The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 20, 2533

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They were still breathing, and the station hadn’t been destroyed, but it was in no shape to travel. Ramses and Leona spent the rest of the day affecting repairs, or rather, programming the automators to start working on them instead. Séarlas was the engineering twin, and could no longer fulfill this role. Franka wasn’t completely helpless, but she couldn’t do it all on her own. They weren’t entirely sure if they were still on their time-jumping pattern since they were waylaid for a year in the quintessence trap, but come midnight central, they received their answer. When they returned a year later, the station was still in a spiral shape, but it was functioning normally, and Franka was eager to test their quintessence drive. While the team was capable of returning safely inside of a moving vessel, even if it ultimately moved light years away, slinging instantaneously across the universe might break that spatial tethering feature. They just didn’t know yet, so Franka and her crew had to wait it out for months. Now the question was, where were they going to go?

“What about—?” Mateo began.

“Nope,” Leona argued before he could even finish his sentence. “I don’t wanna go back to Earth.”

That was not what Mateo was going to say. He was going to suggest Castlebourne, and he was about to clarify that when he sensed caution from Leona. She didn’t want to go back there. He saw her eyes dart over to Franka and Miracle. No, she didn’t want them to go there. He had to save it so they wouldn’t get suspicious. “Sorry, we just hadn’t been back in a while. I was hoping to see what Kansas City looked like now.” Yeah, that sounded like a plausible sentiment.

“Mostly forest,” Ramses claimed, or guessed; whichever.

It had been a long time since Mateo had to spell something out using his emotions. He decided to use an abbreviation and hope that everyone on the team understood. He forced himself to feel Pride, and then Disgust.

The girls were confused, but Ramses got it. “Let’s go to Proxima Doma. We need to know what happened there anyway.”

“Perfect,” Franka replied before turning her head to face her crew. “Get in stasis,” she ordered them. It officially consisted only of Miracle and Octavia, but Dutch wasn’t on Team Matic, so he had just spent the last year on Spiral Station. The first two reluctantly agreed, but he seemingly didn’t know if he had to do what she said. “It’s for your protection,” Franka went on. “These guys are practically immortal, but one miscalculation in the inertial dampeners, and I’m scraping your guts off the walls. I just cleaned them, I don’t wanna do it again.”

“It’s not that,” Dutch said sheepishly.

“Are you afraid I won’t wake you back up? We can set a timer for ten minutes.”

“No.” He would have been kicking the gravel if there were any gravel. “I was just wondering if I could switch to using...one of the ones next to the girls.”

“Oh.” Franka was hesitant, for some reason.

“What’s the problem?” Leona questioned. “Are they VIP pods?”

“The P stands for pods,” Romana joked, trying to lighten the mood.

“They’re not special, but it’s in the crew section,” Franka explained. “He used one of the guest pods last year when we had to do a contaminant purge.” She looked back at Dutch. “If you’re asking to use a crew pod, are you asking to be on the crew?”

“I don’t have anywhere else to go.” He gestured towards Team Matic. “Lord knows I can’t go with them. I assume you will be parting ways eventually.”

Franka sighed, and stared at her once-parents for a moment. “Probably.”

“If we’re voting, I vote yes,” Miracle decided.

“Same,” Octavia concurred.

Franka smiled like a mother letting her child have another cookie before Thanksgiving dinner. “Okay. Go calibrate your new pod to your body properties.”

Dutch smiled, and ran off with the ladies.

“You’re getting in a pod too, right?” Mateo asked Franka.

“Of course. I just wanted to warn you that I don’t have enough for everyone, so I recommend you suit up, and be prepared to teleport. I mean, if the splat happens, it’ll happen fast...”

“I’ll sync our interfaces with the slingdrive countdown,” Ramses assured her. “We’ll teleport 500 meters away, whether the inertial dampeners hold or not.”

“Good idea.” Franka tried to pivot away, but stopped. “And it’s called a quintessence drive.”

“No, it’s not,” Olimpia defended her decision to coin the term.

As it turned out, they were all worried about nothing. The inertial dampeners held just fine. The quintessence drive itself went fine too. Or rather, it didn’t fall apart. Navigation was still bad, which Ramses suspected had more to do with the coherence gauge. He did have trouble repairing it as it was based on slightly different technology than the ones he built for the Vellani Ambassador, and their array. He was confident that he could fix it now since they had just gone through a test run, which gave him more data. Fortunately, they were in a safe enough place. It wasn’t Proxima Doma, but it was another core world. Or worlds, rather.

They were in the Gatewood Collective, orbiting Barnard’s Star, which was about six light years from Earth. “I thought there weren’t any planets,” Angela argued. “That’s what everyone has always says about it.” Gatewood was a special place. While it was relatively close to the seed of civilization, it was decidedly not a colony. It was sometimes called The Lumber Yard, because it was only a gigantic store, and permanent habitation was absolutely not allowed. It was only designated for raw materials, and there was a good reason for that.

A radius of 50 light years was allocated for the stellar neighborhood. Most of the colonization efforts were state-sanctioned, by one state or another, or maybe one of the institutions that used to be a for-profit corporation. A few of those held on past the transition to a post-scarcity economy because they had by then become legally classified as utilities. Think Google and Wikipedia. A growing number of colonists, however, were small factions of people who wanted to start fresh elsewhere. A select few of these were allowed to find a home somewhere in the neighborhood, but the vast majority of them were expected to travel all the way out to the Charter Cloud, or beyond. Since they were not commissioned by an officially recognized state, it would be unfair for them to use resources from the solar system. But this created a problem. If they couldn’t build spaceships, how were they going to leave? Enter Gatewood. While cyclers were transporting people to and from the other nearest colonies constantly, no route was as heavily trafficked as the one to Barnard’s Star. That was the limit to the resource expenditure for the pioneers. The state agreed to transport them to the Collective, and house them there temporarily, but they would have to begin construction on their ship or fleet immediately, and bug out as soon as possible.

“There are no habitable planets,” Leona clarified. “Proxima Doma and Castlebourne aren’t habitable either, but they’re hospitable enough to make special arrangements, specifically the domes. Other worlds prefer lava tubes, or orbiting stations. The planets you’re seeing over there in the distance—there are four of them total—are low mass and extremely hot. Yeah, you could technically build a settlement on one of them, but it wouldn’t be very easy. That’s why they chose this for raw materials. They focus mostly on the asteroids and comets, but I believe they’re already starting to stripmine the terrestrial planets too.”

“Sorry, guys,” Ramses said through comms. “Off the mark again.”

“No, I’m curious about this place,” Mateo insisted. “Do we know anyone who lives here? I know Team Keshida moved on, as did the Ansutahan refugees, or rather, their descendants, but maybe someone else set up shop since we were last here?”

“Oh, I don’t have any more information than you,” Leona answered. “There’s a chance that we know someone, but very few entities live here permanently. Most aren’t allowed to, so it would just be the few who manage the allocation of resources, and enforce the stay laws.”

“Stay laws,” Marie repeated. “I like that term.”

“We got company,” Franka said through Ramses’ comms disc. He was the only one who returned to Spiral Station. The rest of the team was just floating around nearby, enjoying the view of the red dwarf.

Leona activated her maneuvering thrusters and turned around to see a big, dark spaceship on close approach. “Yeah, we see. Probably Gatewooders, trying to figure out where you came from.”

“Yep, that’s what they said,” Ramses confirmed.

“Please teleport back here,” Franka added. “They’re going to sweep the station, and if they don’t find you now, but see you later, they’re gonna think we’re smugglers.”

They all jumped back. “What do smugglers smuggle these days? Whisky?”

“Resource credits,” Franka answered as they were waiting to be boarded. “There are all sorts of criteria that determine what Gatewood gives you for your colonization efforts. Stealing credits gets you the best ores, and more of it, for higher luxury, if that’s your thing. If you have enough, you might even be able to buy antimatter...” She trailed off.

A man had suddenly appeared in front of them. “Ain’t nobody getting antimatter out here.” He pulled off his balaclava. “Fusion for all, but there’s a refinery 42 light years from here called Rasalhague, if that’s what you’re looking for instead.”

“We’re square,” Franka said to him. “Who are you? I’ve never seen you before, and I’m familiar with just about every choosing one in the timeline.”

The man winced.

“He’s not a chooser,” Leona determined. “He’s a product of The Edge. He uses tech to teleport.”

“How else would you do it?” the guy asked.

“Are there a lot of teleporters like you?” Mateo pressed.

“This isn’t about me,” the man contended. He bobbled his head, weighing his options. “But I will answer your question, Gatewood is vast, and some people here don’t like each other, so we distribute them widely. To keep our contingency at low numbers, we were given a special command ship that can teleport somehow. That way, we don’t have to keep one at every single dock to supervise the pioneers effectively. A few of us can teleport as individuals. I earned that right.”

“We’re not arguing with you,” Leona promised him. “Just curious. I’m one of the people who gave you that technology.” She jerked her head towards Ramses. “He’s on the council too.”

The man stared at her, shocked by this news, but also recognizing that she could simply be lying. “Prove it.”

Leona receded her nanites until she was completely naked. Then she simply teleported to the other side of the room. Other members of Team Matic did the same a few times each, though not naked, because it really didn’t add anything.

He stared at her again, but with more shocked belief than skepticism this time. “The New Gods,” he uttered breathlessly, dropping into a kneel and bow.

“This is what we were afraid of,” Leona said with a heavy sigh, “but I had to test it, because I needed to know. There were two ends of the spectrum. We could hoard the time tech forever, or give it all away freely, with no conditions. We chose something in the middle, of course, because we’re rational human beings, but...every iteration came with risk. This is one of the consequences, which I have sheltered myself from for over a century now since I was so busy with other things.”

“Can we...stop him from worshiping you?” Mateo asked her.

She laughed. “People have been worshiping gods for millennia. They literally fought wars over it. I can tell him I’m not a god, but if he wants to believe, he’ll believe.”

“Then let’s take advantage of it,” Franka suggested. She placed herself between Leona and the man, who immediately stood up, because he didn’t know if he should revere her too. She wasn’t one of the ones who exhibited teleportation abilities just now. “You came. You swept. You found nothing. You left.”

He looked over Franka’s shoulder, at Leona, who was afraid to encourage his devotion, but she knew that she really didn’t have any choice anymore. She just shut her eyes and nodded. He lifted his wrist to his lips. “Fall back. This vessel has full access to our resources. Anywhere they want to go, let them go there. Anything they want to take, let them have it. Disconnect once everyone is out of the umbilicus. I’ll jump back to the bridge before you’re out of range.”

“Thank you,” Franka said to him.

“I would do anything for you.” He didn’t say it to Franka, though, but to Leona.

“What you can do is use the tech wisely; not to hurt people.”

“Always,” he agreed.

“Thank you. You can go now,” Leona all but ordered. Once he was gone, she physically turned Franka around by the shoulders. “I don’t care if we end up lost in M87, or NGC 253.” She also looked over at Ramses. “Get this thing out of this star system, and you will never come back for the rest of time, or so help me God, you will wish I wasn’t your mother in any reality. Do you understand me?”

“Do I seem like the kind of person who would abuse this kind of power?” Franka asked.

“You absolutely do look like that,” Leona said bluntly.

“She stared at her once-mother for a moment, not breaking eye contact, even when she spoke to Ramses. “Spool it up Rambo. I guess we’re leaving.”

Ramses did what he could to fix the quintessence drive before joining the rest of his team at the lower tip of the station. Franka asked to handle programming the sling herself. She just sounded bitter and annoyed at the time, but it turned out to be something else. During the interim year, she had programmed the repairs to make it more modular, so sections could be separated from each other. She released the section the team was on, and teleported the rest of the station away. Before they could track where it had gone, they saw a burst of technicolors in the distance, and realized that she had indeed slung away to parts unknown.

“Oh, crap!” Ramses cried. “She still has my forge core!” Since he kept losing access to his labs, he kept having to rebuild them from scratch. The forge core made it easier to do this. He always kept it somewhere in normal 3D space. The data drive module stored the specifications necessary to rebuild anything and everything from scratch, and an AI to process it all. It also came with starter nanites, and some other bells and whistles. He left it in the timestream so it could fix Spiral Station up while he couldn’t even be around to answer Franka’s questions.

“Is it unlocked?” Leona asked.

“Yes, it’s unlocked. I thought we could trust them.”

Angela looked over her shoulder. “I guess we’re going to land on one of those planets after all, huh?”

“No,” Leona reasoned. “We’ll go to the intake station, or whatever they call it these days. We couldn’t have been cast away somewhere better. We need resources.”

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Microstory 2562: Worshiper

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People are missing the point, and I am profoundly frustrated by it. I can barely put it into words. Landis Tipton is not a man. He’s not just a hero. He is a god. Do not mistake my words for metaphor. He is literally the earthly manifestation of a deity. I can prove it. If you just read the text, you’ll see that he checks all the boxes, and that he is the embodiment of the one who created us. I was not very religious growing up, and that’s because people were just telling me things. They didn’t have any evidence of anything. They simply said, “this happened in the past.” And I’m all, “how do you know?” And they’re, like, “they wrote it down.” So I respond, “it’s been proven that they were written down no sooner than decades after the events supposedly happened.” “Well, you see, time—” Blah, blah, blah. You haven’t shown me anything. Anyone can write anything down, it doesn’t mean it’s true. But Landis Tipton? He’s true. He’s definitely real, and I know this, because I’ve seen it. Well, I haven’t personally seen it up close, but I keep trying. I keep trying to become a patient advocate, because I don’t qualify for a healing myself, but no one will hire me, or even train me. I get too excited, and honest, and people know how much I love him, so they stop me. They’re demons, is what they are. They’re keeping me from my bêlovèd, because they know that he only gets stronger when he’s surrounded by his devotees. That’s what I call myself. Others may call me a worshiper at best, or a nutjob at worst, but I don’t care. I know that Landis is the truth, and the way. He made our world, and gave us the chance to suffer, or to not, and we sadly chose the former. He wants us to have free will, but he wants us to live too, and to be happy. So instead of ordering us to change, or even simply snapping his divine fingers, and making it so, he returned to give us a new choice. We can devote ourselves to him, and be cured in the spirit of our savior, or we can reject him, and die. That’s not a threat, it’s an inevitability. Think about it. Death isn’t just this thing that happens at the end of your life. It’s always caused by something. That’s just science. If he can cure everything, there’s no reason for anyone to die. It’s only been five years, but come on, our immortality in the divine light is obviously where this all leads. How can you not see it? He’s not curing diseases, you morons. He’s ending death! I swear, the people who only see the present, and don’t realize what this all really means. It’s so clear. It’s not even a puzzle that you have to solve. He’s already doing it, we just haven’t seen anyone live past 120 already, because there hasn’t been enough time. Wake up! Once you recognize his power, the next logical step is realizing that he is not only one man, healing one person at a time. He is giving us everything we need to be as sacred as him, and we don’t even need to stand in line for it. I think there’s a reason that I don’t need to be healed. He’s already done that for me, because of how devoted I am—because I am a true believer. I’ll prove that soon. I’ll prove to you that I can’t die. Just you wait and watch.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 16, 2437

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Finding the Vellani Ambassador was easy. Mirage had programmed it to follow her wherever she went while invisible with a space-warping generator on the hull, but something must have undone that at some point, because it was out in the open, and available to the public. The locals of Ex-666 had never entered the ship, but it was not clear yet whether they had ever tried, or if they deliberately stayed out of it. Because they had begun to revere it as a religious icon.

The government was a little too busy to return Mirage’s ship to her right away, though they did want to respect her ownership over it. They just really had to worry about preparing to go to war. The team was busy too, helping them take control of the eye in the sky. It was surprisingly easy. They were worried that there was some kind of catch that would come back to bite them in the ass, but the Chief Ascendant was convinced that no escape attempts had been made in the last 150 years, which probably caused some level of complacency.

Not much had actually changed about the world over the course of the last year. The armada from Ex-182 was not yet here. Some of the so-called prisoners were former fleet members, who knew enough about the ships that the empire used to tell them that they were mostly powered by reframe engines. They had built their vessels to be quite large, however, and scaling of the technology came at a cost. While regular fusion reactions were perfectly suitable to make the engine work for a smaller ship, like the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, capital ships demanded too much power. Not even a larger fusion reactor could compensate for the loss. The only way they could get up to maximum reframe speeds was to use matter-antimatter reactions. No one here knew enough about it to understand why that was a problem these days, but Mirage did.

“It was us,” she shrugged.

“You stole their antimatter reserves?” Leona asked her.

“Far as I know, it’s still there,” Mirage began to explain, but it’s hard to get to. It exists as a fully formed antistar, sitting out there alone in the void. Getting close enough to it to extract only as much antimatter that they need when they need it is a delicate dance. My team and I were tasked with engineering a containment megastructure. We were on schedule to completing that mission when I was separated from them, and captured. I knew that it was going to happen, so I made arrangements to halt all production and construction. If they returned to the project themselves, it’s going to take them a hell of a long time. I scattered my barges in all directions. Just getting them back would probably take longer than starting over from a new source of raw material.”

“Why were you helping them in the first place?” Mateo questioned. “Did you not realize that you were working for the bad guys?”

“We suspected from the beginning,” Mirage replied. “But we weren’t sure, we weren’t sure what level of technology they had—though it could have been vast considering their remoteness from the Earthan stellar neighborhood—and also we felt bad. We were the ones who destroyed their first antistar. For reasons I still don’t fully understand, they maintained a link between this region of the Milky Way, and Alpha Centauri. That’s how we ended up this far out in the first place. We were just going to Toliman to pick up my ship, which I had programmed to build itself years prior. There was something very wrong with that whole star system, so we blew up our asteroid to prevent anyone else from trying to investigate, and that’s what destroyed the star. It and the antistar annihilated each other.”

Leona winced. “Toliman has not been destroyed.”

“No, it had to have,” Mirage insisted. “What else could have happened?”

“I don’t know,” Leona contended, “but if Alpha Centauri B didn’t exist in this day and age, I would have heard about it.”

“Someone must have gone back to fix it,” Mirage guessed, “maybe me.”

“I don’t know how you would do that,” Ramses said.

“I have some ideas,” Mirage responded. She looked forward again, and sighed. “Looks like they’re nearly done.”

While Mirage was in the sixth circle of hell, the natives had transformed the site of the Vellani Ambassador into a sacred one. They didn’t worship the ship, nor whoever may have brought it here, but they conceived stories about how it might one day open for them, and a great savior would step out of it to rescue them from their damnation. It was only hitting them now that this was their very first sign of religious doctrine in this sector of the galaxy. The team hadn’t even noticed before, because vonearthan culture had managed to transcend its superstitious origins, so religion wasn’t much of a thing anymore. But the Goldilocks Corridor was apparently seeded with life thousands of years ago, and many of the worlds were severely underdeveloped. So it seemed rather odd, not that some evil religious order wasn’t controlling the masses alongside the evil empire, but that no one on the planets they had been to so far had taken comfort in the mystical. Was this agnosticism enforced...or incidental?

The religious leadership was dismantling the decorations and offerings that had been placed on and around the ship.  Some of them believed that Mirage was indeed their savior, and that their belief that she would literally come out of the Hope Chariot, which was what the worshipers called it, was just a matter of detail.

Why didn’t you have them do this before?” Angela asked. “You could have left before.”

“I figured I would give them one more year with it,” Mirage answered. “I knew that you would need that whole time to come back, and that kind of waiting means little to me in the long-run. I’ve developed high patience. Now they’ve had time to say their goodbyes.”

“Did you explain that it was just a regular ship, and not god, or whatever it is they believe?” Olimpia asked her.

“I don’t know if they believe me. Some think I am indeed the savior they’ve been waiting for, and others think that I’m just the one who is going to unlock it so the true savior can be released from it. This is a prison world, and while they’ve thrived here, they have not forgotten that. So if there’s a god of Ex-666, perhaps they’re a prisoner too, and maybe they’re trapped in the...Hope Chariot. It would explain why this deity hasn’t saved them yet.”

They had an interesting way to express respect here, at least as far as the religious people went. They would stretch their arms out wide, dip their nose down towards the ground as low as possible, and balance themselves out by raising one leg behind them as high as possible. Only the elderly members no longer flamingoed, but they still airplaned their arms, and lowered their head into a regular bow. The younger ones made the move with the most enthusiasm, and they did not care if they fell over in the attempt. “Hmm, it’s basically Warrior 3,” Marie noted, having tried yoga in the afterlife simulation in the early 19th century, before it was cool in the western world on Earth.

The Elder Priestess was the last in line to pay her respects to Mirage and the team. She made no attempt to bow, but smiled as wide as Mona Lisa, and nodded. As she passed by, she placed a comforting hand on Mirage’s shoulder, and walked down the hill to join the rest of the main group, who were watching from there. A huge crowd had convened behind them to witness the magic. Not everyone in the world believed, but surely there were plenty here who just wanted to see what happened. Fortunately, they were in an open expanse in the desert, which fit the instructions for the Ambassador to avoid populated areas, so something like this wouldn’t happen. The settlements here only sprung out as a result of its sudden appearance.

Mirage lifted her hand, and said in reference, “allons-y.” She snapped her fingers, prompting the back hatch of the ship to engage and lower. To her surprise, someone actually did step out. It was a young woman, perhaps in her early- to mid-twenties. She was completely ready for this, coming into the light with confidence and self-assuredness. The crowd went wild. A lot of them dove to the ground in a full Downward Facing Dog bow of intense unwavering loyalty and faith. The woman walked right down the hill, and approached Mirage. “Do you recognize me?”

“Niobe. You’re older now. How long have you been in there?”

This was the girl who was with Maqsud Al-Amin and Lilac’s son, Aristotle. She was a slave-child on Ex-324, but she originated on the Extremus planet of Verdemus. She smirked, and looked over at the team. “A few minutes.” She winked.

“Why?” Mirage asked.

“These people need someone to follow. They’re never going to let go of their convictions, at least not until they win the war. The Chief Ascendant is going to continue to run the state, but they are transitioning from peacetime, and they are severely underestimating what that is going to do to their culture. Someone else needs to be there to guide them. Now, I’m not going to explain why I’m the best person for the job, but it has to do with what I’ve experienced since we last saw each other. Just know that this is the right thing to do, and I’m not going to abuse my power. If you would like to be sure of that, you can stand by my side, Mirage. This team needs your ship more than you do.”

“What about...”

“Ex-10?” Niobe guessed. “Let it go, he means nothing. Do not be fooled by his low numerical designation. It’s a trick. Everything that Oaksent does is a joke, a smokescreen, or a mistake. So, how about it? Are you with me?”

Mirage looked back at the crowd, and let out her signature emulated sigh. She switched her gaze to Leona, who had made herself look like the real Iman Vellani. “Leona’s Rules for Time Travel, Number Fourteen, do not form, or inspire, a religion.”

“Leona is just a person,” Niobe reasoned, “not a god.”

“Nor are we.”

“We won’t act like one,” Niobe continued. “We’re there to help. They understand where we come from, but you were about to open this ship, and I saw an opportunity. I won’t apologize for that. I really am trying to help. The Empire must fall, and while I have limits to what I’m willing to do to accomplish that, this does not cross the line. You have to decide where your line is.”

Mirage shook her head as she thought about it. “Give me the rest of the day.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 27, 2398

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Kivi is exhausted. She’s been working with an SD6 team to hunt down one or all of three people. They need to find Meredarchos, Erlendr Preston, or the version of Erlendr who hasn’t yet been sent off to that other universe. He will still be in Ramses’ body, but the other two are unknown. They’re theoretically looking for little Trina McIver, but they’re not sure the extent of Merdarchos’ power. He had more tricks up his sleeve than they knew when he first arrived, so maybe there’s more, and that’s still just the tip of the iceberg. So far, Kivi and the operatives have found nothing. They’ve not uncovered a shred of evidence that any of these people have ever set foot on this planet. Given enough time, she’s supposed to be able to locate anyone, and this has certainly been proven true many times over the past week...just not in the way that they want.

The team leader nods her head, prompting the spotter to slip the snake camera underneath the locked door. “Too dark. Activating night vision,” he whispers.

“What do you see in there?” the leader asks.

“Three people. No, five. They’re sitting in a circle. One of them is lighting candles.” He peers deeper into the viewer. “It looks like a religious ceremony.”

“Can you clock any faces?”

“No. We’ll have to go in.”

“Secondary entrance?”

The spotter turns the snake. “Open skylight. No backdoor.”

“Hurst, cover the main entrance here,” she orders the spotter. “Strand and Kermode, go to the roof. The rest of you will be with me, standard formation. Klein...blow the door.”

“Wait, where can I go?” Kivi asks as the engineer is setting his explosives.

“I said standard formation,” team leader Alserda repeats.

“You know I don’t have the training for that,” Kivi argues.

“You’ve seen us do it several times, we all trust you now,” Alserda insists.

“But—”

“They heard us,” Hurst announces, pulling the snake back.

“Klein, now!”

They barely have enough time to duck away before the doors blow open. The operatives burst into the room, and surround the targets. They could be bad guys, they could be good guys. They could be nobodies. It’s too early to tell. They don’t know anything about this situation. All Kivi can say for sure is that someone is here who needs to be found. It’s probably not the three men they’re after, but they have to move forward as if it is. So far, she’s rescued a missing kid, a wandering dementia patient, a few criminals, and a guy who just wanted to start a new life somewhere else. No matter how hard she tries to decide who her special gift seeks, it brings her to someone she didn’t even know needed to be found. It feels like the universe has taken control over her, like she’s just a salmon in the main sequence who the powers that be have chosen to be a Superfinder. Maybe it is her calling, but for now, they feel more like distractions. She’s happy to find these people, but they’re not who she’s really looking for. If the universe really wants her to do this, then it ought to let her finish her first mission first.

“State your business!” Alserda demands.

The people in robes hold their hands up high in surrender. “We’re just trying to worship in peace!” one of them says.

“We’re not hurting anyone!” says another.

“Hurst, face scanner,” Alserda orders.

The spotter holds the scanner up to each of their faces. Once he’s done, he says, “all missing college students. Suspected runaways.”

“We didn’t run away,” one of them argues.

“Well, we did, but we had to. The school won’t let us observe our holidays because it’s not an officially registered faith.”

Alserda turns to Kivi. “Bristol, you can sense our targets when you’re closer, right? What do you make of them?”

She’s been trying to find the three real targets this whole time, but the closer she is to a suspect, the easier it for her to rule them out. She scans the worshipers too, but with her own senses. “It’s not them. They must be who the scanner says they are.”

“Are you going to report us?” the apparent lead worshiper asks.

“That’s not our department.” Alserda walks away. “McGuinness, run the spiel.”

“It’ll be my last time, sir.” McGuiness is Alserda’s lieutenant on the tack team, and she’s on her way to retirement. She was actually meant to retire sooner, but this mission came up, and SD6 hasn’t been able to find a replacement. It’s become too late, though. McGuiness has other plans with her life, and her obligation to the government is over. They can’t keep her any longer, so she’s decided to leave at the end of the week. It’s going to take her that long to do her exit interview, and complete the closing paperwork. She was hoping to find Meredarchos and Erlendr, as are they all, but that’s not going to happen. Now she has to read these people their rights, and make them sign an NDA.

“I understand.” Alserda isn’t happy about losing her number two, but again, she has no choice in the matter. She speaks into her radio. “Secure the scene. We’ll meet you back at the base. Follow me,” she says to Kivi and Kivi alone.

“Sir. I’m sorry if I caused a problem.”

“That’s not what I want to talk to you about.” Alserda holds the car door open for her. “Have you ever thought about serving?”

“I serve my team,” Kivi explains. “I don’t serve the U.S. For now, our interests just happen to be aligned.”

“I understand that, but you’ve shown promise. I could sure use someone with your skills on my team. We’re losing someone, so we’ll be down an operative.”

“Sir, there’s no way I could be your lieutenant.”

Alserda laughs. “No, you couldn’t. You don’t have near enough experience. The top dogs would never allow it. No, I’m thinking about shaking up the team. Strand has learned enough to be an engineer, freeing Klein to be my new L-T. Meanwhile, Hurst has always wanted to be a tech, so he’ll replace Strand, and you can replace Hurst.”

“As a spotter?” Kivi questions. “I barely understand what he does.”

“He uses his eyes. He operates the cameras and scanners, as you’ve seen. If Kermode needs to snipe anyone, you’ll help her spot targets.”

“I don’t know about that.” Kivi isn’t in love with violence.

“You have a gift I’ve never seen before. Just think about it, okay?”

“Okay, I’ll consider your offer,” she promises with every intention of saying no after the appropriate amount of time has passed.

Microstory 1419: Splitsville

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The future source mages were a godsend for the people of Springfield, Kansas after it was sucked into the Deathfall portal, and dropped on Durus. Without these special children, the entire town would have been lost in under a month, with only a few people surviving. It was no surprise, then, that the children were extremely popular amongst the townsfolk. They all disagreed on how to divvy up resources, and what rules to institute, but one thing they could agree on was that the kids were amazing, and ought to be revered. Still, many did not believe the Baby Barrier they used to keep the monsters out was a sustainable solution. While everyone protected the children at all costs, even beyond their respective families, there were still some limitations to their lives. They had to live on the perimeter of the habitable zone, and while travel within and without the zone was possible—and quite necessary when journeying out to gather water—for the most part, they had to stay put. If they were free to roam around wherever they wanted, a monster could slip through, and attack someone before others could get to them to help. No, it was too dangerous to break the front line, even for a few hours. When one needed to leave, the rest always had to pick up the slack, and the coordination alone was taxing for all those assigned to the team. Of course, when they were babies, this was fine. They weren’t going anywhere anyway, and their parents fully understood the danger. As these children grew up, however, they started making their own decisions. And as they grew even older, they started feeling rebellious, as children always do. While still in single digits, the town could keep them in line, but that wouldn’t necessarily be true once they became preteens, and it would only get worse as time went on. Obviously, the best way to avoid the unsavory disciplining they worried would come from this was to make the children no longer necessary. That way, they could live their lives however they wanted, and not concern themselves with protecting the town border, unless they happened to decide to train with the general border security team. Fortunately for them, their best scientist was dedicating all of her time towards making this a reality.

In a couple of years, Hogarth Pudeyonavic was ready to deploy her own border protection solution. They could erect towers around the perimeter, which would mimic the repulsive power that the source mage children somehow exhibited naturally. It was not without its engineering issues, however. Some of the town was powered with geothermal energy when it was on Earth, and while experts were eventually able to recreate this situation on Durus, capacity was limited, so everyone had to conserve. They probably would have been okay using fossil fuels, even though Earth was trying to lose its dependency on such things, but no one knew how to do it, or what kind of geological resources the planet held, so that didn’t really matter. With no sun to power solar cells, their only other option was water power, directly from Watershed, which meant that they would need to build a dam. It didn’t have to be a particularly fancy dam, at least not at first, but it was going to take some effort. They spent years laboring on this, even before Hogarth showed up. The Baby Barrier was later cut in half—which forced the habitable zone to shrink with it—so some of the future source mages could protect the workers at Watershed. People had to be trained to construct all the necessary infrastructure. Luckily, everyone wanted this, so it wasn’t like there was some kind of internal disagreement about the project as a whole. They did disagree, however, with what to do with their newfound source of energy. Some just wanted to use it for the town itself, while others wanted to build Hogarth’s towers. The former was composed predominantly of people who almost worshiped the special children, and saw them as their saviors. The latter camp loved the children as well, but saw the Baby Barrier as more of a burden for them, and less of a boon for Springfield. By 2025 the dam was ready to start generating energy, and they had not come to a consensus. They did come up with a compromise, though. Those who wanted to live inside the Baby Barrier would be able to do so. Those who wanted to live inside the tower perimeter would be able to do that instead. They sliced the town in half, and lived on opposite sides, with a no man’s land in between them. The two towns were separated not only by geography, but also systems of leadership. Springfield formed the basis for a new society, which would ultimately be called the Mage Protectorate. The second town fell under its governance as well, but enjoyed a level of independence seen in most distinct municipalities. They called it Splitsville, at first as a joke, but then it stuck.

Firestorm: Indvo (Part VI)

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I have been awakened, and am called to a moment in downtown Independence, Missouri. Time cannot be stopped, but I can slow it down to a fraction of a snail’s pace. Now it is just the four of us. For the most part, when someone becomes in need of my services, I only speak with the replicates, but there’s a chaperone in this case, and that’s fine. I can still do my job, which is good, because I am the only one.

“Who are you?” the young woman asks.

“Paige Turner—”

“No, that’s me,” she cuts me off.

“Please do not interrupt.”

“Sorry.”

“Paige Turner Reaver-Demir, my name is Indvo.”

“Is that spelled how it sounds? E-E-N-T-F—?”

“No,” I reply, “and I am still not finished. There are two versions of the same person in this timeline, who have crossed paths. My recommendation is quantum assimilation. Normally, I would only counsel the subjects, but since you are the traveler, I believe it is best that you remain inside this temporal bubble. I reserve the right to remove you at any time, however.”

She says nothing.

“Now I am done,” I continue. “I can see that you have questions.”

“Who are you?” Paige asks. “And I don’t mean your name. What is this bubble for? You’re a counselor of sorts?”

“I am the quantum assimilator. I step in when the two should be merged into one.”

“What exactly does that mean?” Older!Orsen questions.

I prepare to lay it all out for them. “You are two people with two bodies. Most of your memories are identical, but one of you has some memories that the other does not. And now that you have met, you have undeniably become two separate people, on two unique paths. This is dangerous for the timeline, especially since neither of you are time travelers, and cannot necessarily be trusted with our secrets. I’m sorry, that’s just the way it is. Quantum assimilation is not a requirement, except in the most catastrophic of circumstances. Like I’ve said, however, I do recommend it in this situation, and I will not pop this bubble until I’ve done my due diligence when it comes to attempting to convince you to agree.”

“So, you’re going to make these two people one person?” Paige believes.

“Indeed,” I say.

“Why do we have to do that?” Older!Orson asks. Younger!Orson is still too shocked and frightened to utter a word. “Why can’t I just go back to the future?”

“As I’ve explained,” I begin again, “you are now two different people.” I point to Older!Orson. “When you first lived through this moment, none of this happened. You met Younger!Paige, she impacted your life, and you moved on with it in a certain way.”

“In a good way?” Now Younger!Orson speaks.

“I make no moral or qualitative judgments,” I tell him. “I only protect individuality. The point is that you have returned, and generated a new branch in time...a new timeline. If there are two of you now, when you jump back to 2027, there will still be two of you.” I point to Younger!Orson. “He will move on with his life in a certain way, impacted by what’s happening here and now, and will remain unless he’s, you know, killed, or something.”

Younger!Orson, who has only just now learned that time travel is real, whimpers. “Am I going to be killed?”

“Death is one way to remove the problem of alternate selves. It’s very nasty, and I don’t do it. I am only the quantum assimilator, so if death is the choice you make, you will have to take care of it yourselves.”

“We are not killing anybody,” Paige declared. “Just explain the process, and give us all of our options.”

I take a deep breath. “It is a simple process to explain, but a complex one to carry out. I will remove the consciousnesses of both individuals, and merge them into one. Then I will place this new consciousness into one of the bodies.”

“Which body?” Older!Orson asks.

“That is up to you. People have different reasons for which body they choose. I assimilated a woman who went back in time to stop herself from getting radiation poisoning. When I merged their minds, we obviously chose to put the new consciousness into the unirradiated body. Another, however, happened to live long enough to find a cure for their disease, so we chose the older body. Most of the time, however, it is not that dramatic. The most common choice is the younger body, simply because it gives them more time to live.”

The two Orsons look at each other uncomfortably.

“What happens to the other body?” Paige asks with predictably less fear.

“It is dispatched to oblivion. Every atomic bond is broken, and each atom is carefully placed somewhere separately in spacetime.”

“That sounds horrific,” Older!Orson says, concerned.

“There is no consciousness inside the body that is destroyed,” I contradict. “Even if there were, the process is instantaneous, and would be one hundred percent painless.”

Older!Orson is now getting a little upset, and seems to feel very protective of his younger counterpart. “What are the other options? You said we had a choice. What else can we do?”

“One of you can commit suicide, which we went over. One of you can go live off in a very far removed time period, with a brand new identity. You can also move to a different planet. Both of these run the risk of you encountering each other at some point, as does another option, which is to simply live in different cities, or something. That is, of course, the most dangerous, but it has been done, and I’ve allowed it.”

“Are there more?” Paige prompts.

“I spoke with someone who would regularly return to the past to alter recent historical events he deemed unjust. Every time he did that, he would step into another dimension, so his other self could live on without the hassle. Last I checked, there were hundreds of alternates, all just kind of hanging out together in their bizarre little city that’s totally cut off from the world. That sort of thing is why I’m here, because if he wasn’t capable of accessing this pocket dimension, those hundreds of alternates would all be on this plane of existence. The human population would be negatively impacted by that, and you would have heard about it.”

“That makes sense,” Paige says. “So, to recap, exile, suicide, or assimilation are our only options?”

“It all boils down to that, I suppose.”

“Serkan never did any of that,” she argues. “He and his other self live in the same city.”

“Your father wanted to do that, because he felt he would be reasonably capable of avoiding his alternate selves, one of which is totally oblivious to time travel. I allowed it, because Mr. Demir lives a very underground life, and I recognized that he would be mature enough to shed his old life, and let Younger!Serkan lead it in his stead. That was his secret gift to his self. Not everyone has the willpower to avoid checking in on their family and friends.”

“He didn’t tell me any of this,” Paige points out. “He’s never mentioned you, and he tells us everything.”

I smile. “I’m certain he would have told you if he remembered. He has no recollection of our conversation. No one ever does. Once our business here is complete, you will not remember this either.”

“Wouldn’t that defeat the whole purpose?” Older!Orson believes. “The whole reason I came back here was to convince my younger self not to start a time religion.”

I smile again. “You will remember everything that led to the creation of our bubble meeting. You will also be aware that a quantum assimilation occurred. You just won’t remember how it happened. You just won’t remember me.”

“Does anyone ever remember you?” This was genuine concern from Ms. Paige.

“I’ve not maintained a relationship since I was seven years old,” I tell them. “Whatever I was doing when I first sensed someone in the timeline needed me to help them, was the last time I did anything as a normal person. I don’t even remember what it was. I do remember returning home after my first job, and finding that my family didn’t know who I was. My entire existence; past and future was erased, and it could not be undone.”

She takes me by the hand, again so genuinely. No one has ever done anything like that to me before. I don’t remember the last time I felt human touch. I never need to make physical contact with my subjects. “I’m sorry that happened to you. Is there anything that can be done? Is it possible for you to force people to remember you after you leave?”

“I’ve met the most powerful time travelers of all,” I begin, “and none of them has exhibited the ability to know me. But this is not about me anyway. This is about the Orsons. It is time to decide. I will not force you, but my recommendation stands.”

“What if we disagree with each other?” Older!Orson asks.

I always hate this part. “The older version of someone is more knowledgeable, if not wiser. It doesn’t have to be unanimous. I will do whatever you decide. Younger!Orson does not have to be involved. It is easier this way.”

This saddens the older one, and frightens the younger one even more than he already was. “Still. Can we have a moment to speak in private?”

I nod. “I can create a bubble inside the time bubble. Ms. Paige and I will not be able to hear you, but our time will be synced. I urge haste. I have other things to do with my time.”

The two Orsons step over to the other side of a barrier that I create for their privacy. Paige and I watch them talk. It’s neutral; not heated.

“What do you think they’re gonna choose?” she asks me.

“I’ve done this literally millions of times,” I start to say.

“Really?”

“Really. I always know what they’re going to choose, even before they do.”

“Well...” she provokes. “What is it?”

I take a moment before I answer. “The older one is going to kill himself.”

I can smell the dismay seeping out of her pores. I can also see her reaction out of the corner of my eye.

“I can erase your own memories of it happening,” I assure her. “And his. The younger Orson will know he was told to do whatever it is you wanted him to do. Whether he complies with your request is up to him—that’s not my department, so I have no control over that—but neither of you have to realize what happened to the other Orson.”

“So you can control what people remember?”

“There’s a bit of leeway when it comes to what they forget, but I cannot make them remember anything extra.”

“So, I’ll go back to the future, and what will it look like? We’ll never meet Orson outside the Salmon Civic Center, but we’ll still need some way of continuing the investigation, as if Orson’s name had been attached to The Juggler and Agent Hello Doctor. Oh my God, we didn’t think this through enough. If he kills himself...”

“Again, that’s not my department. You probably won’t want to go back to that future, though.” I hate this part too. Sometimes the people I meet don’t even realize what’s happened to them. They don’t know what they are. It is the burden I bear to deliver so much bad news like this.

“Why’s that?” She’s confused, but she’s about to be scared. It’s about to get real.

“Older!Orson is not the only time traveler here. You are the one who created the new timeline. There are now two Paige Turner Reaver-Demirs in the same timeline. You’re going to have to make a decision too.”

I can see the hurt in her eyes. I’ve seen it many times. “Oh, no.”

« < » > Entire Story

Firestorm: Orson Olsen (Part V)

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Two years ago, I witnessed a miracle. Well, there were actually three miracles in one day. I watched a girl appear out of nowhere, standing on a stump in my yard. Her arms were stretched wide, and a halo shined from above her head. Hours later, I ran into that girl again, though she did not seem to know who I was. I watched her disappear again, and realized she was a time traveler, who needed my help to save her friends. I saw my angel a third time later that day, and before she disappeared one last time, she gave me a mandate. I am to worship time. That is the one true God, and I’m embarrassed I didn’t realize it before. I used to follow an imaginary flying spaghetti monster, because I was indoctrinated into it from birth. But now I see the truth. Time is real; it’s abstract, and impossible to hold in your hand, which makes it magnificent, but it undeniably exists. If that’s not God, then God cannot exist.

I realized I had to spread the word. Most of my brothers and sisters in the church would not be swayed. They did not witness the Trinity Miracle, like I did. There were others, however, that I knew I would be able to convince. My mother was always worried people would leave the church, and she taught me to spot these people, so I could help bring them back from the brink of damnation. No matter what I did, though, they retained their doubts; they just learned to hide it better. Fortunately, my memory is totally fine, so I had this excellent list of people who would be willing to hear the true word. I started out slowly—very slowly. I knew that my best friend would believe me without question. It was he who discovered a magician in the area who might be what we were looking for. He was right. This guy had real powers to move things from one hand to the other. They weren’t very impressive, but they were enough to convince my church’s doubters. I brought them to the shows one by one, never giving away that we knew each other. They saw for themselves that time travel was real, and our movement grew. This was not the magician’s only purpose. I knew he would know others like him, so we watched him for weeks, like secret agents. He ate at the same restaurant almost every single day, and every time he showed up, he was surprised, as if the restaurant was attracting him against his will.

My friend and I realized the restaurant was more special than the man, so we switched gears, and started to investigate them instead. Through a complex series of timing the employees, and watching certain customers being led through the kitchen, we determined there was a whole world in the back we couldn’t see from here. We started watching the whole building, and could tell that there were some strange goingson that people like us weren’t allowed to see. We have to see the miracles, though. My people deserve the truth, and I am the only one who can show it to them. I’ve been coming here ever since, waiting for someone in there to notice, and here he comes. My plan has worked. I’m about to be read in.

“Detective Bran,” the man says, showing me his badge. It’s not the first FBI agent I’ve met, but that’s a different story. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry, have I been loitering?”

“What are you writing in there, your manifesto?” he asks me.

My notebook. “Oh, heavens no. This is the good book.”

“You’re rewriting the bible?”

“I’m writing the real bible.”

“Hmm,” is all he can say.

“What are your abilities?” I’m pretty good at playing it cool, but I can tell there’s something different about this guy. Security has been coming by nearly every day to get me to leave, but they’re just regular people. I can smell the power coming off of him. Perhaps I’m one of them. Perhaps my ability is to sense other abilities.

“Well, I’m a good marksman, and a halfway decent investigator. My true strength lies in getting people to leave.”

“Please. You don’t have to lie to me. I don’t know exactly what you are, but I know that you’re special. I’m not going to hurt you. Just...read me in. Show me the light. I am..open.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Agent Bran says. “This is private property, and it is time for you to leave.”

“I’ll leave, if you let me in...just once. Let me see what’s really in there—no illusions—and I’ll never bother you again.”

“Sir, this is a secure facility. I cannot let you in.”

“You think I’m going to believe that this is nothing more than a CIA blacksite? I’m not stupid. I saw through the windows. Dozens of people ran into that unit, right there.” I point to some kind of club. I never got a good look at the sign, so that’s the only word I could make out. “A minute later, they all came out. They looked different. I have a really good memory, and an eye for faces. People were wearing different clothes, and none of them looked like they had just ran inside, and came back out. Something happened in there, and I demand to know what it was.”

“It’s all right, Agent.” She’s come. She’s come to show me the light again.

“Paige, get back inside,” Agent Bran orders. “Who is he to talk to an angel like that?”

“Angel Paige,” I utter. “You’ve returned.”

“I have,” she says to me. “You wanna see the light. Then let’s go take a look. Let’s go back to the beginning, or near it, anyway.” She takes out her phone. “You ever been to New York?”

“Paige, don’t do this,” Bran pleads.

“The cat’s out of the bag,” she explains to him. “We can’t put it back, but we can domesticate it.” She shows me a picture of a house on a hill. It’s black and white and yellow, but I think the yellow is probably just because it’s really old. The edges are damaged, as if melted, but again, that’s probably due to the ravages of time. This is a very old photograph. “How about New York 1848?”

“Paige, no!” cries another voice, but I never get a chance to see who it is.

She takes me by the arm, and whisks me away. In seconds, we’re standing at the bottom of the hill in the photograph. For a second, a part of me wonders why it’s not still in black and white, but of course, that would be stupid. We’ve just traveled into the past. The angel has given me such an amazing gift. “Let’s take a walk.”

We walk along the fence for a few minutes as I patiently wait for her to say something else. I am in the presence of divinity, but I know she will be turned off if I act too enthusiastic about it. I just keep thinking about how incredible it is to be here, and how much she must trust me to show me this.

“Orson—can I call you Orson?”

“You can call me whatever you want, Angel Paige.”

“I’ll call you Orson, and you can just call me Paige, because I’m not an angel, and I think you know that.”

“Anything you want...Paige.”

“When we met, I was young, and still getting a handle on my abilities. I was desperate to help my friends, and that made me reckless. I showed you something that you were never meant to see. There are people in this world, and other worlds, with time powers. It’s not illegal for us to tell one or two people what we can do. We have to be able to trust our families, and our closest friends. It is a problem, however, if word spreads. So my question to you is, who the fuck do you think you are?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Do you need me to repeat myself? You’re just some random mormon who got a peek at something that wasn’t for him. What gives you the right to run around, showing a bunch of people magic tricks, and telling them what to worship? Do you think we want that? Do you think we want you exposing us? Do you think, maybe, there are consequences to this sort of thing? Do you think it’s possible that somebody built a prison, stuffed my best friend in it, and left her there to rot for a year? You can’t just go upending everything we’ve done to protect ourselves from the general public. Because you don’t matter, and it isn’t fair for you to assume all this responsibility.”

“I’m sorry, I meant no disrespect. You told me to worship time.”

“That was an off-handed comment. It wasn’t a real command. Jesus Christ.”

I don’t know what to say.

She takes a deep breath before continuing. “This prison isn’t designed for criminals. It’s only there to house those who risk outting us to the world. If you don’t stop what you’re doing, we’ll all go there, including you. You’re human, which affords you some special consideration, but that will only take you so far. If your cult gets any bigger, they’re gonna step in. I’m surprised they let it get this big.”

“I don’t know how to do that,” I say to her honestly. “It’s grown beyond my control. People saw the truth. They saw that magician.”

“People see magicians all the time, they don’t start worshiping them.”

“We don’t worship Delmar Dupont. He’s a lesser god, at best.”

“You need to explain to your flock that you were wrong. You need to get them to believe that...they shouldn’t believe.”

“That sounds impossible. I mean, I already pulled them from a church. Now you want me to tell them to go back? They would see right through that.”

“You’re the only one who saw what I could do, right?”

“Yes.”

“You’re the only one who saw people run into Salmonday Club too.”

“Is that what it’s called? Yes, I was the only one there at the time. Like I was saying, though, the magician was enough. They watched carefully, and they listen to me.”

“They listen to you?”

“That’s not really what I mean,” I start to clarify. “They listened in the beginning, because they saw proof, and they needed an excuse to leave the church. That’s not gonna work a second time. I can reinforce what I’ve already told them, and they’ll still listen, but I can’t contradict myself.”

We keep walking as she thinks this over. “Why do they listen to you? Why did they agree to go to the magic show?”

“Magic doesn’t go against the church, because most of it is just sleight of hand and misdirection. They only started believing after what they saw, and because I told them it was real. We can’t undo that.”

“That’s the key, though. You told them it was real. They could have just as easily happened upon the venue, watched it on their own, and assumed it was an illusion, just like most people do.”

“Yeah, I guess.” I’m not sure where she’s going with this.

“If they stop believing in you, then they’ll stop believing in him, and if they don’t believe in him, then they don’t believe in time magic at all.”

“How would they stop believing in me?” I question.

“We have to discredit you.”

“What are you gonna do, like, doctor photos of me in bed with a man, or something? It’s 2027, they won’t like that, but it’s not enough anymore. I mean, it would be one thing if I preached sexual purity, but I don’t even mention that in my sermons. Their hang-ups would all be carryovers from their old lives.”

“No, I wouldn’t wanna do that anyway.”

Now I’m scared. I wouldn’t love that idea, but I would do it for her, even though I’m not gay. I’m afraid she’s about to suggest something really bad. “So...”

“It’s really bad, you’re not gonna like it.”

I suck it up in my own head, and say, “I’ll do anything for you.”

“That’s the problem, it can’t be you. At least, I don’t think it can. How long were you a member of that church in Independence?”

“I was part of Independence Temple my whole life, until you. Why?”

“That’s what I was worried about. I need the name of the newest member of your church who is also now a member of your...cult?”

“We don’t like that word, but...”

“But who?”

“But there’s no one. There’s no one like that.”

“Damn. If we had someone like that, we could discredit them instead. Bran could barge into your worshiphouse, and arrest him for fraud in three states, or something like that. Then we could convince them that he was the one in control of everything.”

“That’s terrible, Paige.” I guess she really isn’t an angel.

“I know. It was just my first idea.”

I sigh. “Well, you’re a time traveler, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s undo it. Take me back to 2025. Change the past. That’s possible, isn’t it?”

“I’ve seen it done, yes.”

“Okay. I’m ready.”

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