The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 26, 2141

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“Well, I didn’t want to go with the obvious reference and tell you to run from the creepy walking mannequins,” Vearden began as he was leading them into something he called The Crossover, “but as you can see...” He presented his surroundings with his arms spread wide. “...it really is..bigger on the inside.” They were standing in the middle of a two story room that looked not unlike a hotel ballroom.

Mateo couldn’t help but stare at him, rather than the extradimensional marvel. He wanted to ask him how he was still alive, but clearly this was a past version of him. It was against the rules to reveal anything about his future.

Vearden picked up on his curiosity. “I’m not the Vearden you knew. He followed you into this reality you created when you killed Hitler. I’m the one who was born to it; the native, if you will.”

“Oh,” was Mateo’s only response.

“Why aren’t Lincoln or the others here with us?” Serif asked.

“They’re not part of this,” a woman said as she was walking down the steps. Another woman was walking through a door on this level.

Vearden reached up to the one on the steps and took her by the hand. “May I present to you my lovely wife, Gretchen Wallace. Well...the other Vearden’s wife. We met later, but technically I never married her.” He then walked backwards to present the other woman like a prize on The Price is Right. “And, of course, our associate.”

She lifted her hand to shake Mateo’s. “Ashton Martell.”

Suddenly everything changed. Ashton was still standing before him, but he was now on the floor. She had a gun trained on him, using her other hand to wipe blood off her face so it wouldn’t get in her eyes. She looked completely prepared to shoot him. He was already in a great deal of pain in various parts of her body. “What the hell is going on?”

“Shut up!”

Mateo looked around, hoping to find answers. They were in a different room now. Vearden, Gretchen, and somebody in scrubs were hovered over Serif on a table, performing some kind of ad hoc surgery on her. He tried to get up, but Ashton knocked him down just by tapping his very wounded shoulder with the butt of her pistol. “Tell me what happened!” he pleaded.

“I said be quiet!” Ashton ordered.

“Mateo,” Serif struggled to say in a hoarse voice.

Mateo tried to get up again, but Ashton smacked him in the face. “Let me up!” he screamed. “I need to help my...partner!”

“You’re the one who stabbed her, asshole!”

“I would never do that!”

“Ashton!” Vearden yelled while trying to hold Serif down, who was now convulsing. “Ashton!” he repeated.

“What!”

“Come assist Doctor Epiphany. I’ll talk with our friend here.”

“Vearden,” she started to argue.

“Now!”

Ashton reluctantly reset the hammer, and did as she was told.

Vearden took a deep breath and approached Mateo, who instinctively slid backwards on the floor. “What is your name?” he asked.

“Mateo. Mateo Matic. Is she gonna be okay?”

“What is the lasts thing you remember?”

“We walked into your weird...TARDIS thing, and you started introducing us,” he answered. “Then I was on the floor.”

“Banana hammock,” Vearden said deliberately.

“What?” This was no time for jokes.

Vearden closed his eyes in relief, and then reached down to help Mateo up. “Thank God you’re back.”

“Where did I go? What is this, Vearden?”

“You remember how Gilbert can possess people?”

“This was The Rogue?” Mateo questioned. It was possible that some earlier version of the guy could have showed up in the present and wreaked havoc, all before Gilbert showed his true colors, and effectively switched sides.

Vearden shook his head. “He’s not the only one who can do that. He’s just the only one from your universe.”

“My universe? How many universes are there?”

“Including Ashton’s?”

“I guess.”

“All of them.”

“What?”

“Take off your shirt,” Vearden instructed. “Serif needs blood, and as she originates from you, yours is the most compatible.

Mateo agreed, letting the doctor take as much blood from his arm as she needed. Serif’s condition gradually improved, and the chaos was set aside. He remained at her side, waiting for her to wake back up. Ashton was giving him the stink eye in the corner, spinning her gun around. Vearden was talking to the doctor off to the side.

“Are you sure I can’t offer you some healing nanites?” She held up a small transparent tube, filled with a gray powder.

Vearden smiled warmly. “Thanks, Haven, but no.” He looked to Serif. “Her people wouldn’t allow it. Mateo’s blood should work. She just needs time.”

“And drugs,” Haven added. She took out a plethora of pill bottles, and handed him a slip of virtual paper. “This will tell you what to give her when. Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?”

“The worst is over. I shouldn’t have even contacted you. You can’t tell the SDS about this.”

Haven started walking away. “Not my universe, not my jurisdiction. And certainly not theirs.”

“First door on the left. Gretchen will let you out.”

“Who possessed me?” Mateo asked after the doctor had left.

“Sure about that tense, Bro Montana?” Ashton asked accusatorily. “Maybe he’s still in there.” She closed her nondominant eye and pointed the gun back at him.

Vearden stepped between her and Mateo. “It’s over, Ash. I don’t know how the fuck he got in this building, but I’ve placed a service call to Danuta. She’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Ashton hopped off the counter, leaving her gun on it. “I’m thinkin’ my services are no longer required. I’m thinkin’ you should take me back to my brain.”

“That wasn’t our deal.”

“Daniela is waiting for me.”

“This is a time machine. She hasn’t been waiting for even one second.”

“I have!”

“Ashton—” he tried to reason.

She interrupted, “I’m not gonna marry someone half my age. Every minute I’m stuck here, I’m not with her. Take me home.”

“You owe us.”

“And I paid off that debt when I didn’t shoot your boy in the head.” She gestured  towards Mateo.

“We don’t know if that would have killed him. But it definitely would have killed Mateo.”

“Not my universe, not my problem,” she paraphrased.

“His universe effects base reality, which effects your universe. So get with the goddamn program. After we go back to the Fosteans, I have two more jobs for you, and then I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”

She grabbed her gun and placed it at her forehead, then swept it forwards in a morbid salute. “Sir, yes, sir!”

“I’m gonna need you for this, Martell!” he called to her as she was storming off.

She raised her hand and flipped him off without turning back around. “In no reality do I spend anymore time with those bloody anarchists. I expect you to erase my memory in full before this is over.”

“Vearden,” Mateo said after she was gone. “Ya gotta help me out here. I feel like I’m watching the series finale of a show I’ve never heard of.”

“You called this the TARDIS,” Vearden started to explain. “That’s not the worst analogy. But we don’t just travel through time. We go to other universes.”

“She said something about her brain.”

“B-R-A-N-E. Like membrane? A universe is not like a reality. It’s entirely separate. This is one of the few things that can traverse them. The guy who possessed you can do it on his own.”

“Because he’s a choosing one.”

“Choosing ones don’t exist where he’s from. He’s an anomaly.”

“Is he gonna do it again? Is he gonna take me? How long was I out?”

“A day. Your whole day. And I’m working on stopping that from happening. I reached out to Sandy Clausen. Hopefully, she’ll—”

“Who are all these people? A wife, an indentured servant, a TARDIS repairman? Have you just been running around to other universes—or branes, or whatever you call them—doing what, putting right what once went wrong?”

“Sometimes,” he said simply.

“Arcadia seems to be afraid of you. It looks like you could put a stop to my situation. You could get Saga back.”

Vearden pulled up a chair and placed him squarely in front of Mateo. “When you were in high school, you got a D on a science test. Kinda sounded like the end of the world.”

“That never happened.”

“It’s a metaphor, bear with me. That bad grade was awful for you, and it was a shame you carried with you for years. But then you eventually forgot about it, and even upon remembering, it no longer feels so bad. Because, it’s trivial. Why was it important back then, but not now? Because you have perspective. You can see a bigger picture.”

“Well, okay, yeah, but...” Mateo tried to reply, but didn’t know exactly what to say.

Vearden nodded, but in that sarcastic way that meant they were not on the same page. He stood back up and approached the window on the back wall that was covered by what was basically a sideways airplane partition. Mateo stood up so he could see as well. Vearden slid the partition back to reveals a dazzling display of bubbly stars. It was like a night sky that was being warped and stretched; each brilliant bubble protruding from the heavens. “This is not really what the bulkverse looks like. You can’t...see the bulk. But a friend of mine built this for us as a visual aid for passengers. Each one of these represents a universe, which we in the business like to call c-branes. Let’s say you’re from...” he started waving his finger around before settling on one... “this one. You are a planck-sized specimen on one subatomic particle for one atom of this bubble. You can’t even see everything in your own c-brane, let alone other branes. Asking you to recognize, and appreciate the magnitude of, the bigger picture that I’ve seen would be like asking a daffodil to say just one syllable. I’m not calling you stupid, Mateo...but your problem with Arcadia is just this side of nothing from our standpoint.”

“But isn’t this what you do? Aren’t you out there, helping people?”

“I am, yes. But as a product of something larger. I’m not helping them for the sake of it.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Building bridges.”

“Mateo,” Serif whispered from her table.

He raced over and took her hand. “I’m here. How are you feeling?”

“Better. Listen, I know it wasn’t you.”

“What wasn’t me?”

“Who stabbed me,” she clarified. “I know it was him. I’m glad you’re back.”

“She’s right,” Vearden agreed. “You didn’t actually do it. Your skin and bones did, but not your mind. And definitely not your soul.”

“Take us back to our c-brane.”

“We’re not done yet.”

“Take us back.”

“I can’t do that. I brought you here to retrieve the Sword of Assimilation. We were successful, but then we lost it again. So we have to go back.”

“I’m not going back to the place where I stabbed my...partner.”

“Not there. Centuries later, in another galaxy.”

“Then we can go home?”

“Yes.”

They went to this other galaxy, in this other c-brane, or whatever. There they encountered some people who remembered them from before, apparently having lived long enough. They were happy to see Mateo again, but saddened and confused as he tried to convince them that that was not really him. They were technologically advanced enough to understand the concept, but were too butthurt to believe it. One man in particular was disappointed in the development, and Mateo got the sense that they had been together sexually, which was a horrifying violation of his body. They found the Sword, and took it back to Tribulation Island, to reportedly less resistance than before. The ordeal was over, but Serif still needed time to recover physically, and Mateo needed to recover emotionally.

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The Disappearance of Rothko Ladhiffe: Chapter One

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I’ve been a detective for ten years now, and no matter what case I take, I always go back to my first. I’m embarrassed and depressed about having never found Escher Bradley. The pain is only amplified by the fact that I’m likely the only person on the planet who knows he ever existed. Not even his parents can remember. They ended up having what they believe to be their first child. A girl this time, named Hogarth. I suspect the loss of their first child continues to tarnish their souls, though, ultimately preventing them from being completely happy. Their memory loss, however, also prevents them from understanding why. In the end, their marriage suffers for it, and shortly after their daughter’s birth, they divorce. Hogarth takes her mother’s name, and moves with her to Topeka. When she’s older, she starts to visit him once a month.

I sort of trick Tyler Bradley into becoming friends with me. He has no recollection of our time together looking for his son, so I just place myself in the position to run into him several times. The coincidence brings us closer, and we start hanging out on the regular. I don’t particularly like him. No, actually, I don’t like him at all, because he never really fought for even joint custody of Hogarth. He could have easily moved out to Topeka too, but chose not to. If he had left, I would have made friends with the new residents of that house, because I need access to the empty lot-slash-invisible house next to it. Not that it matters all that much. As profoundly supernatural as the building is, there aren’t any answers there. If I had a therapist, and I managed to convince them that the house was real, they would tell me to just let it go. Though this is only a hypothetical therapist, I imagine them saying this every time I see them, and start trying to persuade myself.

At the moment, I’m watching the game with Tyler. I’m a football guy, so I don’t care about this baseball game. And when I say football, I mean the real football that they play ‘round the world; not this rugby-wannabe bullshit where they hardly ever use their goddamn feet at all! I take a break to take a piss; upstairs, because that bathroom is cleaner. I pass by Hogarth’s room and notice that she’s not in it. When I go back down, I ask Tyler about it.

“Who?” he asks, eyes still glued to the screen.

“Umm...your daughter?”

“Fuck you talkin’ ‘bout, man?”

I close my eyes, hoping that the world will wake up right when I reopen them. “Please tell me you’re joking. You really don’t remember your daughter?”

“Of course I remember my daughter, retard. She’s with her mother.”

I cringe at that word, but ignore it. “No, she’s not. This is your weekend.”

He lazily takes a look at his watch. “Nope.”

I take my PDA out of my pocket. Yes, I keep track of Tyler’s movements in my calendar. If I don’t remind him to breathe...he’ll suffocate to death. This is definitely his time with Hogarth. I make sure I’m here for it, because she’s kind of not in the best hands with him. She may never eat. Though he might be a terrible father, he’s not so bad as to forget such an important event that only happens a dozen times a year. This must be something weird. This must have something to do with time...and that place. Without another word, I slide out of the house and walk through the lawn to the invisible house, which is now fully visible, and waiting for me. I wish I had my sidearm with me, but of course, I always request time off for Hogarth’s visits. Besides, I’ve never met any actual opposition in the other dimension, or the house, for that matter.

I kick the door open, not because I have to, but because it pisses me off, and I want to get my aggression out. I take a careless sweep of the first floor before moving onto to the second. Here I start going at turtle speed, dreading seeing the elevator again. It hasn’t shown itself to me in years, but if Tyler’s second child is anything like his first, it’ll show up now. It’ll take me to that other dimension, and whatever I find there won’t be what I’m looking for. I gulp and wipe the sweat from my brow, knowing that Hogarth is gone for good, and it’ll be my fault. Just like before.

I hear a strange scratching sound on the other side of the bedroom door. Fearing some kind of awful time demon, I slowly push the door inwards and prepare for a fight. What I find there is a joyful carefree little girl drawing on the closet elevator door with a pencil. “Piglet!” I cry out, happy and relieved.

“Hi, Kal,” she says, not removing her focus from the random lines and loops she’s drawing.

“You can see this house?”

“Of course I can,” she says. And...yeah, of course she can, she’s here.

I get down on my knees and turn her towards me, keeping her shoulders in my hands. “Hogarth. I need you to do something for me.”

She’s confused, but not scared. “Okay?”

“This house is dangerous. It’s not like your house, or any other house. People go missing in here. It’s...basically alive. You have to promise me, that when we leave here in a minute, you will never come back. This isn’t one of those times where an adult tells you not to do something, and you do it anyway. If you ever come back here, you may die.” It’s not a normal thing to tell a six-year-old, but I  have to make her understand how bad it can get. If she can see the house, it means the house wants her to see it, and if it wants her to see it, then it wants her, and that I cannot allow. “Do you understand me?”

She nods, a little nervous about what I’ve said, but still not afraid of me.

“Now come on,” I say in a much kinder voice, taking her hand in mine. “That’s a beautiful drawing, by the way. What is it?”

“It’s a map,” she answers.

Just then, we hear the sound of vehicles outside. A lot of them. A lot of really loud ones, and they’re all converging upon this house. We walk into the front bedroom and look out the window. A number of trucks and construction equipment have descended upon what they all probably believe to be nothing more than a patch of land. “We need to get out of here now.”

I take her down the stairs. As soon as we reach the bottom landing, the house disappears for us as well, leaving us surrounded by the trucks and heavy machinery. A man in a hardhat approaches us. “Did you just...were you...?” He pauses, possibly out of having seen us magically appear out of nowhere. “Where did you come from?”

“She was lost,” I reply simply. “I’m just taking her back home next door. What are you doing here?”

He smiles proudly. “I’m building our dream house, for my fiancée.”

“How did I not know about this?”

“My father’s in the middle of a big business deal with the city. This is just a footnote in Harken news.”

“Harken news?” I ask.

He extends his arm. “Paul Harken. People just call me Hark, though. I bought this lot. It’s gonna be perfect. I assure you, I have all the required permits.”

I take my badge out of the back of my pocket, feeling the need to let him know that I’m not just some nosy neighbor getting into his business.

“Officer?”

“Detective. Bran. Kallias Bran.” I shake his hand. “Listen, I’m not sure if this is the best place for you to build. There’s something wrong with the soil, that’s why they didn’t use it when they were building the rest of the neighborhood.” I’m not lying. I looked into why people think there isn’t meant to be a house here. Back when they were expanding the city, they found something strange in this soil, but only in this small section. The science goes beyond me, but I’ve always assumed it was some evidence of the other dimension. The house that actually is here either created the disturbance—and now people don’t remember it; ultimately justifying the lot through some more believable means—or the disturbance was always here, and the house’s condition is merely a product of that.

“Yeah, my scientists looked into it, and they think we can still build. We’ve made a lot of advancements in construction still they first tried this in the early 20th century.”

“Still,” I begin, hoping to come up with some other excuse, but failing. I don’t want him to build a second house here, because I don’t know what happens with the first one. When it comes back, is it going to cause an explosion of some magnitude? Afterall, two objects can’t occupy the same space at the same time. Best case scenario is just that the house never returns, but since when have I been that lucky?

“I appreciate your concern, detective. But I’ve been assured by the smartest people in Kansas that nothing will go wrong if we take the necessary precautions.”

Before I can respond, we hear a woman yelling from down the street. “Help! Somebody please help me!”

“Take her back to her father’s,” I order Paul Harken. I then run off to meet the screaming woman halfway.

“Please, you have to help me,” she begs.

I show her my badge. “My name is Detective Kallias Bran. What is the matter?”

“It’s my son. I woke up this morning, and he was gone. I thought he had snuck out of the house for this stupid unauthorized senior lock-in, but I’ve talked with the school, and no one was there. They didn’t do it, I guess. But then I guess I talked with the other parents...” She wasn’t able to finish her thought.

“Tell me what happened,” I say.

“It doesn’t make any sense, I know those people. I know their children.”

“I don’t understand, ma’am.”

“They have no clue what I’m talking about. They don’t think they have any children. Or if they do, they’re too young to have gone to the lock-in.”

Yeah, I’ve heard this story before.

“I’m the only one who remembers my son,” she goes on. “Please, you have to help me find him.”

“Okay, I will. Let’s start with the basics. What is your son’s name?”

“Rothko. Rothko Ladhiffe. But he loves those Goosebumps and Fear Street books. He pretty much only answers to RL.”

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Microstory 650: An Escaped Murderer Kills No More

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This is one of those taikon that are hard to judge, which is why it’s so important that we have trained and conscientious verifiers to make sure that all events in question qualify. Lightseers have been worried about this one since the Book of Light was first written. It describes the life of a murderer who changes his ways. It doesn’t say who this killer is, why he’s meant to stop, or even what amount of time is supposed to pass. All humans are potentially immortal. Even those who haven’t worked hard enough to gain access to transhumanistic upgrades still have access to basic medical treatments that can extend life by decades...centuries, even. Though many of us never worry about death, or at least death by old age, we still measure time by the same lifespans of old. In fact, lifetime remains a legal term in most courts. Seventy standard years is used in sentencing systems as a baseline to determine how much punishment an offender deserves, be it more, or less. It is for this reason, and other traditions, that people still experience their lives in increments of about seven decades. People often alter their lifestyles to account for these transitions, as arbitrary as they may be to medical science. Because of this, believers were unwilling to wait however long it may take for an escaped murder to prove that he has stopped killing. Does the clock start once the taikon themselves begin, or can a murder have effectively quit long before, and somehow qualifies now. Fortunately for the more impatient amongst us, the former turned out to be the right answer.

Peve Stannon is considered to be one of the worst serial killers of all time; in this galaxy, and likely beyond. Of course, murder in Fostea is completely legal, as it’s a free choice that any central government would be powerless to prohibit. There are many good reasons to kill someone else; personal vengeance, business purposes, or even to protect others. Peve Stannon did not kill for these reasons, though. He did it for fun, and he was quite particular. Stannon went after people who his twisted sense of morality told him were too different than him to be trusted. He didn’t like being around those who were not heterosexual (which includes most everybody), those with darker skin, or people who chose to associate themselves with diversity. As terrible as it was to live under the rule of the dirty communists back in Lactea, one thing they had going for them was their ability to accept others for who they are, which is a sentiment we continue today, if only that. Stannon got his ideas by studying the planet isolate, Earth, which is where Fosteans lived for a brief time during its early civilizations. Since then, racism and homophobia has come and gone to the Earthan peoples. They are now living in the middle of the first decade of their third millennium, and things seem to be going okay. Decades earlier, though, bigotry and hatred were almost ubiquitous, with an entire political party being built on the platform of killing people who were different than them; their main issue being those of a rival religion. They ultimately resulted in the deaths of millions of people. We fight against our rivals as well, but we do so on an even playing field, and our goal is to show them The Light, not to simply be rid of them. Peve Stannon was fascinated by their behavior, and that of others later on, notably a white skin supremacists group who, umm...dressed up like ghosts? Stannon went on several killing sprees for years, eventually killing thousands of people. He was finally caught by a collective of the survivors of many of his victims, who created a court system for the sake of hunting, and prosecuting, Stannon. Sadly, Stannon escaped from the prison they built for him, and has spent years hiding out, having left no trace of where he might be going. But one thing he did do was spend the rest of his life without killing anybody else. His body was found in the middle of the woods by the survey team shortly after former Eido, Mateo’s departure from this universe. Verifiers still don’t know how he ended up on Kesliperia, or Hargrave Peninsula, but decided that he had died recently enough to qualify for the fiftieth taikon.

Microstory 649: Eido Mateo’s Homecoming

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When Sotiren Zahir first met Eido Mateo, they could immediately relate to each other. They were both charming, mysterious, intriguing, and highly intelligent. They were the perfect match for each other. Had they wanted, they could have taken over the entire universe, and any other universe beyond it. Shortly after arriving, however, Mateo was taken back to his worlds by those he once called his friends. It’s unclear what happened to him while he was back there, but we know that he was somehow altered. The Sacred Savior had predicted Mateo’s return to these worlds sometime in the future, but many believed this to be more about his wishful thinking. Actually, the text was vague enough for him to return more in spirit; that his ideas could continue to modern times. Most did not think it possible that Mateo would survive the wrath of his former compatriots long enough to come back in any literal capacity. Following its sudden creation, verifiers landed on what would now have to be called Hargrave Island to survey the land. In fact, the recently resurrected Sotiren came as well to see this for himself. Before they could even get started, a door appeared in the middle of the rocky shore. It was just a regular brown door in a maroon frame, and it seemed to lead precisely nowhere, because all they found on any side was more rocks. It was not attached to anything, or at least not to anything in our perceptible dimensions. The door opened, and out came none other than Eido Mateo, along with his friends. And they really were his friends. He completely ignored Sotiren upon seeing him, as if they had never met before. Sotiren was saddened, and reportedly frightened; with good reason. One of his best friends had been taken from him by an enemy that he did not understand. Mateo was changed in some way, through technology Sotiren was not familiar with. If they could make this merciless warrior a tame moron, what else could they do? What threat does their parallel universe pose to ours? What other threats are out there waiting...or looking for us? Sotiren tried to get the real Mateo back, but Mateo had no recollection of their time together. He claimed that that wasn’t really him; that he was somehow possessed by someone evil and dark, but of course, nobody believed that. His people had done awful things to him, and Sotiren doubted there was any way to fix it. They left again before he could make any real progress, once again taking the Sword of Assimilation away, but their story together was not over yet.

Microstory 648: Peninsula Removed from the Mainland

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This taikon was at particular risk of being instigated unnatural, which is against the rules. In general, we are at risk of mischievous nonbelievers attempting to artificially create taikon in order to corrupt our beliefs. The fact that the taikon must be fulfilled in a particular order protects us from this, but only to a degree. It’s still possible for these evildoers to keep tabs on our progress, and prepare for the right moments. While we must all be vigilant against the corruptors, we have also curated a number of verifiers. This position, between standard Lightseers, and Highlightseers, is a coveted one. Verifiers are trained their whole lives. They memorize not only the Book of Light, but also contemporary records, to better recognize valid Lightseed events. They are extremely important to the process. We cannot simply rely on hearsay and fake news media reports. We have to see for ourselves, and people who have been trained their whole lives have to ensure every single taikon’s legitimacy. As it turned out, however, this taikon didn’t require any special precautions against corruptors. The peninsula in question was an obvious one. The Cleansing Light did not return the planet’s oceans to its original state, for that would be impossible. The removal of the oxygen irreversible altered the terrain, which meant that the oceans of now are different than before. One thing that came out of this was a new island. The Hargrave Peninsula was a large bit of land that protruded from one corner of the mainland. On one side was the Morbek Sea, and on the other was Linta Bay. Though other terrain had shifted, it had remained stable and unchanging. About an hour after the new oceans were created, however, the peninsula began to split off, forming a perfect canal that now separates the new island from the rest of the continent. Though it would be entire possible to achieve this through technological means, this did occur natural, and our verifiers have confirmed its validity.