The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 18, 2500

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The ladies were gone. Leona, Olimpia, and Romana were on a trip together in the Pacific Northwest, predominantly the Portland area. Mateo could have taken time off of work to go with them, but he wasn’t invited. Instead, he was staying home. Ramses was spending a lot of time here too, hanging out to keep him company. They had planned on playing cards with a couple of driver friends, but both of them fell through, so now it was just the two of them. “You can play cards with just two people,” Mateo reasoned. “You can play with just yourself, if it’s the right game.”

“That’s depressing,” Ramses pointed out. “Let’s just find someone else.”

“This last minute?”

“It’s not a big party; they’ll be able to leave whenever they want to. What about those twins next door?”

“Angela and Marie.” Mateo leaned over in his chair, but couldn’t quite see through the window, so he stood up. It still wasn’t enough, so he just stepped over. “Yeah, they’re out there in their garden. Seems as though that’s all they do.”

“Maybe they would like a break,” Ramses suggested. Maybe they’re always out there hoping a couple of cool guys will invite them to something better.”

“I’ll see.” Mateo walked out of the house, expecting to do this alone, but Ramses was trailing behind him. “Hello, Waltons. Are you free this evening? We got a poker game going, and there are some extra seats at the table.”

Marie and Angela exchanged a look. “Do you have RPS-101?” asked the former.

“Is...that a drink?” Mateo asked.

They laughed. “No,” Angela said. “It’s a game. We have a board, if you think you might like to learn.”

Mateo exchanged a look with Rames, and then shrugged. “Yeah, we’re up for something new. It’ll just be the four of us.”

“Great.” Marie stood up, and started to remove her gardening gloves. “Marie Walton, computer programmer.” She shook Ramses’ hand.

“Computer engineer,” Ramses replied.

“I know.” She smiled.

“I’m an addiction counselor.” Angela shook his hand too.

“There won’t be any drinking,” Mateo explained, worried that maybe she was worried about it.

“It would have been fine if there were,” Angela promised.

The twins wanted to shower first, which was fine, because the gaming table wasn’t set up yet. A half hour later, they showed up with their game board. It was a giant wheel with 101 objects written in the wedges. The entire game was pure chance, with absolutely no strategy involved. One player spun the wheel, and randomly landed on one of the objects. The other player spun next, and if it was better than the first one, they won. It was the most boring thing that Mateo had ever experienced, and he couldn’t understand why they liked it so much. They couldn’t explain it either. They just had this peculiar fascination with it, like there was a secret dimension to the game that they simply hadn’t reached yet. Mateo wasn’t so sure, but he did find himself mysteriously landing on Sponge a lot. Maybe there really was magic to it. Despite this inexplicable intrigue, everyone agreed after a while that it was literally played out. They switched to regular old poker. They had to explain the game to the Waltons first. Well, Ramses did. Mateo knew the hands, but he didn’t understand it on the level that Ramses did. That was why he served as the region’s engineer. Mateo certainly couldn’t do it without him.

After hours of this, they took a break to get up, use the restroom, and scavenge for food. Ramses and Marie ended up in a discussion about their jobs, and it was kind of looking like they were never going to start playing again.

“There’s something I’d like to show you,” Angela said to Mateo. She tilted her head towards the east. “Back at our place.”

“Okay,” he said. Hopefully she wasn’t coming onto him. Managing a three-person relationship was complicated enough. They didn’t need to add a fourth. He followed her back to her house, and into what she called their study.

“Did you know that there are more than two kinds of twins?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, you can have identical or fraternal—or in the case of two girls, sororal. You’ve probably heard of this distinction, but there are other variations. Precisely when the egg splits, or whether it was fertilized before the split, or after, makes a difference. There are other factors. You can even have two twins with two separate fathers!”

“Is that what you are?” Mateo asked, not sure where she was going with this.

Angela giggled as she took a file folder out of the top drawer of a desk. “No.” She opened the folder, and folded it under itself before handing it to him. “We’re not sure what we are.”

Mateo looked down at the top piece of paper. “I don’t understand what any of this means. DNA methylation, telomeres...”

“Down at the bottom.” Angela just pointed at the sheet in general.

Mateo read it out loud, “biological markers inconclusively suggest an aging abnormality that places Subject B roughly four years ahead of Subject A. Yeah, I still don’t know what that means.”

“Marie is older than me,” Angela tried to explain, “by four years.”

“How is that possible?”

She shook her head. “We don’t know. It’s not the only weird thing about it. We understand that RPS-101 is stupid and boring, but we wanted to play it with you two to see what would happen. You keep landing on Sponge. I keep landing on Heart. And there’s also the matter of the hemlock.”

“Excuse me?”

“We all drank hemlock.”

“I don’t know much, but I know that that’s toxic.”

“Yeah, it should be. But are you even a little queasy?”

Mateo turned away. “You poisoned me as some sort of test?”

“Do you remember moving here, to your house, I mean?”

“Yeah, of course I do.”

“I don’t. Neither does Marie. We’re just been here forever. All we do is garden.”

“And play Rock, Paper, Scissors, and drink hemlock.”

“Do you feel stronger when you go out in the sun?”

“Lots of people like the sun.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Mateo sighed. “I guess so. Is that not normal?”

“No, it’s not.”

“What does it mean, when you put it all together, that we’re superheroes?”

“Well, we may be super, but we’re not heroes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure your job is very fulfilling, but it can be done by a computer.”

That was a bit of a sore subject. While it was true that RideSauce valued the human touch, his role was also under constant threat of being automated. The only reason they hadn’t pulled the trigger was because customer satisfaction was a reflection of staff satisfaction, which was reportedly tied to their ability to receive help from real humans. If the pendulum ever swung to the opposite direction, even for only a day, his job would be gone so fast, a new tenant would be in his office space by lunch.

Angela took her lab test back, and returned it to the drawer. “I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but there’s something going on around here. I feel like nearly everyone around me is fake. There’s a reason we ran these tests on you two. You, your wife, your daughter; they all seem like real people. You seem like the only real people. Everyone else is just sort of...weird. Wouldn’t you say?”

“No,” Mateo argued. “My assistant feels real, as does one of my drivers, Boyd.”

Angela grabbed a notepad from the desk. “Boyd. And what’s your assistant’s name?”

“You’re not going to poison my friends too!”

“Understood, but you only listed two more people. Can you think of anyone besides them?”

“Yeah, my rival...Pacey.”

“Pacey, with an e?”

“You’re not—I mean, you can poison him if you want, I guess. But you stay the hell away from my wife and daughter, you hear me.”

“Well, your daughter wouldn’t be able to survive it.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I dunno. Why did I say that?”

Mateo decided to sit down in one of the guest chairs. “If I’m being honest, there are some things I know or think about the world around me, and the people, which don’t seem true...but do?”

Angela flattened her skirt under her thighs and sat down in the other guest chair. “I think I know what you mean. Leona and I had tea the other day, and she made an off-handed comment about how I was once engaged to a man named Ed. That’s completely untrue, I’ve never been engaged, yet it still somehow felt right. I could picture him in my mind. He was dressed weird, like he lived in a different time.”

“Maybe it’s a past life.” He stood up and laughed as he put his face in his palm. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m even entertaining these scifi ideas. Past lives? That’s not a thing.”

“Aren’t they? We don’t know,” Angela pointed out.

“I designed a spaceship.” The two of them looked over to find Ramses standing in the doorway. “I thought it was just for fun, but...I think it works. I mean, it’s really detailed, right down to how the fuel is injected into the engine.”

“He showed it to me,” Marie said as they were both walking all the way into the room. “I can’t make heads or tails of it, but I can tell that he put a lot of thought into the design. If it wouldn’t work, it’s well-thought out at the very least.”

“We were talking,” Ramses went on. “I’ve never been sick. Neither has she, nor her sister. My memories seem...not fake, but too perfect, like they’ve been carefully curated for my mind.”

“Did she tell you about the poison?” Mateo asked him.

“Yeah,” Ramses said with a nod. “We took it a step further.” He bent over, and unplugged a surge protector from its wall, along with all of the appliances connected to it. “Do you care about this?” he asked Marie.

“No,” she said as she was taking it from him. She pulled it back like a baseball bat, and slammed it straight into Ramses’ face. He didn’t even move. It didn’t seem to hurt at all, and didn’t do any damage whatsoever.

Apparently inspired by the two of them, Angela grabbed a letter opener from the desk, and tried to jam it into Mateo’s neck. It didn’t hurt either, and didn’t break the skin. It did do damage to the opener, though, bending it into a slight curve.

“We are superheroes,” Mateo guessed.

“Or it’s the simulation hypothesis,” Ramses decided.

“Explain that one again?” Mateo asked, jokingly without laughing, because he hadn’t ever heard of it, though it did not sound humorous.

“We’re all living in a computer simulation,” Ramses began. “Usually, it’s used in an attempt to explain the nature of reality itself, and where we all are in general. But in this case, it could just be the explanation for where we are...the four of us.”

“Six,” Marie corrected. “We think Mateo’s family is part of this too.”

“More,” Angela corrected Marie’s correction. She lifted up the notepad. “Mateo came up with a few names of people he interacts with who also appear to be real.” She used airquotes around the last word.

“If we’re just in a computer,” Mateo asked, “how do we get out?”

“Typically?” Ramses asked. “You can’t. You can never really know what’s real, and what’s not. It’s not like the movies, where you can will yourself out of it, or where the developers hid secret powers that let you take control. If the simulation hypothesis is true, we have absolutely no free will. Not only can they shape our world to their liking, but they can adjust our minds as needed. We’re not necessarily real either.”

“So, what do we do?” Angel asked him.

“Our two main choices are to keep our heads down, and hope our creators see fit to at least keep us alive in whatever definition that should be for the simulation. Don’t make waves, don’t rock the boat; just play along.”

“Or we keep bashing each other with office equipment,” Marie offered.

“Or we try to talk to them,” Mateo suggested instead. “I told you, Angela, that my rival, Pacey seems real too. There’s more to it. He actually seems, somehow...more real.”

“You think he’s one of them? An avatar of one of the developers?” Angela figured.

“Might could be,” Mateo said. “But I don’t wanna do anything until my girls come back home. It’s not safe for them here, but it’s not like it’s safe wherever they are now. What if they’re on a different server, or whatever? At least if they come back, I can keep an eye on them.”

“Okay, then we wait to do anything,” Marie said. “They should have a say in whatever decision we make anyway.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 17, 2499

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Mateo and Olimpia were in St. Louis on one of their business trips. There was an issue with the booking, which was forcing them into a single room with a single bed. It was no coincidence that all of the hotels were booked up this week. They weren’t the only game in this town right now. Every ridesourcing company was hoping to strike a deal with St. Louis Metro Transit. They were looking to expand their service to multiple outlying areas, but found the project to be cost-prohibitive on their own. One of the bus drivers moonlighted as a driver for Tractus Rides, and suggested they form some sort of partnership. It was a last mile program, which could help thousands get to their destinations at lower cost than if they had to drive themselves, or use a ridesharing service alone. The executives actually thought it was a good idea, but they didn’t just want to close themselves up to options. Everyone was going to get a shot to pitch their idea. This would be a huge opportunity for RideSauce. While St. Louis fell under Mateo’s purview, he wasn’t in charge of the negotiations, because that was well above his paygrade. If they managed to secure something here, there was a chance that RideSauce would make similar deals in other cities.

Only the higher ups for RideSource were here, but Tractus went a different direction. They decided to secure rooms for their local drivers as well, reportedly to show their enthusiasm for the project, but clearly just to make themselves look stronger. They took all the hotel rooms just so they could walk around with their big swingin’ wieners, and that was annoying. There was nothing that the front desk agent could do, so Mateo was gonna have to swallow his pride, and speak to his archrival. “Pacey,” he greeted with an insincere nod.

“Matthew, what a pleasant surprise.” Pacey Henricksen was essentially Mateo’s equivalent for Tractus in the central midwest, though not exactly. Their organization was structured differently, so he managed more cities, and other divisions in those cities. RideSauce focused on ridesourcing, but Tractus was also in delivery and limousine services. And he knew that Mateo would be here, obviously.

“You took all the rooms.”

Pacey breathed in deeply through his nose and nodded. “We need them.”

“This is a stunt.”

“This is all a stunt,” Pacey argued. “That’s what we’re doing here. How we appear to the client is what matters most.”

“What we can provide to the client is what matters in our eyes,” Mateo countered. “They’ll see that.” He wasn’t really here to get in a fight, but he couldn’t help it.

“We’re bigger, and they need to know how much better we’ll be at scaling operations.”

“Your other divisions are irrelevant. The bus riders aren’t going to be getting in any limos.”

“They might if they pay a premium,” Pacey reasoned.

Mateo laughed. “They’re bus riders,” Mateo emphasized. “They don’t pay premiums. You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”

“We’ll see. Did you need something?”

“We need one of your rooms. They overbooked, so now we’re stuck with one between the two of us.”

Pacey looked over Mateo’s shoulder, at Olimpia. “I don’t see the problem.”

“Put your tongue back in your mouth, you’re not her type.”

“What’s her type?”

“Decent people,” Mateo answered.

Pacey shrugged. “I’m sure she would make an exception.”

“She and I are professionals. You might look into it. Until then, what do I need to do to get one of your rooms?”

Pacey grimaced. “You see, if I give you a room, I’ll be taking it away from someone else, which means they’ll be pairing up instead. That doesn’t really solve the problem, it just shifts it to someone else. You have more experience with that than I do.”

Ugh. Of course he would bring that up again. He always found a way whenever they ran into each other. “For the last time, that driver was not in my area. Just because he was supposed to drive the rider from Sioux Falls to Sioux City doesn’t mean he worked for me. He was registered in South Dakota. I had nothing to do with the failed background check.”

“Well, it speaks to how flippant your company is with safety and security,” Pacey decided.

“The driver worked for you too, he passed your background check just as easily, so don’t give me that bullshit. And unlike me, South Dakota is in your jurisdiction.”

“Well, he wasn’t working for us that night, which is why the judge withheld it as evidence.”

Mateo had no retort, and it was a distraction anyway. “There are only two of us, and as her superior, it would be inappropriate for us to share a room. Pacey. Please. You must know of two people who can bunk up.”

Pacey looked away in thought. “Well...there’s this one driver that I’ve been seeing. I suppose that she and I could share. Your little assistant could sleep in her room instead. We wouldn’t even have to involve the hotel. We’ll just give her a keycard. But if she takes anything from the mini-bar, you’re paying for it.”

“She never would,” Mateo explained. “I’ll ask her if she’s okay with it.”

“Lovely,” Pacey said. “Always glad to assist a colleague.”

Mateo stepped over to talk to Olimpia, who was receptive to the idea. She wasn’t entirely convinced that the original situation was a problem that needed to be fixed, but she didn’t argue. She wouldn’t, though. He needed to get better at reading her, and recognizing that he’s her boss, and that she wouldn’t want to antagonize him. As long as Pacey’s companion stayed in his room, instead of going back to her own, Olimpia should be fine. That wasn’t what happened, though, and they should have known.

“They got in a big fight apparently,” Olimpia said at Mateo’s doorway.

“Come on in,” he said, stepping away.

She rolled her suitcase inside. “She was telling me about it, but I’ve become pretty good at tuning people out. I know what they want to hear when I’m pretending to listen actively, based on tone and pauses in their speech, so I don’t have to absorb the information. I’m sure it was very banal and meaningless. The fact is, she wanted her room back, and I didn’t want to stick around. She said she was fine sharing it with me, because I seemed cool, but I really don’t wanna do that.” She looked around this room. “I was hoping there was a couch, errr...”

“No, the company’s very frugal. I typically don’t care. It doesn’t need to be big, just clean. But you can sleep in the bed, and I’ll be in the tub.”

“I know you, Mateo, you shower at night. I can tell that you already have. The tub is wet.”

He shrugged. “I always bring a swimsuit. I’ll sleep in that.”

“That’s silly. We can share, it’ll be fine.”

Mateo looked down at the bed. “It’s a full, not even a queen. Pacey must have done that on purpose as further punishment.”

“Pacey?” she questioned. “How would he have any control over what room you were assigned?”

Mateo blinked. “I don’t know, how would he?”

Olimpia blinked back. “Can you sleep next to a woman without having sex with her?”

“Yeah, can you? Vice versa, that is?”

She hesitated to answer.

“Olimpia, it’s a simple—” Wait...

She still couldn’t answer, and she didn’t try to backpedal.

No, he couldn’t sleep in the bed with her. He couldn’t even sleep in the tub. He had to get out of here entirely. “You take the bed, I’m gonna hail a RideSauce Hot. They’re almost always SUVs, so I should be able to sleep in the back.”

“That’ll cost you a fortune.”

“Not if we don’t go anywhere,” he contended. “I’ll pay under the table.”

“That is not a service that our company offers.”

“No, but...I’m the boss. I’m sure whoever it is will say yes. That’s the difference between us and Tractus. The drivers know who I am. Nobody who works for Pacey could pick him out of a line up.”

“Mateo, it’ll be fine. I’m not saying that I won’t be able to handle it. I just want to be honest about my feelings.”

“I appreciate that. It would have been real easy for you to say nothing, and let it happen. But I have to nip this in the bud. You’re my employee, and I’m married.”

“Right, which is why I’ll get over it.”

“It’s too complicated. Things are different out there.” He pivoted, and started to gaze out the window at the stars. What did they have to do with anything?

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.” Mateo’s phone rang. It was Leona. “Hey, I’m about to go to bed.”

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing. What would be wrong?”

“I just had this feeling that you’re upset about something. I can’t explain it.”

“Things have gotten a little bit awkward with the hotel rooms, but we’re working it out. I think you just get worried about me when I’m gone.”

“No, that’s not it.”

“Oh, hold on. I’m getting another call.” He switched over without even bothering to see who it was. “Hello?”

“Mateo. This is Angela. Is everything okay?”

“Angela? My neighbor? Why would you think there’s something wrong?”

“Marie and I just started getting this weird feeling.”

A text came in. It was Ramses. Yu ight?

What the hell was going on?

They heard a series of beeps at the door just before it opened. Pacey walked in. He looked disappointed. “I thought you three had an understanding, but it looks like the feelings are a little more complicated, so this whole hotel room gambit isn’t gonna get you where you need to be.”

“What are you talking about?” Mateo demanded to know. “How do you even have a key to get in this room?”

Pacey looked back at the door, and then back to Mateo. “What room?”

“I’m so confused.” Mateo sat down on the edge of the bed, and buried his face in his hands.”

“I know,” Pacey said. “I messed up. I was trying to respect your privacy by only extracting the memories and knowledge that I needed to set up a plausible scenario, but it wasn’t enough. I’m afraid, in order to keep you here, I’m gonna have to go deeper.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Mateo argued.

“I know, and you won’t remember any of this anyway. You and Olimpia will have had sex tonight. That’s how you’ll remember it, and you will have already told Leona about it by the time you wake up. In fact, it will have been weeks ago. She will be fine, and the three of you will move forward with your relationship. Unfortunately, in order to make this work, you’re gonna have to lose the transit contract. I’ll become a weaker antagonist if you don’t.”

Actually, this was starting to make sense. Mateo’s memories were resurfacing. None of this was real. This wasn’t his life. This wasn’t any of their lives. “I know you. You met Leona before. She ran into you in the ka—”

Mateo was nervous. He had never been on a date with two women before. Well, there was that one time, but that was more of a double date where his girlfriend’s friend’s boyfriend flaked out on her. He had never been interested in that other girl. He was interested in Olimpia, and as fate would have it, Leona was interested in her too. She seemed to like them both. This might even go okay. But a first date was a first date, and those were stressful no matter what.

“Are you ready?” Leona asked. “I just need to pick a pair of shoes.”

“Wow. You look beautiful in that.”

“It’ll look better on the floor,” she joked. “Ah, come on, I’m tryna lighten the mood.”

“Is this weird? This seems weird. Maybe we shouldn’t do this.”

“It’s almost the 26th century,” Leona began. “Polyamory is in.”

“I know, but...”

“Don’t shoot yourself in the foot. Two hot chicks are into you. Just let it happen. If things get messy in the future, we’ll clean it up. No one’s life is gonna get ruined.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“You and I have been through worse,” Leona claimed.

“We’ll see about that.” He gave her a kiss on the cheek. “But I trust in your judgment. And I love you.”

“Were I you,” she said as he was walking out of the room.

“Were you me what?”

She blinked. “Huh. I don’t know. It’s an idiom, though, isn’t it?”

He shook his head. “No, it isn’t.” But was it?

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Microstory 2351: Earth, May 25, 2179

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Dear Corinthia,

I’m glad that you have friends, even if you’re not the absolute closest to them as you could possibly be. I envy you, actually. A bunch of people attended our party, but they were almost all my dad’s friends. I haven’t really connected with too many people here. There’s one guy who I was really glad could make it, so I wouldn’t be left alone in the corner. Dad always talks shop at these things. Every time he attends an event, he promises himself that he’s just going to socialize, and not discuss his work, but he always ends up failing. I really prefer to leave my work at work, so I stay out of the little circles that he forms with others. People really like him, because he usually has fairly interesting things to say (from their perspective) but he doesn’t hog all the attention either. He makes sure that others are heard. He’s really good at knowing when someone wants to speak, but is too afraid to interrupt, and will in fact interrupt other people to give the quieter ones their chances. I wish I could be more like him in this regard, always charming and fascinating. Then again, I don’t think I would like to have an audience all the time. The guy I was telling you about is pretty cool, but he works the night shift at the water treatment plant, so we don’t find many opportunities to hang out. Plus, he has a family that he needs to spend that extra time with. His wife was there too, and I like her, but they talked mostly about their children. I don’t mind it, but there’s nothing that I can contribute to the conversation since I don’t have any of my own. Part of my inability to connect is due to my lifestyle and experiences. I spent so much time meeting people that I would probably never see again after the end of the trip. I would occasionally see someone I knew before for a second move, but then I would leave again. My mind grew very accustomed to that, and hasn’t really felt at home here, even though I’m pretty sure that I’ll die here one day. There I go again, being all depressing. It makes it sound like I hated the party, but it’s not true. I had a lot of fun, and I’m glad that we were looking at Libra at the same time, just for the symbolism of that moment.

Trying to feel at home,

Condor

Microstory 2334: Earth, January 22, 2179

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Dear Corinthia,

I beamed your contact card to dad, and he said that he’s going to write to you as soon as possible. Take that with a grain of salt, because his definition of possible might be different than yours. I would say, give it a couple of weeks, and then maybe just give up. I could talk to him again, if you wanted, but he’s really nervous. He doesn’t know if you forgive him, or hate him, or what. I have not told him anything about you. I told him that you and I were in contact now, and demanded he explain his involvement in our separation thirty-six years ago. I didn’t say anything about your job, or what your life is like on Vacuus. I did divulge that his wife, your mother, was dead. I felt like he had a right to know that, regardless of how at fault he is. Anyway, I hope that whatever happens between the two of you, it doesn’t negatively impact our relationship. I think he may be partially worried about that too. I want you to know that I won’t let him ruin our new sibling connection, and I would hope that you don’t let whatever he does or says—or doesn’t do or say—stop you from wanting to converse with me. Okay, I think I’m done with all this negativity now. You inspired me today. I actually don’t have much idea of how the platform can move from one part of the ocean to another. You’re right, it’s pretty big, so it can’t be easy. I’ve started taking some courses on it, not necessarily so I can tell you, but because I would like to understand it myself. I’m so old, I doubt that I’ll ever become an engineer, or a mechanic, or a sailor, but it doesn’t hurt to learn more stuff.

Until next time,

Condor

Microstory 2328: Earth, December 9, 2178

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Dear Corinthia,

The system works! I received your canned response, telling me that you were going to wait to write back until I had a chance to speak with dad. Well, that’s what happened. He finally came home a few days ago after having been gone the longest amount of time in my life. I gave him one night to sleep off the jetlag, but then we spoke over breakfast the next late morning. We sat down at the table together, but he knew that it was coming, and neither of us ate much of anything. He admits that his wife—your mother—came to him 36 years ago with the idea to raise us separately. They were going through a divorce, and his work was going to take him across the continent anyway. She had this opportunity to be part of the first manned mission to Vacuus, and didn’t want to go without any family at all. She framed it as her idea, but my dad has always been pretty convinced that another man talked her into it. Funny thing is, this other guy ultimately failed the mission qualification tests, so he ended up not going anyway. I’ve not gotten a name yet, but I would like to find out who he is, and what happened to him.

So anyway, it sounds like it was partly a social experiment, and partly the solution to the calculus of there being two parents in need of at least one child each, and having two children to divide into the solution. He says that he doesn’t remember why she got the girl baby, and he got the boy baby, but I don’t think that part really matters. He claims that he regretted the decision immediately, but your ship had already launched. If that’s true, why didn’t he tell me about you earlier? We could have known each other since we were kids, and had some sort of relationship growing up. Yet he played into the experiment. He could have made things a little better, but chose not to. Not only did he deprive us of each other, but himself of you, and you of him. He could have known his own daughter, and now you’re an adult, but a total stranger. I also missed out on the chance to know my own mother, though you would be a better judge as to whether that’s a bad thing, or not. He was too tired to give any more details. He didn’t really paint himself as the hero, but it’s clear that he considers her the villain. Again, he did have some control. There must have been some argument that he could have made in a court of law. Your mom had to volunteer for the Vacuus mission. They weren’t begging for her to sign up. Maybe that’s not true, though, because as I said, I never had the chance to know here. Before she died, what—if anything—did she say about how this started for her? I’ll try to find out more information for us later, but I wanted to reply as quickly as possible, so you would have time to consider and process it. To be honest, it was a rather disappointing conversation. When I think back to my conversation with him, I realize that he said as little as possible without allowing me to accuse him of being totally evasive.

Let down on Earth,

Condor

Microstory 2252: No Dutch! No Dutch!

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Dear Dudes, Dutch. Doy. I asked to fill in for Nick today, instead of Kelly. It’s not that she couldn’t write it for him, but I’ve been a little bored, and I wanted something to do. I don’t know what we’re gonna do tomorrow, because the hospital still won’t want him working, and his website is his job, so I may write the next one too. We’ll just have to wait and see. If you don’t read his socials, then don’t worry, he’s okay. He’s not back here for a medical issue, but because he had his surgeries. They took out his index, and some of his bone marrow. Funny thing about that first thing, when I went to another universe, the scientists who studied me wanted to see if there were any physiological differences between me and them. They did all sorts of tests...consensually, and discovered that everything was the same. We all got ten fingers, one heart, and two butt cheeks. They also mentioned that the appendix was about the same. And I’m, like, “what the hell is an appendix?” That’s what they call the index. Apparently, their ancestors thought that it was a useless organ that doesn’t do anything. Which is strange, because back then, they also thought that a magical God created humans. Why would they think such an omnipotent entity would think to include something so strange and pointless? Anyway, I just remembered that, and thought it was funny.

Welp, I think I have a little extra time, so maybe I’ll spend the rest of it telling you how I got my name. Most people assume that it’s only a nickname, but no, it’s real. Both in this world, and the other one, learning it has made people chuckle, or hold back chuckles. The Dutch are people from Nederland, or the language that they speak. My family is not from Nederland, nor even the area. Here’s the story. When my father was a child, he used to watch this old television program. Of course, as Nick has pointed out, we don’t have much of a library of fiction on this Earth, but this one was scripted, and said to have been pretty good at the time. I can’t remember what it was called, but in the first season, there was a younger brother in the family. They got rid of him in later seasons without an explanation, but he kind of became synonymous with the show anyway. The character was very protective of his toys and other belongings. Whenever anyone would come into his room, or try to do anything with his stuff, he would yell “no touch! No touch!” But he had this sort of babyish accent, and it sounded more like Dutch than touch. My father, being of about the same age as this kid, started imitating what he saw and heard. He’d walk around the house, yelling that catch phrase over and over again, emphasizing a D sound even more than the actor did. My grandmother tells me that it was annoying, but at least he didn’t really understand what the words were supposed to have meant, so he wasn’t actually ever trying to stop people from touching his stuff. Then he grew up, and forgot about all of this. But years later, as an adult, he watched some old home movies, and saw himself yelling that. His own dad was gone, but his mother was still alive, so he asked her about it, and she explained what that was. So my dad, being the jokester that he is, just started doing it again. He’ll periodically yell, “no Dutch! No Dutch!” usually at very inappropriate times. I think you can guess the rest. It became part of his personality, so when he and his future wife had a kid, naming him Dutch just made sense. I get my brains and good looks from my mother, but I got Aderyn ‘No Dutch’ Haines’ sense of humor. I think it’s a pretty good deal.

Microstory 2004: Colorado

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For most of their lives, my grandparents weren’t able to go on vacations. My grandpa was so poor, if he ever had a day when he wasn’t working, he was trying to do other things for work. He would paint a neighbor’s fence, or help out at the local gas station. Anything he could find to save money, he was doing it. This continued for many years, even after grandpa got a better job in Wyoming. They occasionally went to places nearby, but nothing that anyone would call a family vacation. In 1981, which was five years after the new job, grandpa was experiencing something that my dad calls burnout. That means his job was really hard, and he wasn’t taking care of his mental health. He had recently gotten an even better promotion, and he was working all the time. His wife made him take some time off so they could go on a real vacation. They chose Denver, Colorado. They chose it because it was in a different state, but also not too far away, so they were able to drive to it in a day. My papa was about to become an eight-year-old, and it was the summertime. He had a lot of memories of this period in his life, but he couldn’t remember much about this trip. He knew that he was at some kind of sports game, and also that they went hiking. He thinks they probably spent one of the days shopping too. What my grandma said is that my papa’s father loved this trip, and it changed how he saw the world. They would start going on more trips from now on, which is what helped my papa to end up going to all fifty states in the United States.

Microstory 1998: Vastly Irresponsible Plan

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Leonard: Where is she? She’s not in a jail cell still, is she?

Street Proctor: No, no, no, no, no. She’s in the VIP quarters. She’s perfectly fine.

Leonard: The law station has a VIP room?

Street Proctor: Of course. They don’t on your world? [...] Oh, don’t look so surprised. You told me that you were in the wrong world when we first met, and now you’re some big shot secret agent. It wasn’t hard to figure out that you were actually telling the truth the whole time. I really wanna apologize for how I treated you back then. I was going through some stuff that had nothing to do with you, but it was no excuse for being unprofessional and unhelpful. And I’m not just saying that because you super outrank me now. I’ve been to some seminars, one workshop, and counseling every week.

Leonard: Well, I appreciate you saying that. It’s...very big of you.

Street Proctor: Yeah. Well anyway, your wife is right through here.

Leonard: *steps into the room* Keziah.

Keziah: Leonard. What the hell is happening? Where are we?

Leonard: What is the last thing you remember?

Keziah: I was going to Yuuna’s baby shower. I was driving around, thinking that I was very lost, until I realized that I was actually very, very lost. None of this is familiar. They call this place a law station, instead of a police station. The guy who helped me said he was a proctor, which is nothing I’ve ever heard of either. What is this room all about?

Leonard: Yuuna’s baby shower? That was months ago. That was...that was the day that I disappeared. You and I left our Earth on the same day, but I’ve been here since June.

Keziah: Time travel? We traveled through time? Wait, does this have something to do with your little friend? Where is he? He has to send us back home.

Leonard: It’s not really time travel. It’s that—let’s see, how did he put it—the timestreams for two separate universes have nothing to do with each other. And anyway, I’ve not seen him. I don’t think he had anything to do with it. It’s just something that happens sometimes. In fact, I believe that our link to him is the only reason either of us realizes that there’s something different about this world. There could be others here who  are from different versions of Earth, but don’t even know it.

Keziah: Either way, I wanna go home. Do you have a plan? It’s been months, right?

Leonard: Hold on... *starts to wave a little device all over the room*

Keziah: *turns the sink on* Is that a bug detector?

Leonard: Yes. We’re in the clear, but let’s whisper anyway. I have indeed been working on a plan, but I’ve had trouble enacting it. Number one, if we use the only tools we have at our disposal, we could be dooming our world to profound destruction, so if we try it, I’ll have to kill the alien who transported us right away, but that’s assuming he even took us to the right brane in the first place. And now that you’re here, I’m not sure we can both fit in the portal. Plus...I’ve sort of...built a new little life here.

Keziah: The ink on the divorce papers you texted me to say you signed, sealed, and sent out for delivery isn’t even dry yet. But you met someone, didn’t you?

Leonard: Yes, I did. You would like her.

Keziah: I don’t doubt it. But I still wanna go home. Tell me about this alien.

Microstory 1996: For the Lulls

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Leonard: How is it that we both have free time right now? Reese is still on his way back from the Capital, but everything’s goin’ so smoothly out there.

Myka: It happens, these people know what they’re doing. So let’s take advantage of it.

Leonard: What are you doing?

Myka: Taking advantage.

Leonard: This is the napping room. 

Myka: Yeah, and Navin is the only one who ever uses it. He’s off today, so we’re alone.

Leonard: It’s still not appropriate.

Myka: Leo, I have fifteen minutes before I have to get back to finalize the quarterly reports. I’m not driving all the way back home.

Leonard: Then we should just not do it. And don’t start thinking it’s because I’m not attracted to you anymore, or some nonsense like that. I just don’t want to have sex at work. Like you said, this is Navin’s room. That’s his bed. It’s not right.

Myka: You’re a better person than I.

Leonard: Let’s just talk. We don’t get to talk anymore. I mean, of course we talk about work all the time, but it’s gotten so busy with all these new recruits that that’s all we can talk about. It seems like I have to run a tour of this place every week.

Myka: Yeah, okay. We’ll just sit and talk. Is it okay to sit on Navin’s bed?

Leonard: I think that will be all right.

*awkward silence*

Myka: This isn’t working.

Leonard: Are you breaking up with me?

Myka: Of course not, but we have to figure out some sort of work-life balance. I’m no good at scheduling time to have a conversation. I’ve tried that. I had a cousin who moved to live abroad in Europe. We tried to have weekly talks in ChatChapp, but eventually just stopped setting the next week up. I haven’t spoken to him in years.

Leonard: That’s sad. But see, it doesn’t matter that we have to be more formal and scheduled. We can talk about that. Tell me about your relationship with this cousin. Have you ever visited him, and-or has he ever come back stateside?

Myka: Neither. At least I don’t think so. Honestly, if he ever came back home, he might not even tell me. *checks watch* Maybe I should just go back to the quarterlies.

Leonard: No, we’re doing good. Let’s change the subject, though, since you’re struggling with it. Let me tell you about my cousins. I have sixteen of them. Don’t know if I ever told you that. *phone rings* Oh, shoot. It’s...it’s the law station.

Myka: Better answer it. They don’t know what time your break is.

Leonard: I love you. *answers phone* Hello?—Yes, this is Supervisory Agent Miazga.—Wait, what? What name did she give you?—Are you sure?—No, I know her.—Yeah, I’ll, uhh...what was that?—Of course not. Is she in there right now?—Let her out of there this instant, give her whatever she asks for, and tell her I’m on my way.—Okay. Thank you. *hangs up*

Myka: What was that about? Did they lock up someone you know?

Leonard: Yeah. It’s my wife, Keziah. She somehow crossed over to this universe.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 6, 2400

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Leona undoes her safety straps, and tries to stand up. She falls right to the floor, having not realized how dizzy she was until it was too late. Cedar struggles to get out of his own seat to help, but he’s no better off. “Everyone hold still for a few minutes,” Danica orders. “Just breathe in...breathe out. It wasn’t supposed to be that rough, but we were pressed for time, so I had to improvise.”

Leona rolls to her back, and pads her hips, looking for the communicator she used to reach out to Kyra, but she must have dropped it. “I need to get to Egypt.”

“I’ll transport you there once we’re back to a hundred percent,” Danica promises. “Constance, show me the outside.”

The walls and floor turn invisible, showing them what it looks like outside of the Constant. “Oh, crap,” Leona says. It just looks like she’s a dozen or so stories up in the air, and it’s making the dizziness worse.

“Constance, this house is glass.”

The floor returns, but is still very transparent, so they can still easily see what’s what out there. A car is parked in the middle of the field where the Constant landed, the occupants sizing up the building that appeared out of nowhere In the opposite direction, they can see Danica Lake. Danica aimed extremely well for it being such an emergency. More cars are coming. “The Dark Citadel has arrived, Leona muses, standing herself up.

“What does that mean?” Angela asks.

“It’s from a passage in the Word of Dalton,” Carlin explains. “Leona recited it earlier. I think it predicts our arrival.”

Leona watches as even more cars appear from over the horizon. “It’s over. This chapter in my life is ended. I don’t have to worry about this stuff anymore. Navigating what’s happened today, and how it may or may not alter the religious landscape on this planet, is no longer my problem.” She breathes in. “I have spoken.”

Angela steps up to Leona’s side, and takes her hand. “It’s okay to move on.”

Marie steps up to Leona’s other side, and takes her other hand. “As long as you don’t move on from us.” She smiles and holds up a little fob. She presses the button, and sends all three of them to the Great Pyramid of Giza.

They’re standing at the very top of it, which gives them an area smaller than a single-family home to walk around. Kyra, Ansel, and Allison are already here, admiring the view. Constance!Three left the roof when she generated the hologram of the exterior of the Constant, and Leona was focused on the ground, so she didn’t notice the sky before. It’s like the Auroras Borealis and Australis, but with technicolors. “Does it always look like this?” Leona asks.

“No, never,” Kyra replies. She nods at the beauty. “This is new.”

“Where are we exactly?” Leona asks her. “I mean, where is the Earth situated, in relation to other star systems and their orbitals?”

“We’re on the other side of the sun. “The Fourth Quadrant probably didn’t even notice us since they’re not all that advanced.”

“Kure, Japan, and Panama both have major astronomical monitoring equipment. It has not necessarily been long enough for them to notice yet, but it will be soon. Our arrival would have had a profound impact on the solar system. It’s not instantaneous, since gravity travels at the speed of light, but it’s fast. How are you station-keeping?”

“I’m not,” Kyra answers. “We’re orbiting a tiny bit farther from the sun than the Earth that belongs here does.”

“That’s Lagrange point three,” Leona notes. “That’s highly unstable. We’ll start drifting in a matter of weeks, depending on the orbit of Venus.” Leona was so preoccupied with the attack from the Parallelers that she couldn’t focus on anything but that. She didn’t stop to think about the fact that you can’t just move a new planet to a new solar system. The gravitational forces could destroy all celestial bodies, including the new one. Either Kyra doesn’t know that, or she knows something Leona doesn’t.

“Weeks is enough time. When the Reconvergence finishes, everything will be okay, at least in the celestial sense. Politically, it’s going to be a nightmare. But that’s not our problem to worry about. Our only job is to save lives.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I am,” Kyra promises. “I’ve seen the Sixth Key.”

“No one who knows what the Sixth Key is like in the future seemed to know anything about this,” Leona points out.

Kyra only now turns her head to face Leona. “We did not tell you everything. We’ve still not.”

“What does that mean?”

“Go to the main sequence, Leona.”

“What? Why?”

“Go to the main sequence,” Kyra repeats.

“Hold on to my shoulders,” Leona says to Angela and Marie, now very worried about Mateo. She removes the tip from the center, and places it on the spoke for the Third Rail. Then she tries to turn it to the main sequence. Nothing happens. “Oh wait, we’re in the Fourth Quadrant now.” She removes the tip, then puts it on the Fourth Quadrant, and then turns it to the main sequence. “No, that didn’t work either. Maybe I need to...” She reverses everything she just did, and tries to start over, unsure how this device really works. They still don’t go anywhere. “No, it’s...it won’t do it.”

“What?” Kyra takes the device, and fiddles with it. There aren’t a whole lot of different things to try, so she runs into the same issue in that nothing happens at all. Her eyes glaze over, and she looks into the distance. “The time jump.”

“The what?”

“The time jump?” Kyra repeats. “It threw off the calibration.” She shakes the Helm of Reality demonstratively. “This is like an app, and the universe is a phone. We upgraded the OS, but now this app is no longer compatible with it.”

“What..time jump?” Leona repeats herself as well.

“We went into the future. It’s April 6, 2400.”

“Excuse me? You never said that you were going to do that,” Leona argues.

“It’s fine. Mateo is here too. Well, he’s not here; he’s still in the main sequence, but he jumped forward too. That’s not the issue. The issue is that this thing doesn’t work, and we’re gonna need it. We need all Helms on deck.”

Leona sighs, upset about being lied to. “What needs to be done to fix it?”

“You’ll have to go back to the now uninhabitable Third Rail, though I don’t know how. It would be like changing a setting on the app, which you can’t even open.”

“Enough with the metaphor.” Leona snatches the device back. “I’ll figure it out! Like always!” She and the Walton twins teleport away.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 5, 2399

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Mateo’s eyelids feel as heavy as an elephant. They tug themselves down so hard, they take the rest of his head with them. He barely keeps himself from falling flat on his face. It’s a symptom of his pattern, which he has had since he was first starting out, and it even continued on through his multiple deaths, and body transferences. It hasn’t happened since shortly after his arrival in the Third Rail, and only then when he happened to be close to a point of strong temporal energy, such as the parking lot in Crown Center where they first came through.

“Whoa, what was that?” Labhrás asks. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, something’s different. What year is it?”

“It’s 2399, I would assume. Should it not be?”

Mateo takes out his communicator and tries to contact Leona in the Third Rail, but no one answers. The line’s completely dead on their end, which is not a good sign. Tarboda answers when he calls the Parallel, and Winona when he reaches out to the Fifth Division. Aldona in the Fourth Quadrant confirms what the first two said, which is that it’s April 5, 2399 for everyone. Whatever he felt, it was limited to him, which isn’t surprising. He’s the only remaining member of the OG team still accounted for. Marie and Angela are still traveling at relativistic speeds, and they still don’t know where Olmpia went. Ramses is dead, and now Leona is missing. He’s all alone.

The time zones are a little weird, but the Key Protectors generally try to stay on the same schedule as each other, so everyone goes to sleep afterwards. Mateo can’t do it, though. He’s too worried about Leona, and everyone else in the Third Rail. What happened? Why can’t he reach them? And why has she not shown up to tell him that everything is okay? She checks in with everybody physically at least once a day, and comes to the main sequence a few times, because this is where her husband is.

Things begin to happen late the next morning. Winona calls back first to announce that she, Hamilton, and Mithridates are no longer alone. Summit Ebora and Trina McIver suddenly showed up. They’ve been preparing to protect the Key all this time, and now it’s their chance to prove that they can do it.

“No, you’re not protecting the Keys.” Trina has forced herself into frame.

“Hi, Trina. You’re older now,” Mateo says.

“It happens. There seems to be some confusion. You’re protecting the Keyholders. The Keys won’t be anywhere near these realities. That’s the whole point.”

“Who’s protecting the Keys, then?” Mateo asks.

“Don’t you worry about that. It’s not your issue.”

“I’m not worried about it, just curious,” Mateo admits. “What I’m worried about is my wife. Do you know where she is?”

Trina sighs. “Yes. She’s fine. She’ll be back.” She’s reluctant to elaborate when he asks her to. “She’s...in the future.”

“How far in the future?” Mateo presses.

“I’m sorry, I can’t say any more than that. Goodbye.”

“Wait!” Mateo tries to stop her, but she’s gone. If she heard him, she doesn’t care. She hangs up, and doesn’t answer when he tries to call her back. She may be ignoring him deliberately, or she’s in the middle of another call. Aldona didn’t seem to include call-waiting or voicemail on these things.

One by one, the other parallel realities call in to let everyone know that the Keys and Keyholders are here. At some point, the Keys will leave, but they won’t say how they’re going to accomplish that. If Leona won’t be back in the timestream until later, they must have some other way of traveling to the Sixth Key. Trina was the one who gave Leona The Helm of Reality, so they could easily have another one just like it. Once everyone’s spoken their piece, Mateo waits a good hour, and then tries to call Trina back, but she won’t come to the phone. Hopefully she’s trying to respect Leona’s Rules for Time Travel, and is not just being an asshole.

Nothing else interesting happens for the rest of the day. No one shows up for them, which is a bad sign. If the whole Third Rail is missing, they could be in really big trouble. A part of him hopes that he’ll jump to the future come midnight central. No, that could be bad. If Leona comes back after, say, two months, they’ll end up on different patterns. He doesn’t know what to do but stress about it. Labhrás tries to take his mind off of it with a new game of RPS-101 Plus, but it’s not working. Is this what it feels like for Leona every time he’s died or disappeared, and she’s the one who doesn’t know whether she’ll ever see him again? He must say, he does not care for this.

Fifteen minutes before midnight, he starts to get a weird vibe, like maybe he will actually jump to the future, as if the whole Omega Gyroscope thing were over. It couldn’t be, could it? Two people suddenly appear before them, one of them being Summit Ebora, and based on context clues, Mateo guesses the other to be his mother, Iris Blume. “I was not told that you would be here,” Mateo says as Summit is checking the perimeter for threats. “It’s nice to meet you, though.”

Iris shakes his hand. “Likewise.”

“The plan was kept secret intentionally, to prevent interference. We need your help, and you’re the only person in five realities who can do it.”

“Shoot,” Mateo offers.

“Can we borrow your communicator?” she goes on.

“We’re clear,” Summit informs his mother.

Iris takes the device, and selects a recipient. “Bring the rest over,” she instructs.

“Got it, boss.” That sounded like Alyssa. “Red rover, red rover, send the Helm of Reality on over.” Yeah, it’s definitely Alyssa.

Iris widens her arms, the communicator in one hand, and the second Helm of Reality in the other. She smashes them together. A flash of light shoots out from the small blast, and when she’s done, only the communicator is left.

“Neat trick,” Mateo says.

Seconds later, Alyssa appears with Vearden and Arcadia, holding little baby Cheyenne in her arms. Neither of them are surprised to be there. Alyssa disappears, and returns quickly with someone who looks a little bit like Vearden, so it must be his father, Ansel. She leaves again to retrieve Trina, and then another man that Mateo doesn’t recognize. He gives Iris a kiss, so it must be her husband, Rino. None of the protectors is here, except for Mateo and Labhrás—or maybe not. Where’s Labhrás?

“Where’s Labhrás?” Mateo asks.

“He’s not a part of this,” Iris answers. “Now give me your arm.” She takes blood from him to fill several vials. Once one is full, her son takes it, and begins to inject it in one of the others, even little Chey-Chey. When midnight central hits, they all jump to the future together, except for Alyssa. It’s now the year 2400, a.k.a. The Edge.