The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 28, 2235

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Mateo had to take medication to get to sleep that night. This wasn’t the first time he was being sent into a mission without any clue what he was doing, but it felt different. Mirage’s warning about where to be, and when to be there, wasn’t just giving him ample time to prepare, but also to become anxious about it. When he woke up the next morning, he decided to embellish his kit of essentials with some more specialized equipment. He used the Gatewood’s industrial synthesizer to fabricate graphene bulletproof clothing, nonlethal debilitating weapons, augmented vision glasses, and several other tools. He also got his hands on a Gatewood communications device, so he could contact help in the event he needed it. Goswin was the only person he told where he was going. Goswin strongly implied that he would have a security force on standby, should Mateo need it. When the time came, he took a shuttle to cylinder two, the automatic train to row 56, arcology 24, and the elevator to floor 83. Then he walked towards unit A-11 of spoke six. But then he found he wasn’t alone.

“Did you follow me here?” Mateo asked, looking around feverishly, worried about any threat.

“I was told to,” Cassidy replied.

“Who told you that?”

“Mirage.”

“She told you to accompany me on my mission? That seems unlikely.”

“No, she told me to stay close, that you were my only shot of surviving here.”

“I can’t protect you, Cassidy. I’m just a guy.”

“You’re not just a guy. People have said you’re a Vin Diesel-level action hero.”

“I’m an above average driver. That’s about as close as I get to Vin Diesel-level anything.”

“Well, Mirage said...” She didn’t have much intention to finish her sentence.

Mateo’s watch beeped. He turned his head quickly to eye the door he was meant to go through. It remained closed. He turned back to Cassidy. “Go back to the AOC.”

“There won’t be a shuttle for another hour.”

“Son of a bitch. Then just go! Anywhere else.”

They heard a sound down the hallway. The door was opening, and a man was stepping through. “Ah-ha!” he exclaimed. “You’ve brought her right to me. Now I won’t have to track her down.”

“Shit.” The man obviously didn’t have good intentions. “Run!” he ordered Cassidy.

She ran off.

“What did I just say?” the man questioned as he was walking towards Mateo.

Mateo dropped his bag, and made sure his Batmanesque utility belt was secure. “My brother taught me a thing or two about fighting, so come at me, bro!” That sounded neither like Mateo, nor Darko, but it felt like the right thing to say at the time. He decided to not give this stranger the chance to attack first. He ran straight for him, and they started grappling. The fight between them looked cool in his head, but probably appeared petty and graceless from the outside.

The elevator doors right next to them opened up. It was Cassidy. She immediately ran out, and knocked the man against the wall. Then she grabbed his shirt by the shoulders, and swung him into the elevator himself, where he fell to the floor.

“Holy crap!” Mateo cried. “How did you do that?”

“The bouncers at the first club where I worked were ineffective. I had to learn how to take care of myself. Mirage, emergency evac, protocol seven; authorization code Castaway-Vociferous-Laundry-nine-nine-seven.”

The man in the elevator couldn’t get all the way up, but he could take a teleporter gun out of its holster. He pointed it at Cassidy just before the doors closed, so Mateo had to jump in front of it.

He suddenly found himself in the elevator with him. It was falling much faster than they normally moved. The two of them started grappling again, but stopped once they realized how long they had been falling. They should have reached the bottom by now.

“Mirage, status report!”

Mirage’s voice came on the speakers, but it was just a canned response. This wasn’t the actual Mirage, who was a self-aware artificial intelligence with agency. “We are currently on a course for orbit around Barnard’s Star b-twelve.”

“What is that?” the man asked.

“It’s the largest coalesced celestial body in this system, after the planet’s destruction. Cassidy must have sent you out here to take you off the board. Why are you trying to kill her?”

“I’m not trying to kill her. Sure, she may have to die, but the goal is not to kill her. We need her.”

“You need her for what.”

“When I say we, I mean all of us, including you. The white monsters are a threat to the very survival of this universe, and her blood is the key to stopping them.”

“Wait, back up. Start at the beginning. Who are you?”

“Who I am, specifically, is unimportant, but until rescue arrives, I suppose it can’t hurt to explain why I’m here; more to the point, why she’s here.”

“I’m listening.” Mateo had activated his beacon, but was expecting Cassidy to reach out to the others for help.

“Cassidy Long was born on Dardius not too long ago.”

“She was? How?”

“Do you wanna hear this, or just ask questions?”

“Okay, go ahead.”

The man restarted his story, “Cassidy Long was born to Étude Einarsson, and Newt Clemens on Dardius. The planet was designed as a sanctuary, mostly for humans, but she was not safe there, so her father sent them away. They went through the Nexus replica, and ended up on Earth in 1997. What he didn’t realize is that we would never hurt a child. Time travel can make things really urgent and hectic, but if you use it right, it can grant patience. So we waited until she was old enough to be recruited for a mission. She was all set to take a trip with her friends to Springfield, Kansas. Her mother didn’t want her anywhere near that town, but Cassidy was rebellious, and wanted to go anyway. Sadly, though, Étude died, and Cassidy didn’t want to go anymore. Fine, she missed the Deathfall, but we still had another shot. If we could get her to the Deathspring in 2161, we would be all right. Of course, that didn’t go well either. We had her protected in a cabin, ready for her to run into a woman with the ability to skip forward in time.”

“You mean Dubravka?”

“Yes.”

“That’s my daughter.”

“Yeah, we knew that. Annoyingly, the Maverick intervened, and we lost again.”

“What are you talking about? Not that I wanted you to do this, but why didn’t you just find some other time traveler to take her?”

“We didn’t want her to be able to travel back and forth. We needed her on Durus, so she could later end up in Ansutah.”

“Why? Why go through all this trouble?”

“She can absorb people’s powers. If we could figure out how she works, we can replicate that, and build an army to defeat the Maramon.”

“A supersoldier program? This is all about a cliché B-movie premise?”

“These things are nearly impossible to kill, Mateo. We need an edge.”

“Yet she would die from this.”

“The procedure could kill her, yes; a noble sacrifice.”

“Nothing is noble about this. You kidnapped her from her hotel room—”

“We didn’t do that,” the man contended.

“Then who did?”

“We have no idea. Our best guess is she met a client she didn’t know had time powers. She absorbed them, and jumped all the way here. It’s taken us forever just to figure out where she was, and even longer to figure out how to get here.”

“You keep saying us, and we. Who else is here?”

The man didn’t respond.

“Who else is here?” Mateo demanded.

He still kept his mouth shut.

Goddammit. He took out his comms. “Goswin. Goswin! Do you have eyes on Cassidy. Where is she?”

“We couldn’t find her,” Goswin replied. “There’s...there’s blood, though. And broken glass.”

“How much blood?”

“Not too much. We think she’s still alive. I have my best people on it. I would have updated you, but you activated the radio silence beacon.”

“I don’t care what the attacker hears now. I’ll be the last face he sees before I throw him into the hock permanently.”

“I also have people on their way to you, but you should know, someone else is approaching in an evac pod. They’re way ahead of us.”

Just then, as if on cue, the metal from the elevator pod clanked and vibrated. The doors opened, revealing Cassidy yet again on the other side. She was in her own elevator pod, holding a bandage on her hand. “Could you help me close this up?” she asked.

“You’re alive!” Mateo hopped over, and hugged her tightly, then pulled back, because this was still awkward, and because she needed help.

“Enjoy the ride,” she said to the man. “Mirage, close the doors, and separate.”

After the pods separated from each other, Cassidy directed theirs to head back for Cylinder Two. The other would be reached by Goswin’s security team before too long, and the man would be dealt with accordingly.

“What happened to you?” Mateo asked her.

“There was another guy. He held me down, and took some of my blood.”

“I think he wanted all of it,” Mateo explained.

“He got one vial, but I broke the other in my escape. ”

“I’m so sorry this happened to you.”

“It’s not the first time.”

“So I’ve heard. Why didn’t you tell me about the cabin?”

“Mateo, I’m not a prostitute, but I have gotten offers that I just couldn’t refuse, so to speak. I wasn’t having sex, but it was sometimes a lot more private than the champaign room of the club. The hotel gig was for a client who just wanted to wake up next to someone in the morning, and kiss me goodbye when he went to work. The cabin, on the other hand, happened when I was young and stupid. I trusted the wrong person, and I paid for it.”

“That wasn’t your fault, Cassidy. They were trying to kill you.”

“He was insistent that he wasn’t.”

“A justification. They were trying to steal your powers. Chooser blood transfusions can copy powers, but they don’t last. You need a hell of a lot of it to make it last. If you had told me, or someone, we would have handled your arrival differently. We would have known to protect you.”

“I didn’t know it had anything to do with this. That was, like, two years before I came to Gatewood, and nothing happened since then.”

Mateo sat cross-legged on the floor. “They didn’t bring you here. I don’t know who did, so there’s at least one other party we have to worry about.”

“We don’t have to worry about that. Mirage is the one who brought me here.”

“Why? To protect you?”

“She didn’t explain everything, but yes. I think she thought these blood thieves wouldn’t be able to follow me.”

“She was wrong.”

“Yes.”

“But it wasn’t just her,” Mateo went on. “She can’t do anything herself. She has to recruit others. Who was your client? The hotel guy?”

“Just a PhD student. I’ve known him since middle school. He doesn’t have powers; he would have told me. He talked to me about everything. I know more about hospital administration than I ever wanted to. I was basically his wife...except we weren’t actually married. We were only in the hotel to renovate his home.”

“Cassidy.”

“What?”

“He was a PhD student, and you were twenty-two at the time. You’ve known him since middle school, but he wasn’t in middle school.”

“Yeah, there was a bit of an age difference. Don’t judge me.”

“I’m not judging you.”

“Wasn’t Leona fourteen when you met?”

“Fifteen,” Mateo corrected. “Days from turning sixteen. We didn’t sleep together until we were the same age, though.”

“Jai and I never did it at all!” she reminded him.

“Okay, fair enough.”

They sat in silence for a moment.

Then Mateo had a weird idea. “Just to, uhh...make sure. Could you go ahead and tell me what your client’s last name was?”

“Why does that matter?”

“It’s just...um, coincidences are hard to find in our world. I would feel a lot better if I heard his last name, and could be sure I didn’t know him. I mean, it wouldn’t be bad if it was, but...I just need to know.”

“Quelen,” she answered.

He let out a snort-laugh. “Jai Quelen.”

“Yes, he’s heard all the jokes.”

“When I knew him, I never made any jokes.”

Now she laughed. “No, you’re serious.”

“He’s good people. Married to my sister.” When he saw that she was confused, he clarified, “in another timeline.”

“Why didn’t they marry in this timeline?”

“She doesn’t exist anymore.”

Cassidy frowned, not knowing how else to react.

“It’s okay. I used to not exist; it’s not that bad.”

“Why wasn’t he on your list?” she asked. “When we met, you gave me a list of people you know.”

“You were right, he’s human. I don’t have a list of humans I know. Maybe I should.”

They spent the rest of the elevator pod ride writing up a list of humans they knew, and cross-checking them with each other. They had no other known mutual acquaintances. Of course, that didn’t mean she was safe. They needed a new plan.

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Proxima Doma: Reconstruction (Part XII)

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Vitalie wanted to help Étude, but she had no recollection of feeling perturbed about her own memory issues. At the moment, as in every moment, she could only remember the last fifty-six years of her life. For a person who was only in their early sixties, that would likely be traumatizing. Without amnesia, a person should be able to retain memories of when they were nine years old, and several years younger. Walking around with a total blank from that time period meant Étude could sense that there was something missing from her life. She should have been able to recall her mother comforting her when she was scared of the dark. She should have been able to remember her birth father sending her off to live on The Warren, so she would be safe from the dawning of the Maramon white monsters. Vitalie was different, though. She knew she was much older than that, which meant she had spent a long time without those kinds of memories, and now, it just felt normal. She also couldn’t remember Étude herself, so this whole situation was a little uncomfortable. Still, she tried. “What is the first thing you remember?”

“I remember Brooke teaching me how to fly the ship. I mean, she wasn’t really teaching me. Like, I couldn’t do it now. But she was showing me the basics.”

Vitalie nodded.

Tertius only frowned.

Étude went on, “it’s weird. Intellectually, I know that picking your earliest memory isn’t this easy. You don’t always know whether something happened before, or after, some other event you remember. Before full memories, you’re gonna have fragments, and two-dimensional freeze frames. Sometimes, you could also be conflating a fictional story you watched or read with your own life, so it never actually happened. Memory is usually complicated and unreliable, but I remember Brooke’s pilot lessons, and I know for a fact that that is the first thing. At the same time...” she trailed off.

Vitalie was still nodding. “At the same time, you can feel it slipping away.”

“Right,” Étude confirmed. “Because time is still moving. That memory is quickly being overtaken by the next thing that happened after it. I mean, I don’t even know if...”

Vitalie sighed. “It’s best not to focus too much on your earliest memory. It’s always ephemeral, and it’s really unsettling to feel it constantly being replaced by the very next event.”

“It feels like I’m riding on a train. Up ahead is only blackness, as the tracks form themselves little by little. Then behind me, it’s also black. It’s further away, but I can see the tracks gradually disappearing. I try to hold on—”

“Don’t try to hold on,” Vitalie interrupted. “You can’t, and it will just hurt more. Try to live in the present. We’re talking about episodic memories here. You’re not going to forget what a paperclip is, or how to drive a car.”

“I never learned how to drive a car,” Étude argued, but realized that that’s not the point Vitalie was trying to make.

Vitalie sported a small smile. “Whenever you pick up a new skill, you’ll always have it. Well, not necessarily. I’ve been told I used to be a doctor, but I guess I spent a long enough time pretty isolated, without any patients, and now it’s gone, because I didn’t flex my brain muscles. That’s true of anyone with anything, though. What I’m trying to say is, don’t worry so much about the daily events that you’ve gone through. Concentrate on what you have at this very moment, and do what you can to solve any problems based on what your gut tells you you know how to do.”

“That’s the thing, though,” Étude said. “I can’t just ignore those events. While everything before I was nine is disappearing, everything more recently is becoming clearer.”

Vitalie didn’t know what she was talking about. “It is?”

“Yeah, it’s like I’m slowly developing hyperthymesia. Anything within the fifty-six year timeframe is far easier to recall than it ever was before.”

Vitalie stared at her. “Either that’s a feature that will eventually go away, or you’re different than me. None of my diary videos say anything about it, but we shouldn’t be surprised if it turns out Tertius’ saliva is affecting you differently, since you drank it first.”

Tertius flinched at this; being the cause of all of it.

Vitalie noticed this. “I’m absolving you of any wrongdoing, Mister Valerius. I’ve been around for four and a half billion years, yet my brain is the same size it always was. I have a limited number of neurons, with a limited number of neural connections. Maybe humans just weren’t meant to live as long as I have, because we certainly weren’t designed to. I probably would have lost my memories anyway, but it would have been unpredictable, and it could have had other negative effects.”

“Well,” Tertius began, “you’re the only one who’s lived this long, so there’s no way to know.”

“I’m not the only one,” Vitalie contended. “I don’t remember them now, but my diaries have mentioned other immortals, who were much older than I was when I first ended up in that universe.”

He widened his eyes. “Really?”

“Yeah, I don’t know what happened to them. They seemed to be doing okay, but I think it was taking a toll on them. I’m fine with who I am. I enjoy a perpetual clean slate, like a bad credit score after seven years.”

Tertius breathed in deeply. “Well, we still haven’t tried something.”

“Can you even restore memories?” Vitalie asked.

“I never have before,” Tertius said, “but I’ve also never tried. Ya know, I don’t think I’ve met anyone with amnesia before. If I can’t do anything, though, we can try to contact The Warrior.”

“Who’s that?”

“He can give you memories from an alternate timeline. He might not be able to restore you and Étude exactly as you should be, but he could come damn close. Basically, you might remember wearing a red shirt one day twenty-four years ago, but in this timeline, it was blue. That would be the only difference; not a big deal.”

“I don’t want him to do that to me,” Vitalie said.

“You don’t?” Étude asked her.

“No, like I said, it’s been billions of years. He probably couldn’t access anything that happened to me in the other universe, and I’m so far removed from my life in this universe, that he would be giving me the memories of a stranger. I know you two wanted me to come back, and just restart my life, but this isn’t my life anymore. I don’t know who it is you knew, but I’m someone else. I don’t need to know her, and I definitely need to be her. I really am fine. I hope your respect that.”

They stood in silence for a reverent moment. “Miss Einarsson?” Tertius offered.

“I would like you to try, and if you can’t, I would like to see if we can reach the Warrior. I’m not sure if it’s possible, though. As far as I know, he doesn’t have a temporal calling card.”

“I don’t think he does,” Tertius agreed, “but I know someone who does have one, who could make an introduction.”

“Temporal calling card?” Vitalie asked simply.

“All these people with time powers,” Étude began to explain. “Since we don’t all experience linear time, someone figured out how to communicate across time, but only with a select few. You have one, actually.” Étude pulled out one of the pennies she kept on her person at all times. “I set this on the table and deliberately utter, be the penny, and it summons you to me. You’re not a time traveler—or, at least, you weren’t—so I think you would have to be in the present moment.”

“I’m always in the present moment,” Vitalie joked. “Anyway, I’ll get out of your hair, so you can try to get your memories back.”

“No, can’t you stay?” Étude instinctively took Vitalie by the arm with affection.

Vitalie was less tentative about this than she was when she first returned. “I can do that,” she answered gracefully.

Tertius took two cushions from their chairs, dropped them to the floor, and sat down on one of them. He patted the other, indicating that Étude should do the same, facing him. He began breathing exercises, and asked her to match. “Relax,” he instructed.

Étude kept breathing, until they were perfectly in sync. Without him telling her, she started clearing her mind, and focusing on one thing: the tower they were in. It was an echo chamber, which could amplify anyone’s time power. If he wasn’t normally capable of restoring people’s memories, the tower might have been the only thing that could make it happen now. She could feel an energy pass back and forth between her and him. Her head felt cool, and maybe soft? It was kind of hard to describe. She just felt open, and available to accept knowledge in a way she didn’t know was possible. She felt a pair of hands cup her temples, then she started receiving a flood of memories. But they weren’t of her childhood; they were of her daughter’s. She could remember going to Earth to retrieve the Cosmic Sextant. Something went wrong with the ship on the way back, and she was flung all the way to Dardius. She met Newt Clemens, and many other people. She had a child, and had to escape with her back to Earth 1997. She raised her for years, taking breaks only to find Tertius his immortality water. She was essentially killed, so her body could be cryonically frozen, and restored later. She came out, made her way back to Proxima Doma, lived in peace for a time, then went back up to this very tower, where she died.

Étude opened her eyes.

“Did it work?” Vitalie asked. “Was that supposed to happen?”

Tertius opened his eyes too. He looked above Étude’s head, and she realized it was not his hands that were touching her. He scrambled back like a frightened rodent under the sudden kitchen light. “Oh my God.”

Étude slowly turned as the hands removed themselves from her head.

It was Nerakali Preston, which was the woman who initially had the power to blend memories from alternate realities. Years ago, the Warrior killed her, and stole this power for himself. Though, when one is dealing with time travelers, one can’t ever expect to never see someone they know to already be dead. “You’re welcome,” she said, almost clinically, but not coldly.

“What did you do?” Tertius asked. He was still profoundly scared of her.

Nerakali scoffed. “I did what you asked of me. Or rather, what you would have been going to ask me in the future.”

“Are you okay?” Tertius asked. “Did she really do it?”

“Yes,” Étude answered him. “Well, not exactly. I have to find my daughter. I have to find Cassidy.”

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Microstory 1120: Amanda Moss

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If there was one thing Amanda Moss would change about this world, it would be its borders. She grew up in a staunchly conservative household. Her parents were extremely in favor of building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. They considered themselves to be King Dumpster’s biggest fans, and nearly lost it when he was ousted from his position in 2020, having accomplished nothing positive in his entire political career. When you’re raised by extremists, you can either become helplessly indoctrinated to those same values, or you can use that as fuel to be more reasonable. Amanda chose the second at first, but then she started getting angrier and angrier with how things were going, and wanted to make a difference. She turned out to be extremist as well, though she would fall on the other side of the spectrum. There was nothing in this world worse than inequality, according to her. It was the cause of everyone’s problems. Health issues, environmental concerns, poverty; these were all ultimately sourced from the same thing. If everyone had everything they needed, and the system was designed to encourage this dynamic, no one would suffer. More importantly, no one would choose to be the cause of suffering. Amanda didn’t like seeing people in pain, and she believed everyone had the right to live wherever they wanted. She was always going to go above and beyond to help others, even if that meant breaking a few laws along the way...or a few dozen. Instead of building a wall, she decided to build bridges. She earned her license, and took up a job as a private pilot. She didn’t cater to the richest, instead advertising her services towards low-income people who were seeking to reconnect with loved ones who lived far away. If, for instance, a man could only find work in Georgia, but later learned of his mother’s illness all the way in Montana, Amanda would transport him home at an incredibly low rate. She lived a simple life, and spent the majority of her time up in the air. As she watched the world around her crumble, however, she determined that she wasn’t doing enough. There were refugees from the other side of arbitrary national barriers who needed to find safety. So she became a human smuggler, though she preferred the term specialized relocator. She moved people from all over Central and South America, into the United States, and Canada. She was smart and careful. As far as she knew, there wasn’t even a whisper in law enforcement that she existed. She never felt like anyone was onto her, or investigating her deeds. She was getting away with it. But then she chose two clients on a whim who were desperate for her help, but had no clue that she happened to be in the exact right business. They didn’t mean to expose her. In fact, the man they were running from wouldn’t have wanted her to be exposed either. As bad of a person as he was, his politics aligned with hers pretty well. Unfortunately, once he started on his path to retaliation, no one could stop it; not even him. So, in a turn of the tables, Amanda was rescued herself, and relocated to Sanctuary on Dardius, where she continued to live in peace. She later accepted the role of Transportation Administrator for the whole planet, using her skills to rescue thousands of others from their dangerous lives on Earth.

Microstory 1119: Norberto Pastore

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Norberto Arcangelo Pastore was always eager to please, always underappreciated, and always willing to do the jobs that no one else wanted. He just kept trying, but he was uncoordinated, and socially awkward. Every day came with the same or similar challenges, but he simply could not figure them out. He was at a disadvantage from the start, though, because his parents were so much worse. They were masters at cultural appropriation, which is why he possessed three Italian names, without having so much as one drop of Italian blood in his body. Upon their marriage, they actually both changed their surname, to reflect some misguided belief that their lives would be better if others thought of them as foreign. Don’t try to understand it. They adopted vaguely transatlantic accents, and made up stories about their heritage. Why they did this is anyone’s guess, but they were clearly mentally unstable; a fact which presented itself in a number of ways as Norberto was growing up. They never mistreated, or abused, him. They were always around, and liked to help, but they were incompetent, and it almost would have been better if he had raised himself. They contradicted and disregarded his school assignments. He desperately tried to receive high marks, but was unable to with all of his parents’ meddling. In the end, he had to realize that he was better off alone, and cut ties with them when he finally graduated from high school at the age of 20. He didn’t go to college, and suffered through many low-paying jobs of menial labor, all the while looking for at least one new parental figure. He felt like he found it when he started working for a woman named Volpsidia Raske. She was developing a cutting edge biotechnology company, using her psychic powers to engineer creatures that would be capable of her gifts. He became staunchly loyal, and possibly unhealthily attached to her. She did not accept his attempts to make her his surrogate mother—only partially because he wasn’t much younger than her—but she also didn’t explicitly reject them. She appreciated having someone around who would always do whatever she wanted, and he conflated that with true love, because his fragile mind couldn’t survive without it. He finally found someone who knew what she was doing, and that was enough.

The true test of his dedication came when he was sent on a deep undercover mission, for which he was barely qualified. A probationary member of one of the New Gangs of Kansas City named Krakken reportedly discovered one of Volpsidia’s lab experiments out in the wild. She had not been made aware that the animal had even escaped, so she had to fire a team of five scientists for their inadequacy. By the time Norberto managed to get close enough to meet this Krakken, it appeared that he had long ago forfeited the animal, though he did not say where. So Norberto was forced to join his gang as well, and prove himself with street graffiti. As luck would have it, he was not the worst artist in the world, and was able to fake his way into the tagger gang without much question. He was never going to be in charge, but hopefully he would at least get close enough to Krakken to find out where he had left the animal. After all, they were the two newest members, so they had that much in common. Unfortunately, Norberto—known to the other taggers as Noobo—continued to struggle with his social skills, and spent far too much time with them than he should have. He only managed to find the animal when someone from the tracer gang happened to show up at their headquarters with it, looking for some assistance. Norberto uncharacteristically shrewdly stole the creature, and evaded capture for a fairly long time. The tracer was able to steal it back, but it was probably for the best. A rival company to Volpsidia’s was interested in the creation as well, and Norberto might not have been able to keep it from their grasp, whereas the tracer had years of training to help him protect it. The animal would wind up in the hands of the FBI, but under control of a mysterious and secret religious cult. Now was the time for him to come out of his shell, and redeem himself for all of his mistakes. He had to team up with the enemy to get the animal back, and Norberto would be given the chance to become an unlikely hero.

Microstory 1118: Richard Parker

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Richard Parker was not just a tiger. He was a man, with a brother named Saxon, and an eventual husband named Allen. While his brother would go on to become an astronaut, pioneering missions to Luna, Mars, and beyond, Richard chose to remain grounded. He met Allen on a camping trip in Colorado. At first, everything seemed normal. They were just two dudes who liked the outdoors, and ended up with tent lots next to each other. But the more they talked, the more they realized they had in common. Not only were they both on a lifelong mission to camp in every single state, but as if by magic, they had both already done this for the same four states. They lived on opposite sides of the country, though that didn’t matter. They went back to their separate lives, but kept in contact, and coordinated their vacation times, so they would always end up in the same place. After about a year of this, Allen found himself in between restaurant jobs, and decided it was time to move closer to his boyfriend. Richard was in construction, and could live just about anywhere, so they settled on Kansas City. A year later, they were living together, and still going on monthly trips, and a year after that, they were getting married. This all may sound nice and happy, but they had plenty of obstacles up ahead, because starting their lives together was just the beginning of their story. The beautiful early days of their marriage quickly descended into struggle and danger. It’s important to note that these were not the only versions of them. Similar events had transpired in an alternate timeline, but they had also met a woman named Ulinthra, who they ended up marrying as their third. She was a salmon, who lived each day twice, and used her gift to save as many lives as she could find in the newspaper. She did this with a partner named Reaver, but it would turn out they were both murderous psychopaths, who also used their gifts to hurt people, free of consequences. This timeline collapsed, giving way to a new one, in which Reaver attempted to prevent Richard and Allen from getting caught up in the death and drama by simply keeping them apart. But this was terrible as well, because they would end up alone, and separately working for Reaver anyway. It wasn’t until the next timeline after this that things started going well for the two of them, but that didn’t mean it was going to last forever. They soon found themselves once again in the world of time travelers, battling a powerful woman with psychic abilities. It would seem time did not want them to lead normal lives, and the history they don’t even remember would come back to haunt them when they were recruited to help stop Ulinthra yet again, this time many decades in the future. Then things got real crazy.

Microstory 1117: Opal Jolourvedin

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By absorbing all the powers of every mage in the world to finally end the war with the monsters, historical figure, Jayde Kovac ushered in a new era. Fortunately, while some monsters did survive that final attack, most were destroyed anyway. Unfortunately, the Mage Protectorate was destroyed as well. Most of the former mages survived, but they no longer possessed powers, which sent the planet into chaos. They would come to find out that these temporal abilities were not lost forever, though it would be a long time before they returned at full strength. For a while, all they had were people they referred to as mage remnants. Their powers were weak and unreliable; mere echoes of what their ancestors could once do. Opal Jolourvedin was not one of these people. She was a full mage, and in fact, quite a powerful one. The problem is that she didn’t realize this about herself. She knew that she could fix the present moment, like a magical undo button, but she never did figure out how much of reality she could alter. The universe is an uncertain place. Every decision you make springs a new reality, as does every decision anyone else makes, including the lowly cockroach. Opal had the ability to spontaneously draw forth the outcome of a decision that was never made, but could have been made, theoretically. Let’s say that a man is climbing a ladder, but is in too much of a hurry to get to the top. He rashly skips a rung, which causes him to slip, fall, break his neck, and die. With a snap of her fingers, Opal can elicit a timeline where he decides not to skip a rung, does not slip, does not fall, does not break his neck, and does not die. She doesn’t go back in time and warn him of his mistake. She doesn’t send her consciousness to his body, and force him to take a different path. She simply determines the best outcome of any situation, finds that outcome in an endless field of what are called microrealities, and then makes it so. For the most part, she is the only one aware that any change to the timeline has been made. According to everyone else, this is just what happened, and it was always going to have happened. She can, however, preserve certain people’s memories of the other timeline, just to give them a little perspective. After all, if they are not cognizant of what mistake they might have made, they may end up making a similar one later on, and she won’t necessarily be around to fix it for them. Again, she was never in a position to truly understand the magnitude of her power, but she would bear a son with the same gifts. He eventually made his way to Earth, and became...The Repairman.

Microstory 1116: Uma Kulkarni

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The world was a terrible place when Uma Kulkarni was born, but she would live long enough to see its salvation. She grew up with her family on Durus, which was a rogue planet that was hurtling towards Earth at the time. A group of people with special time powers attempted to avert this disaster, but they were unable to. Society continued after that, though in a severely deteriorated state. They blamed all of their problems on women, and eventually settled on what would retroactively be called a phallocracy, or in more positive terms, the First Republic. While it was in place, it was just called the Republic, to distinguish it from previous forms of government, like the despotocratic Smithtatorship, and the Mage Protectorate. Over the years, the reality about what had happened in history gave way to fear and paranoia. Books were not outright burned or outlawed, but they were gradually removed from view. The men in control knew that they would lose that control if the true accounts of history were publicly shunned. In order to keep people from even considering the possibility that their civilization was built on lies, they would have to quietly pretend that they were not lies. Uma’s family considered themselves to be the Stewards of Truth. They maintained a secret library collection of their own, and passed the forbidden knowledge down the generations, knowing that one day, someone would be in a position to use it. Men and women alike in the Kulkarni bloodline kept the faith, and worked hard at creating a resistance force known as the thicket. They weren’t only there to protect the inherent rights of women, but also to keep looking for a way to avoid the planet’s ultimate collision with Earth. As far as that bloodline went, it was Uma who was around when they finally met the woman who would both save them from this fate, and usher in a new era of equality. Hokusai Gimura arrived in a very small ship to look for her daughter. She was able to use this ship, in conjunction with a very powerful temporal object, to adjust the planet’s movement through space, and steer it away from Earth’s path. She couldn’t do this alone, however. Uma’s brother worked for the power grid, so she conscripted him to divert all power to the ship. Their heroics and defiance led them to assuming a number of leadership roles as the world attempted to move on from its troubled past. Uma helped facilitate transitions to the Provisional Government, and the Salmon Battalion Military State. She retired from service many years later, after working as the first Education Administrator in the Democratic Republic.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 27, 2234

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So named Project Stargate, also known as the Quantum Seeder Network, was a real thing. They were going to be sending truly massive module ships across the galaxy, on a course that would ultimately last tens of thousands of years. The idea was to build two gargantuan turtle shells; one for each of the two arbitrarily designated planes of the Milky Way Galaxy, which was relatively flat. Each turtle shell would break apart into four smaller pieces; one for each quadrant, with an origin point in the center of the Sagittarius A* black hole. These pieces would then break into smaller pieces, and then smaller pieces still, until you’re left with a seed plate. Each plate would be programmed to land somewhere in a solar system, and use the materials found there to make more interstellar ships, which would then spread out to the system’s nearest neighbors, up to twenty-eight.

The idea was to be able to instantly travel to any star system in a matter of seconds. This was not like its namesake, however, which feature actual gates that could open artificial wormholes for physical faster-than-light travel. This was quantum communication. No normal human would be able to reach distant stars using this technology. Biotechnological upgrades beyond a certain threshold were required to interface with a quantum messenger, which would then send one’s consciousness to the selected destination, and upload it to a surrogate body. They would then pilot this body around, able to see, hear, and feel everything they would if they were actually there in person. For the time being, the intention was to leave a constant connection, so that, if the system were to shut down, or something would go wrong on the other end, the traveler would simply revert to their real body. It was unclear whether it was safe enough to transfer one’s consciousness entirely, and completely sever any connection to the original substrate. When it came to consciousness transference on the whole, the nature of identity was always a moral, ethical, and philosophical concern. Of course, as a time traveler, Mateo was aware that it was possible to teleport to other planet by manipulating time. This was not universally known, however, so humans were given more believable limitations.

This endeavor would require constant calculations and recalculations in order to select the best candidates for landing. Local resources needed to be analyzed and synthesized, and failure rate needed to be determined. Alone, this would be impossible, even for an artificial superintelligence, because they would be operating blindly. No one was cognizant of  all the stars in the galaxy, because the majority of them were blocked from view from any one point while inside this galaxy. The only way one could potentially map the entirety of the Milky Way was to leave its confines, and see it from the empty space beyond. That was where Project Topdown came in. The plan was to construct two giant void telescope arrays, send them away, and use them to navigate the quantum seeders. If these telescopes were going to be able to stay ahead of these seeders, they needed to leave about ten years prior, which meant construction on them needed to begin now. Of course, this process was predominantly automated, but Kestral and Ishida were the humans assigned to monitor its progress, and be prepared to make creative decisions that may fall beyond the scope of the commanding AI. Weaver was still helping them.

With Ramses gone, it fell to Goswin to help foster the new Gatewood government. He was presently on a far away cylinder, on some diplomatic trip. So once again, Mateo couldn’t contribute much to the efforts. Nor could Cassidy. But the two of them weren’t speaking to each other at the moment. Mateo immediately regretted receiving a dance from her, and though it wasn’t her fault, he didn’t want to be reminded of his mistake. Leona was the love of his life, who had sacrificed so much for him. It wasn’t her fault either that they were so far separated. His anxiety was his own, and it was up to him to come up with healthy ways of relieving it. That relief could not be found in a three-minute song with Cassidy, nor anyone else in that capacity. It would seem that she did not feel the same way.

“I have something to show you.”

“I don’t want to see it,” Mateo said.

“I did nothing wrong.”

“I know, Cass. But I did, so please, just...just pretend it’s yesterday, or tomorrow, when I don’t exist.”

“I found something that could help you.”

He didn’t say anything.

“It has nothing to do with me,” she said. “I’m just he one who found it. I was going to ask someone else to show it to you, but I’m not a hundred percent certain you or I are allowed in that section of the building.”

“If you’re not sure, then we’re probably not, and I still don’t want to see it.”

She stomped her foot. “Mateo Alessandro Matic.”

“That’s not my middle name.”

“Stop dwelling on the past, and come with me. I will then leave you alone.”

He sighed. “Fine.”

They crawled out of the AOC, and into the building they were using as a command center. It wasn’t completely out of use, but their little group had been separated to other places. It served little function at this point. They rode the elevator up, then Cassidy led him down a twisty turny hallway, into one of the many rooms he had never entered before. It looked wholly unremarkable.

“What is it?”

“It’s a VR room.”

“So, what?”

“It doesn’t utilize hard coded programming.”

“Do they ever?” Mateo joked. He didn’t know what that meant.

“Yes. You don’t insert a cartridge, and play a program. This thing reads your mind, and generates an alternate reality for you to live in.”

“Like a dream?” It sounded just like a dream.

She nodded. “Like a dream, except you can be perfectly lucid in here, and it will set physical laws for you. The problem with a dream is that you’re in too much control. If, for instance, you become lucid, suddenly the things that are happening to you can be adjusted, and they’re no longer happening to you. That’s now how life works, though. You’re not in control of every aspect of it, which makes every experience actually worth experiencing. I’ve not tried this myself, but the instructional video made it sound promising.”

“Okay...” He still didn’t see the point of being here.

“You know what Leona looks like, and how she acts. You know how she would react to a given situation, or what she would think of your choices.”

“Way to rub it in.”

“I’m not talking about the lapdance. Let the dance go. With this system, you can see her again. Obviously, it won’t really be her, but it will be a damn close approximation. This is especially true since you know her so well. If you were to try this with some random person, or a celebrity, like James van der Beek, it wouldn’t work so well, because you’ve never met him.”

“Yes, I have.”

“What?”

“I’ve met James Van Der Beek.”

“What! When?”

“It’s this whole thing with a fake cooking show; don’t worry about it.”

“This is all I’m worrying about. That man is my idol.”

“Was,” Mateo corrected.

“You don’t know that.” This was true. “Okay,” Cassidy went on. “I told you I would leave you alone, and I will. You are free to create your reality, or just go back to sulking in the ship. I also found a vertical wind tunnel. I believe it was designed for research purposes, but we could ask one of the geniuses to make it safe for indoor skydiving, if that’s more to your liking.”

“No, that’s quite all right.”

Cassidy gave a curtsy, then turned to walk away.

“Thank you.”

She stopped for a moment, but didn’t turn back around, and didn’t say anything. Then she left.

Mateo started to watch the instructional video, but quickly ignored it, and just sat down in the chair, thinking he understood how it worked. Once he activated the system, he felt a sharp pain in the back of his head, and everything went black for a second. A picture then came into focus. He was standing on the side of the hill that he and Leona seemed to share on some psychic level. She was not there, though. Instead, he was facing an entity they had met many, many years ago named Mirage.

“What is this?” Mateo asked. “Why did I conjure you?”

“You didn’t conjure me,” Mirage said with some earnest. “I’m really here, and I don’t have much time. In order for the virtual reality system to work, you have to have be transhumanistic.”

“Like the stargates?”

“Exactly.”

“So...”

“It had to insert three tiny chips into your brain, so that you could interact with the constructed environment. This goes against the wishes of the powers that be. If these chips remain, you will fall off your pattern for good, and they will not be able to get you back on it.”

“So they won’t let that happen.”

“No. They’re already figuring out how to pull you out of here, should I not comply, and pull you out myself within a timely manner.”

“Did you...did you manipulate Cassidy to bring me here.”

Mirage pretended to sigh. “I was trying to get her here, actually. I’ve been wanting to speak with her. But until then, I might as well tell you that everything you’ve been feeling is nonsense. I put you on Gatewood, because—”

“What the hell do you mean that you put me on Gatewood?”

“I don’t have time to explain myself. I can see the timestream, and I’ve been trying to correct what I know will become major mistakes. This is a delicate period in history; the human expansion to the nearest stars. Lots of things go wrong, and it would seem as though the powers have not planned on doing anything to help it. So I’ve stepped up. I needed Kestral and Ishida here to finish building the cylinders. I needed Ramses here to go with Greer to Kolob.”

“What’s Kolob?”

“That’s what the Maramon are going to call their new home planet.”

“Okay, go on.”

“The point is that everyone has a part to play, and though I would never say yours is the most important, it is still important. Serif’s actions, for instance, were highly dependent on her connection to you. Leona’s mission on Varkas Reflex doesn’t work if she’s not stressed out by being separated from you. You may feel useless, but you are not, and it’s important that you understand that.”

“I don’t. I don’t understand that. If you’re as powerful as the—”

“I’m not as powerful as them,” now she interrupted him. “I’m not even as powerful as Lincoln was. I require a lot of help, and you are part of that puzzle.”

He didn’t say anything.

“That’s okay. You’ll get there eventually.” She paused a moment. “Listen, I have two more things to tell you. First, I would love it if you strongly suggested to Miss Long that she come try this VR room out for herself. If you think she won’t come if you tell her about me, then don’t. I can’t force you to do anything, which is one major difference between me and the powers that be. All I can do is ask nicely. If she doesn’t want to come, then so be it. I just hope the future unravels as it should. Secondly, I do have a mission for you that—you’re not the only one who could do it—but the others are busy, and it does happen to land on your day. You would be saving a life.”

“Go ahead and tell me what it is,” Mateo urged, getting the feeling that the VR program was about to end on its own.

“Cylinder Two, row 56, arcology 24, floor 83, spoke six, unit A-11, at 13 o’clock central.”

“What am I meant to do there?”

“I need you to—” She was cut off, and Mateo was promptly expelled back to the real world.

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