The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 20, 2399

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When the surgeon attempted to remove the foreign body from Alyssa’s brain, she went into autopilot and warned them not to do that. She spoke in monotone, and it was clear that she was only reciting a script rather than speaking from the heart. When the doctor let go of her brain, she was able to give him consent to remove it from her, but every time he tried, she would protest again. Under normal circumstances, no means no, whether or not it’s preceded by a yes, but in this case, it was obvious that the implant was speaking for her, and that the real her wanted the thing gone. The surgeon removed it, and then the anaesthesiologist put her back to sleep so they could seal up her head. If her substrate is anything like the ones that Ramses built for the others on the team, her skull should heal up completely. There shouldn’t even be a scar.

“Why not?” she asks. She’s woken up now, and asked to see herself in a mirror.

“I can actually answer this,” Mateo says. “I had a friend when I was younger who kept getting hurt. He ended up with this huge scar on his neck, and he explained that when the body is injured, it produces collagen to repair the damage, but it’s better to produce too much than too little, because too little would result in it not healing all the way. Too much ultimately creates extra skin. It’s evolution’s way of making sure that the healing finishes all the way.”

“Yeah,” Leona agrees, “but the medical nanites that you have now can gauge exactly how much collagen they need to order to get the job done, so there’s no extra.”

“Oh. And the hair?”

“Don’t know about the hair,” Leona replies. “Ramses may have included a subroutine that would command the nanites to activate the right protein growth factors, or it didn’t occur to him. If he did think to include it, it may still take a while. Hair treatment isn’t bad in this reality, though. We can sign you up for follicle stimulation. In the meantime, we’ll buy whatever wigs you want.”

“Don’t bother,” Alyssa says. She uses her illusion ability to generate a hologram of her original hair. “I may just leave it shaved. I’ve found it easier to produce an artificial image from scratch than to superimpose it on something else.”

“True,” Leona says as she’s waving her hand through the hair, and touching nothing. “However, the hair’s not really there, and people can tell.”

“Right.” She frowns slightly.

“I’m sorry we had to do this,” Leona said. “We just...”

“We just wanted you back,” Mateo finishes.

“Yes, and I appreciate that,” Alyssa tells them, “but there’s something you should know. “I am still bound to Dalton’s commands.”

“What? You are?”

“I’m sorry, the surgery didn’t do what you thought it would. That’s not what the dot was for.” What that thing did was block her from remembering certain things from her past. Removing it didn’t reprogram her. It’s just that now she knows what’s at stake, and understands why the Gyroscope must stay active. Fortunately, she can explain it now too. “It was just a...uh—what would you call it? A memory inhibitor. I still want to keep the Omega Gyroscope working, but now I know why.”

“Why?” Leona presses.

“Someone is trying to get into the Third Rail. They have been trying for ages. The original programming was enough to prevent that from happening, but things have changed in recent days.”

“What’s changed?” Mateo asks.

“You,” Alyssa says. “You, and the team. And Aldona, and everyone who came from the Insulator of Life. Everyone who disappeared into the Livewire. Every time you tap on the glass to the Fourth Quadrant, and every time you teleport, you’re pushing the boundaries. You weaken the system. Luckily, Dalton broke the rules, and looked into the future to see all this coming. He set in place a series of events that would put me in charge, and I have been this world’s protector ever since.”

“Well, he was late. All those versions of Constance managed to come through. I suppose, if it had to happen, he should have made it happen sooner.”

“Those Constances were about as threatening as a lone ladybug compared to the one who’s trying to get in now.”

“Wait, are you talking about Constance!Two, or someone else entirely?”

“Both,” Alyssa answers. “She’s the most dangerous, not because she’s inherently different than the others, but because she’s formed a relationship with the Superintendent’s alternate self.”

“The Superintendent has an alt?” Mateo questions.

“I don’t have the details, but yes. He has a...more local form of the real Superintendent’s power, but if you’re in the same universe as he is, he can do a lot of damage. Evidently, you were this close to meeting him a couple times. From what Dalton has discovered, he was on the Stage at the same time you were, before you came here. When we ran into your friend, Meliora by that river? He was there too.”

“Was Constance!Two there too?” Leona asks.

Alyssa waits a moment to respond. “She was Meliora. Or rather, she was impersonating her. Dalton thinks she started to try to break through just after you, but luckily the Superintendent’s alt stopped it.”

“So what do we need the Gyroscope for?” Mateo asks.

“I think he stopped it by distracting her. She ends up trying anyway. The good thing is that the portal she sent you through closed up, so she missed the only opportunity she had...unless you force me to take the barrier down.”

“It has to come down eventually,” Leona points out. “Certain things have to happen. This world is ending.”

“Dalton is aware, and has accounted for that. He will let Constance!Two in at the right time, on the right day, to destroy her before she can do any damage. That time is not now. That day is not today. You just have to trust us.”

“We can do that,” Leona begins, “but Dalton has to give us two things in return.”

“I’ll talk to him about Angela and the immortality waters.”

“You shouldn’t have to,” Leona says. “We want to talk to him ourselves.”

“I’ll try, but he hasn’t been very inviting with me. Our relationship is one-way.”

“I see that. He took your fancy cane back.”

“He didn’t take it back. I lost it,” Alyssa admits.

“Lost it where? How?”

“What’s the second thing?” Alyssa asks, avoiding the question.

“We want you back,” Mateo says. “No more short emails. You stay with us.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 19, 2399

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Alyssa teleports herself into the center of the bottom floor of the Superscraper. It hasn’t been that long since she last saw Mateo and Leona, though longer for them than for her. She assumed this place would be virtually empty, but there are a few dozen people around. A few are moving furniture and indoor plants into place, while others are just sitting around and conversing. There are even children, so they’re probably not movers. Are they residents? Do people live here? How much did she miss while she was off-world? They’re regarding her curiously, but they’re not shocked, so maybe they’re from other realities, and they’ve seen this sort of thing before.

A little girl runs up, and tugs on Alyssa’s shirt. “Hi. Where are you from?”

“I’m from a black hole that’s so far away, if you flew there going the speed of light...it would take you more than a thousand years to get there.”

“Wow,” the girl says. She runs off to tell her friends the news.

Alyssa notices one of the adults on a phone that’s attached to a support column. He hangs up. “Mrs. Matic is on her way.”

“Thank you,” Alyssa replies. She stands there awkwardly while she waits.

A few minutes later, Leona comes down the elevator. “Alyssa, you’ve returned. Is it by coincidence, or did you finally receive our messages?”

“I was indisposed. Is there somewhere we can talk?”

“Here’s fine,” Leona tells her.

Alyssa looks over at the people, who are watching, but not staring. “Privately?”

“Oh, please,” Leona says. “Look around. Everyone knows about time travel now. They may not understand it, but the world has been deveiled. I’m working with a publicist, and will be making a streamed statement regarding the secret at a later date.”

“I see, and who are these people; part of your new publicity team?”

“They’re helping us put this place together, and in return, we let them live here. They have nothing to do with the statement.”

Alyssa nods. “Well, I’m sorry I didn’t respond earlier. I was orbiting a black hole. Those things slow down time, did you know that?”

“I did,” Leona confirms.

“Well, I wasn’t there long, but apparently I was.”

“What were you doing there?”

Alyssa keeps her mouth shut.

Leona breathes deeply through her nose. “Very well. Would you be willing to help us with an issue that we have?”

“I can try. What is it?”

“Angela will be returning soon, and if she doesn’t drink all of the immortality waters soon, Marie is going to die. Now, we had Tarboda go out and scoop up some Bermuda Triangle water. It’s...it’s just water. There is no temporal energy in it.”

Alyssa nods. “Because the Omega Gyroscope is suppressing it.”

“That’s right. It would be incredibly helpful if you could...turn them back on for us, and then teleport us to each location, so we can procure the samples we need to save Marie’s life. Otherwise, everything that the two of them did after Marie was attacked with a DNA bomb will have pretty much been a waste of time.”

Alyssa closes her eyes to think. She desperately wants to help her friends, but nothing she does can interfere with what her brainwashing demands, and it is not always obvious where the boundaries are. She sometimes has to sort of…ask herself about it. She doesn’t realize that she’s been holding her breath too. She gasps for air. “I’m sorry, I can’t do it. I want to, I hope you believe me. I just...”

“It won’t let you,” Leona says. “I get it. Which is why we’re gonna help you.”

“How?”

Mateo creeps up behind her, and injects her with a powerful sedative.

Alyssa wakes up strapped to a chair. She can’t move her head. It’s strapped against the headrest. She reaches up to feel.”

“Don’t, don’t, don’t,” Leona urges softly.

Alyssa tries to turn to face her, but she can’t even do that, so she just moves her eyes, but it’s not enough. She looks to her other side. Mateo is in her field of vision. He’s wearing a bracelet attached to a wire, which is connected to Alyssa’s wrist. “Is that the Livewire?” she questions.

“Yes,” Leona’s voice comes again from behind.

“You’re going to force me out of my body?”

“Absolutely not,” she replies. “If you should suddenly get the urge to teleport away, the wire should allow my husband to travel with you. It’s just a precaution.”

“Could y—could you step in front of me, so I can actually look you in the eye when I’m talking to you?”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that. Mateo?” Leona asks.

Mateo reaches over somewhere behind Alyssa, and comes back with a tablet. He holds it so she can see. There’s a video showing someone performing brain surgery. “Can you see okay? I think the brightness isn’t all the way up.”

“What is this? Why are you showing me this?”

“That’s you,” Leona replies. “That’s your brain.”

“You cut open my brain?!” Alyssa exclaims.

“Not me,” Leona answers. “I’m holding the camera, and the scope. A neurosurgeon is handling the actual surgery.”

“And what exactly is the purpose of this?”

“Well,” Leona begins. “While you’ve been swimming in black holes, Mateo has had his hands full with the ship—”

“The ship? Which ship?”

“Oh, you didn’t know that the Superscraper was a ship? Hm. Well, it is. Anyway, I’ve been dealing with the public in that regard, Heath’s been trying to find Dalton—”

“Heath is trying to find Dalton?”

“Yes. Would you please stop interrupting me? You don’t want me to poke your brain, do you? As I was saying, Tarboda is handling transportation, so everyone’s been pretty busy. I had Vearden look into your history, since he’s not really doing anything while he sits by Arcadia’s bedside. Turns out, you had surgery when you were a baby.”

“Yes, they had to remove a tiny benign tumor. It hasn’t been a problem since.”

It sounded like Leona was looking at something as the surgeon was digging around. “I don’t think they took something out. I think they put something in.”

Alyssa watches in horror as the surgeon separates a brain fold to reveal a black dot tucked inside. “What the fuck is that!?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 18, 2399

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Mateo shoots up from the pillow and gasps. He would have guessed that it would wake up his wife, but she’s sleeping peacefully next to him. He nudges her, but nothing. He shakes her, and she groans, but still doesn’t open her eyes. “Leona. Leona—Lee-Lee!”

“What?” she finally says, keeping her eyes closed, and crunching her pillow up under her arms and head. “I’m sleeping.”

“What about Angela and Marie?”

“Alyssa promised that she would let them come back without disrupting the reframe engine that’s bringing them here, or the exterior inertial dampeners that will stop them from crashing into the planet.”

“No, I mean the immortality waters that Angela is meant to drink. We still haven’t gotten the remaining sources.”

She opens her eyes, and holds herself up with locked elbows. “We keep forgetting about that. Why do we keep forgetting about that?” That’s a really good question. Either they’re terrible people, or someone is doing this to them. They would like to think it’s the latter, because that problem can be solved, but at the same time, it may be rather difficult to find the culprit. They need to erase all distractions. Is it the building-slash-evacuation spaceship, and if so, is there something odd about the structure itself, or is it just so mysterious that they can’t think about anything else.

“We need to make a plan to procure what we need. First, I need you to remind me which ones she’s already taken. If I recall correctly, she had access to another.”

“Right.” She curls into a more comfortable position. “Lamp on,” she commands their smarthome receiver. “She’s had Catalyst, Longevity, and Time. Which is good, because those are the hardest to get, especially in a world where time and accelerated space travel are all but impossible. She also drank some of the hard-to-make Atacama desert water for Body. Now, the alternate version of Tamerlane Pryce reportedly gave her a bottle of Dead Sea water, so that takes care of Energy, but she’ll need to take Existence and Invulnerability first, so we will need to take trips to the Bermuda Triangle, and the North Pole. At this point, the latter will be easier than the former, because people apparently know that the Triangle is special, and are watching it.”

“The Fountain of Youth is the next one, right?”

“Yeah, the government is monitoring that. I don’t see it being a problem. Both Health and Death come from the Pools of Pamukkale in Türkiye, which is also politically complicated, but if I ask Winona, I think she can swing it. That just leaves Activator.”

“Where do you get that?”

She frowns at him. “The end of the world. It’s the opposite of Catalyst.”

“I don’t know when the world ends, but it’s not in a few weeks.”

“And if we can’t travel through time, it won’t matter when exactly it is anyway.”

“It’s right now,” came a voice from a dark corner.

“Who the hell is there?” Leona questions. “Lights to a hundred percent.”

The lights come on to reveal it to be their friend, and Mateo’s sort-of daughter. “Kivi,” Leona exclaims. “I forgot about you. You can’t exist, can you?”

“I don’t have long. Just know that the world is ending this year. Any water, from anywhere—as long as it’s injected with temporal energy at the right ratio—will work.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 17, 2399

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Leona has finally come back to the Superscraper after spending days at Homes for Humankind, working on something big. She even made a short trip to Haiti without even telling Mateo about it. She hasn’t given any details regarding their plans, but Mateo has briefed her on what he and the volunteers discovered as they were exploring the sublevels. She wanted to see it for herself, of course. She is particularly interested in the fusion reactor on the very lowest level. She stares for a few minutes, not vocalizing her thoughts. Then she walks over to it, and starts opening panels and hatches. She presses a few buttons, and flips some switches too. When she’s satisfied, she brushes the dust off her hands, and walks back over. “It is more interesting than you thought.”

“Why’s that?”

She points. “See that over there, that collection of tubes?”

“Yeah. Kind of looks like an organ.”

“It’s part of a cooling system.”

“Sounds reasonable to me. Fire hot. Fire burn,” he says like a caveman.

She smirks knowingly. “Let’s go back upstairs. I need to test something.”

They take the elevator up. Leona stops on the main floor, and opens the door to a maintenance closet. She looks around a little bit before finding what she’s looking for, which is apparently a large metal pipe. She smacks it against her other hand to test its strength, then they get back into the elevator to go up a few more floors. She doesn’t say a word this entire time. Mateo doesn’t think she’s going to hurt anyone with it, but he’s very confused, and a little nervous. She usually likes to explain herself along the way.

They get out on the fourth floor, and walk into a random unit. It’s not being used by any of the people they took in. Still silent, Leona pulls the pipe into a backswing, and sends it straight into the window as hard as she can. It’s not too hard, because she never played baseball, or works out, but it should have done at least a little damage. There is not a mark on it. Also silent, Mateo reaches out. She hands him the pipe, and he takes his own shot. Nothing. Impenetrable. “What does this tell us?” he asks.

She takes back the pipe, and hits the glass again, like a pickaxe this time, and not with all of her might. She feels the seams with her fingers, and looks closely at them. “Does this kind of window remind you of anything? Like, when you think back to the times you’ve encountered one that appears to be indestructible, were you in an office building, or were you...in something else?”

Puzzled, Mateo winces, and tries to think. “I mean, they’ve always been like that when I’ve been on ships?” He shakes his head tightly, and widens his eyes. He looks around at the room that they’re in, and slides his palm on the walls. “This is a ship?”

“I think so. In fact, I think that it’s just a giant evacuation vessel. They built them to replace the original arcologies in the main sequence during Project Airtight, but we never saw them. The whole planet could be evacuated in a matter of hours, if need be.”

“Leona, one of our new friends did the math. If some lived up top, and some below, a million people could fit. How many would you need to save literally everyone?”

“At a million per ship, that’s about eight thousand, just like this one.”

Mateo gazes out the window. “Is that possible? Do you think more exist?”

She sighs and watches the sun set upon the city. “That...would be crazy.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 16, 2399

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The building has been inspected, at least with a cursory glance. They didn’t hire a professional to go through the entire thing, and check or mold, or whatever it is they do. All the doors are open now, though, which will allow drones to go through, should Leona deem there to be some need for that. While she’s been dealing with other things, Mateo has been in charge of helping the volunteers check the rooms, and now it’s time to go in the opposite direction. A building this tall has to have a deep foundation, and there should be space down there too. It may not be furnished, or even clean, but there will be potential in it. The elevator turns out to be large enough for all of the now two dozen volunteers, so he invites everyone to join, including the kids. It’ll be a little adventure.

When the doors open, they find themselves in a wide expanse, which may cover the entirety of the building in the first two dimensions. There is nothing here but support columns. It’s made of concrete, but really clean and unused. Maybe this is meant to be used for offices. Underground, though? That seems unnecessarily cruel, especially since there should be plenty of space in the common areas on the bottom floors above the surface. “Come on,” Mateo says. “There’s nothing to see here. Let’s keep going down.”

They go down one story. This one is just as expansive, but it looks different. It’s filled with stuff. As they step onto the floor, and spread out, they find compartments that mirror the kind of rooms up above. Each room is equipped with four bunk beds, and is separated from its neighbors by only half walls. Metal bars come up and go across, suggesting that a modest amount of privacy can be created from curtains. There are rows and rows and rows of these bunks. “What are they for?” a teenager asks.

“Emergency shelter, in case of a tornado?” someone else suggests.

“Look at this sign,” one of them says. “ROOM CAPACITY: 34,768.”

“Okay,” Mateo says, stepping back towards the elevator. “Let’s try one more.”

They get back in, and go down one more story. It’s the same, doubling their current known underground capacity. Mateo looks over at the buttons. There are twelve stories total, numbered zero through negative eleven. “Who here is good at math?” he asks the group.

A girl snakes her way forward.

“Assuming that every floor is just like this one, subtracting that first one that was empty, how many people can fit in the shelter?”

She takes a moment to perform the calculations. “It would fit 382,448 people.”

Mateo shakes his head. I was kind of worried about that. “That’s not much more than half of the population that can fit above. That doesn’t sound like a great shelter.”

“Well, we don’t know what we’re looking at here,” a man pointed out. “The other floors could be bigger, or maybe they can’t make an elevator this big that goes down as many floors as there are, and we’re expected to get off, and get on another one.”

They keep riding the elevator down, stepping out for a moment just to check that it’s equipped with all the same stuff. Floor Negative-10 is different. It’s just a giant open area, like the first sublevel. There’s only one more to check now, and while this is all rather exciting, they don’t expect anything different. They would all be wrong. “I recognize this,” Mateo says. “This is a fusion reactor...a big one.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 15, 2399

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Imani didn’t say much more about her religious faith, and how much she thinks it does, or doesn’t, have to do with time travelers. By the sound of it, some of the Word of Dalton is drawn from real life, and some of it is ripped straight out of pop culture from the main sequence. For instance, he tells a story that Leona recalls from an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, as if it were real. Similarly, this reality never had a version of Adolf Hitler, so Dalton apparently felt totally comfortable using hitler as an adjective to describe someone evil, or literal daemons from the bad place. Yes, he stole IP from The Good Place too. They probably should have read over the prooftext months ago, since it could have clues. Leona would do that now, but she’s busy.

Imani wanted a tour of the Superscraper, but didn’t have enough time for it, and still doesn’t today, which is good, because Leona scheduled an unrelated meeting. If she wants to turn the building into a refugee sanctuary, then she needs to get help from people who already work with refugees, and actually know what the hell they’re doing. They seemed amenable to the possibility of collaborating on the phone, but it was audio only, and they could have just been being polite. Been being? She needs to make sure she doesn’t talk like that during the meeting. She’s entering their offices now. Game face, Leona. Wait, stop! She didn’t mean that literally, but her ability interpreted it that way. That’s not her game face. That is Chief’s tight end and four-time Super Bowl champion, Travis Kelce. Leona face, Leona. There we go. Okay, now open the door, and if anyone saw,  pretend that it was just an optical illusion.

“Hello. Welcome to Homes for Humankind. Do you have an appointment, or would you like to volunteer?”

“I have a meeting scheduled with Yulian Văduva.” She checks her watch. “I’m about ten minutes early.

The receptionist blinks. “Hold on, I know who you are.”

“Yes.” Leona ran into a celebrity once, and she’s not talking about Juan Ponce de Leon, or the time she was on a fake cooking show with James Van Der Beek. In the reality where she didn’t meet Mateo until later in life, she found herself in front of comedian and actor, Heidi Gardner in line at Richard and Allen’s restaurant in the Plaza. There was no one else there at the time, and that was before that version of her found out that it was a hangout spot for time travelers. Heidi shook her hand politely and said hello, but Leona didn’t ask for a selfie, or anything like that, and Heidi didn’t offer. She seemed to want to be left alone, and Leona respected that. She was very nice to Richard when he took her order, and ate quickly, surely because she had to return to her busy life. Leona didn’t think that she would ever have to deal with anything like that. She’s famous in certain circles, like the planet of Dardius, but she’s never felt every eye in the world on her; not when the people whose eyes they belong to don’t know about time travel. This is so surreal. She’s being bashful about it.

“And you’re meeting with the big kahuna. Lucky you. A word of advice, don’t say anything about the Daltomist who visited your country yesterday. He’s not a fan of organized religion.”

“Don’t worry,” Leona said. “Neither am I.”

He nods. “I’ll let him know that you’ve arrived. You can have a seat over there.”

Leona barely has time to sit down before Mr. Yulian comes down from on high. “Mrs. Matic? It’s nice to meet you. Right this way, we’re in the big conference room today.”

“Okay,” Leona said. She follows him to the room, which she expects to be entirely empty. She thought it had something to do with the other rooms being booked, but nope, it’s completely full of people. They all look up at her when she stops in the doorway, some having to spin their chairs around to see. “Hi. Forgive me, I wasn’t prepared for this. It seems that our wires were crossed. I was under the impression that it would just be us, and maybe one associate of yours.”

“Wires were crossed,” he echoes. “Heh, I like that. I’m gonna steal it from you. Why don’t you have a seat? Yeah, right there at the head. Go on. Are you thirsty? We have water or tea.”

“I’m fine, thanks.” She sits down awkwardly in the incredibly comfortable chair. A conference room chair has no business being this soft. This is a place of business.

Yulian walks to the other side of the room, and flips on the TV. “Before we get to the pitch, I would like to show you something.” He presses a button that reveals the feed from the front door security camera.

Leona’s heart sinks. She really needs to get a handle on her new illusion power.

“Before every meeting with a potential partner or donor, we like to have a little internal pre-meeting. We leave the feed up to play in the background so we know when someone shows up. We never expected to see this.” He prepares to press another button.

“You don’t have to show it. I know what you saw.”

“Okay,” Yulian says with a smile. “Then I’ll show you this archive footage instead.” He changes the screen to a different camera. It’s high up on the roof, and showing the New York City skyline. “Wait for it...wait for it...” The Superscraper appears out of nowhere. “I assume what you did at the front door has something to do with what made this thing suddenly spring into existence?”

“It’s...maybe.”

“So there are others who can do the same thing?”

“...maybe,” she repeats.

He widens his smile. “We’re prepared to defect to your nation, and maybe even expand its borders. Did you know that you could do that? The original owner once owned a modest apartment complex in that spot where he provided a different kind of sanctuary; one that was designed to protect the worst criminals the U.S. has ever seen. He bought more land so he could spread his bullshit message to the masses, and now that it’s yours, you could do it again. But you could do it for the right reasons.”

“I can’t build another building like that,” Leona says. “I didn’t build this one.” She paused, and bobbed her head indecisively. “Or I did.”

“What does that mean? Do you have memory issues?”

“Actually, I think I’ll take that water now.”

The woman next to her slides her own glass over. “It’s clean. I didn’t take a sip of it yet.”

Leona took the glass, and downed it.

“Are you okay now?”

She clears her throat. “I don’t have memory problems. I’m a time traveler, and it’s not outside the realm of possibility that Future!Me constructed that building.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 14, 2399

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Imani Pettis is a Compliance Enforcer in the Church of Daltomism. Unlike most Daltomists at her level, she began in a starter house where she could have easily been lost in the crowd. People who have risen up the ranks to be where she is today have done so after being born into more elite status. There’s a downside to this, because while it’s impossible to begin in the uppermost levels, those who start at the upper levels just under those are not always considered worthy by the general Daltomistic population. Imani garners a lot of respect, because she started at nothing, and earned her place. She belongs to what is called a Singularity Church, which basically means that she operates autonomously, and at the behest of the Primary Church. The paradox is complicated, but even though there are thousands of members of the Primary Church, they each technically belong to their own church. That is what gives them the highest elite status.

Imani attends services all over her region, which encompasses the majority of Northeast United States. She is there to ensure that the local chapters are following the Word of Dalton faithfully, and that no one in the congregation strays from the path too significantly. The point of starter houses is to determine who is worthy to move up to smaller meeting houses, which means that technically, people here don’t have to do anything The Word says. But she will still instruct the local leadership on how to guide the wandering flock towards the Mountain of Truth. It’s unclear why she has requested a meeting with Leona Matic, but Heath wanted to impress her because of what she can do for their mission, so he set it up right away.

“Madam Pettis,” Leona says with her hand outstretched. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.” She shakes her hand. “You may call me Imani.”

“Thank you, Imani. How can I help you today?”

Imani looks around, and walks forward a little. “What is the purpose of this building?”

“We hope to turn it into a refugee sanctuary. It’s not quite ready. We need to inspect all of the rooms, and there are many.”

Imani nods. “How did you come to create it? Or did someone create it for you?”

Leona looks to Heath for guidance, but he isn’t giving anything away. Okay, so a building appeared out of nowhere in the middle of downtown, which threw out the whole secrecy thing. For now, Leona has been able to remain quiet about how she’s not stunned that this happened, but it may be time to change that. If she were freaking out, she would probably be telling people, and asking the public how the hell it happened. She doesn’t know how it happened, but she knows that they can’t help her. “Someone appears to have created it for us. I had a general idea of what I wanted to do, and this building fits those parameters. I’ve taken it as a gift from an anonymous donor.”

Imani laughs. “An anonymous donor builds an invisible building for you, and then just suddenly makes it visible? I would like to meet the person with such power.”

She probably doesn’t need to know about the Omega Gyroscope. Whoever built it may not have known that it would be activated, and was intending to keep the Superscraper hidden for longer. Unless that person was Dalton himself, which is a plausible theory. “There are things in this world that most would not understand.”

“Yet you understand it?” Imani prods.

“Some things I know, some things I don’t,” Leona quotes a TV show.

“Quite,” Imani replies. She looks around some more, and steps a bit deeper in. “A Dark Citadel will fall from the heavens, and make its mark in the Center of World Power. The Watchers who come out of it will change the world forever, and the people shall know the Life of God.”

“Ma’am?” Heath asks vaguely.

“Word of Dalton, Book Two, Chapter Thirty-One.” She grins at him. “Yes, dear, there is a second Word of Dalton book. You have not learned enough to know it.” Pretty impressive, keeping the existence of a whole prooftext out of public knowledge, especially in this advanced informational age. She goes on, “tell me, do either of you recall the date that this building appeared?”

“March 1,” Heath replied.

“March 1, 2399.” She holds up a tablet, and navigates to the chapter in question. “Chapter 31...month three, day one. Page two,” she says as she swipes to the second page. “Paragraph three, words 99 through 137. March 1, 2399,” she repeats. Numerology: the fool’s excuse for being late.

“Interesting,” Leona says, trying not to scoff at the absurdity, knowing in the back of her mind that it’s possible that the book is telling the truth, and this has all been orchestrated to turn out exactly as Dalton wished.

“Tell me,” she repeats herself, “would you consider New York City to be the Center of World Power?”

“One could argue that,” Heath says.

“One could also argue that it’s Kansas. Perhaps the whole country is the world power, and Kansas is literally in the middle of it.”

Imani points at her. “Exactly, my child. Because that’s how Dalton’s words often go. He frequently means something literally that most would take metaphorically, or culturally. And while Daltomism began in Africa, many competing religions were started somewhere in the land which would become North America. Some believe that Kansas holds a plethora of sacred secrets. Besides, look around...would you consider this place to be a dark citadel? Why, it’s so white, I was nearly blinded by the façade when I pulled up.” She’s right. Normal arcological megastructures are painted a gray base, which can alter its tint automagically to reflect or absorb sunlight, depending on the regional climate, and current weather where it’s built. The Superscraper is shockingly white, making it stand out even more amongst all the puny little skyscrapers below, and it doesn’t appear to change colors at all. Plus, it shouldn’t really be described as a citadel.

“So this is not the structure as foretold in your...little book,” Leona says, knowing that it’s a pretty disrespectful way to word it, especially considering it may all be real.

“That was why I wanted to come here, and why I appreciate your accommodation, despite the line of others ahead of me.” It’s true, the number of people who have asked to cross the border has grown exponentially, and that is showing no signs of slowing down. Most of them likely don’t have any particular reason they want to come. They’re curious more than anything, but as soon as they find out that she was invited without any sort of waiting list, or whatever, others might start to feel a little ticked off. Hopefully Imani does not intend to ask for more than just a few answers.

“So we’re agreed that this is not the Dark Citadel?” Leona presses.

“It’s not, but that does not mean that it is not something else. Mr. Walton, tell me what you know of the False Watchers of the Other Worlds.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 13, 2399

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Leona was still hesitant to let Heath go undercover in the Church of Daltomism alone, but he’s finally doing it today. Daltomists meet every day of the week, but Fridays are the biggest. At first, he thought that that would be the best day to go, but if he’s trying to establish himself in the community, Saturday may be the better choice. He may be able to stand out more here, which is what he really needs. Of course, this is such a large congregation that a smaller service is still pretty big, but he has other ways of getting noticed. They practiced strategies yesterday.

He’s not going to start right away. He has to get his bearings first, and find out who here has the power to help him infiltrate. In Daltomism, just because someone is up on stage, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t someone in the audience who is more important than them. He’s looking for someone who all of the other congregants are avoiding, but not like they smell, because they respect and fear them. They’re more than likely too high ranked to be worshiping here as a normal person, and are here to make sure that this particular location is following the teachings of Dalton, and not straying from The Word. This person won’t know that Dalton is alive, but they may know someone who knows someone, who knows someone, ad infinitum.

There. That’s her. She’s holding herself with a strong sense of entitlement and superiority. She’s disgusted by the size of this place. In other faiths, the larger group of followers you have in one place, the more clout you have amongst the other chapters. Daltomism is different. The smaller the meeting house, the more elite you are, which is why this place is so gargantuan. It’s a starter house, and doesn’t require an invitation. He doesn’t really have time to prove himself, though. He has to move up the ranks fast...or else. That’s why he needs to get in the good graces of whoever this woman is, because she’s his ticket into something greater.

He won’t approach her right away. In fact, he’ll probably never try to speak with her at all. He’ll have to find some way to get himself noticed. He doesn’t want her to know that he’s targeting her, after all. God, he sounds like such a creep. This is important, though. Knowing that Dalton is just a man with access to special powers makes him seem a lot less mystical. Heath was never a huge believer, especially since he was taught to believe that he would never amount to much, but the truth has pushed him over the edge. He doesn’t feel bad about doing this, and doesn’t consider these his people anymore. Let’s see, he needs to get himself on stage. He doesn’t have to be the center of attention, but they sometimes bring people up to sing. They usually pick from the front, and he didn’t get here early enough for a good seat, but maybe he can swing it.

While he’s thinking about that, the woman he was eying suddenly approaches. “I know who you are,” she says to him, almost accusatorily.

“You do?” he questions. He’s not famous, in any circles. She shouldn’t recognize him in the least, especially not since they’re a thousand miles from Kansas City.

“I saw you on the news. You weren’t featured, but you were there, being led into that woman’s crime hole.”

“Oh. It’s not a crime hole. She’s trying to change all that.”

“Yeah, I don’t need to hear the pitch. I just need you to get me in the building.”

“That I can do,” he says with a smile. “Hi, I’m Heath Walton.”