The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 10, 2217

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Mateo woke up in a bed with a terrible headache. He reached for his head, where he found some kind of cap on it that he figured he better leave alone. Leona was reading next to him. “You have to stop doing that to me,” she said.

“What happened?” he asked.

She kind of acted like she was still half-reading her book, and wasn’t too concerned with his wellbeing. “For starters, it didn’t work. I guess a grave chamber is not the same thing as a real grave in the ground. We shouldn’t be surprised. It’s only a meter deep, too wide, and not long enough. You didn’t manage to travel to Dardius, but you did hit your head somethin’ fierce on the side of the chamber. You’ve been out cold since last year.”

“Christ, it hurts.”

Leona reached for an IV bag hanging in the corner, and examined it. “Ahh, you ran out of painkillers. On the bright side, the pain is probably what woke up again.”

“So, it’s 2217?”

“Yes.”

“I better get up, then. We need a real grave this time.”

She flipped the page. “Way ahead of you. Ramses dug it while we were gone. I’m not convinced you should do it, though.”

“Was anyone else able to do it?”

“No, but they got hurt in the trying; not quite as bad as you, but...”

“I’m pretty sure I’m the only one what can summon Halifax with an open grave,” Mateo said, “other than Serkan Demir, of course.”

“You’re in no condition to be falling backfirst into a hole.”

“I have to try, and I have to do it now. We don’t know when the Maramon will find the human Ansutahan. They haven’t yet, right?”

“Serif is coordinating with the leadership on the other side of the bridge right now. No, I don’t think the Maramon have found them yet.”

Mateo slid the needle out of his arm, and started climbing out of bed. “Take me to the grave.”

She sighed, and dropped her book on the mattress. “Very well. It’s in the Blacklight District.”

She led him outside, or to what passed for the outside under a giant city-sized dome that protected the human inhabitants from the harsh conditions of Jungula’s surface. People were watching them curiously, but someone had already provided the Jungulans with sufficient explanation.

Ramses was waiting for them with a big smile on his face. “I didn’t know when you would come to, but I knew you would come to here once you did.”

“Are you going to Dardius with us?” Mateo asked him.

“No, he’s not,” Leona answered quickly.

“She’s kidding,” Ramses said. “Yes, I am.”

“We need you to stay here, and keep watch over the ship.”

“That’s bullshit. Put me in, coach. I have to see this.”

Mateo gave Leona this look. “We’ve no right to keep him away from this. He’s been proving himself trustworthy since before I existed.”

Leona sighed again. “Fine. I don’t want you out of our sight, though. When it’s time to come back, it’s time to come back.”

“Absolutely,” Ramses agreed.

They huddled together, and fell back into the grave. The light above them changed, revealing that their plan had worked. They climbed out of the hole, and looked around. They were in a cemetery on the edge of a city, but The Gravedigger was nowhere to be found. “Hmm, he must be busy,” Mateo guessed. “He had enough time to transport us, but no time to talk.”

“As long as he takes us back, with everything we need, I’m okay with that,” Leona noted. “Come on, we have to get our bearings. Sharice indicated the beacon would be in something called the Intake Building.”

As it turned out, they were in Sutvindr, which Mateo recalled being considered the Kansas of Dardius. It was the central region of the world, where everything began. A friendly passerby gave them directions to the Intake Building, and didn’t ask why they didn’t already know it. The three of them moved on until they came upon it, and then they walked in, and up to the reception desk.

“Welcome to Intake, how may I help you?”

“Yes, umm...” Leona hesitated. “What is this place?”

“Everyone who comes to this planet does so through this facility.”

“Everyone?”

“Everyone, even you. Unless...” The receptionist peered at them. Then she looked over to the far wall, where they found a gigantic painting of Mateo, Leona, and a few of their closest friends. “Oh my God, you’re back.” She didn’t know how she was supposed to handle this situation.

“Please don’t make a fuss,” Mateo asked of her. “We’re just looking for the Muster Beacon.”

She was taken aback by this. “Well, that’s what we use to summon massive numbers of refugees from Earth. The last time we used it was for the arcology hanging tower in Panama.”

“Ooooohhh,” Leona said. “This is where it went.” Years ago, when Leona was deep in the fight against Ulinthra in the corrupted reality, the former tried to kill thousands of people by dropping their building, which was hanging from a platform, to the ground. A portal had opened up, and taken the building away, but Leona never found out where. Now it was all coming together.”

“Does that mean you’re done with it, and we can take it?” Ramses asked her.

“I’m sorry, who are you?” The receptionist questioned.

“A new series regular,” he replied.

She ignored him, and went back to the celebrities. “Mister Matic, it’s true you still own this planet, but in your absence, a governing body is elected to maintain order.” She frowned, worried about their reactions.

He wasn’t offended in the least. “Naturally.”

“I’m not saying you can’t have the Muster Beacon, but I also can’t say that you can. This may be a decision for the Senior Administrator. I don’t personally have a way to contact her, but I can get you close.”

“That would be lovely, thanks.”

The receptionist dialed the phone, and spoke into her headset. “Hello, this is Reception. I have two executive guests, plus an undesignated associate, here to see Transportation Administrator Moss.” She waited for the person on the other end to talk. “Uhh, the tippy top.—Yes, those two.—Just tell her the owners are here, thank you!” She hung up, probably in the middle of the other person’s sentence. She looked back up at them and smiled. “Please have a seat.”

They waited for about ten minutes before a woman that looked familiar walked down the steps, and greeted them. “Mister and Missus Matic, thank you for coming in. Who else do I have the pleasure of meeting?”

He shook her hand. “Captain Ramses Abdulrashid. I don’t own any planets, but I’m happy to be here.”

“Great, great. How can I help you?”

“We would like to...borrow your Muster Beacon.”

“For what?”

“Refugees, just like how you use it. Eleven billion humans, trapped in another universe, with no time to evacuate them all once.”

“I should say so,” Administrator Moss agreed. She consulted her tablet. “If they’re in another universe, that explains why we haven’t been notified of their need for help. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I can give up the beacon. We will be needing it for a pressing matter. Dozens of helpless passengers are requiring extraction from two related ships. Let’s see, The...Vosa, and The Sharice.”

Mateo, Leona, and Ramses looked amongst each other. “You’re saving them?”

“Quite.”

“The Vosa, I understand,” Leano said.

“But the Sharice?” Ramses questioned emphatically. “Those people are horrendous. I would know, I used to be one of them. I was on that ship, and they don’t deserve to be saved!”

Moss looked back at her tablet. “Captain Abdulrashid? You were a mechanic.”

“Engineer,” he corrected. “I’ve transcended my old life.”

“It’s already happened, right?” Mateo asked. “I mean those ships blew up years ago?”

“Yes.”

“So, it doesn’t matter when you extract them, because it’s time travel anyway.”

Moss nodded her head. “Yes, but we do have a schedule. It may seem arbitrary to you, but the assimilation of new people into our society is a very delicate process. Our experts have spent months dedicated to research and predictive modeling. They must arrive within the next seven weeks to safely acclimate to our way of life.”

“The Muster Lighter,” Leona said simply.

“I’m sorry?” Moss turned the tablet’s screen off so she could pay Leona attention.

“When I was on the Vosa, trying to get back to Earth, I spoke with Holly Blue about all the objects that I had accumulated. She said the Muster Lighter is capable of summoning hundreds of people at once. You don’t need the beacon for this mission. The lighter could do it.”

“We don’t have the Muster Lighter,” Moss reminded her.

“Something tells me you have ways of getting the things you need from Earth. If the beacon reach out and find its predecessor, maybe you still have access to the Nexus we once had on Tribulation Island.”

“Yes, it’s still there. We use it for recon missions.”

“Find a chooser with potential permission to go to The Constant. If the Muster Lighter isn’t still there, The Concierge will know what happened to it. Tell her I sent ya.”

Administrator Moss cleared her throat, and thought over this proposal. “I’m inclined to accept your exchange, but only because you’re the owner. I need assurances that you will bring it back as soon as you’re done with it, in pristine condition. Just because we may not need it for the next arrivals, doesn’t mean we’ll never need it again.”

“Of course, you have our word.”

“Huntsville Waterdome,” Mateo suddenly blurted out.

Administrator Moss had mixed feelings about hearing this, but she knew exactly what he meant by that.

“What?” Leona said.

“This was her. This was the woman who flew us all the way from Ontario to San Diego when we were trying to save my mother and Samsonite. She saved their lives, with little hesitation, even though she had no idea who we were.”

The Administrator was quiet and reticent.

“Oh, he’s right,” Leona realized. “I remember you. That was in another reality.”

“Yes, Dardius is aware of changes to the timeline. We save people from every reality, so even when one collapses, the people we took from there will still get to live out their lives in whatever reality remains.”

“You’re a good person, Administrator Moss,” Leona reminded her. “Like he said, you helped us when you had no reason to. You’ll do the right thing now.”

She considered it once more, then finally gave in. “Okay. You can take the beacon, but we do still need it back.”

“I promise.”

“I’m staying here,” Ramses said.

“You said you would come back when it was time,” Leona said, only a bit upset.

“I know, and I meant it, but if the Freemarketeers are coming here, I just...I don’t trust that they’ll accept their new reality.” He faced Admin Moss. “I don’t know what kind of economy and government you have on this world, but they’re fiercely capitalistic. I’m not sure you’re fully prepared to change their minds. My mind has already been changed, so I know what it’s going to take.”

“It’s fine with me,” Moss said. “I can help you get your citizenship request forms started.”

“Very well,” Leona relented. I do want to get back before 2218,” she said to Mateo.

“Me too,” he said. “But there’s no reason we can’t have some dinner at Lorenzo’s Grill.”

“It’s midmorning,” Moss said.

“Then we’ll have quiche at Reaver’s.”

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Furor: The Required Skills For It (Part IV)

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Before Ace could leave with Slipstream, he needed to regroup with his family, and obtain Serkan’s knowledge and memories of what was going to happen in the next coming weeks. Once he had that, Serkan and Paige went back to their lives for the time being, while Ace went on a background mission about their new enemy. Slipstream wasn’t able to keep the files from The Archivist, but she was able to remember quite a bit about him. Rothko Ladhiffe was born on the second of February, 1984. He was born after the cutoff date, but he showed such promise as a young child that they let him into kindergarten early. He would go on to skip fifth grade, and be one to two years younger than most of his peers.

In the summer of 2000, just before the beginning of the school year, the incoming senior class got together for a lock-in at the high school. It was an unauthorized event, but a decades-long tradition that adults allowed to continue, as long as no one got hurt. Rothko was living on the edge of a breaking point. For the last ten years, the city of Springfield, Kansas was gradually disappearing. Entire blocks would spontaneously disappear, leaving all survivors completely oblivious to its former existence. Rothko’s family was suddenly living on the edge of town, where they were once somewhere in the middle of it. Rothko, however, happened to have strayed beyond the borders on the night of that block’s disappearance. Several of his friends in the senior class had done the same. Together, they worked to get back home, and after awhile, they succeeded. Rothko, however, would not return for another twenty-one years.

He became stranded on a rogue planet that would come to be called Durus, with a boy named Escher, and a girl named Savitri. They had fallen into their own portals on two separate occasions before, and were the only survivors until much later, when the last of the now-small town of Springfield was swallowed up. No one—not even the Archivist himself—seems to know what happened to Savitri, and there were some plot holes when it came to Escher’s fate, but Rothko was eventually saved. He was sent back to Earth via a machine of Hogarth Pudeyonavic’s design. It would be another few years before she was able to rebuild that machine, and return to Earth herself, where she fought Jesimula Utkin by Paige’s side.

It was a culture shock for Rothko, who was now basically alone on a second world he knew nothing about. Smartphones, cars that could drive themselves, and the corporate automation tax were just too much for him to bear. Beaver Haven Penitentiary keeps criminal records in a location far removed from the Archivist, who was responsible for everything but. Slipstream was unable to garner information about what Rothko did that led him to a prison cell, but it wasn’t likely something good. The prison was specially designed to handle people with time powers. These weren’t the worst of the worst, or the ones with the potential to do most damage. They were just the ones who risked exposing the underworld to the Earth at large. This can be as simple as teleporting a loudmouth human—with a lot of followers on social media, and a permanent body cam—out of a deadly fire, to predicting global events that are destined to come true on national television. An individual who spent the majority of their life in a hellworld, fighting literal monsters, probably wasn’t capable of making considerate and careful decisions. Rothko Ladhiffe was placed in custody at some point in 2022, and managed to escape just last week. He was the only one in this reality to ever do so. It was unclear what he was so upset about when it came to the City Frenzy, but it was becoming clear that whatever was going to cause the commotion Serkan recalled from the near-future, he had something to do with it.

“What’s his power then?” Ace asked.

“He can manipulate local reality,” Slipstream answered unelaboratively. They were headed towards The Forger’s den. They weren’t going there to see him, but a man named The Courier, who operated in the same building, and was the only person they knew who traveled regularly to the prison. They needed answers, and that was the best place to get them.

“What exactly does local mean?”

“Well, he has to be able to see something in order to change it. He can’t just create a world where all trees are blue, or buildings hang from the clouds.”

“That’s a nice little limitation. I can’t imagine dealing with someone who could do those things.”

“Oh, that person exists too. She’s one of the other Springfield Nine.”

“Is she evil?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why is Kolby not coming with us to this place?”

“He’s doing this thing with his alternate self. I was asked to not ask too many questions about it.”

“Oh, okay.”

A man opened the door when they knocked on it. “Do you have a thousand dollars?” he immediately asked of them.

“What? We’re just here to speak with the Courier.”

“The last guy who came in without an appointment gave me a thousand dollars.”

“We don’t have that kind of money,” Slipstream said.

“Yeah, we do,” Ace said. He took a credit card out of his wallet. “The Forger has an ATM, doesn’t he?”

“You can give me the cash on your way out,” the freelance security guard said. He stepped to the side, and presented the dark rounded hallway to them. “Forger on the left, Courier on the right,” he called to them. “Don’t forget the money!”

They opened the door on the right to find another man sorting mail into slots, while a woman was sitting in the corner, in one of those giant covered chairs that hip startups have in their exposed-brick headquarters, which allow employees to take naps.

Ace tried to get into the Courier’s periphery. “Excuse me?”

“Speak softly,” he responded. Only then could they see that he had severe burns on part of his face. “She’s sleeping.”

“I didn’t know there were two of you,” Slipstream noted.

“Susan and I work in different departments. She’s The Switcher.”

“What does she switch?”

The Courier snuck past the sleeping pod, and into another room. It was full of stuff. They saw jenga blocks, and dark cloak hanging on a hook with a knife, and a penny sitting on a table that looked like it was there very much on purpose. “When you’re dealing with time travelers, you can’t exactly call each other on cell phones.” He picked up a device from the table. “Though, this is a Doctor Hammer pager.”

“Don’t touch that,” Susan mumbled from the other room.

“Sorry, love,” he said back. “Anyway, some choosers have special ways of contacting each other, usually with something that is symbolically relevant to their specialty. Sometimes you have to dig deep to find the connection. He was about to lift the penny, but thought better of it. For instance, there’s a woman with the ability to project her consciousness across space. If you want her to come, you find an ordinary penny, and recite be the penny to it. If you watched a certain science fiction adaptation on a certain science fiction network, you’ll know why that makes sense, but not if you didn’t.”

Slipstream nodded. “I watched it.”

“Susan is sleeping because she has one of the strongest powers ever. She can see the river of time itself, and she uses it to manage communications for all of us. If you’re trying to reach across time, she’s the one who decides precisely when your contact gets your message. Sometimes she maintains an order, and sometimes she lets people meet back up with each other in the wrong order. We are no one to question her reasoning.”

“Would she be able to contact someone at Beaver Haven for us?” Ace asked him. “Or could you?”

“It’s a prison,” the Courier said, “which means they’re not generally allowed packages. I can propel regular mail through time without actually traveling to it, so I’ve never had a reason to go there myself. You’ll have to wait until Susan wakes up. If she has a contact there, and wants to help, she will.”

“I’m up,” Susan said, somehow both reluctantly and ardently.

“We’re sorry to wake you,” Slipstream said to her as she was coming into the room.

“It’s okay,” Susan said. “As Ennis was saying, it’s exhausting work, so I need to sleep about fourteen hours a day.”

“We absolutely must build that extension,” Ennis lamented, “so you have an entire sleeping room to yourself.”

“We would need an extra dimension for that,” Susan said, “because the other tenants in this building aren’t scheduled to leave for another nine years and four months.”

Ace thought about their predicament. “You help us get to Beaver Haven, and I’ll get those tenants out ahead of schedule.”

“You don’t understand. The timeline says—”

“No, I get it, but the future can be changed, right? If anyone can do that, it’s me.”

Slipstream backed him up with her facial expression.

“That would be lovely. Let’s assume you’re bound to succeed in that endeavor, why do you want to get to the prison in the first place?”

“We would like to interview someone there who knew a man named Rothko Ladhiffe.”

The name seemed to make both Susan and Ennis really uncomfortable.”

“He and the rest of the Springfield Nine are out of pretty much everyone’s jurisdiction,” Ennis explained. “The fact that Beaver Haven arrested him in the first place speaks volumes about their desperation to stop him, and his escape is probably their greatest shame.”

“So, what are you saying?” Slipstream pressed.

“They’re not going to want to talk to you,” Susan said. “They’re going to pretend it never happened. If word gets out that their facility is not inescapable, they’ll start having a lot more people on their hands who want to test the limits of time traveler exposure.”

“We can reason with them,” Ace said confidently. “Because we can get him back.”

Susan sighed deeply. “Well, you were instrumental in bringing in Keanu ‘Ōpūnui, and she was vital to bringing in Jesimula Utkin, so I guess you are indeed our best shot.”

“Wait, if they’re also Springfield Nine, how did the prison justify locking them up too?” Ace asked. “I didn’t realized they had gone there.”

“No, me neither,” Slipstream said.

Susan smirked. “You’re loopholes. Choosing ones are not allowed to go after outliers, like the Nine.” She faced Slipstream. “But you’re human.” She faced Ace. “And you’re a salmon, your husband is a chosen one, and your daughter is spawn. We also aren’t allowed to go after any of you, but it’s totally fine if you go after each other.”

“You’re saying that we’re the only ones who can do this?” Ace gathered.

“Essentially. I mean, you’re not the only ones, but you’re some of the few living in this time period who have the required skills for it.”

“And they’re not going to get in trouble for involving me?” Slipstream questioned. “They exposed time travel to a human.”

“No, Jesimula exposed time travel to a human. Paige and the others just garnered your help with stopping her. They’re perfectly innocent, and even if they weren’t, Beaver Haven doesn’t arrest everyone who gives up their secret. It has to put us all at risk, and you’re not a liability because you’re a badass mercenary who knows how to keep a secret.”

“So, you’ll help us?” Ace wanted to confirm.

Susan smiled again as she was walking over to a corner. Ennis helped her move some boxes out of the way, revealing a barred window without the actual window. She lifted a metal mug from the sill, and started swiping it back and forth along the bars, making a huge racket. “Guards!” she shouted.

A security guard stepped in from a door on the other side of the room. “Yes, Madam Glines?”

Susan gestured towards Ace and Slipstream. “These two will be asking some questions at your institution. Give them anything they desire. Anything,” she reiterated.

“Yes, sir,” he said with the utmost respect for her.

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Microstory 1030: Herman

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You can call me H.R. Mann. It’s my pseudonym, but I like when people call me that in real life. I write mostly horror stories, but I’ve been known to dabble in some fantasy, kind of like the reverse of George R.R. Martin. I hate other people reading my stuff. In my eyes, my work is never really done. I wrote an entire book five years ago, but I keep just looking back at it, and changing things. A lot of my stories are connected, so I’m kind of working on them all at the same time, and I worry that if I try to publish something, it will prevent me from making a creative decision that would contradict some irreversible decision. It was Viola who suggested I try to write a standalone novel. It would take place in its own universe, and be completely separate from all my other stories. Then I could try to publish that, and maybe get my name out there. Well, I spent the entirety of our junior year working on it, and gave it to her to look over. I had no expectations of her, but I did expect that she would read it over, and give me a few notes. I didn’t think she would pull out the red pen, and edit the whole thing for me. I don’t mean she just proofread it. She edited for content, suggesting thematic and semantic changes that made the overall book far better. There were some parallels, and narrative symmetries that she saw that I would have never thought of on my own. I implemented nearly all of her suggestions, which helped make me think of a few extra, but I wasn’t able to give her the next draft before she died. Not that it would have been her responsibility to look over it yet again. I’m really just saying this to illustrate how important a person she was to everyone in our class, the school, and the world. She would do just about anything for just about anyone. She was an angel. We’ll miss you, Viola Woods.

Microstory 1029: Eugene

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I don’t know that there’s much I can tell you Alfred didn’t already say. I would have joined magic club without Viola’s coaxing. I’m just sort of always in my own little world, so I didn’t notice that he had started it when we were freshmen. To be completely honest, I was not particularly into magic before that, but I have an adventurous spirit, and I like to try new things. Those new things are mostly limited to dining at interesting restaurants that are thirty minutes away in Adamantingham. That’s the largest city in Mineral County, in case you don’t know from being the new kid. Not that you’re a kid, sorry. Anyway. I grew up pretty sheltered in this small town where nothing ever happens. This is kind of the worst place for me, since I was never exposed to all the crazy things happening in larger cities, which is what I crave. I’m getting out as soon as I can, and not because I hate Blast City as it is, but it’s just not enough alone. I need the Eiffel Tower, and the Egyptian Pyramids, and the ocean. I’ve been alive for eighteen years, and have never seen the ocean, or even a single mountain. For the time being, I’ve been okay, though. There are some hidden gems around here, and Viola was an expert at finding them. We literally never spoke over the course of our high school careers. She just kept leaving notes in my locker, with suggestions for adventures. The last thing she did for me before she died was sending me on a scavenger hunt all over Blast City. I never got a chance to thank her for that. I sent her a text message a few days after her death, just as a symbolic gesture, and to kind of unburden myself of the minor guilt. I didn’t realize the police would be monitoring her phone, so they came and questioned me about it. I guess that was actually the last adventure she sent me on.

Microstory 1028: Alfred

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Nobody calls me by my name around here, but different people will have different nicknames. Al, Alfie, Allie, Fred, Freddie, and Batman are some of the more common variations. I don’t really like any of them. My parents named me Alfred, full stop, and that’s what I prefer. Viola was the only one who respected that, which was this small but courteous thing she probably didn’t think twice about, but now it seems significant, because of her death. I’m a pretty big nerd, but I’m not that much into comics, which is why I’m not all that fond of that last nickname I mentioned. It doesn’t even make sense. Alfred wasn’t the superhero, he was the butler, and didn’t have his own codename. Or maybe he did, but that’s not something I would know. What makes me a nerd is that I’m into magic. I feel like back in the day, liking magic wasn’t a nerdy thing. It seemed more accessible back then. Maybe people were easier to trick, because humanity as a whole was less educated? I don’t know. Now it’s just so universally hated that I don’t understand how professional magicians even exist, and are able to sell tickets to their shows. In junior high, I was the president of the magic club, and I wanted to continue that when I got here, but there was no such club at the time. I guess it’s more acceptable to be into it when you’re younger. And so, of course, I decided to start the club myself, thinking that if I built it, they would come. You have to have at least five people sign up for any new club, and prove that they’re coming to regular meetings, in order for the school to sign off on it. I bet you can see where this story is going. Not a single person showed up. I held introductory meetings every single day after school for nearly a week, until one person finally came. Viola. She was not into magic, but she felt bad that no one came, so she just made an appearance to boost my numbers. Like I said, that still wasn’t enough, so she also somehow convinced three other people to come over the course of the next few days; the last one just by the deadline. So she managed to find, not just random people she could coerce into making me feel better, but also ones who could actually learn to like magic. She even kept coming to meetings with us the rest of the year, never missing, and occasionally participating. The following year, two freshmen wanted to join right away, which allowed Viola to quit, and our numbers have increased ever since. I’m proud to say that Blast City Senior High’s Magic Club boasts one of the highest memberships of the school. We have to meet in the cafeteria now to have enough space for everyone. Viola did this for me—for us—and I will always be grateful for that.

Microstory 1027: Howard

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Have you ever noticed that we write addresses backwards? If I want to send a letter to my friend at 123 Main Street, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, I make it harder for the mail service to deliver by writing it out like that. We should start with the general, and become more specific from there. The first person at the post office only cares about which country it’s going to. They see Spain, they throw it in the Spain bin. They see Canada, they throw it in the Canada bin. Once it gets to Canada, the next person only cares about which Province it goes to, so put that on the next line. Next person after that only cares about the city, and the next which post office, which means it’s only the last one who cares about which specific building, or unit, it’s meant for. I had this dream that we would completely revamp our delivery system, to make it make more sense. Now, I don’t really know how it works. Maybe I was always wrong, and no worker has any problem hunting for the line that matters most to them. Or maybe the entire address is relevant to everyone who sees it. I just thought there was a better way, but Viola helped me get over it. It’s an insane idea to change something that’s been so ingrained in our way of life for centuries, but she never treated me poorly for it. She gently explained to me that the problem with the way we write addresses has less to do with the order, and more to do with the spacing. The system would work just as well top to bottom, if only we separated the geographical regions more clearly. Anyway, this was really just one carefully explained example of these ideas I have in my head that normal people don’t think about. I obsess over small inconveniences and inefficiencies that most people gloss right over. There are better ways we could be doing things, but in the grand scheme of things, that doesn’t matter much. Viola taught me that, but didn’t let on she was doing it. She taught me that life is not so much pointless as it is too complicated. A lot of good has come from humanity’s advances over the last few centuries, but some have made things worse. Why do we have health insurance? It’s an unnecessary step towards healthcare. We came up with these ways of treating maladies and other medical conditions, and then we muddied it up with a bunch of erroneous programs that do nothing but cause mess. I was getting so bogged down with trying to make this life more efficient, that my life itself was inefficient. Viola helped me shed what she called the extra from my life. Minimalism is key. That’s not to say I’m going to go live in a tiny cabin in the middle of nowhere, and drink milk straight from the udder. But I’m also not going to play by all of society’s rules. My life is going to be simple, and fulfilling, and I owe that to Viola’s ageless wisdom.

Microstory 1026: Willis

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Yo, my name is Willis, I talk a mile a minute, and I got a lot to do, so let’s make this quick. I’m on my way to the pharmacy, ‘cuz my father, he is sick. I didn’t really know the girl; we were never tight, but I saw her by the pond one day; she was in a fight. She was talkin’ all crazy, to herself, no one was there. I looked for something in her ear, but it was totally bare. I think she thought a ghost was by her side; or something invisible. Whatever it was, it had lied, and she felt that was impermissible. It was something about religion—myself, I don’t have faith. For Viola, it seemed like hers was the same case. Someone close to her was in a cult, or maybe something like it. She needed help to save her friend. As for the cult, she thought she’d fight it. She caught me peeping on her convo, and stopped right in her tracks. She didn’t seem upset with me, but told me I needed to relax. She did not deny she had had a religious argument, but didn’t want me thinking that she was just intolerant. I assured her that her business was her own, and I’m only telling you right now, since she’s gone off to the unknown. Well, we shook each other’s hand, and parted ways, but I could tell she was still worried. I later found her...stands [sic], by the locker bays, and now she was real hurried. I tried to ask after her friend, but she brushed off any issue. I thought that she would start crying, so I checked my bag for any tissue. By the time I looked back up, she was nowhere to be found. I tried to keep looking for her, but she got lost in the the high school crowd. I went on vacation the next day, so that was the last time I saw her face. By the time I returned, Viola was gone, and out of this lively race.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 9, 2216

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Mateo and Leona learned from Serif that it had been centuries since the universe of Ansutah was created by the fourth pocket dimension on the interstellar ship, The Warren. For her, however, it had only been a few years. It was after The Crossover was invented, utilized to explore the bulkverse, and ultimately destroyed. It was before, however, the time that Leona went to Ansutah with all those people looking to get rid of their time powers. Since that had not yet happened from Serif’s viewpoint, there was no way for her to stay with them permanently. At some point, she would have to return to the monster world, and continue her own life with her daughter. There was just no way to save her. She knew this, but she was determined to save all the other humans there, by whatever means necessary. Apparently, they were the descendants of those who sought to be free from their powers, and had been transported back to the early days of the universe.

Unfortunately, the brilliant Leona quickly did the math on their plans to evacuate the billions of people in Ansutah. It would take a couple decades to get them all out through the little ceiling entrance magically attached to grave chamber four on The Ocasio-Cortez. And that was assuming those people literally ran up the rickety wooden ladder, and out of the vessel constantly, so they could funnel hundreds in a minute, which was probably also impossible. It would take many decades at the most realistic projections, and even then, there was nowhere for them to go. Bungula was not presently hospitable to life, and wouldn’t be for the next few centuries, assuming its colonizers decide to terraform the planet at all. The domes were not designed to fit quite that many people.

“What made you think this was going to work?” Leona asked. She was feeling overwhelmed by the situation, and was unable to just be happy to see Serif again.

“The scientist built the bridge, and apparently didn’t consider the logistics of the endeavor,” Serif defended. “I didn’t ask for this, but we have to find a way to escape. Ever since the Crossover was destroyed, and its remnants scattered throughout the bulkverse, the Maramon have grown more and more restless. As the human population grew, an entire continent was needed to be set aside for them. Religious superstitions have kept the Maramon from exploring the area, but like any sufficiently advanced civilization, those superstitions are waning. They want to see what’s over here, and if they discover an entire planet’s worth of humans have been hoarding resources, they’re not going to be happy. This will start a war.

“Why did he build a bridge, instead of another machine?” Leona questioned. “That could completely eliminate the time sensitivity. Every time the Crossover leaves a universe, it can spend as much time as it wants away, and always return one second after it left.”

“I understand that,” Serif said. “Sadly, he still felt he needed to ultimately honor his promise to his colleagues. He killed himself as soon as the bridge was finished. He didn’t even test it out first. There might be a way to move the exit somewhere else, but I would have no clue how to do that. Time itself wants the refugees to come through here. Something thinks this is our best option.”

“Time is not a conscious individual,” Leona argued. “The bridge exited out here, because this is where we are. It was seeking to bring you back to us.”

“If time isn’t conscious, how could it be seeking anything?”

“You know what I mean, like magnets. The three of us are entangled on a quantum level.”

Serif wasn’t buying it entirely, but it didn’t matter. Leona was right. There was no way to get everyone to safety using their only current option. The bridge was all but useless to them, and that wasn’t going to change, even when they landed on Bungula next year. They needed a creative solution.

Mateo, Leona, and Serif returned to the timeline a year later, and found the Ansutah situation to be no different than before. To keep Ramses safe, they decided they needed to lock the opening to grave chamber four. There was a lot of diversity in a group of eleven billion, which meant there would be plenty of irrational people who might try to escape through the bridge, even one that led to a ship designed for six to twelve people.

The upside was that there were two new members of their group. Ramses was able to extract Brooke and Sharice Prieto from the Insulator of Life, and upload their consciousnesses to new android substrates. And bonus, one of them seemed to have an idea of what to do with the Ansutahan humans.

“What about Gatewood?” Sharice suggested.

“What is Gatewood?” Mateo asked her.

“Orbiting Barnard’s Star, Gatewood is a collection of planetesimals, dwarf planets, asteroids, and comets about six and a half light years from here. Since there aren’t any planets, it wasn’t a good candidate for colonization. Still, people had dreams of reaching nearly all of the closest stars, and so a project was started in order to capitalize on the plethora of materials that can be found there. They would live in centrifugal cylinders instead.”

“What is that?” Mateo asked, feeling as much the idiot as ever. Serif didn’t seem to recognize the term either, though.

Sharice went on, “they’re basically giant space stations that rotate so fast, they simulate gravity on the inner surface. You might have seen the movie Interstellar. The people at the end lived in one.”

“Oh.”

“Well, the project was scrapped, but there was some sort of communication breakdown. All evidence suggests the automated factories in the system continued to build these cylinders on their own, waiting for colony ships that will never come.”

“Is there enough room for eleven billion people?” Leona asked.

“Theoretically. The basic designs are based on 21st century personal space requirements. People need less room now, and there’s no reason you couldn’t expand later, as needed.”

“What about Project Stargate?” Brooke asked.

“And what is that?” Mateo asked yet again.

“Like Sharice said,” Brooke began, “Gatewood is full of stuff. Most of it didn’t coalesce into larger celestial bodies, but this stuff is very useful for building things. It’s called Gatewood, because it’s also the home of the largest vonearthan endeavor in the entire history of our species.”

“It’s a rumor,” Sharice argued.

“I think I can guess, based on the name,” Leona said, “but just so I’m sure, what is this rumor?”

Sharice decided to answer. “The vonearthans are presently concerned with the colonization of the stellar neighborhood. We have settlements—or planned settlements—on Proxima Doma, here on Bungula, Varkas Reflex, Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, and Glisnia, with a few other places in the early exploratory stages. Project Stargate would expand those plans by hundreds of billions. Every single star in the whole galaxy would be reached, over the course of the next tens of thousands of years. It’s an absurd idea, and it’s not real. It couldn’t be.”

“But if it is real, then Gatewood would be the perfect staging ground for it,” Brooke reminded her.

“It would be, if it were real, but it’s not.”

“Would they be building the galaxy vessels right now? If it were real, that is,” Leona added.

Sharice shook her head. “Maybe, maybe not. The people who came up with it projected a 2250 departure date, only because they wanted to travel as close to the speed of light as possible, and that’s when futurists think we’ll get there. They hadn’t figured out how long it would take to construct the damn thing. The smallest independent unit was called a seed plate. It’s about a meter wide, and three centimeters thick, and would have been responsible for installing quantum messengers, and other structures, in seven to twenty-eight solar systems. Look, Gatewood is perfect for the refugees. The cylinders are waiting for them there, no one else wants them, and there aren’t any goddamn Stargate automators swallowing up resources.”

“Well, we have to come up with some solution in the next few years,” Serif noted. “My people are on the brink of war with the Maramon. Our universe is not big enough for all of us. Something’s gotta give. I’m willing to risk Gatewood, if Bungula is not a viable option.”

“Even if you got everyone there,” Brooke complained, “it will still take forever to evacuate them. The bridge is still attached to this wee little bunk thing in the floor.”

“Grave chamber,” Ramses corrected.

“Morbid.”

“That’s an easy solution too,” Sharice said. “We just need the Muster Beacon.”

“The lighter that I used to bring Mateo back from nonexistence?” Leona questioned. She had gotten it from another universe, and though it was a powerful temporal object, there was no way it was strong enough to take on eleven billion people.”

Sharice smirked. “Every invention you’ve ever come across has had a more advanced counterpart, right? The Jayde Spyglass is an easier-to-use version of the Cosmic Sextant. The Escher Card is the sequel to the Escher Knob. Even the Crossover started out as a tiny Prototype. The Muster Lighter too has another version. The Beacon is much larger, and has a much greater capacity.”

“How much greater are we talking?” Leona asked.

“A handful of rounds could pull everyone from the other universe, into Gatewood. It’ll take longer to transfer it from cylinder to cylinder than it will to summon everyone from Ansutah.”

“Just what the hell are we talking about?” Serif was feeling left out.

“Special fire,” Leona said to her. “It somehow apports massive numbers of people, from wherever they are, to a single location. It’s like a bug zapper for people, that doesn’t kill the people.”

“And we have this object?” Serif tried to clarify.

“That’s another thing,” Brooke said. “If it does indeed exist, which we don’t know for sure, we don’t know where it is.”

“The Weaver told me where it was,” Sharice said, but she didn’t act particularly excited about it.

“Oh, yeah? Where?”

Sharice pretended to clear her throat. “Dardius.”

“That’s millions of light years away,” Brooke shouted. “If we could travel those distances, we could just take the refugees to Dardius itself.”

“There’s not enough room there either,” Sharice fought back.

“Still in another galaxy, young lady.”

“You promised not to call me that anymore.”

“There’s a way to get to Dardius,” Ramses jumped in.

“Is that right?” Leona asked him in disbelief.

Ramses took a deep breath. Then he looked between Mateo, and one of the other bunks. “There’s a reason Étude wanted the ship to be designed like this, and why she wanted us to call these grave chambers.”

“Why?” Serif had no clue.

Ramses looked back to Mateo. “Accent on the grave part.”

Mateo didn’t know what he was driving at either.

Ramses rolled his eyes. Then he reached down and slid back one of the doors in the floor. “Before...it was a closed grave,” he condescended. “Now...it’s an open grave.”

Oh. But would that work?

No.

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