The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 25, 2507

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On the way to Atlantis, Mateo pulled up its prospectus, and took a look at what was in store for them. It was located at the bottom of the Aquilonian Deep ocean, so visitors would be fully immersed in the environment, just like they would be if they were in the Atlantis from the book series. The characters lived in a grand city, hidden from the eyes of the normal people on Earth at the time, who wouldn’t understand. Unlike most domes on Castlebourne—or whatever alternate copy of it this place was—Atlantis wasn’t under a geodesic dome. The prospectus called it a monolithic dome; just a transparent shell with no lattice structure. It was non-holographic too, to better simulate what it was like for the Atlantians from the story, which protected their city through telekinesis, rather than physical infrastructure. It’s also much wider than it is tall. Other domes are hemispheres, but the Atlantic ocean only goes a few kilometers down, so Atlantis is shaped more like a cap, like the Aquilonian Deep itself.

Something weird happened when the train stopped at the Atlantis station. The pod started to creak and shake a little. The doors wouldn’t open, and the virtual windows weren’t operating, so they couldn’t see what was happening outside. They received their answer soon enough, though. As Leona and Ramses were once more trying to fix the issue, water began to leak  through the cracks. They became a house divided. Most of them had pressed themselves back against the wall with the controls. Mateo and Octavia happened to be on the other end, and did the same over there.

“I thought that Atlantis was literally under water, but not actually in it,” Marie began, loud enough for all to hear. “I thought the inside of the dome was fully dry and livable.”

“Without maintenance, it must have buckled under the pressure at some point,” Leona figured. “This isn’t the real Castlebourne.”

“The domes are made of diamond!” Angela argued.

“Partially,” Leona corrected.

“How do we get out of here?” Romana asked. “Can you guys teleport?”

Olimpia shook her head. “I’ve been trying. It’s still suppressed.”

“Why would he send us here,” Ramses questioned, “knowing we’re gonna die?”

“Wait. This is part of the experience, isn’t it?” Mateo put forth. “I never read the books, but I think Atlantis does—”

He was unable to finish the sentence before all hell broke loose. The vactrain could hold back the deluge no more. Water came rushing in. They were fully submerged in seconds. For most of them, this wasn’t that big of a deal. Their nanites tightened themselves around their bodies, and sealed up. They could have survived without air for a period of time, and even the force of being violently tossed around the pod, but the suit was an important extra precaution. Unfortunately, not all of them had one of these. Octavia was totally unprotected and in grave danger. Mateo was already holding onto her, making sure she didn’t hit her now. He was now hoping to somehow breathe into her mouth, but his helmet was in the way. He tried to open it up temporarily, but the nanites did not recede. They had a job to do, and it would seem that they were not programmed with the knowledge of Mateo’s advanced substrate. He didn’t need the suit. Octavia did, and if he didn’t do something immediately, she was gonna die.

Mateo closed his eyes to concentrate, realizing that giving her a few rescue breaths wasn’t gonna do much good anyway, as they were likely still trapped under a fully submerged dome. These nanites. They were stored inside his body, and right on the surface when engaged as a vacuum suit, but this was not a requirement. They could be reconfigured to fit loosely around him like regular clothes. He actually wasn’t even wearing regular clothes. They were all nanites the whole time, clinging to each other in the form of a shirt and pants until the suit was needed. If they could hang loosely from him, then they should be able to adhere to something else...someone else. Despite their protests, he commanded them to let go, and swarm Octavia instead. Finally they did as they were told, releasing their grip on his skin, and swimming over to envelope Octavia instead. He maintained his mental control over them, so they would maintain their cohesion. Then he took Octavia’s hand, and began to swim away.

Now that the pod was fully filled with water, it was no longer so turbulent. He was able to see his friends, who were starting to exit through the giant hole in the doors that the pressure had made. Leona was swimming over to beckon the two of them forth. The entire station was also submerged, so there appeared to be no respite. Ramses seemed to be less concerned about it. He led them along the outside of the vacuum tube, to a maintenance hatch. Once he managed to open it, the water flooded into that compartment as well. They had to wait until it too was filled before swimming in. After they were all in, Ramses shut the hatch behind them. Then he worked the controls to open a much bigger hatch. The water flooded there too, but as the space was now twice as big as before, it was no longer completely engulfed. There was a pocket of air for them to breathe in without their helmets. More importantly, they could finally talk about what just happened.

“What just happened?” Olimpia asked.

“We survived,” Ramses answered. “Again.”

“Did you know I could do this?” Mateo asked, jerking his head towards Octavia. She was still in his suit, because she had no mental control over the nanites. And for some reason, neither did he.

Ramses waded through the water towards them. “I didn’t. Good thinking. Can you release her?”

“They’re being difficult,” Mateo replied. “It was hard enough getting them to switch over to her. Now they don’t want to come back.”

Leona waded over too. “It was probably your adrenaline, which allowed you to exercise more control over the nanites than they were programmed to be subjected to. They only exist in three states: dormant, emerging, and stabilized. They’re stable around her now, and aren’t listening to you, because...” She contemplated the issue. “You’re too far away.” She shrugged. “Give her a hug.”

Mateo hugged Octavia, placing himself closer to his nanites, and commanded them to recede into his implants and go dormant, which they did. So he was still naked, but he didn’t want to command them to do anything else. He was afraid of another glitch.

“I’ll tweak the programming, and maybe boost the signal,” Ramses decided. “Might be nice if we can do what Mateo did, but on purpose, and with less resistance.”

“I did it on purpose.”

“I meant, premeditatively.”

“Where are we?” Romana asked, looking away as if examining their surroundings, but she was really just uncomfortable with seeing her father like this.

“Service tube,” Ramses answered, wading back in her direction. “They put pods in here to repair and replace parts.”

“How do we get out?” Angela pressed.

Ramses kept going towards a computer terminal, which was thankfully, waterproof. He started looking through the data. “I may need time to come up with a solution.” He shook his head. “Seven people, six suits, and flooding appears to be quite comprehensive. We need a clear path out of this dome, and into the next one. We can’t just walk though, or even try to swim to the top.”

“Octavia’s gonna be stuck here alone, in the water, for an entire year,” Marie pointed out. “No food, no freshwater. No escape.”

They all looked sadly at Octavia.

She took a breath. “What else is new?”

While Ramses was trying to come up with an escape plan, Leona was at another terminal, trying to figure out how to drain the water out of here, so at least Octavia would have a dry place to stand. The Waltons, meanwhile, were working on extracting a dayfruit smoothie module and a water recycling module out of their respective pocket dimensions. Octavia needed these things more than they. The ladies solved their three problems in enough time for the jump to the future. The tube wasn’t designed to be drained of this much water, but it did have a drain, which could take care of it over time. Octavia would be alone, and in this terrible place, wet for a few days, but at least she would have food and water.

“I’ll stay with her,” Romana declared.

“What?” Mateo asked her. He was fully clothed now.

“It’s something I can do, and I should, Romana reasoned. “She shouldn’t be alone. She’s been so alone.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Octavia assured her. “It’ll be boring.”

“Actually,” Ramses said. “The terminal has some entertainment stored on it. I don’t know why, as they don’t really use human workers for this, but it’s there. Should last you. Lots of ancient reality TV, though.”

“Have you not found somewhere better where they can go instead?” Leona asked him.

“Afraid not,” Ramses responded. “Atlantis is totally flooded. Every nook, every cranny. The vactube was the only dry space, but it only stayed that way, because there wasn’t any activity. We altered the pressure differential by coming here.”

“It’s okay,” Romana decided. “We’ll make this work.” She smiled at Octavia. “Together.”

Their watches beeped.

“Last time to back out,” Mateo said.

“Not gonna happen.” Romana hugged her father. “I’ll see you in a year. You’ll see me in a minute.”

Midnight central hit. When they returned, Leona’s draining program was complete, and the service tunnel was totally dry. The weird part was, Romana was in a different spot, but Octavia wasn’t. The former was sitting on one chair, resting her feet on another, casually filing her fingernails. The latter was exactly where she was before, still wet, and very confused.

“What the hell happened?” Mateo asked. “Octavia, you’re on our pattern?”

“I don’t see how.”

“What’s that humming sound?” Olimpia asked.

Leona knelt down to the floor, and pulled her bag off to open it. She took out the crystal that Pacey had given them. The colors had abated after the initial lightshow, but they were back, presumably triggered by the time jump. “First thought. This put her on our pattern, hopefully for her sake, temporarily.”

“Oh, Romana. You’ve been alone this whole time,” Mateo whined apologetically.

“NBD,” Romana said, hopping off of her chairs. “I watched every episode of Survivor and The Amazing Race. I read those Witches of Atlantis books too. I know why it flooded.”

“Still,” Mateo said, embracing his daughter again. “I’m sorry that happened to you. I wish Pacey would have just been clear about what that crystal was. Talk about a solution without a problem.”

“It’s really okay. Now we know. And that’s not all we know.” She walked over to the hatch they had come in through, and opened it. No water came in. “As you said before, it’s all part of the experience.”

Even though they were confident that it was fine, the six of them cautiously passed Romana, and stepped out of the tunnel. The train station was completely dry. Everything was fine. Had they imagined it?

“You’re not imagining it,” Romana said. “It’s periodically flooded on purpose. I don’t know what the exact schedule is, so we shouldn’t stick around, but I have not been living in that service tube this whole time.”

“Why would the station be flooded too, through?” Leona questioned. She looked down at the pod, which was still warped and damaged. “That’s a major safety hazard.”

“That I believe was an accident,” Romana determined. “Pacey left a door open. Only the dome itself is meant to be inundated. I closed it.”

“I’m proud of you,” Mateo said.

She laughed and scoffed. “Dad. Anyway, I looked for Buddy, and he’s not here. He must have moved on to a different sector in Recursiverse, perhaps a different planet.” She used airquotes.

“How do we do that?” Ramses asked her. “The vactube is down, so do we take a spaceship?” He used airquotes too, because if there were indeed ships here, they were probably only simulations, meant to make it feel like visitors were traveling through the simplex dimensions, to worlds light years away, when they were probably only driving to the next dome over.

“The Atlantians didn’t use ships,” Romana explained as they were leading them down the corridor, still in the perimeter structure of the dome. She stepped into the driver’s seat of a shuttle cart, and drove off once everyone was on board. “If they wanted to leave Earth, they used something else.” She drove them a few kilometers until they reached what was clearly a Nexus building.

“Is this functional?” Leona asked, intrigued.

“I don’t think so,” Romana replied. “You tell me.”

“Hey, Venus Opsocor,” Leona said to the aether after walking in. “Are you there?”

No response.

“She may not wanna answer,” Leona explained, “but I’m guessing that it’s simply not a real Nexus.”

“Probably not.” Romana started to walk up the steps to the control room. “Shut the door.” She reached into the room without stepping in, and swung her arm once against the wall.

Marie smirked and looked up towards the ceiling with her eyes. “We’re moving.”

“Yeah,” Romana agreed. “Right now, we’re rotating into the next dome over, while that dome’s Nexus rotates into here. It takes about four minutes, and is meant to be imperceptible. If you’re paying too much attention, you can tell that it’s just a simulation, but visitors are expected to step into the cavity, and pretend that it’s real. We don’t have to do that. We’re just gonna wait for the rotation to be complete, open the door, and we’ll be in the new dome.” She pointed. “I think there’s a corridor over there, so we could have just walked across, but...”

They stood there and waited. Only Leona wandered into the cavity, mostly out of boredom. Technicolored lights rained down on her from the Nexus drum above, but that was all they were; lights. The rotation ended, and they left. Everything looked pretty much identical to where they were before, until they crossed the ring, and opened the inner doors. They were definitely not in Atlantis anymore.

Romana passed by them, and held her arms out as she was spinning around. “Welcome...to Ce—”

She never finished the word. An explosion knocked them all on their asses.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 24, 2506

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The door was still open, but Octavia was now on the other side. She looked pretty upset and scared. “Come in! Come in!” she screamed. Mateo heard something behind him too, so he looked over his shoulder. Goddammit, another goddamn monster horde was coming after him. Was this ever going to end? Yeah, right now. He shuffled in through the door, and helped Octavia close it. They could hear the booms as the monsters pounded on it, trying to get through. “I thought they couldn’t cross the perimeter.”

“Rules have changed,” Octavia explained. “I think seeing me walk through this door last year broke something in them. Imagine waking up one day and realizing that you were in a simulation.”

“That literally happened to me, like, a few days ago.”

“Oh. So you know.”

“You’ve been here for the whole year?”

“Yeah,” she answered. They weren’t outside of the dome, per se, but now inside of an antechamber. The border wasn’t a single two dimensional wall, but a complete ring. If they were on the real Castlebourne, this plaza would be used for intake, maintenance, and other meta-purposes. “There’s plenty of food in the kitchen, and I’ve been using this time to find your friends.”

“And did you?”

“Yeah, it hasn’t been easy,” Octavia went on as she was leading him down the corridor. “Obviously, they disappeared last year when you did, so they weren’t anywhere. I couldn’t just command drones to fly around and search for them. Optical cameras aren’t actually all that common. Security and logging systems rely predominantly on other sensors. I had to sift through this past data, looking for anomalies. I believe that I’ve pinpointed them to six domes. Now that you’re all back, we can find out for sure through those few optical cameras on scouting drones. I wanna show you something else first. One of the domes is different. It flagged something that I don’t recognize, and unlike the others, this anomaly appears to have been there during the whole interim year.”

“Oh, no.” Mateo knew what this was. Still, he followed her into a room full of monitors. She pulled up the feed that she was talking about, and confirmed his suspicions. It was Boyd Maestri, a.k.a. Buddha Maestri, a.k.a. Buddy. “Yeah, he’s...I know him.”

“Are you gonna break him out too?”

“I don’t see why I would. Where is this? Is that water, or is there something wrong with the feed?”

“Apparently, it’s Atlantis, so yes, it’s underwater. But it’s not consumed by water; it’s under a dome. But a smooth dome, rather than a geodesic one like they usually are.”

He sighed. “He looks like he’s doing fine, and doesn’t need to be rescued. He’s another bad guy...sort of.”

“Okay, well, he’s alone, so either one of these other domes is doubled up, or I missed one.”

Mateo nodded. “Pacey did say that not all of us would be alone. I thought he was referring to me, which was confirmed when you showed up, but hopefully there are others.”

They sat there for a few minutes, watching the drones hunt for the anomalies in realtime, instead of just old data. They found them. Ramses was in a snowy hell. Leona was in a museum, Angela on a river, and Marie in an old timey settlement of some kind. Oh, Dome for Pioneers, it said that right there at the bottom. Olimpia and Romana were thankfully together, and Pacey couldn’t have picked a better place than a cloud paradise. It was called Heavendome.

“I assume you wanna start with Leona?”

“She looks fine,” Mateo noted. “She’s just looking at the artifacts. Let’s get Ramses out first. It’s literally called Tundradome.”

“I postulate that the vactrain network is just like that door in that you have administrative access to it. I have not been able to leave, not that I had anywhere to go anyway.”

“You could have gone to The Bowl, and commandeered a ship.”

“I don’t know that that exists here. Like I said, this isn’t the real Castlebourne. We may not be in regular space.”

“Still, I appreciate you sticking around. You’re a good friend.” They hugged.

They took the circle line first to get to the vactrain station. It was a series of sealed tubes almost fully underground, which could take passengers anywhere in the world. There were hubs scattered around the globe, where these vactrains switched tracks when necessary, but some tracks had direct routes to each other, just based on proximity. The one between Bloodbourne and Tundradome was one of these connections. Ten minutes later, they were at their destination. According to the drone keeping watch over Ramses, he wasn’t too far from the station, but it was still going to be a little bit of a walk. Mateo and Octavia grabbed parkas from the locker room, and started to put them on, as well as the boots, scarved, and caps.

“Don’t you think it’s a little weird, that Pacey hasn’t done anything to try to stop us?” Paige asked.

“He told us that he didn’t want to mess with our memories too much, or make every choice for us. My theory is that he believes in some level of freewill, and freedom in general. We used our ingenuity to break out of our prison, and break into others, and he likely respects that. He doesn’t have to be our enemy, and he knows that. Or, his purview is limited, and he straight up doesn’t know that we’re here. In case that’s the explanation, let’s be careful and quick.”

They also found snowmobiles near the entrance to the tundra environment, so they drove right out to Ramses’ location, got him on board without a single word, and drove back. That really was easy. “Do you remember who you are?” Mateo asked once they were back inside.

“I remember everything,” Ramses answered.

“Me too.”

“I don’t have any powers, though, which is why I almost died out there.”

“You would be surprised. I materialized a solid knife made out of light in my hand.”

“Good for you,” Ramses murmured.

Mateo laughed. “Let’s get you warmed up. They had hot chocolate in the Bloodbourne intake plaza. I’m guessing that this one does too. It must.”

“Let’s just go,” Ramses requested. “I assume you know where the others are.”

“Leona’s closest,” Octavia answered, “but we will have to go through a conjunction.”

It took longer to get to her than it did to get to Ramses, but they still had plenty of time before next year stole them. She was less than enthusiastic about leaving. She owed her resistance to the fact that she had no clue who they were.

“Who are you? How did you get in here?” she demanded to know.

“Leona, it’s me!”

“I don’t know you, I don’t know Leona.”

“Claudia’s in trouble,” Octavia said, randomly maybe?

“What?”

“She’s hurt, and you know, if she dies, this place dies.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s, umm...on a river,” Ramses improvised.

“Yeah, she was looking for the Rod of Moses.” Octavia cleared her throat, hoping that would work. “The snake bit her.”

“Why is she out in the field?” Leona lamented. “She’s always doing that, still thinks she’s an agent. Wait, the Staff of Moses should be in the religious power aisle.”

“Yeah, it was stolen,” Mateo said, hoping that she would find this believable.”

Leona growled. “Walter’s son.”

“Yeah, we think it was him.” Even Octavia didn’t know enough about whatever this place was all about, but this was working.

“Okay, let’s go.” Leona started to move, but then stopped. “Wait. I still don’t know who you people are.”

“We’re from...Warehouse 14,” Octavia lied. “So...better not ask any questions.”

Leona was still not convinced, so Mateo decided to take a gamble. He held his hand up between them. A holographic daisy sprouted from his palm, and then bloomed to full glory.

She regarded it with all-consuming interest. She didn’t think of anything else but this one light-based flower. She slowly lifted her gaze up to her husband’s face. “Mateo?”

“Are you starting to remember?”

“Yeah.” She looked away to consider it. “Yeah, I remember everything.”

“Triggers,” Ramses realized. “We all need triggers.”

“What was yours?” Mateo asked him.

“The cold,” he said. “My fictional persona was programmed to like the cold. I do not. And that became quite apparent within about three microseconds of being there.”

“Oh, Mateo, I almost lost you.” Leona wrapped her arms around Mateo’s neck to hug, and then kiss, him. She hugged Ramses too. “Paige! You’re here!”

“Octavia.”

Leona held up an index finger. “Got it.” There was a brief pause. “Where are the others? On a river, or was that just a lie to get me to go with you?”

“Angela is the one on the river,” Ramses replied. “It’s on the other side of the planet. The others are more over there too, but in different domes.”

“Which ones?” Leona pressed.

“Dome for Pioneers and Heavendome. Olimpia and Romana are sharing that one.”

“Let’s go to Dome for Pioneers first,” Leona suggested, “even if it’s farther away. It sounds terrible.”

“Hasn’t Marie done that kind of work before?” Olimpia asked as they were starting to leave the warehouse. “She lived in the 1800s.”

“Her father was quite wealthy,” Leona explained. “He literally had slaves do that work instead.”

“Oh.”

They went to Dome for Pioneers first. Marie was even more resistant to leave. They kept trying, but could not figure out her trigger. Nothing they said about her past—her real life—made her remember anything true about herself. As far as she was concerned, she had been born in a cabin twenty miles from here, walked with her family on the Oregon Trail when she was three and four years old, and had lived in this settlement ever since. She wouldn’t budge, and they didn’t want to force her. Not only was she becoming more and more frightened of them the more they insisted, the androids who were programmed to believe that they were other settlers were getting upset too, and very protective of her. Okay, at least they weren’t going to hurt her. The humans switched back to the original plan, and went to see Angela.

Angela was much more open to the idea that none of this was her real life, though she still didn’t want to leave. The way this dome worked was that an upper lake was the source of water to a river, which fed into a lower lake before being evaporated up, and rained back down. It might not have been as conventionally coveted as the Christo-centric interpretation of the afterlife, but it was still gorgeous and pleasant. Still, she said that she felt she could trust them, so she walked through the exit, and got on the vactrain. They then went back to Dome for Pioneers, where the Walton twins served as each other’s trigger. Now they only had one more place to go to collect the whole set. If Angela’s reluctance was any indication, it could be the hardest. Who in their right mind would ever want to leave heaven?

“Oh my God, this place is so boring!” Olimpia complained.

“You have a way out?” Romana asked. “Let’s go!”

“Do you remember us?” Mateo asked them.

“No. What? Why would we remember you? I don’t care who you are. If you have an exit, then point me to it. ¡Ándale!” Olimpia exclaimed.

“Seconded!” Romana agreed.

“Okay, great,” Ramses determined.

They started to walk back towards the elevator, but then Marie stopped them. “Wait, where are we going? Which dome is safe and preferable, or somehow beneficial?”

“Oh,” Mateo said, realizing that they hadn’t actually thought that far ahead yet. “Octavia, how did you get here in the first place?”

The group all looked at her, so she started to recoil a little. “It was a train. I found a line that looked like it didn’t go anywhere. Unlike the others, I think it was interdimensional. I ended up back where I was, but everything was different.”

“Where is this line?” Leona asked her. “You can’t access it from just anywhere?”

Octavia was still nervous. She shifted her focus from person to person. “Castledome. You have to go to Castledome.”

“Which is probably where Pacey is,” Romana lamented.

“It’s where he was,” Octavia agreed. He found me right quick, and took me to Bloodbourne.”

Mateo placed a hand on her shoulder. “Remember what I said with the car, that you had me to help you. That’s still true, but you now you also have them.” He indicated the group. “Castledome won’t be a problem.”

“No,” Leona concurred. “Let’s go.”

They took the vactrain back to the other side of the world, not speaking too much during the ride, but catching each other up a little. Mateo was able to trigger his daughter by recounting the story of when they first met, and Olimpia with a passionate kiss. They now all had a lot of memories that they didn’t have before, including their true pasts, their fabricated lives in Underburg, and the new ones from their respective domes since being separated. Something went wrong with navigation, which sent them on a detour away from Castledome. They ended up in Power Crystal Factor. Leona and Ramses tried to reroute them, but the controls were locked out. Someone wanted them here, almost certainly Pacey. With no other reasonable choice, they stepped off the train, crossed the ring, and walked through the main doors.

Pacey was waiting for them on the main floor. The name was fitting. He was surrounded by crystals of all shapes and colors, forming in their little growth chambers. They were sparkly, beautiful, and a little mesmerizing. Pacey still stole focus, though. He didn’t look mad, and definitely not surprised. He spoke first. “I’ll allow you to leave, but under one condition.”

“What’s that?” Leona asked, stepping forward, and resuming her role as their leader.

Pacey smirked. “All members of your party must be present at the reservation time. We do not seat partial parties.”

“Ah, shit,” Mateo said. “You’re gonna make us go get ‘im.”

“I’m gonna make you go get ‘im,” Pacey confirmed.

Mateo sighed. “And then we can go?”

“And then you can try to figure out how to leave,” Pacey corrected. “Whether you can actually do so is entirely up to you.”

“So that’s a no, you won’t let us.”

“I won’t actively stop you,” Pacey said. “But I won’t help you.”

“Well, at least we know he’s in Atlantis,” Octavia said encouragingly.

“He’s not necessarily there anymore,” Pacey countered. “The Recursiverse Immersive Experience takes the immersive part very seriously. It’s the largest dome network on the planet. It may take you a while, and you won’t have access to any tracking systems, or navigational data. But you might wanna take this.” He pulled one of the nearby crystals out of its slot, and offered it to them.

“What’s this?” Leona asked. It was totally clear while Pacey was holding it, but then it started to change to multiple colors once Leona took hold of it.

“You don’t know?” Pacey asked. “Ramses?”

“Never seen one like it,” Ramses said. “It’s technicolored, though, which is interesting.

Pacey nodded once with the corner of his lips turned down, but not in frown. “You’ll figure it out.” He ushered them back out to the train station.

“We’ll go to Atlantis first, and start on his trail from there,” Mateo suggested. “We’ll get it done faster than you think.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Pacey said as Team Matic was filing into the train car. “Good luck,” he added just before the doors closed.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 15, 2497

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Like a bunch of idiots, Team Matic lost the plot. Ramses and Leona were absorbed in trying to understand neutrinos, and everyone else was just relieved to have their friends back. They totally forgot the only question that mattered. Who was the scary neutrino monster, and how were trillions of neutrinos sentient? As simple of an explanation as there was for their profound overestimation of the intelligence of these subatomic particle clusters, that thing’s awareness of its surroundings could not be in doubt. It was shaped like a person. It moved like one, and at one point, it was reportedly trying to communicate. It had a mind of some kind, perhaps as a disembodied consciousness that attracted, or could control, the neutrinos, like Buddy. They had to go back to Dome 216 for more answers.

“It’s...gone,” Olimpia stated the obvious. They were standing in the space between domes, exposed to the harsh environment that was Castlebourne’s natural state. There should have been a geodesic dome here, but it was just a deep crater under open space. They didn’t know that it was going to be like this. Out of an abundance of caution, Mateo insisted on taking Romana back to Castledome for medical treatment. She was only exposed to the vacuum for a few seconds before her suit automatically formed itself around her to protect her, but she wasn’t expecting it, and could still be suffering from the effects. Hers wasn’t an upgraded substrate designed to withstand such deadly conditions unaided.

“This is it,” Leona said. “We’re where it once was. Hrockas completely destroyed it somehow.”

Ramses was checking his sensors. “No radiation, so he didn’t blow it up.”

“Could they have dismantled it?” Marie asked. “I mean, it’s been a whole year for everyone else.”

“Baudin could have taken the dome itself down relatively quickly,” Leona explained. “That’s not the problem. The question is what would have left this crater. Maybe they dug it out to be certain that all of those dark particles were gone.”

“We could go ask,” Angela offered.

“I already tried, we’ve been cut off,” Leona contended,

“What? Why?”

“It’s nothing personal,” Leona went on. “He just has to focus on the upcoming grand opening event. We’re no longer in the inner circle. We claimed to be leaving a few years ago, so he wasn’t expecting us to still be here.”

“So the neutrino monster is his problem now,” Marie decided, “and we can finally leave.”

“I still have questions,” Ramses complained.

Leona patted him on the shoulder. “You always will. This isn’t our home. We’ve overstayed our welcome, and we gotta go.”

They didn’t leave right away. Leona allowed Ramses to take some soil samples, and other residual readings. Everyone else on the team spent the rest of the day seeing their loved ones one last time. Mateo focused on his other two daughters, but also spent a little time with his once-parents, Aura and Mario, his once-brother, Darko, and Darko’s daughter, Dar’cy. She showed up a couple years ago, but never reached out to them, for whatever reason. They didn’t even know if she still had all her special powers, which Dubra lost when her consciousness was transferred to her new body.

Goodbyes were always hard, and they never seemed to last long enough, but at some point, they just had to decide that it was over. They congregated on the outside of Ramses’ lab. To protect it, he trapped it in a temporal bubble, sunk it into the ground, and disguised it as an unremarkable rock formation. These weren’t holograms, but solid objects. People knew that it was around here somewhere, but perhaps they would forget precisely where, and after being unable to find it, give up, and move on. Or they would indeed make their way into the rooms, and cause some damage. The team couldn’t live their lives in the what-ifs, so they washed their hands of it, and teleported away.

They were floating in orbit now. Well, they weren’t really in orbit. They were just fully outside the atmosphere, and in freefall. Since they had no means of propulsion, they would eventually burn up in the atmosphere and die if they didn’t leave. They could hang here for a moment, though, and admire the planet from such an amazing vantage point.

“Do you think we’ll ever come back here?” Romana asked. She was all better now. Space exposure was an easy fix these days.

“It’s almost inevitable,” Ramses mused. “We always go back.”

“Really?” When’s the last time you were in Egypt?”

Ramses pointed. “I think that’s Giza.” It was impossible to tell from this elevation, but it could have indeed been the replica of the Great Pyramids that Baudin built under one of the domes.

Some of them chuckled. Then they continued to fall, and watch the ground get just a little bit closer. “Y’all ready for this?” Leona asked, knowing that they didn’t have much time left before it became unsafe even for them.

“I’ve been running diagnostics on the tandem slingdrives,” Ramses said. “They look good. We’re in the violet.”

“Okay,” Leona said. “Yalla.”

They decided to follow through with their plan to fly blindly by merely activating the slingdrives, and letting it send them wherever. They weren’t going to navigate, or think about where they wanted to go. They wanted fate to take over, come what may. The web of technicolors formed around them, and sent them away.

They emerged from the quintessence cocoon in a room. It was dark, with the only lights appearing over what looked like an altar on the far wall. There were other objects around them, like tables and glass cases, but it was hard to make anything out. There weren’t any dark particles flying around them, though, so they were presumably not in the neutrino dimension again. Ramses looked at his arm interface. “Atmosphere: Earth perfect. No toxins detected.” He collapsed his helmet back into his neck. Everyone followed suit, so to speak.

As soon as they were exposed to the air, an alarm blared, and a red light flashed. They all passed out at the same time, and fell to the floor.

Mateo Matic woke up in his bed. He gently lifted the blanket and sheets off of his body so he wouldn’t wake up his wife, but it was too cold in the room. Most women preferred it to be warmer than men, but Leona was the opposite. She kept turning the thermostat down. Part of him thought that maybe she did it so he wouldn’t sneak out of bed every morning. She was right about that. He quivered, and put the covers back down. Five more minutes wasn’t gonna hurt anyone. Besides, what was the boss gonna do? Fire him? He was the boss!

Leona groaned and turned over. When she saw that her husband was still there, she smiled and nuzzled his neck. Then she grabbed him by the shoulders. “I’ve trapped you!”

“Oh no!” he cried jokingly. “What can I do to escape you?”

“Kiss me.”

He kissed her.

She took her lips off of his, and tilted her head all the way back away from. “No! I know what that kiss means! That’s a goodbye kiss!” she complained.

He really did have to go. He was onboarding a new assistant today, and needed some time to get some actual work done before she came in. They didn’t make him Fleet Commander of the Central Midwest because he couldn’t make it to his destinations on time. “I promise to be home in time for dinner.”

“Good. Romana’s cooking, and she’ll be disappointed if you don’t make it.”

“I’m sure it’ll be great.” He gave her another goodbye kiss, then jumped out of bed, shivering all the way into the bathroom.

Once he was finished getting ready, he ran downstairs to catch his ride. Of course, as the big man on campus, he could absolutely afford his own car, but he wanted to support his own business, and stay in touch with his people. He always called a driver so the public would know that he believed in his company. He wasn’t famous, per se, but if he were ever to be interviewed—say, by the local news—hopefully this would help his image. He didn’t know, maybe it was stupid, but it was important to him.

“Dad, you’re missing breakfast again.”

“Sorry, I gotta go. Boyd M. is coming, and you know how obsessed he is with his q stats.”

“Wait, give me a kiss,” Romana urged, tapping her own cheek.

When he leaned it to kiss her, she faked him out, and stuffed a piece of toast in his mouth. “Thanks, honey,” he said, grabbing it with his hand so it wouldn’t fall to the floor.

“Most important meal of the day!” she said as she was running back off to the kitchen. “Your tea is by the door!”

Mateo’s watch dinged. “Thanks again!” He ran outside to find Boyd M.’s car waiting for him on the street, next to the driveway.

“Hi, neighbor!” It was one of the Walton twins, digging around in her flowers. Actually, they were his flowers, but she had a lot of time on her hands, so he never complained about her crossing the property line. He could never tell her apart from her sister, mostly because they lived together, always matched their outfits, and acted like the same woman. If he hadn’t ever seen them both at the same time, he would think she was just a crazy person who sometimes wanted to be called a different name.

“Hi...you.”

“Say hi to me too!” the other twin asked after appearing from behind a bush.

“Hi to me too!” Mateo joked. He walked over to the car, and shook his head. “We talked about this, Boyd. You’re only gonna be here for thirty seconds. Park in the driveway. If someone needs you to move, you move!”

“Your door is on the left side of your driveway,” Boyd defended. “Studies have shown that they prefer to step into our cars from the passenger side.”

“Okay, I personally don’t care about walking around, but a solution would be to take a moment to back in.”

“You got it, boss.”

“Great.” He opened the front door, and climbed in. A regular customer wouldn’t do this, but Boyd was his employee. They needed to be on the same level here. It was about respect. Speaking of which, Mateo noticed that Boyd was looking around Mateo’s head, back at the house. Mateo turned to see the curtain in the parlor fall back into place. “She’s sixteen,” he reminded him.

“What? I was just admiring your flowers. Tulips?” Boyd cleared his throat uncomfortably, and began to drive away.

“Daisies.”

The regional RideSauce branch wasn’t too far away. Once he secured this promotion, Mateo could pretty much live wherever he wanted within this region, and they would find affordable office space to accommodate him. Not every region had a local office, but it was growing in popularity in recent years. That was what set them apart from their competitors. They only had corporate offices. They didn’t care about their drivers, and never reached out to the communities. Their drivers weren’t even considered real employees, but contractors. There was this whole lawsuit surrounding the status of their personnel, which cost these other companies millions. RideSauce managed to avoid all of that by treating their workers with the respect they deserved from the very beginning. It was why they were now number one in this country, as well as in many others. Boyd stopped in front of the door, and let him out.

“Thanks! Five stars!” Mateo found his new hire waiting at the door. “Miss Sangster, you’re early.”

“If you’re early, you’re on time; if you’re on time, you’re late; if you’re late, you’re fired.”

Mateo smiled as he was starting to unlock the door. “We don’t operate like that here. We’re more chill. But I appreciate the initiative.”

Before he could manage to unlock the door, it opened. His engineer, Ramses was on the other side. “You’re a bit late, boss.”

“Then I guess I’m fired.” He gave Olimpia wink. “Come on in.”

Before this, Olimpia was living in Lincoln, Nebraska. Until today, they had only ever spoken on video chat. So she needed a tour of the offices. It didn’t take long. He took it seriously, but still casually. “This is the congregation area, where we can talk to drivers if there are any questions, comments, or concerns. This is the front desk, you’ll probably spend a lot of time here. Kitchenette to the right, bathroom to the left.” He gave her the side-eye. “Sorry, there’s only one, but there are only three of us, so we should be fine. That back there is the server room, which is Ramses’ workspace, and that’s my cubicle. There’s technically a basement, but we’re only allowed to use it in case of a tornado emergency. It connects to a store next door called Pregger Craves, which uses it for storage.”

“Pregger Craves? What does that mean?”

“They’re open 24/7, and only sell foods that are most commonly associated with pregnancy cravings. You got your ice cream, but you also have...pickles.”

“Oh, that’s what that smell is.”

Mateo chuckles. “I give it a year.” There was a short awkward pause. “Well, you can drop your bag down anywhere. Rambo, please make sure her computer is set up how she wants it.” He turned around while he was taking a sip of his tea, and gazed out the window. “Let’s keep the Midwest moving,” he said to himself.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 14, 2496

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“Anything?” Mateo asked.

“Nothing,” Leona replied.

“Where could they possibly be?” he went on. “You need at least three people to make the new slingdrives work, if it even works at all.”

“Maybe he was wrong about it,” Olimpia offered. “Maybe it works with only two.”

“We should still be able to detect them,” Leona reasoned, “wherever and whenever they are.”

“Unless they’re shrouded in dark particles,” Mateo pointed out.

“Yeah, that’s my hypothesis,” Leona agreed, “but Ramses’ systems are being finicky with me. I technically have access, but it’s...argh!” She didn’t want to have to explain the complexities of it all, and she didn’t have to.

“If it is dark particles, you know who we can call,” Angela said.

“Won’t work,” Marie countered as she was walking back in from the other room. “Buddy was here. He disappeared with them.”

“How do you know?” Leona questioned. “The surveillance was garbled.”

“I didn’t look at the footage from the lab. I looked at the recordings from the drone in Dome 216.” She lifted her hands, and projected a hologram of the video recordings from Dome 216 last year. They could see Buddy standing there with Romana and Ramses. There was no sound, and it wasn’t detailed enough to read their lips, but their body language appeared nonconfrontational. None of the others remembered experiencing angry emotions from this moment, though there was some agitation leading up to it, if they were remembering correctly. As the three of them were standing there in the desert, the dark particle creature appeared out of nowhere, and seemingly tried to kill Buddy. It kind of looked like Romana was trying to save him, further reenforcing the idea that they were not at odds at this moment. Marie closed the hologram with a drop of her hands after the creature grabbed Romana and disappeared, and the other two left, presumably to rescue her.

“You gotta fix that machi—” Mateo began.

“I know,” Leona interrupted. Then she sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“I know that you love her too,” Mateo acknowledged. “I’m just sick of worrying about her.”

“I don’t think that ever goes away,” Olimpia said.

“There’s another possible way to find her,” Angela began. “Maybe we don’t need Buddy. Ramses has given us all we need.”

“You wanna use the tandem slingdrives, and hope that they take us where we’re trying to go, even though we don’t know where exactly that is,” Leona guessed.

“If it doesn’t work, we’ll try again,” Angela reasoned. “If we can’t navigate back here for another attempt, it probably means that it never mattered if we knew where they were, because they’re probably out of range, and the tandem slingdrives don’t work right.”

Leona sighed, and looked back over to the screen. The computer was trying to find them just as it had when Buddy abducted Romana years ago. “I don’t know if this thing is good enough. That seems to be an entire person made out of dark particles. It could be orders of magnitude more powerful than the stasis field that Buddy put Romana in before.”

“Is that a yes?” Angela asked.

“I would have preferred to test the tandem slingdrives in a more controlled situation, but you make a good point that that doesn’t really exist. The whole purpose of these things is to push the boundaries of intergalactic travel. If we get lost, that was always going to be the result, and we’ll be no further from locating Rambo and Romana than we are now.”

“The great thing about these suits he made for us, we’re never not ready to go.” Mateo mused.

Olimpia interlocked her arm with his. “As long as we have each other.”

“They could be in a harsh environment,” Leona warned. “Suit up.”

Mateo released his emergent nanites, and commanded them to turn mostly green. He now looked strikingly like Green Arrow. When Leona looked at him funny, he shrugged and said, “she loved this show.”

“She had time to watch it?” Leona questioned.

Marie looked at the time readout on her interface. “Eleven, ten, nine...”

Everyone shut themselves up safe in vacuum mode, though Mateo kept the superhero costume on over it to keep things light. If he didn’t laugh, he would cry. No one lost track of their children as many times as he had. Put a bell on her, he thought to himself. Well, she had a bell. A psychic bonding bell, which should always let them know where the other one was. These dark particles were incredibly frustrating, and how funny it should be that they would come into their lives around the time the quantum connection was too. Their fates were sealed, whether they were aware of it or not.

Marie finished counting down, and they all slung away, concentrating on nothing but Ramses and Romana’s location. It looked like they were still in the lab, but it was very different. It was a hell of a lot darker, and these flashlights that looked like forearm weapons weren’t doing them much good. They couldn’t make out any details in the room around them, it just had the vague shape of everything back home. The right angles of the tables, desks, and chairs; the curve of the gestational pods in the corner; the height of the ceiling. They were here, but not here, kind of like the Upside Down. Everything was just a shadow of its true self, nothing more than a slight hint of its presence. Shadows, really. They could call this a shadow realm. It was very much like that in more ways than one. This was seemingly where the dark particles lived. They were swarming all around them, not paying the humans much attention, but clearly aware of their sudden appearance, however complex their intelligence might be.

Something was coming at them from the darkness. It was moving steadily, and maybe a little threateningly, but not too quickly. Before it reached them, it split in two. Shortly after that, they could be recognized as people; people wearing EmergentSuits. It was Ramses and Romana. Nice, it worked. Ramses took Mateo by the hand. He was already holding Romana’s. She took Marie’s, and together with everyone else, they completed the circle. With nothing more than a sense of homesickness, and no words exchanged, they reactivated the tandem slingdrives, and left this place as quickly as they had come. They were back in the lab; the real lab, complete with light and solid objects.

Ramses collapsed his helmet, and fell to his knees, sliding on the floor a few centimeters. At first, they thought he was hurt, but he was positively ecstatic. He was laughing and crying simultaneously, holding his arms up and to the side like he had just won Olympic gold, panting, both relieved and proud. No one had a clue what was going on. Romana was just as perplexed as the rest. “Oh my God. Yes! Yes! That’s it! I finally figured it out! I saw it! Me! Well, Romana and I, but I understand it. Whew!” he whooped.

“What happened in there?” Mateo asked his daughter.

“I don’t really know,” she replied. “We couldn’t talk, but he was super excited the whole time. He kept tapping on the interface modules of his suit. I’m guessing he was taking readings, but who knows?”

Ramses was still laughing. “Yeah. I was taking readings, all right.” He stood up, all giddy and cheerful. “I know what it is. I know what it all is.” He squealed. “I have to write it down.” He rushed to find the nearest device.

“Care to share with the class?” Leona asked.

“Yes, class first. Then the paper.” He clapped, then started gesturing with his hands as he prepared his remarks. “Neutrinos.”

“Neutrinos?” Leona echoed. “Are you saying that that’s what the dark particles are?” She didn’t seem to believe him. She was the only one who was following him even remotely.

“Yes.” Oh, Ramses was still so jazzed about this whole thing, whatever it was.

“That doesn’t make any sense. They’re subatomic particles. You can’t see them.”

“I was wrong,” Ramses went on. He kept talking with his hands. “I thought that they were lifeforms, which were replicating, but that’s not it. They don’t breed, they congregate. They form masses. They’re like...snowflakes; water adhering to a mote of dust, and clumping together until it becomes too heavy to stay up.”

“So, a dark particle isn’t a neutrino. It’s billions of neutrinos.”

“Exactly. But not like water forming on a mote of dust—”

“You literally just said that that’s what it’s like,” Angela reminded him.

“I know, but not really,” Ramses insisted. “It’s more like...a whole bunch of neutrinos who happen to be on the same trajectory as each other. They emit some kind of energy. Individually, it’s negligible, but combined, we can actually see it. We perceive it. It’s dark, because neutrinos don’t interact with photons very well either, but these bursts of energy, firing in rapid succession, do occasionally repel light like a solid object would. Again, it appears dark, because it’s a minuscule amount, but it is technically visible. For fractions of a second, but as I said, when they get close enough to each other, these bursts are happening all the time. Normally, you don’t see it, because we can’t see the neutrino dimension, but Buddy can...call them forth.” He pointed while adding, “and so can Romana.”

He was talking real fast, but no one bothered to ask him to slow down, because they didn’t understand him either way. Except for Leona. She knew what he was saying, she just  couldn’t believe it. She crossed her arms, but didn’t say anything else for now.

“So, they’re not alive?” Romana asked.

“No, as I said, I was wrong. They just seemed to be that way, because baryonic matter freaks them out. No, that’s personifying them again. They’re not used to baryonic matter, because they usually pass right through it, but in these clumps, and with some sort of weird charge that Buddy can artificially generate, they do find themselves running into us.”

“That doesn’t make any sense either,” Leona pointed out. “The particles move around people. That requires some level of sentience.”

“Yeah, I was thinking about that. I don’t think they’re diverting with any semblance of intent. I think as soon as this energy comes into contact with normal matter, they split off into different directions, ultimately colliding with other clusters, and forming new temporary trajectory masses. It only looks to us like they’re swarming, because we can’t effectively track one clump at a time. They don’t have to hit us directly, because a sufficiently concentrated layer of air is all around us at all times. To us, it’s meaningless, but it’s like a wall to them. I thought they were disappearing and reappearing, and I was sort of right. They don’t hold together for very long, but they do form clumps constantly during this charged condition. I would really love to get my hands on Buddy, and see how he does it. I may have learned all I can from Romana.”

“Where is Buddy, by the way?” Olimpia asked. “We saw you with him on the drone cam in Dome 216.”

Ramses brushed it off. “Oh, I dunno, we lost him in there. He could still be trapped for all I know, or he knew exactly how to escape. I’m sure he’ll show up again at some point.”

“Hold on,” Leona said, still unconvinced. “Where were we? What was that place? The neutrino dimension? That’s where they live? Why? Seems random.”

“It’s not,” Ramses continued his lesson. “Let’s say you have a vacuum-sealed room with two doors. There’s a screen door, and then the fully sealed door. When you open the sealing door, only the screen door remains, which allows the air to rush through the screen, and into the room. That’s because nature abhors a vacuum. As you know, neutrinos don’t interact with electromagnetism, or the strong nuclear force. The dimensional barrier is apparently made up of one or both of these, which is why the neutrinos pass into it. It’s just like entropy, where a state of order naturally flows into a state of disorder. It wasn’t made for neutrinos specifically, but those are the particles that go into it, because nothing can stop them. And they don’t usually come back out, because there’s so much space in there.”

Romana tapped on her arm interface. “Yeah, that was my interpretation too.” She lifted her arm up. “That’s what it says here, neutrino clumps.”

Mateo laughed. “You’re adorable. Like a young me.”

“Why are you dressed like Green Arrow?” she asked.

“Why aren’t you dressed like Speedy?”

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