. The impostor’s story about Mateo going to the Fifth Division was not unbelievable.”

“You think that really happened, but Constance!Five somehow transformed herself into him, and left him somewhere?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time. Fax!Mateo did it so he could sacrifice himself in Alt!Mateo’s body.”

“This is getting confusing,” Alyssa admits. “Has your life always been like this?”

“It hasn’t,” Leona begins. “Back in the day, when Mateo and I were just jumping forward in time, we met a lot of time travelers, but we never had to wonder whether they were the wrong version of someone we already knew. I mean, there was The Rogue, and then Makarion after that, but it didn’t happen nearly as much as it does now. For a reality that doesn’t allow temporal manipulation, there do seem to be a lot of wibbly wobbly, timey-wimey shit. Sorry,” she adds in reference to the children.

“It’s fine,” Alyssa promises.

Young Moray comes down the hallway, pulling away from every attempt of Carlin’s to keep him back. “What about the error detector?”

“What do you mean?” Leona asks.

“That thing you had in the sky. It told you where all the weird time people were, right? If the real Mr. Matic is somewhere else, that should be able to find him, right?”

Leona looks over at Ramses. “We need to replace that anyway to find the remaining errors, don’t we, since the AOC is gone?”

“Oh my God, the AOC!” Ramses laments. The error detector was on that, and now it’s gone. He feels so stupid. It would have been so easy to deploy a nanosatellite from the AOC, and it’s a lot more difficult now that they have to rely on this antiquated Third Rail technology. Months of living here, and he has still not gotten used to that. He keeps making these mistakes, and it’s really starting to piss him off. “The detector isn’t up there anymore. I’m such an idiot.”

“Now hold on,” Alyssa says. “Maybe we don’t need it. If Mateo isn’t dead—which, I’m guessing the detector wouldn’t detect anyway—and our theory is correct, then Constance!Five is keeping him somewhere relatively safe. He would need food, water, shelter. She hasn’t been here long, so she doesn’t know of a whole lot of places.”

“It would appear that she knows everything that Mateo does,” Leona replies. “He has a lot of places in his head.”

“How many of those places are isolated or hidden, so no one will stumble upon him?” Alyssa asks.

“Where was he last time,” Carlin offers, “the first time this happened?”

“The bunker,” Leona answers. She gets out of her chair, then just stands there.

“What’s happening?” Ramses asks her.

“I can’t jump,” she replies. “This body metabolizes temporal energy too quickly.”

“I don’t have any left either,” Ramses says apologetically. “I’ve had to use a lot recently, and I’m in no position to synthesize more.”

“I can still feel the power in this body. If that’s okay with you?”

“No, go, please.” Leona urges. “No one else will go with you to conserve the power you have left. I’ll show you where it is on the map, then we’ll catch up with you by car.”

Alyssa teleports to the middle of the forest, and can instantly feel that it was her last trip. She either gets her hands on more temporal energy, or she never jumps again. Her mother taught her how to read a map without satnav, so she can also tell that she’s a little off the mark, but not too far away. She carefully climbs down the hill, and finds the secret entrance to the underground bunker. She slides down the ladder to find Mateo on the opposite wall. He’s nearly naked, strapped to what seems to be a wire bed frame. He looks dehydrated and exhausted. “Oh my God! What happened to you!”

“Fuh...” he’s really struggling to speak. “Cons...conste...”

“Constance!Five, yeah, we know. She was impersonating you.”

“No.” He shakes his head while she tries to get the restraints off. He musters what little energy he has left. “Constellation.” He passes out.

“What?”

One more push. “Constellation. Phoenix. We have to go there.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 15, 2398

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Marie is sitting on the cot, face pressed up against the glass, not in a longing sort of way, but just because she’s bored. This isn’t the first time she’s been locked up, and if she survives, it won’t be the last. The other three are doing their own thing, but they seem just as bored.

“How long have we been here?” Kivi asks.

“At least a day,” Heath answers, just guessing.

“Are they gonna torture us, or something, or is this the torture?” There is nothing in this glass cell but eight cots, one toilet, partially covered, a sink with an extension to approximate a shower, and holes for ventilation. Under the sink is a stack of these dense granola squares for them to eat at their leisure.

They haven’t seen a single soul since they woke up here yesterday. The light is dim, and they can’t see the outside. They get the sense that this thing was built in the center of a warehouse, but it’s so dark that they can’t be certain of the scope. Surely someone is watching them on monitors somewhere, but they don’t actually see the cameras. There is no sound. Not even the light fixtures give off that familiar hum you normally wouldn’t be able to get out of your head when everything else is this silent. For now, the only noises they hear are the ones they make.

“Don’t give them any ideas,” Marie tells her, pulling her face from the wall for a minute. “They’re always listening,” she whispers.

“You don’t know that,” Heath says. “Look around. I don’t see anywhere for anybody to slip food to us. Hell, one of these bars holding the glass together is probably a door, but we don’t know which. All we have may be all we ever will. This may not be a jail cell at all, but a coffin.”

“Don’t be so morbid,” Marie urges. “They brought us here for a reason.”

“What reason?” Kivi questions.

“If I knew that...” Marie begins, going back to the glass. She stops in the middle of the sentence when she realizes that there is no way to finish it. It doesn’t matter what she knows, and doesn’t. There are no actions to take in here besides sleeping, eating, cleaning, and wasting. Her guess is as good as Kivi’s

“Does this have anything to do with A—”

Marie quickly turns from the glass again. “Shh!” Kivi was about to drop Amir’s name, which she shouldn’t, in case he has nothing to do with it. Or they, rather since there are two Amir Hussains. Swapping them, and freeing them both to different places, was their only choice. They knew it would cause problems, but they didn’t think these people would take it this far. The second Amir was so interested in getting out of Birket that he gleefully accepted the risk. Marie is glad that Leona isn’t here, but she could have helped. For one, she probably would have already figured out who these people truly are, and how to get out of here, and in two weeks, she would be running the joint.

“Sorry,” Kivi says. “I’m just hungry.”

“Go ahead, and have another square,” Marie suggests.

“I can’t, we have to ration it.”

“No, we don’t,” Heath insists. “It’s fine. I was just being dramatic.”

“Yes, we do, and no, it’s not, and no, you weren’t,” the fourth prisoner says.

Extremus: Year 36

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At first, it was obvious what Captain Leithe needed to do. Dr. Holmes lied to her, claiming that she was trying to help her fix her memory problem when really she was the cause of it, at least part of the time. She had to go. People had to know that she was bad news so the dismissal process could be completed. It was going to be neither easy, nor simple, but it simply had to be done. As Kaiora pondered the proceedings that would follow should she choose to put this on the agenda, however, she had to acknowledge a big issue. Nearly everything would come out about her practice. Every procedure she performed, every medication she prescribed; it would all be out in the open. This information would not be attached to any names, of course, but it had to become evidence, because while it wasn’t all relevant, any of it could be relevant, and it was going to take a specially formed committee time to sort through it. At the very least, this was needlessly humiliating to a well-respected medical professional whose motives Kaiora was not fully cognizant of, and at worst, it placed Olindse in more danger, which defeated the whole purpose.

As it turned out, Kaiora didn’t know that much about what happened to Admiral Olindse Belo. She circumvented a direct order from her Captain to jump into a portal to the future. That’s really all she knew. She didn’t know why she had to go, or when she would arrive. Best practices suggested the best way to handle the situation, since the memory wipe didn’t really take, was to ignore the topic as much as possible. Throwing Dr. Holmes under the bus was not ignoring it, and it was not discreet. Temporal theory states that doubt about the path to reach a known future is tantamount to an unknown future. That is, Kaiora doesn’t know what the timeline is like when Olindse shows up in it, which means she has to assume that every choice she and the people around her make will lead to that future, rather than some random alternative. She’s not free to make any decision she would like, but she’s pretty safe making the reasonable ones since she has no reason to believe they would go against her hypothetical fate.

Still, trying to get rid of Dr. Holmes was a risky move by any standard, so she decided to let it go. The two of them didn’t talk about it for almost three years after that. When they passed in the corridors, or sat across from each other in the executive crew meetings, they exchanged knowing glances, but they did not address the elephant in the room, which they could both see. It was in both of their best interests to pretend it never happened, so that’s what they did. Unfortunately, as the time since has illustrated, it has not been that easy. The tension between them has proved to be a lot more obvious to everyone else. Apparently, there have been two elephants in the same room all along, with neither being mutually visible. It’s affected their work. Surely without coordinating, they’ve both begun to delegate a lot more work that they would traditionally do themselves, worrying their fellow crew members and friends. They never staged an intervention, but independently of each other, the head of surgery spoke with Dr. Holmes, and the Second Lieutenant spoke with Kaiora. That’s when the latter knew she was at her lowest, because if Lars Callaghan thinks there’s something wrong with you, there’s something wrong with you.

Something has to change about this dynamic, and if Kaiora isn’t going to step away from the captain’s seat, there is only one other option. They’re in a meeting now to discuss the future of this crew, and their respective responsibilities on it.

“I’m not going to do it,” Dr. Holmes says before Kaiora has a chance to speak.

“You’re not going to do what?”

“I’m not going to retire.”

While Hock Watcher can effectively be a lifetime appointment, Chief Medical Officer actually is. Dr. Holmes would have to do something pretty bad to lose her job. Premature retirement is even harder. If Kaiora wants to do this, she has to be careful. She has to convince her to make this decision for herself. “I never said that.”

“You were going to suggest it.”

“And how would you know that?” Kaiora questions. “Are you aware of future events in the timeline to which the likes of me are not privy?”

“Oh, here we go again.”

“What do you mean, here we go again? We’ve never talked about this!”

“I see the way you look at me.”

“I see the way you look at me!”

“Are you just going to echo everything that I say?”

“Are you not going to explain yourself? I want to know why you did it. Why did you fuck with my memories?”

“Why did you not question me before?”

Kaiora takes a moment before responding. She sips her tea in the meantime. “Do you know what this room is?”

Dr. Holmes looks over at the walls. “I’ve never been here before. I stay mostly in the medical section.”

Kaiora nods. She places a headband over her forehead. Then she reaches over to a gadget on a table next to her, and flips a switch. Everything changes. They’re still in the same room, but they’re joined by infinite copies of it now, along with infinite copies of Dr. Holmes herself. Kaiora is safe as she’s wearing the headband, but the doctor can see her own duplicates, sitting around her, above her on the ceiling, and below her under the now transparent floor. They’re all looking around at each other too, equally as confused, but each reacting differently to an infinitesimal degree. As time goes on, they begin to pop out of existence, only to be replaced by new copies.

“What is this?” Dr. Holmes asks, and as she does so, an infinite number of others do the same, each in their own special way, at slightly different times, tones, and speeds. The sound echoes unbearably throughout the infinite cosmic expanse. They continue to disappear.

Kaiora clears her throat, and switches off the machine. “This. is the Infinitorium. It’s sometimes known as the quantum duplication room, but to some, that implies the ability to cross dimensional barriers where that function does not exist. You can see and hear your alternates, but only one of you will survive any given moment. The rest are constantly being destroyed. You are dying an infinite number of times every moment of your life. This is the fact of reality, and what this chamber does is show you that, whereas most of the time, you’re free to move on with your life, blissfully ignorant of all the versions of you that didn’t make it. This was an experiment of Old Man’s. He thought the criminals on this ship might find it unenjoyable to be tortured in. See, now you’ve seen. You’ve watched yourself be wiped from existence over and over again, but here’s the catch.” Kaiora leans in. “That’s not what you learned today. What you really saw...is that the next possible version of you to die...could be you.”

Dr. Holmes shifts uncomfortably. “What do you want?”

“I want the goddamn truth. What did you do to my memories? This has been a long time coming.”

Dr. Holmes takes a breath, and does everything to recover from her recent traumatic experience, recognizing that she’ll probably need therapy after this regardless. “I did it to protect the Admiral. You came to me, and told me what happened, and together, we pieced together what you were missing. The memory drops were perfectly fine when they were manufactured. They’re a prescription drug, and I don’t know where Olindse got them, but like any consumable, they go bad. It was expired, Captain Leithe, and you should not have taken it. I keep telling my patients, read the label. Analgesic doesn’t mean what you think it means! Anyway, what your videos don’t mention is that the drug was having a negative impact on other parts of your memory, not just episodic. They were interfering with your ability to walk, and to remember words. You were making yourself look like an idiot, and people were strongly considering recalling you as the captain.

“I found myself incapable of fixing you permanently. The best I could do was give you that nose spray. What it does is sort of consolidate the apparently reproductive memory solution in your system, so it does what it was supposed to do, and only erase your episodic memories. It was a temporary solution, obviously. I never meant to keep you like that. I was working on something that could flush all of it from your body, but that was proving to be more difficult than I thought it would. I delegated my duties, and focused solely on the permanent solution.”

“I didn’t need you to synthesize a system flush,” Kaiora argues. “All I needed to do was stop taking the nose spray.”

“Yeah, I see that now, but since we kept having the same conversation every other day, and the same other conversation every other day, that didn’t occur to me!”

Kaiora took another beat before responding. “Once you realized I was back to normal three years ago, why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because you didn’t say anything. Your past self was trying to protect the Admiral, and I wanted to do the same. Yeah, it sucked that you kept erasing the day you just lived, but I believed you would agree that to be the lesser of two evils. I still don’t know what you know; what you remember about it. You never came to me to run tests, and I didn’t want to...do any more damage to your psyche.”

Kaiora reaches up to massage her forehead, only now realizing that the control headband is still there. She pulls it off, and carelessly throws it across the room. “Shit,” she says loudly, but voicelessly.

“What was that a reaction to, the headband?”

“No,” Kaiora contends. “I messed up. I assumed the worst, and I didn’t talk to you about it.”

“I nearly retired because of what happened, Captain. I’ve never made a mistake like that. I’ve never been so reckless with someone’s neurology; someone’s life. I didn’t wanna say anything because...I was afraid to lose my job, and my reputation. As soon as they posted this position for the Extremus mission, I dreamed of dying at my desk. I wanted to outlast everybody, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned as a doctor it’s that patients benefit from continuity. What I did to you...and what I didn’t do, it threatened all of that. It threatened my legacy, and I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry,” Kaiora echoes. “I jumped to conclusions, and that’s not the sign of a good leader. Halan Yenant would never have done that.”

“Yenant is not without his faults. I mean, he’s the one in hock.”

“He shouldn’t be.”

“Yes, he should, and not because he broke the law—his actions saved the lives of thousands on board, and tens of thousands of our ship’s descendants, and countless generations beyond the realization of our mission. But the next guy won’t have such good intentions, and we can’t let that guy think that we’ll just forgive and forget. That was Halan’s true sacrifice, and we can’t rob him of it. I know you and Olindse have always wanted to get him out, but it can’t be done. He’ll die in there, just like I’ll die at my desk...assuming you aren’t still trying to get me out.”

“No, doctor. I was wrong.”

“Welcome to the club.”

While they’re sitting in silence, the doorbell rings. It’s excruciatingly annoying, and needlessly echoey. Kaiora stands up, and looks at the screen. It’s Lieutenant Seelen. “What is it, Corinna?”

“If you’re done with, uh..whatever it is you’re doing in there, the resupply team found something.”

“I’ll be right there.”

“Thanks, Captain, for understanding.”

“Thanks for protecting the timeline. That’s what I was trying to do too.”

They both teleport out of the room, but go to different places. Kaiora lands in the cargo bay. Nearly three decades ago, this team’s predecessors sent the first drones out to nearby planets in the past to mine precious resources, and return them to the Extremus. They’ve continued to do this on an as-needed basis, but the process has become more difficult since Halan sent them into the intergalactic void. There are worlds out here, but they’re incredibly dispersed, and hard to find, which makes every mission that much more important than before. If they run out, the mission will be a bust, and they will probably all die.

“I was told you found something.”

“Yes, Captain,” the cargomaster tells her. He escorts her over to a stack of raw materials that were in the middle of being sorted. He points down at a block of metallic hydrogen. On top of it is a clear box, not larger than a tall man’s fist. There is a life inside of it, which Kaiora has to lean in and squint to make out.

“Oh my God.”

“That’s what we were thinking.”

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Extremus: Year 35

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Omega and Valencia decided that they needed some help. Fortunately, they potentially had that in the form of over a thousand of Omega’s clones. It’s their job to wake up in case something goes wrong with Project Stargate, and while they’re mostly expected to be responsible for things like transferring antimatter from a cracked pod to a replacement, this situation qualifies as a moment of need.

The modular quantum seeder ships were only made as large as they needed to be to get the job done. There are corridors, ventilation shafts, engine rooms, and a few interface consoles, but the majority of the space is taken up by three-meter tall seed capsules. There was simply not enough room for all current clones to convene for a meeting, and it was never the intention to hold such meetings at all anyway. To do this, they had to activate a special virtual construct. Anglo clones were meant to be asleep throughout their respective journeys, but the engineers wanted to be prepared for any eventuality. Bonus, they’ll get some time to wake up and stretch their legs.

Once their minds are all connected to the simulation, Omega and Valencia step on stage, and go over the bullet points.

“So, you think you’re, like, our leader, or something?” one of the Anglos asks.

“That’s not what I said,” Omega defends.

“You think you’re better than us because you have a name,” another guesses.

“No, he thinks he’s better than us because he has a life!” a third counters.

“Please, please,” Valencia says after taking the microphone. “This is not about what Omega did. You have lives, and you have purposes, and those are both under threat. We ask for your help with stopping this. The True Extremists are more powerful than we even know, and they’ve sent some kind of contingency to destroy you. We don’t even know what. We’re not saying he’s your leader. No one is. We have to fight against this together.”

“Are you a girl clone?” a fourth one questions.

“Don’t you worry about who I am.”

“That sounds suspicious.”

“I just mean...ugh.”

“Look,” Omega begins, “a lot has happened since I abandoned the program. Yes, I’ll admit that, I abandoned you. But I did a lot of growing up during all the happenings, and I’m back now to prevent catastrophe. Saxon made us for a reason, and we can’t let him down just because I was the weakest of the bunch.”

“Hey, he’s right!” one of them cries. “Why is this guy on stage! Saxon Parker is our creator! He’s our leader!”

Valencia takes the mic back again. ‘That’s enough with the interruptions! I understand that you’re confused, and I get that you’re mad. But Omega and I are the only ones who can explain to you what is going on, and why these people have to be stopped. I’m sure Saxon is a great guy, but he is not cognizant of the True Extremists. You’re here, and only you can end this.”

The crowd starts to murmur and argue. Who knew that a bunch of people with the same DNA, same basic neural makeup, and same purpose, would have so much to fight about? It’s hard to say what they’re so upset about, because they don’t have any life experience to draw upon, so they probably don’t know either. That must be what it is. They’re scared, because they don’t know what they’re doing. They’re not equipped to make such decisions. Valencia is wrong. As he listens, Omega realizes that this isn’t going to be good enough. These clones are clearly on the front lines, but it doesn’t only affect them. It affects the entire clone population, and they all have the right to decide what to do for themselves. He can’t say exactly why September directed them towards this particular voussoir, but this has to just be where it begins. “I propose a Town Hall.”

They all hush up as if they know what he’s referring to. Valencia wraps her hand around the microphone. “What is that?”

“What is that?” another one of the clones asks for all to hear.

“It’s like a...company-wide meeting. I’m suggesting we enter a joint virtual environment, where everyone can hear the problem, and contribute to the solution.”

“Will Saxon be there?”

“Yes, Saxon is in my pod, so he’ll be there,” Omega promises.

“I think that would be a good idea.” This clone is different. He walks with confidence and independence. Without asking, he climbs on stage, and approaches the duo. “Hi, I’m Anglo 83, and I believe that you stole my body.”

Yitro Moralez’ body is on fire, which is funny, because he’s entirely submerged in some kind of fluid. Oh yeah, it’s probably acid, and probably isn’t all that funny. It’s burning him, but not damaging or destroying his skin cells. It’s like it’s just bad enough to hurt, but not bad enough to call upon death’s comforting touch of painless oblivion. No, he can’t think like that. Death is not the answer to this problem. He just has to get out of this acid vat. He doesn’t know how long he’s been in here, screaming in agony. He can’t even tell which way is up. But even if he could, up doesn’t necessarily mean out.

What’s this in his mouth? Oh that likely helps him breathe. And this on his eyes? Goggles to breathe. And over there? That’s the framing of his pod. And that? Glass. Well, it’s clearness. Is there anything on the other side of the glassic clearness? Hazy figures meandering about, gawking at him, and monitoring his vitals. He doesn’t really know that, but there are definitely people out there, and they know he’s being tortured, whether they’re the ones in charge of the torturing, or not.

What if he pounds on the clearness? Pound. Nothing, it’s too strong. Okay, well what if he pounds again? Pound. No, it’s not gonna do him any good. He’s just wasting time and energy. What does he need energy for? He’s stuck in a vat of acid! The only thing he can do is try to get out of it. That’s true. Carry on. Pound, pound, pound. The figures on the other side of the clearness seem to be reacting to this now.  Yitro imagines that one is assuring the others that the clearness will hold, and can’t break, but after each pound, gulping, and wondering whether this is an accurate statement. He doesn’t want the others to see his doubt, but he wears his emotions on his sleeve, which is why the other guy is pissed off that he was promoted to Head Torturer when he clearly can’t handle his shit. Pound, pound, pound, pound, pound. They back up. The clearness may not be as strong as they originally thought. Maybe they should go run for help. But if they do that, all the other departments will know that the torture team is composed of incompetent people who skimped on the clearness budget so they could have a coffee maker in their breakroom, which they probably don’t even deserve a break room anyway, because they’re are only four people on the team, and they could have just shared with the bioweapon developers.

Pound. That one was weaker, and it took him a long time to try again. Yitro is losing his strength. He’ll have to give up eventually, even if the clearness was bound to break eventually. The acid is doing its job. He’s trapped and being tortured and he’ll never get out of it. Pound, pound, pound, pound, pound, pound, pound, pound, pound, pound, pound, pound, crack! They jump back in unison. Oh yeah, there it is! Now they’re scared, but they’re too scared to do anything about it. It’s time for Yitro to get out of here, if it’s the last thing he does before he passes out. Sure, they may just throw him in another vat of acid, but at least he will have proven himself. At least he’ll have gotten out, and they will never be able to take that away from him. Plus, he’ll just break out of the next one, and the next, and the next. Give him a million vats, and he’ll give you a million broken vats. Pound, crack, pound, crack. Pound, crack, pound, crack, crack. Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, shatter!

Yitro tumbles out with the acid. He isn’t able to watch the hazy figures in the chaos, but he imagines they finally did run away for their lives. The glassic clearness rips into his legs, and while he can feel it, nothing compares to the anguish from burning acid that covers his whole body, and from which there is no escape. Except there was an escape, and he’s just illustrated that.

He recognizes that he can’t just lie here, because then he’s lying on a floor covered in acid, and the whole point is to stop doing that. He gets up, and stumbles around. Jesus, someone should really put a wet floor sign down here. He doesn’t mean to literally be asking Jesus to do that, but as he’s hunting for the exit, he can’t help but imagine an actual man named Jesus tossing things around in his little janitor closet, desperately trying to find the wet floor sign so no one else gets hurt. It’s a funny image, and it’s the only thing keeping Yitro from throwing in the towel. A towel! There’s a towel there. He grabs it, and starts drying the acid off his body, as well as he possibly can. It’s not a towel, but a lab coat, so it’s not very absorbent, but it’s better than nothing.

Lab coat spent, and acid dried mostly from his skin, Yitro keeps on running. Out of the lab, down the corridor, and through the first door he sees. Now a light burns his eyes like a vat of acid. He’s outside, and that’s the sun. Well, it’s a sun. He’s never seen a sun before. Stars, sure, of course. The doppler glow of relativistic travel? Every single day; filtered, obviously. But he’s never stood on the surface of a planet, and looked up at the blue sunlit sky. This. Is. A...time to leave. He can’t afford to stop and admire the beauty of a spherical world with a natural oxygenated, nitrogen-rich atmosphere. Still, he does have a second or two to breathe it in and be thankful that, amidst the torture and threat of death, he still got to see this. No one on Extremus can say as much. The few still alive who could recall Ansutah lived mostly in caves to avoid detection.

“Stop!” A woman is standing several meters away, but closing in. “I’m not gonna hurt you. I just wanna make sure you’re okay. Are you on drugs? What did you take?”

“I didn’t take anything! I was tortured in a vat of acid!”

“Okay, okay. I believe you. What’s your name?” she asks.

“Yitro Moralez.”

“That’s an interesting name.”

“What planet am I on?” When she doesn’t answer, he repeats himself loudly.

“Earth. You’re on Earth, like everyone. Like always.”

“What year?” He sighs and has to repeat himself again, “please, what year?”

“It’s 2022. You’re in Kansas City. Well...Kansas City Metro. And you’re naked out in public, where a child could show up at any moment.”

Shit. Not about being naked, or being in Kansas City. That’s the one saving grace.

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