Second Stage of Something Started: Loaners (Part X)

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After Mateo Matic was pulled into the timestream in the replica of the Colosseum, he was escorted down to a staging area. Makarion returned shortly thereafter with bad news. “Okay, so I told you that everything would be over once you built the Colosseum, but I can’t necessarily deliver on that one hundred percent.”

“What does that mean?” Vearden asked with a scowl.

“The Cleanser is going to keep using you,” Makarion began, “as long as the powers that be have you loaned out to us.”

“We’re on loan?”

“Yes, that’s what makes you The Freelancers. If the powers want you to go somewhere else, they will, which is why you, Saga worked with The Doctor for six perspective years. If you walk through the stargate now, and you end up anywhere other than Stonehenge, that means you’re still on retainer for us.”

Vearden breathed in deeply out of exasperation, but it ended up making him yawn. When was the last time he slept? “Why are the powers that be helping the Cleanser? They seem to be...” He couldn’t find the words.

Saga finished his sentence, “at odds.”

“I am not privy to that information,” Makarion said.

Dropping it, Saga said, “so we just keep walking through portals, waiting to find out who we work for next, assuming the current job is done.”

“That is how I understand it.”

She looked to Vearden. “Well, I guess that explains our nickname.”

“Yeah,” he responded. “Makes a level of sense now.”

“But you don’t know what’s on the other side of our portal?” she asked of Makarion.

“No,” he said honestly.

“Very well.”

Saga and Vearden once more walked through the stargate to find themselves in some kind of encampment. “When and where the hell are we?” Vearden asked.

“I recognize these kinds of tents,” Saga said. “I think I’m back in World War II.”

“Why would they bring you back here?”

“I don’t know, but I worry about crossing my own timestream.”

A man Saga knew from before approached them stealthily from the side and pointed a gun at them. “Who are you?”

While Vearden held up his hands, Saga tried to diffuse the situation. “Sargent, it’s me.”

“Me who?” Sargent shook his gun threateningly. “I don’t know you.”

“We must have not met yet from your perspective,” Saga tried to explain. “We’re both salmon. This is my partner, Vearden.”

“Nice to meet you,” Vearden said, arms still up.

Sargent put down his gun. “Are you here for the battalion, or for Operation Earworm?”

“We don’t...” Saga started to say.

“Operation Earworm,” Vearden answered with confidence. It was a rational guess, because he really didn’t think an entire war battalion was in need of two more soldiers. If the powers that be dropped them off right here right now, it was for a reason.

“Good, because you would otherwise be dreadfully late,” Sargent pointed out “What year are you from?”

“2079.”

“Then you have implanted translators,” he said, nodding.

“No, we’re originally from the 2020s,” Saga clarified. “We have no transhumanistic enhancements.”

“Lucky for you, I have two extra, but we’re still going to need to find you Nazi uniforms.”

“We’re Nazis!” Vearden exclaimed.

“We’re pretending to be,” Sargent said.

But they were doing more than just pretending. The implanted interfaces allowed them to perceive the German language as English. The translator voice that played right inside their ears even sounded like the person who was talking. They only knew they weren’t actually listening to English because people’s mouths didn’t sync up with the words they heard. Visible text even transformed to the English language instantly. This kind of technology existed in Saga and Vearden’s original time, but usually had to be seen through some kind of device, rather than being sent directly to their visual cortex.

Using further incredibly advanced technology, they were provided with forged documents that allowed them to go just about anywhere in Germany. They headed to a place called Berchtesgaden. There they met a man named Hermann Göring who agreed to listen to them after learning of their powerful positions within the Nazi party. Sargent spoke to him in German, “Mr. Göring, tomorrow Karl Koller will arrive to inform you of Hitler’s intentions to appoint you negotiator for peace. The Führer believes the war to be over, and that it is time for us to move on.”

“I am to become leader of the Third Reich.”

“Yes, that is true, which is why you must act now.”

“What do you mean?”

Sargent sighed and paced around, careful to keep the composure and posture fitting for a Nazi officer. “The name Adolf Hitler has, for a long time, been synonymous with Germany. People treat him as a God, and will follow him everywhere. But you and we all know that he is but a man, and the Third Reich was always destined to outlive its creator.”

Göring did not respond, but appeared to be intrigued by what Sargent was saying.

“And you are destined to lead us into our next stage, to protect the sanctity of Germany, and maintain its dominance over Europe.”

“But if the war is over...” Göring started to say, never expecting to end the sentence.

“There are many different kinds of war,” Sargent explained. “Europe has turned its back on the Führer. Even if we were to win the war, the continent would be in great distress. We would be spending vast resources merely on appeasing  and containing the population. The time for trenches and helmets has passed. We need someone new for the party, Germany, and Europe to follow. We need a new voice, one with the strength of a commander, and the eye of a true strategist.”

“But the Battle of Stalingrad...” Göring trailed off again, referring to his failure at that point in history.

“Will be forgotten in a year,” Sargent stated dismissively. “You and the Führer are not on good terms right now, but you must cement your place in the party. Send him a message. Remind him of his plan to appoint you as successor. Germans, we are a proud race, and we do not dance around the issue. We get to the point, and we get things done. No one knows that better than you. So get this done. Show the world what a true Führer looks like.”

Hermann Göring needed little further convincing. He agreed that this course of action was best for the Reich. He really just needed someone to stand up and tell him that was okay. After they left, Saga asked what was really going on.

“We need to encourage discord amongst the top levels of the party. Hitler is under a great deal of pressure now. Germany really has lost the war, and a telegram from his top officer, reminding him of his promise to allow him to take over? Well...whew, that’s not going to go over well.”

“Forgive me, Sargent, but if we’re time travelers, why don’t we just go back further in time and kill Hitler? Wouldn’t that be easier than just rocking the boat with one little telegram?”

“There’s something you should understand about this, Mr. Haywood,” Sargent began. “This is the upteenth time salmon have returned to this time period. They have tried countless permutations. They tried killing Hitler several years ago, they’ve tried killing him as a youth. They’ve tried bombing Berlin like the Americans did against Japan. They even tried meticulously extracting all prisoners from the concentration camps. But none of these worked. Stopping the war, using advanced technology to win the war; it all just ends up turning to shit. The only way history will allow us to move past this time period is if we let most of it happen the way it did. The main thing we’re changing is killing Hitler a couple years before he died of syphilis anyway, but we first need to prevent anyone who took over the party in alternate timelines from having enough respect to accomplish that in this timeline.

“I’ve been traveling Germany, and abroad, for months now. I’ve planted seeds of distrust amongst dozens of bigwigs. You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to convince Felix Steiner that his army detachment could no longer fight. I’ve had more rewarding jobs, though, like passing along certain bits of intelligence to the allied forces that they would otherwise be ignorant of. This, however, was my last mission before I’m sent back in time to join the salmon battalion for some good ol’ fashion guerrilla warfare, so the rest is up to Mateo.”

“Mateo is coming?”

“Well, I don’t think he’ll actually be coming to 1945. I believe Glaston has been assigned to run a merge point for him. Either way, he will have the worst-slash-best job of all of us.”

“What might that be?”

Sargent looked at them like they should have already figured it out. “He’s going to kill Hitler.”

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Microstory 345: Exercise

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Career Integrity

Whenever anyone’s ever talked to me about exercise, they always have some idea of the best way to do it. I’ve also read articles about what you’re supposed to do, and what you’re not. The truth is that different kinds are good for different things. Lifting weights isn’t going to get your heart rate up, but swimming isn’t really going to increase muscle mass. It just depends on what you’re trying to get out of the activity. When I was a child, I didn’t seek out exercise, it was just something that happened to me. I played baseball for however many years long (don’t remember). I started gymnastics very early on because I saw someone on television do what I later learned was a roundoff backhandspring backflip. After eleven years of practice, I was finally able to do that myself. Looking back, it should not have taken that long. Anyway, the point is that I wasn’t trying to stay healthy, especially not when my parents made me join the dive team in high school. These were just incidental, and I didn’t realize how much good they were doing for me until I went to college and promptly stopped exercising. I wasn’t doing anything. I walked to class, but sometimes not even that. My dog still lived back home, so I wasn’t going out with her. I was leading a very sedentary life, and developing a binge eating disorder, but I’ll talk more on that later. It was only a couple years ago that I decided to start hiking again, which was something I had done, again incidentally, through the scouting program. That was one of the best choices I made in my life, and I wish I could do it more. I wish I had the money for a treadmill so that I could multitask with it. But I need to get past my roadblocks and understand that there are ways to exercise without paying any money at all. I hope you’re getting some level of exercise, whether it be yoga, dancing, or even running.

Weight Control

Microstory 344: Career Integrity

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Authority

Oh my God, is this another entry about working? How many of these am I going to do? Give me a second to look into that... Okay, this is it. Last one. Thanks for bearing with me. Now. Career Integrity. What does that mean? Well, it basically means having a career that you can be proud of. Not only that, but it’s probably a good idea to find a job that others would be proud of. I know that this is all subjective, but there are some jobs that are obviously undesirable, and I don’t mean that it’s just crappy work. Don’t work for an institution bent on taking away the reproductive rights of women. Don’t work for a company that refuses to join us in the 21st century, or one that still rejects the 20th. Don’t work for Apple, Microsoft, or Amazon. Do not. Under any circumstances. Work. For. AT&T. Now these aren’t laws that you have to live by just because I say so. I guess it’s a little harsh to say that you shouldn’t work for them under any circumstances. Remember that you’ll only be able to reach this step assuming that you’ve climbed the corporate ladder far enough to choose where you want to work, rather than depending wholly on someone finally agreeing to hire you. Again, this is indeed subjective, but if you’re in a place in your life where you can be choosy, think carefully about your choice. If someone at a party asks what you do, or where you work, are you going to be worried about their reaction? Will you have to tailor your response so they don’t start questioning your, wait for it...integrity? This doesn’t mean other people should be your only factor. It is not immoral to sell your time to clients for sex, and you shouldn’t be ashamed if you’re in this industry. It should only bother you if, well, it bothers you. That’s the first step. That’s more important. But seriously, don’t work for AT&T. Do everything possible to avoid them altogether.

Exercise

Microstory 343: Authority

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Mastery

People with authority are a special breed of masters. I’m not talking about people who just happen to be in charge of something like supervisors or judges. Authority, in this case, refers to a master who’s become so versed in their field that they’re matched by no one but a few other authorities. These are the people you call when only the best will do. When a meteorite lands in Russia and alien insects start tearing out politicians’ brains, you call authorities on geology, astrophysics, exobiology, neuropsychology, etc. I said in my previous step that mastery is not a lofty concept; that you could become a master in what’s considered a “low-tier” job. This is not so with authorities. They’re the tippy-top masters of a relatively small number of fields. This is not to them just about a job, or even a career. This is their whole life. Not everyone is going to become an authority. By its very nature, only a handful of people will succeed. You can be a master cashier, but there’s really no such thing as an authority on cash registers, because what would that even mean? Unless, that is, you’re talking about an engineer, or maybe a technician or mechanic. Now, I know what you’re thinking, where is he going with this? Nowhere. This is one of those entries that sounded good on paper, but can’t really amount to much. This would probably be better as an inspiration poster, or something. So why don’t I tell you how I came up with this series in the first place? I don’t remember. But I know that I took every major aspect of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Then I stretched them out so that I had 33 of them. Then I broke each of those into thirds so that I would have 99 in the end. That’s why I sound so repetitive. It seemed like a great idea, but hasn’t turned out like I had hoped. At least landing on the right number of words hasn’t been as hard as

Career Integrity

Microstory 342: Mastery

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Subculture Recognition

Once you have found your strength, and built your life and/or career around it, you’re going to want to go all the way. We’ve all probably heard the research that says you can’t become a master of something without 10,000 hours of practice. Of course, that’s an arbitrary number, and though I don’t know for sure, I suspect the original writer meant that figure to be more of a foundation for understanding the concept of repetition. Practice creates procedural memories. This allows you to grow so good at something that it becomes simply part of who you are. It attaches itself to your identity, weaving in and out of your other character traits, making it impossible to see one aspect of you without seeing the rest. You are a master when the question who are you? becomes nearly identical to the question what do you do? It does not mean you know absolutely everything about your chosen topic. It just means that you have studied enough to act upon your knowledge through career choices and interactions with colleagues. It means that when someone asks you for your opinion about a certain aspect of the field, you understand what it is their asking, and can express a logical perspective, comparable or superior to theirs. Mastery, however, is not a goal. It’s about getting up to speed with the state of the art so that you can participate in furthering the world’s comprehensive study of it. A master’s job is never done, for it is their responsibility to keep up with changes and other developments to enrich their own lives, and to support the field as a whole. Mastery may now sound like a lofty concept, but the fact is that the word can be used for any profession. Anyone can become a master of anything to which they hold competence. If you want to become a master cashier, and you’re fine with that life, then that’s perfectly all right. Masters are not the elite, they’re just all the ones who worked hard enough.

Authority

Microstory 341: Subculture Recognition

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Heritage

I’ve been looking into this topic, and I see a lot of sources defining subculture in terms of their opposition to the practices of “normal” people; also known as the majority. They speak of a subculture’s tendency to be perceived as negative by this majority, which suggests the subculture’s own negative perspective. Okay, first of all, you’re not talking about a subculture, you’re talking about a counterculture. A subculture is merely a faction of a particular population composed of people who hold some kind of commonality. But not only that, they’re actively appreciating their shared interests. Lots of people like pizza, but that doesn’t make pizza-lovers a subculture, it’s really just recurrent character trait. Regardless of whether you distinguish counterculture from subculture, it’s important to remember that they are not inherently bad. Liking something that others don’t is not wrong, unless that thing happens to be wrong; rape, hunting for sport, killing gay people in a nightclub, etc. There are a few things you should know before joining or rejecting a particular subculture. Just because the majority of people act a certain way, doesn’t mean it’s right. Just because a small subset of people act a certain way, doesn’t mean it’s right. Also know that being part of a subculture does not mean people outside of that subculture don’t like what you like at all. I’m not a Trekker, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like watching the Star Trek franchise. It’s just not important enough for me to identify myself as such. And to that, subcultures are rather fluid. They are not clubs, or even tribes. They are an extension of a character trait defined by those who carry it with you. One final note: people like to say that you should “always be yourself” but this is a naïve and counterproductive outlook on sociological interaction. We all work to conform to, at the very least, a subculture. We sacrifice certain aspects of ourselves in order to showcase others that may be less essential to us. That’s quite all right.

Mastery

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 25, 2079

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What Mateo found out upon jumping back into the timestream was that Saga, Vearden, and even Harrison were responsible for building a scale replica of the Colosseum. It was a magnificent sight, one he felt oddly fortunate to have experienced, even though it wasn’t real, and there were far better ways to see the original in a world with salmon. Though he felt a great deal of anxiety about what he was going to have to do—whatever that was, it would involve killing—he tried to look at it from an outsider’s perspective. People die all the time, and yes, survivors become sad about it, but then they move on. Unless the death affects them personally, it goes no further than a social media post with sad face emojis. Mateo was going to have to kill someone today. It was either them or Leona. He would have to choose the lesser of two evils, and he had to believe whoever he killed would choose the same thing in his place. In fact, that person might have been given the same options.

Mateo had only rewatched the first Gladiator movie once. It was really long, and he didn’t care much for the story. It was like they were trying to remake The Count of Monte Cristo without all the most important parts. Why it received such high praise was something he didn’t understand the first time he saw it way back when. It wasn’t terrible, but it also wasn’t revolutionary. He certainly wasn’t a fan of Russell Crowe either. Mateo read online the various ideas for a sequel, the majority of them pulling the franchise towards more fantastical directions. There was one idea where the main character would continue his warrior ways in the afterlife. Mateo didn’t know if the afterlife was real, or if salmon were sent to their own special corner. Anything was possible at this point, and the chances of him not being able to escape this life even following death were already high enough due to reincarnation.

Makarion led Mateo down the ramp to an underground area where he was to wait until it was time to fight. Hours later, Saga, Vearden, and Harrison came down as well, apparently having been busy with other things. “We keep running into each other,” Mateo said with his hand held out. “We’ve yet to officially introduce ourselves, I believe.”

Vearden shook and said, “Vearden Haywood.”

“Saga Einarsson.”

“I’m sorry you two got dragged into this,” Mateo said with the full understanding that it was not his fault. “And I’m sorry you got dragged back, Harrison.”

“What’s a deprecated android like me gonna do in a world like this anyway?” he asked, both playfully and seriously.

“You two won’t have to fight, right?” Mateo asked.

“We’ve not been told as such,” Saga said. “But The Cleanser has yet to arrive.”

“I’m here,” the Cleanser said, having appeared at some point recently. “You won’t have to fight. This is for the prisoners, and Mateo.”

“Who are the prisoners?” Mateo asked.

“You’ve seen a lot of them,” the Cleanser began. “When you were actually in the prison?”

Oh, that’s right. One of The Rogue’s early tribulations was in a prison evidently designed to house salmon and choosers. He and Leona first had to reenact the escape from The Shawshank Redemption, before segueing into a show called Prison Break, until finally just having to improvise by letting everyone out of their cells.

“That was the first time you killed someone, Mateo.”

“I killed no one on that day,” Mateo argued. “We found Darko who threaded us back in time through a security guard’s hat.”

“What do you think happened to that security guard?”

Oh no. He hadn’t killed anyone directly, but the riot was dangerous. They didn’t know anything about those prisoners. Any or all of them could have been killers. “Are you serious?”

“I am, yes,” the Cleanser replied. “Don’t worry, doesn’t bother me. Except that they did make some changes to the facility that would make it more difficult for me to escape again.”

“You’ve been imprisoned there?” Vearden asked under a glimmer of hope that it might happen once more.

“Of course I have. I’m crazy.” He gestured all around him. “Just look at this place. Who the hell does something like this? The original was used for, like, a thousand years. We’re gonna use this once and then just walk away. That’s weird, and I do recognize that.”

“Have you thought about getting help?” Saga suggested. “Maybe dropping this whole killing all time travelers crusade?”

The Cleanser let out his best villainous laugh. “Where’s the fun in that?” He walked up the ramp and into the gravel field. In a weird transatlantic accent worthy of the original, he yelled as loud as he could, “are you not entertained!” No audience was there to hear it.

Little by little, prisoners were sent into the staging area. Each time one appeared, they would make a popping sound like one would hear in a smartphone video game; one of those with micropayments and literally no end. Did those still exist? He didn’t recognize any of the others. During the prison break, they were just trying to survive, so there was no time to memorize faces. That might have been useful, though. It could be a subordinate rule attached to the one that said, keep track of everything you do, and everyone you meet.

The prisoners did not seem surprised to be there. Perhaps the Cleanser or Makarion had filled them in on the situation. How they got them out of the prison was the interesting thing, though. The Cleanser indicated that he wasn’t involved with the facility, so either he struck a deal, or he really was just too powerful for anyone to stop. But that little line he said about the prison being dangerous for him was a slip. He did have some kind of weakness, and Mateo would need to find a way to exploit that. Or rather, he would need to get Leona back so that she could figure it out for him.

Some of prisoners greeted each other while others started to stretch and walk around with a little more freedom than usual. One guy held his arms to his side out at a curve like he was ‘posing at a gym for all da hotties’. As he flexed his time traveling muscles, the space around him rippled. A man started teleporting around, but he kept looking over to where he wanted to go, so he could probably only go as far as his eyes could see, unlike say Daria or Makarion. It also seemed like he was having trouble getting back into the swing of things. He kept tipping over and running into walls. He missed his mark once and ended up teleporting to right under the vaulted ceiling two stories up. A woman reached out her arms towards him, sending a pulse of energy. The falling teleporter nearly froze in place and started heading towards the ground at a slower rate, much like when Mateo and Leona were watching Prince Darko get hit by the sign in the hurricane. She released him from the temporal bubble after he had reached the ground. “Thanks, Missy.”

“You need get a better handle on that, nightcrawler,” Missy said.

“Wait,” Vearden exclaimed with excitement, “is he really named Nightcrawler? Is he the real Nightcrawler!” It must have been a pop culture reference.

The teleporter laughed. “If I were, I would have been able to stick to the ceiling.” He shook Vearden’s hand. “My real name is Curtis. That’s just a coincidence.” He paused for a moment in consideration. “I think it is, at least.”

“Are you all choosers?” Mateo asked, wanting to fully understand his competition.

“We are, Mr. Matic,” the man who could ripple space said in a very low voice. “It is quite a pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise, I’m sure.”

He chortled. Michael Clarke Duncan. That’s who he sounded like. “Believe me, it is not.”

“Well, I don’t know what you did to land yourself in jail, but—” Mateo tried to say.

Some other guy interrupted them by announcing to the ether, “I’m ready. Let’s get this thing started.” He stretched his arms out towards the battlefield.

“Glaston, no!” Missy yelled, but it was too late.

As Glaston pulled his hands towards his chest, the battlefield moved towards them. Or maybe the he pushed them all out towards it. Whatever he was doing, it was similar to how Mr. Halifax, The Gravedigger was able to mash the graveyard up with some other location so that the two points in space were sitting on top of each other.

The Cleanser didn’t really laugh. He actually said, “ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” as words. “If you’re ready then I’m ready!” He was sitting in the little emperor box, whatever that was called.

“Get back inside,” Mateo ordered to Saga, Vearden, and Harrison.

“I can help,” Harrison claimed.

“I suspect that androids are against the rules,” Mateo volleyed. “I don’t want to screw this up. I just want to keep my head down and protect my family. You protect those two.”

“Very well,” he answered with a tip of an imaginary hat. “Until we meet again.”

The Cleanser lifted his arm up and snapped his fingers, apporting Mateo to his side.

“What’s happening?” Mateo asked, fearful of being so close to, and so alone with, his deadly enemy.

“You didn’t think you were Maximus in this story, did you? Ha-ha-ha,” he said again. “You’re Commodus.”

“What does that make you?”

He focused his eyes on the prisoner crowd below. “The Roman gods.” Then he raised his voice so that all could hear, “a fight to the death! Only one lives!”

The battle was horrendous. Some of the fighters were clearly not killers, but others had no problem with maiming or taking lives. Some were able to use their powers to their advantage while others were not so obviously choosers. Curtis teleported all around the amphitheatre, including up in the seats, but he was not the only teleporter, and a far more violent one was able to take him down eventually. Missy could only hold onto one temporal bubble at any one time, but she used it expertly, moving across the group to prevent anyone from getting too close. The space rippler, however, was able to send out a beam of energy towards her from a distance after concentrating hard enough. She was torn into a million pieces in the exact same way that the Cleanser had murdered Leona’s stepmother, Melinda.

Mateo tried to look away from all the death and destruction, but there was no avoiding it. The Cleanser was able to manipulate his perspective so that the battlefield literally appeared no matter where he looked, even somehow when he closed his eyes.

“You are going to watch this. It is why you are here.”

“To what end?”

“To show you.”

“Show me what?”

“That you...are powerless. You cannot stop what’s coming. You cannot stop what I do. I am the Cleanser, and I will rid this world of time travel one person at a time. Or several, as the case may be.”

“Why not just kill me now?”

“Reaver warned me to kill you first.”

“So...?”

He looked away from the battle, which was quite nearly over. “Would you listen to advice from a man like Horace Reaver?”

Good point, he probably wouldn’t. “If the situation called for it.”

He smiled as the last two choosers remained. Glaston had just drawn a pillar from the other side of the arena to slam into the third chooser’s body. The rippler sent a beam towards him, but only one strong enough to knock him to the ground. He towered over him and readied himself to send the death blow.

“Haaaaaaalt!” The Cleanser commanded.

The rippler stopped and looked up.

“You know what to do,” the Cleanser said to Mateo. “Either Lucius kills Glaston, or I kill Lucius. You are the chooser now.”

Knowing no way out of his predicament, Mateo held out his fist, trying to decide which one would die.

Lucius lifted his hand to stave off the decision. “I will not be responsible for you sending another man to his death!” he called up to Mateo. “You are better than us! Do not let this...ghoul steal that from you!” He closed his eyes and began to ripple the space around him as he had upon first arriving. Glaston scooted as far from him as he could in spite of his injuries. Lucius began to yell in his beautiful low voice as time tore him apart per his own directive until he no longer held a voice, because he no longer existed.

The Cleanser was seething as he breathed in deeply through his nose. “I will allow it.”

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Second Stage of Something Started: Overnight (Part IX)

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Saga and Vearden held hands, as was tradition, as they walked through the portal created from the threshold to the backrooms of the secret pyramid chambers. Makarion promised them that there would be no more games, no more challenges, and that the job would be over once they finished construction. They spent hours on the island, reading instructions for how the nanotechnology worked. Technology had continued to march on, even since they first landed on the island several years ago. Their little cottage was still standing, but could have used a little maintenance while they were gone. Fortunately, someone had erected another little hut down a ways containing rovers, sky drones, and other automated entities. One of those was able to fix the place right up for them while they studied.

In the corner sat a powered-down android. No reason was given for his presence, so they decided to ask him. Unlike androids in pop culture, real androids didn’t need to be turned on with a switch. They could be woken up just like any other person, but with a little extra force. He looked at them with curiosity, “who are you people?”

“We are Saga and Vearden.”

His eyes darted back and forth as he was gathering as much information about his environment as possible, including everything he could tell by looking at them. “You’re salmon.”

“We are. Let me guess, you’ve met Mateo Matic.”

He nodded. “As well as Leona, Horace Reaver, and my former employer, Ulinthra.”

“Never heard of her,” Vearden said.

“Do you have a name?” Saga asked.

He scoffed. “Of course I do. It’s Harrison.”

“Nice to meet you, Harrison. Are you fully independent?”

“Other than the fact that I can be turned off like a toaster oven, yes.” He looked around the hut. “How much time have I missed?”

“It is the year 2079.”

“Thirty-one years,” he said under his theoretical breath.

“Who did this to you?”

“It was a man named Gilbert Boyce. Mateo, Leona, and I broke him out of prison while we were getting Reaver out. Ulinthra had just relieved me of my duties when he came out of nowhere and shut me down. I don’t know how he found my hibernation sequence, or why he wanted me out of the way. I certainly don’t know what I’m doing here.”

“We don’t know either,” Saga admitted. “A chooser named Makarion has contracted us to construct a replica of the Colosseum to be used for one of Mateo’s tribulations.”

He widened his eyes.

“It’s a long story,” Vearden said, somewhat dismissively. “But the point is that if we don’t do this, things will be bad for both us and him.”

“Just you two are building it?”

“Yes, and we hope all these robots.”

“Nanotech,” he said with a nod. “I can download the specs and handle that on my own. I don’t know why he hired humans for it. I need to find a satellite connection first so I can catch up on what I’ve missed. Plus, my battery is low.”

Harrison went outside and sat down on the sand like he was in deep meditation. It took a few hours for him to charge all the way back up and learn recent history. The human salmon continued to study the instructions, even though Harrison was apparently going to do all the work for them. While they were eating dinner, Harrison approached them and asked where the materials were. After they pointed to the stargate, he attempted to walk through it, but was met with nothing but open air. It would seemingly not work for non-salmon, or maybe just not androids. Maybe that was why Saga and Vearden were there, or maybe they were just there because the powers that be declared it to be done.

They say that Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it almost could have been with this technology. Saga and Vearden hauled raw materials through the stargate from various locations. They were essentially stealing from reputable construction companies. Security guards from one such of these called Regolith caught them in their warehouse. When they called it in, they were told to give Saga and Vearden whatever they needed and send them on their way. It was strange, yes, but Makarion must have had them in their pocket somehow. Each time they pulled the materials through the portal, a rover was waiting for them so that it could drive it all the way to the golf course.

Every once in awhile, the two of them would take a break so they could go up and watch the progress. The robots had started out building a foundation before expanding it to a framework. After that the nanotechnology pretty much just went to work on its own. Drones would fly around, inspecting the work per instructions from Harrison who was monitoring diagnostics and software code. Skyscrapers were being built with this method in a matter of days. Those, however, used a number of different materials that would have to be combined with precision. The Colosseum replica was made of a sort of stone and plastic mix, patented by one company, and licensed out to others. In just over a day, the entire thing was built at its full glory, complete with the pieces and features nowadays missing from the original.

Makarion jumped into the middle of the amphitheatre while drones were completing their final inspections on the backside. “Wow, you guys really did it.”

“You’re surprised?” Vearden asked, both offended but also indifferent to what Makarion thought of them.

“I wasn’t completely certain that you would be able to pull it off. Ya know, I don’t actually control the portals. You open them, and the power that be in charge of you actually decides when and where you go. In fact, I didn’t know when you had arrived. I’ve been coming here once a week to check on your progress, but you’ve never been here. How did you guys get it done so quickly alone?”

“I figured that’s why you put me here,” Harrison began, “so that I could expedite the process.”

Makarion had been admiring their work, and hadn’t actually looked over at them. He was shocked to discover Harrison with them. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“You didn’t bring me?”

“What, no?”

“I was left in the hut, with all the artificials.”

“He’s how we finished overnight,” Saga said.

“Artificials. Hut. What? I didn’t give anybody a hut, and I don’t know what artificials you’re talking about.” It was exciting to see Makarion so distressed and confused.

Vearden jerked his chin up towards one of the drones who had come into view behind them. “There’s one of them.”

Makarion squinted and followed the drone as it glided towards another section. “That is not mine.”

Saga smiled. “Someone else is looking out for us.”

“Or for you,” Vearden said, in reference to Makarion.

Makarion shook his head. “The Cleanser would not have done this. We may have another player in town.” His watch began to beep. “The investigation, however, will have to wait. It’s almost midnight central.”

Mateo Matic appeared in the timestream next to them and exhaled. “You weren’t kidding about the Colosseum being to scale.”

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