The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 17, 2132

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At the moment, it seemed to be nearing the noon hour of 2132, and the three captives had yet to see any sign of their jailers. All they had to look at were their cell bars, and a cave wall. Mario was trying to sleep, Horace was meditating, and Mateo was literally twiddling his thumbs. He had already tried some meditating techniques that Future!Leona had taught him to help him recover from The Cleaner’s horrific memory implants. This time, they weren’t doing any good. He was starving, yes, but their biggest problem was that they didn’t have any water. They would soon die of dehydration. Something had to be done. This thought apparently psychically transferred to Horace, who suddenly broke his meditation, and started banging on the bars like a maniac. Mario shot up from the ground, ready to fight any oncomers. Mateo pulled back and unsuccessfully hid in the corner.

“What the hell are you doing?” Mario cried.

“Something new. What we’ve been doing has not helped us, so I’m just changing things up.” Then he started screaming and banging his hands on the bars again.

“That’s not gonna do any good!” Mario argued.

“Can’t hurt!”

“You don’t know that.”

He just went back to making as much noise as he could. And, as luck would have it, it actually did help them. They could hear a voice in the distance, but drawing closer. “This way, Lee! Keep up!”

“I’m not a runner!” the second one replied. It was Leona. “I’m a thinker!”

“Are you callin’ me dumb!”

“No, just fast!”

Two women appeared from around the corner and smiled. The one he didn’t recognize smiled. “Thank you for the alarm. This place is a freaking maze. Even I was getting tired.”

“Slip, holy crap!” Horace said to her. Yet another person he knew from his past.

Leona ran up and hugged Mateo through the bars as best she could. “I finally found you. Christ, what trouble are you in this time?”

“How long have you been on Earth?”

“Just ‘bout a year,” she answered.

“You’ve met some friends.”

“Yeah, that’s just this thing.”

Horace and, uhh...Slip were continuing their own conversation. “How did you get to this time period?” Horace asked.

“Ashlock shot me through. I can’t stay long.” She then looked at Mateo. “Don’t worry, Matty. We’ve already broken Leona’s tether, so she doesn’t have to revert back to my time period.”

“I don’t know that what means,” Mateo said, “but thank you.”

“Do you have a way to get us out of here?”

“The cells, or Easter Island?” Slip asked. “Doesn’t matter...yes, both.” She took a doorknob from her bag.

“The Escher Knob,” Horace said, relieved.

“I couldn’t find the Card.”

“That would have helped us find Paige, but at least we can break out.”

Slip placed the knob against the lock on the cell, which magically opened it up, with no apparent effort. She then did the same for Mario’s and Mateo’s cells. “Let’s get going,” she suggested.

“Have you seen Tauno and Keanu?” Horace asked as the five of them were jogging down the cave corridors.

“No, but we’ve see a couple of the others. Apparently they’ve set up shop here. The powers that be are not exactly happy about it.”

“Does anyone have any idea where we’re going?” Mario asked as the voice of reason.

“I usually just keep running ‘til I find what I’m looking for,” Slip replied.

“We have an idea,” Leona clarified. “Slipstream, don’t freak them out.” Oh, so that was her full name. Or at least it was her full nickname.

They heard voices down the corridors again, this time from behind. “They’ll have no hope to find the exit,” one of them said. “I can pick up their trail!”

“Crap, we have to get out of here now,” Mateo said, his concern about their pursuers causing him to fall behind.

“Mateo,” came a voice from his left. It was none other than Juan Ponce de León. He was pointing towards a turnoff to Mateo’s right. “That way.”

“Guys!” Mateo called up to them, not bothering to ask Juan where he came from, or questioning his credibility. “Follow me!”

They were reluctant to follow, but did so anyway. It was clearly the right choice when torchlight revealed the shadows of a horde of people, now trying to catch up to them by going the wrong direction.

“Walk softly,” Slipstream whispered, “stay quiet.”

They kept moving at a decent pace, but not as quickly, and definitely not as loudly. They came to a three-way intersection, and decided to take a left, but then Keanu and Tauno appeared from behind, as if having been waiting for them to pass by.

“You’ll never get out of here,” Keanu said with a grin, and a gun.

“I could have done better,” Tauno claimed, “but this is a pretty good maze.”

“A human weapon?” Horace said. “Really?”

Slipstream smiled back. “Do you remember what I used to do for a living?”

“Who are you again?” Keanu asked her rhetorically and insensitively.

With no further warning, she used her kung fu ninja skills to disarm Keanu before Mateo had a chance to blink. She then finished the job but planting him on the ground, and knocking him out cold. Tauno just stood there like a deer in the headlights, unable to decide how to escape, even though he had shown himself capable of opening doors the likes of which Saga and Vearden once used. Slipstream took him down too. “Felt good to get back to my roots,” she said when it was done.

“Disarming people?” Mateo asked.

“That’s exactly what she did,” Horace answered for her.

They then turned around, only to find themselves face to face with Keanu and Tauno once more. The other two versions of them were still lying on the ground. “Quantum replication,” Keanu said, without a gun. “It’s a beautiful thing.”

“How many of you are there?” Leona asked accusatorily.

“Enough,” Tauno replied. Three more Taunos, and two more Keanus revealed themselves from their various hidey-holes, like they had rehearsed their grand entrance.

But then all they could hear was flesh being torn apart...and all they could see was blood splattering all over the walls. An attacker was making their way through the Keanu-Tauno legion. The Warrior stood over their bodies, and began wiping the blood off his sword; a different one than he had used to steal other people’s time powers. “Not enough to contend with me,” he said, like a B-movie action hero.

No one knew what to say.

The Warrior looked only at Mateo. “I have given up killing, like you asked. But these are...” He struggled with his explanation.

“Let’s call it a cheat day,” Mateo said.

The Warrior just dipped his head in respect. When they could hear even more pursuers—probably another group of duplicates—he raised his sword and ordered them to leave. Mateo didn’t like killing, but he appreciated the assist. They needed to find Paige, and they needed to escape. They couldn’t be picky about who helped them do that, or how they did it.

They kept jogging, hoping to find their way back to the amphitheatre stage, which was their best shot of somehow leaving the island. They came upon another group of Keanus and Taunos, but there were other replicated people with them; those that Mateo didn’t recognize. Vearden appeared from a door to what looked like an office, with two women. “I’m not the Vearden you knew,” he said to Mateo and Leona. “I’m from this reality.”

The horde was frightened, having either never heard of Vearden and his partners, or having heard enough about them that they didn’t want to start a fight.

“Come quietly,” one of the women said. “We can either take you to an exile universe, or to a hell universe. Either way, you’re leaving these lovely people alone.”

They actually agreed, despite likely having some ability to fight back.

Immediately following that, Slipstream stopped short. “Ashlock’s calling me back.”

“Can’t you take a message?” Mateo asked.

“He has control, and if he’s doing this now, it means he needs to transport someone else. He can only do one at a time.”

An invisible force took hold of her at the stomach, and pulled her away from them. She didn’t just enter a portal, or fade away. She just grew smaller and smaller until disappearing completely.

“Come on,” Mario said. “Paige still needs us.”

“Yes,” Horace agreed.

They kept jogging. Every once in awhile, Juan would appear to direct them where to go. Darko randomly showed up once to fight a couple of enemy combatants, but he didn’t act like he knew any of his friends. He must have been from the past, before being trapped on Tribulation Island, and was just guessing which side to pick.

At last, they were at the end of their journey, back in the amphitheatre. Paige was waiting for them, but was trapped between two Keanus, and two Taunos. The rest of the auditorium was completely full of their duplicates. Most of them appeared to be Keanu alternates, though. It looked like the boss fight in the third Matrix movie, except that there could be no fight, because none of them was equipped to handle this many people. What they needed was a miracle.

As Horace tried to step forward, the Keanu holding onto Paige’s collar tightened his grip, and waved Horace back. “Uh-uh-uh. No closer. I want you to watch this, though. I want you see her end. Then I’m gonna duplicate from a quantum reality. And I’m gonna kill her too. Then I’m duplicate her again..and again..and again..and again..and  again.” He pointed to all his alternate versions. “I’m going to create and kill as many Paige’s as there are Me’s in this room right now. And only once I kill them all will I let you die. Slowly.”

“Your beef is with her,” Horace yelled to him, confusing his friends. “So if you wanna hurt her...hurt me.”

“Interesting proposition, the Keanu said. “But no.” He tightened his grip once more, and lifted a knife from its sheath.

A blur raced out of the exit corridor, down the steps, and onto the stage. Before them was the speedster Horace and Serkan already knew, plus Guard Number Two. As what was likely always, the speedster didn’t say a word. But Guard Number Two addressed the whole crowd while holding a very large futuristic gun. His voice carried throughout the entire amphitheatre, even though he wasn’t using a microphone, much in the same way a girl named Ellie had in the Colosseum replica during Mateo’s and The Cleanser’s Uluru battle. “My name is Kolby Morse, but may know me as the guy who keeps sending you and your kind to hell! You are all in violation of the Babylonian Treaty! Either the primary versions can step up and extinguish all their respective replications, or we can do this the hard way! From my end...the fun way! We at Beaver Haven do not possess a criminal facility capable of holding all of you at once, so you can either line up, or I can shoot you with my apportation gun where you sit! No one escapes this, though! No one hurts this woman! And no one hurts any of these fine people!” He gestured to Mateo, Leona, Mario, and Horace. And The Warrior, who had arrived sometime in the middle of Kolby’s speech.

Nobody moved.

Kolby lifted his special gun to his shoulder. “Fun way it is!” He then just started spraying what Mateo just now decided were called time bullets all over the crowd. They tried to run, but the speedster zipped up and down the aisles, forcing them back. Kolby certainly was having fun with this, laughing and smiling in between battle cries. He was barely a quarter of the way through his targets when the remaining bunch disappeared at once, leaving behind only the alternates for his friends.

Kolby looked around, trying to figure what had happened, as did everyone else. Their eyes landed on the Keanu who had been personally holding onto Paige. The Warrior’s sword was sticking through his chin, and out the top of his head. Horace’s hand was still on the handle. Apparently killing the real Keanu automatically deleted all the others from the timestream.

Better-late-than-never Arcadia teleported in and placed her hand on Horace’s shoulder. “It’s over,” she said to him soothingly. “You can let go now.” She then turned to Guard Number Two, which was something Mateo would have a hard time not calling him. “Thank you, Mister Kolby. I can take it from here.”

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Flurry: The Lake House (Part X)

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“Quivira? Was she named after the street?” Serkan asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Ace said, taking charge. “We’re kind of in the middle of our own crisis. We don’t have time for anything else. I’m sorry, but you’re just gonna have to find some other way.”

“The way is clear. I know the way. You are the way.”

“We don’t even know your name.”

“I go by many names.”

“Well, great, Bob. I’ma call you Bob. Or no, Not Bob. You’re Not Bob.” Sassy Ace was about the same as regular Ace.

“Look,” Not Bob, said, “I know this might be difficult for you to understand, but there are bigger things at play than just a little snow. By measure, Keanu’s thing isn’t all that big of a deal. His friends are far worse, and they have no intention of stopping. We need you. Quivira is important.”

“Right now, I don’t care about the snow either. I’m just trying to protect my daughter.”

“Well, then, if you’re not going to listen to me, perhaps you’ll listen to a voice your trust.” He started taking something out of his bag.

“We don’t trust many people,” Serkan said.

“This person you do.” He removed a polaroid camera, and carelessly took a picture of whatever was in view at the time as he was swinging it around. By the time he had the chance to put the photo away, the woman they now knew to be an older Paige teleported herself in.

Ace lunged to hug her, but resisted. He didn’t know what she’d been through, or how she felt about them anymore. “Paige.”

“Hi, dad. I can’t stay long, but you need to follow this guy. Keanu is just the tip of the snowflake.” It would seem that photographs were some sort of transportation technique for her, which was fitting since she was holding a camera when they first met her. She took out a phone and started sifting through an album.

Serkan could kind of see over her shoulder. “Are those pictures of us?”

“It’s been awhile since I’ve seen you,” Future!Paige said. “But we’ve had a lot of good years together. It won’t always be this bad. I can’t tell you much about what happens, of course, but know that the three of us always have each other’s backs.” She had presumably found the picture she was looking for. “I’ll see you later, and you’ll see me soon.” She disappeared.

“Well,” Ace said to Not Bob, “it looks like you have your wish.”

Not Bob nodded. “I have a car waiting for us outside.” He lifted his arm to let them pass first.

As Serkan was heading down the steps, he could hear Ace confront Not Bob, probably under the impression that Serkan was out of earshot. “We’ll help you now, but if you ever use my family against me again, make no mistake, I will kill you. In another life, I was a pro.”

Not Bob was scared shitless.

Wanting to avoid another fight, Serkan kept quiet, and just left the house. A couple years back, some now-defunct company produced this weird clamshell car with no navigation controls, and a door that locked from the outside only. It was designed to transfer prisoners, but it never took off. The few hundred models that had already made it through production were being kept in a warehouse somewhere in Tennessee, but it wasn’t well protected. A group of criminals, who were never caught, made their way in, and managed to steal almost every single one of the models. They had been floating around the country, and some internationally, ever since. It was illegal to send one on the road, but not to just have one sitting in front of your house, which was why the one Serkan was standing next to now was being left alone.

“We can’t get in this thing,” Serkan said.

“It’s perfectly safe,” Not Bob tried to assure him.

“This feels like a trick,” Serkan responded.

“You heard Future!Paige.”

“This feels like a trick!” Ace repeated.

“This is the only way to get to Quivira. We don’t have time to fly to Wisconsin.”

“Oh, but a car gets us there faster?”

“It’s a magic car,” Not Bob said with a smile. “The Chauffeur built it himself, with help from The Weaver, of course.”

“Oh, of course,” Ace said sarcastically.

Not Bob stepped in first to show them that he was not trying to lock them up. They were in there for only a few seconds before it evidently teleported them all to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, right next to a lake. They removed all their winter clothing, and left. They walked about a mile before coming upon a house. Nice, well-maintained, secluded, but clearly not built a hundred years ago. There were a few too many windows for Serkan’s taste, but the area did look like a great place to run.

Then they saw it. Through the windows, they spotted a woman place a chair into position right under a noose. Serkan froze. As much of a runner as he was, springing into action wasn’t one of his strengths. He was no scaredy cat, but he hadn’t found himself in any emergency situation before. Still, he wished he had been stronger. Fortunately, Ace was fast enough for the both of them. He ran down the hill to the front door, which was locked, so he kicked it in like a federal agent. Finally, Serkan broke out of his fugue state, and followed him in. Ace was already slowly walking around the woman, trying to give her a berth, but ready to take action, if necessary.

“Who the hell are you?” she asked from the chair; the only piece of furniture in the room.

“We’re here to help,” Ace answered gently.

“You can’t help me,” she replied.

“If you tell us the problem, maybe there’s something we can try.”

“There’s nothing you can do.”

“Maybe there is. You don’t know what we’re capable of.”

“Can you go back in time and stop me from making the biggest mistake of my life?”

That was an interesting question. He looked to Serkan, and gave off a slight shrug. “We may be able to accommodate that, yes.”

“Don’t be an asshole,” she said before starting to place the noose around her neck.

“Wait!” Ace pleaded. “It’s not a joke. We are time travelers. We weren’t just walking along the lake. We were sent here to help...by another time traveler.”

“And who would want to save me?”

“Well...” Ace looked around. “Where the hell did he go?” he whispered to Serkan.

“I thought he was here.” He looked out the windows, but Not Bob was gone. “Maybe he had fulfilled his purpose by getting us here.” Or maybe he was just worried Ace would kill him.

“That’s right,” Ace said, turning that news into an opportunity. “His job was to bring us here, and my job is to bring you down from there.”

“Then what’s his job?” the woman asked, indicating Serkan. That was a good question too. He would be useless in this situation. He had no idea how to help this woman, either as a time traveler, or an empathetic human. He had empathy, but no training or predisposition to use it effectively for something like this. He had turned eighteen, but in the end, he was still just a kid.

“He’s here to save me,” Ace said quietly.

This gave her a reason to stop what she was doing.

“Now, your name is Quivira, right? Quivira Boyce?”

“It is, yes.” She didn’t seem too bothered that he knew her name.

“I feel like I knew a Boyce once. “Gavin...or Gideon, maybe?”

“My parents were gonna name me Gilbert if I had been born a boy.”

“Hmm.”

They stood in silence for a moment.

“Why don’t you tell me what happened?” Ace probed.

“If you can go back in time—if you really can, then I would want nothing more. Otherwise, we have nothing to talk about.”

“If we do find a way back, we’ll need to know what we’re doing. So start there, and we’ll see what happens. Deal?”

“Okay.” She stepped off of the chair, and sat in it. Then she waited until she could figure out what to say. “I’m not a good person. My parents were civil servants, working their whole lives to serve a country that never gave a fuck about them. When it came time for me to become an adult, I couldn’t, because I didn’t have very many options. I could shovel shit at a zoo, or I could take what I wanted. I chose the one with less cleanup. It started out small, as you might expect. Most people don’t break into Fort Knox on their first day. A little shoplifting here, a few car stereos there. Then I went on to credit card scams, and ATM skimming. Eventually, though, I started actually putting people in danger. I cased houses so I could rob them when they were on vacation, but there were a few miscalculations. The worst one was three weeks ago. I got away with something I shouldn’t have, and it’s been eating me up the whole time.

“It’s worse than you think. Yes, I killed someone, but it’s who I killed that matters in this story. At first, I just saw him. He must have realized what was going on in his house before I knew he was there, because he already had his gun. I didn’t carry weapons, so all I could do was hope he didn’t do anything stupid while we waited for the cops to arrive. He was angry, though. He kept screaming at me, trying to find out where my partner was. I didn’t have a partner, but he didn’t believe me. It was a huge mansion, so he just figured I was working with a team. I guess he had seen Home Alone a few too many times. He was waving the gun around, and growing more and more agitated by the second. I don’t think he knew how to use that thing; he just bought it for protection. I just could not convince him that I was alone, and that I wasn’t dangerous. I wanted his stuff, but I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.” She kind of got lost in her own thoughts. “I just wanted his stuff...”

They waited patiently until she was ready to get back into it. “The floorboards creaked behind him, and I assume he thought it was one of my people. But the hallway was dark, and he was flustered, and he couldn’t think straight, and he wasn’t trained to only point a gun at something he wanted to shoot...and to be sure what he was shooting deserved to be shot. He just swung around and fired. It was his son. Maybe seven or eight. He had come up to help his father stop the bad man. At least...that’s the story I made up in my head, because the kid didn’t make it. Way it looked, he died pretty quickly. I tried to console the father, but of course, I was the last person who could do any good in that situation. He decided that he wasn’t going to live in a world without his son, so after spending some time sobbing over the body, he lifted the gun to his temple, and left this world.

“It was like he completely forgot about me. In fact, he had never gotten the chance to call the police. Upon realizing this, I put everything back, wiped my prints, and walked away. There was no evidence that I was there, or at least as far as I knew. I had completely resigned myself to the fact that a SWAT team would soon break down my door. But they never did. I was fine. Two people were dead; one a child, and I was free to do it again. I’ve tried moving on with my life, but can’t.”

“I remember this,” Serkan said, possibly insensitively. “It was on the news. They say a father accidentally shot his son, so he killed himself.”

“Yes, it was national news. But they didn’t say anything about a robbery, because I was just that good.” She stared into space for a good long time. “I have to kill myself. I can’t live while they’re dead. That is...unless you can kill me before I even step foot in that house.”

Ace smiled warmly. “We don’t have to do that. Now that you’ve told me the truth, I can tell you mine. I’m saying this now, and just hoping it makes sense in the future...before it’s too late. Forgive me if I fail. I didn’t know your name because that teenager told me. I knew it because you and I have already met. You have a bright future ahead of you,” Ace said to her believably. “You go on to do great things...save a lot of lives. You even save me once. You can’t die here today, Quivira Boyce. If you do...I do.”

Her eyes widened. “Really?”

“Would this face lie?”

This made her smile narrowly, but it didn’t last long. Everything changed. She disappeared, furniture appeared all around them, and they were even wearing different clothes.

“I thought we were changing the future,” Serkan said, confused.

“We changed her future, which is part of our past, and thus our present. All this is the result of those alterations.”

“What made you think to lie to her about having met already?” Serkan asked.

“I didn’t lie,” he explained solemnly. “It happened.”

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Microstory 605: The Return of Peter Fireblood

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Peter Fireblood was an anomaly. I don’t just mean that he was an unusual person, but that he was born to a subspecies of humans with special abilities. Little is known about his involvement in the seeding of life in the Fostean Galaxy, but most scholars agree that he was instrumental in our freedom from the communists. He evidently mediated the treaty that allowed us to live our truths without interference, as long as we did not attempt to bring the light to any Lactean. It is believed that he remained in Fostea long enough to ensure that we held up our end of the bargain, which of course, we did. Peter Fireblood, whose real name has been lost to history, is and was one of the most powerful people in the universe. He has the ability to transport himself over great distances, and to bring himself back from the dead. He does this by cleansing his former self in a glorious fire, and rising from the ashes, born anew. It is unclear when exactly he disappeared from Fostea, but he hasn’t been recorded as present for at least a millennium. After destroying the last major Hydra Support base, the group of loyal Lightseers escaped to a random star system on the outskirts of the galaxy. They scanned the surface of an uninhabited, but atmospheric, planet and found signs of life. They landed and discovered that Peter Fireblood had been living there alone, possibly the entire time. He returned with them to civilization on Primenchi where Sotiren’s body had been moved. It is there that he carried out an incredibly important task.

Microstory 604: Derail Hydra

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The Hydra Support Network was a strange organization, based out of Lakre, of all places. It takes donations from hard-working individuals, just so the money can be spent on charity. That’s right, their sole purpose was to redistribute wealth so that people who sit on their asses and do nothing can feel the benefits that come from having a job. Of course, most of us know that this is ridiculous, because they are all choosing to be poor. No one is born without the opportunity to rise up and make their lives better. That’s what’s so amazing about this galaxy we’ve built. If they don’t want to be poor, they why don’t they just do something about it, and stop complaining? Unfortunately, “charity” is a business. If you can make money at doing something, no one has the right to take that away from you. And if they do, then you have the right to take from them. The donors have a responsibility to spend their money wisely. No one is going to go out of their way to teach them any better, for that would be a perfect example of irony. Humans are meant to be self-sufficient and self-reliant, and to have the ability to make their own choices. That’s how the world works, so it wasn’t like Hydra Support could ever be shut down. Except that they were. A brave group of men and women, after seeing Sotiren’s body with their own eyes, took it upon themselves to dismantle all of Hydra once and for all. Why they chose that name for their organization is something no sane Lightseer could ever understand. They were just asking for trouble when they chose to identify themselves with the evil monster from a story in the Book of Light, one prophesied to be destroyed as part of the taikon. Heathens is what they were. With the destruction of Hydra Support, including all eight of its satellite locations, the taikon were free to continue.

Microstory 603: Find the Sacred Savior

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Centuries ago, our people were lost. We were searching for a home, unwanted by dirty communists. We needed somewhere safe, far away from the tyranny of rule. One man, named Sotiren Zahir, discovered for us our galaxy of Fostea. It is said that he traveled there in an instant with no ship, and no Nexus. He spent millennia there alone, inspecting every single planet to make sure they were all suitable for our way of life, including the Footstream of Pilo, and the bee mountains on Anath. He then sent himself back to Origin. No time had passed from their perspective. He told them what he found, and the people rejoiced. They built large exodus ships and traveled here to the Galaxy of Light and Truth. Though virtual immortality was available at the time, he chose to live out his life as a mortal. We know that he died before seeing his vision come to fruition, but no one knows where. Before his end, he commissioned a group of loyal followers to eject him randomly in interstellar space. He ordered them to then kill themselves so the secret would die with them, which they did happily. People have been searching for Sotiren’s body ever since, for this was foretold in the Book of Light. But they were unable to find him, because the event was described to be the third taikon, and could not be found until the first ones had been achieved. As a hearship was on its way to lay Katafar's body to rest on Raista, it encountered a critical failure of its astral collimator. The crew was forced to exit orange plex and reenter normal interstellar space. As fate would have it, they fell out at the exact spot of Sotiren’s drifting body. They took the body to an immaculate and controlled space station where it could be studied and verified. Once scientists determined that the remains were legitimate, the galaxy rejoiced. We had once again found our savior, and also experienced the third taikon. This marked a turning point in the search for all taikon, because it could not be faked, repeated, or misinterpreted.

Microstory 602: Kill the Cat of Komere

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Some of the foretold taikon were expected to be literal. Others were up to interpretation. There have seldom been any feline animals in the Komere star system. People have attempted to start the taikon by carrying cats of all kinds to the three planets, but they are missing one thing. The taikon absolutely must be experienced in order. You cannot kill just any cat in Komere, and expect the taikon to continue, without having done first things first. One day, a ship was passing through the Komere system only to pick up a passenger who was on his way to spread the teachings of the Atheistic Believer. Something went wrong, and they were forced to execute an emergency landing on the planet of Sacrede. Katafar Lyons had never been to the Komere system before, because she never had enough money to live on any of the central worlds. She was only a passenger on the marooned ship, and had not intended to step foot on solid ground until they had made it all the way to Raista. After the rescue team had completed their job, they sought out the ship’s manifest so that the survivors could be charged accordingly. Upon seeing Katafar’s name, they knew that they had stumbled on something amazing. The Cat of Komere was not an actual animal. She was a person with an interestingly fitting name. The other passengers attempted to protect Katafar from harm, but the clever rescuers agreed to waive their fees for everyone if they handed over Katafar to them. They did so quickly, for most of them had spent all of their indexa on the trip to Raista. The rescuers gave Katafar a lavish and decadent final meal, broadcasting the celebration across the galaxy. They signed a contract with Katafar, promising to provide her family with a comfortable life on one of the central worlds. And then they killed her, fulfilling the needs of the second taikon.