Source Variant: Painting the Forth Bridge (Part VII)

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Saxon’s idea was to make their McIver hats turn them invisible. Whenever one of the natives was discovered having missed daily boulder god worship, they would step in front of them, and take the hit themselves, to prevent anyone else from getting hurt. They were wearing some padding, but they didn’t bring any special bullet-resistant vest with them, or anything. So it wasn’t a whole lot of fun, but it eventually did the trick. Their constant misses caused the Orothsew to believe that their means of punishment was not appreciated by the boulder. It took a few times for it to really sink in that this wasn’t just a fluke, or weirdly powerful gusts of wind. There was one particularly devout rock worshiper who wouldn’t accept it, though. He just kept throwing rocks at people, even going so far as to throw them at former victims who he figured were still not committed enough. Vearden!Three finally decided that the only way to deal with this bully was to start throwing rocks back at him. If this didn’t lead him to believe that God was angry with him, he at least didn’t like the taste of his own medicine. After a few days of monitoring this isolated group of Orothsew, Saga!Two, Vearden!Three, and Saxon stepped back into their shuttle, and flew off. They traveled really far in time, but not very far in space. They ended up landing exactly where they were before, but two hundred years later.

The three of them stay in the shuttle for awhile. It takes a few minutes for it to reconnect with the system. They need to find out what’s been going on before they do anything. After the update, they start looking through the historical records. The former nomads, turned rock worshipers, have now dropped all rock-worship, and have founded a new culture. And it’s all their fault. Again. As it turns out, the Orothsew they were trying to help—who have now distinguished themselves from the rest of the world by calling themselves Telijir—did not attribute the human intervention to the rock god at all. They now worship Ijirasa, a whispering god of the wind. While they were invisible, the humans still needed to communicate, but this was a difficult task since they were unable to see each other. They thought their voices were going unnoticed, but that was clearly not the case. All they did was replace one false deity with three others. Yeah, the Telijir were even able to tell that there were three of them. A cursory glance didn’t make it seem like their new religion was as violent as the one they followed before, but it still had to be stopped, right?

“What are we gonna do this time?” Saga!Two questions. “I feel like anything we try is just going to create a whole new set of problems that we can’t predict. I mean, if we’re only here every two centuries, we can’t keep trying to guide them in the right direction. I think this has grown beyond our capabilities.”

“Do we even need to do anything?” Vearden!Three asks.

“Why wouldn’t we?” Saxon asks. “This is our doing.”

“Right,” Vearden!Three agees, “but the Telijir haven’t heard whispers since we were here. Yet they still believe. I kinda think that’s on them.”

“Never underestimate the power of conviction,” Saga!Two says. “According to these notes, the Telijir still hear whispers all the time.”

Vearden!Three dismisses this with his hand. “We know they’re making it up. Every time a Christian claims to see a bush that burns but isn’t consumed; or a Buddhist claims to have found enlightenment—it’s all just bullshit. There is no God, on any planet, and anyone who claims to have uncovered evidence of such is only doing so to stop themselves from feeling like shit about their lives. They want to believe there’s some higher power, not to take comfort in their divine control, but so they don’t have to admit that their predecessors duped them into believing such obvious nonsense in the first place. No one wants to acknowledge that it isn’t real, and they’re just being stupid. Should we try to convince the Telijir that they’re wrong? Of course not.

“People spent a lot of time and energy on Earth trying to debunk other people’s myths, and they didn’t make one step of progress. No follower has ever been told they’re wrong, and been, like, yeah, ya know what? I think you’re right. Sure, they switched religions all the time, because some invading force conquered them, and they didn’t have a choice, but it never really took hold until the next generations. Why? Because people don’t change; they just die off, and make room for different people, with different ideas. That’s the only reason religion faded away on Earth. No one changed their minds; they were just increasingly less skilled at getting their children to believe as strongly as them. So why should we refuse to help? Because we’ve already seen that it’s a fruitless pursuit, and is more work than it’s worth. The only thing we can do is find some other lie to grapple onto. They won’t become rational overnight. The best we can do is hope it gets better for them faster than it did for us.”

“This is a complete one-eighty from your position last time,” Saga!Two points out.

“That was two hundred years ago,” Vearden!Three says.

“It was a week,” Saxon corrects, though it didn’t need to be said.

“Maybe I changed my mind after all those people threw a bunch of rocks at me.”

“I thought you said people don’t change their minds.” Saxon actually isn’t happy about noting the contradiction.

“I meant that people don’t change their minds about their worldview,” Vearden!Three argues, “but they gain perspective all the time.”

“Vearden,” Saga!Two begins. “How did you get to be so cynical? Was it really the rocks?”

“I’m just sick of this,” Vearden!Three begins. “When I was young, I kept looking for my purpose. With no prompting, I just knew there was something about the world that was hidden from most people. It was by random chance that I stumbled upon the truth. Now I know none of it matters. Nothing we do is going to make any real difference. So why have we been sent to this world? To keep fighting against the inevitable? Count me out; I ain’t doin’ shit this time. May the powers that be strike me down if my decision angers them. I don’t care anymore.”

During Vearden!Three’s last speech, Saxon was looking through the window. Once it’s over, he stands up, and tries to get a better view of something out there.

“What is it, Saxon?” Saga!Two asks.

“Do you think it’s possible that the Orothsew built a monument that’s strikingly similar to Stonehenge on Earth?” he wonders.

“You’re joking.” Saga!Two stands up, and gently moves Saxon out of the way, so she can see what he’s talking about. “That’s the real Stonehenge.” She engages the exit door. “Come on, Vearden!Three. There’s someone I would like you to meet.”

The three of them leave the shuttle, and head for the standing stones. The Delegator is waiting for them in the center with a neutral smile. “Ah, there you are. Thank you for coming.”

“Who are you?” Saxon asks.

“My name is The Delegator. I handle salmon assignments; when necessary, that is. Some salmon don’t need to speak with anyone to do their jobs. They figure out what’s expected of them, and do it with no instructions. Others can be confused, resistant, or just need a little proof that they are indeed there for a reason, and it’s not all just a random occurrence.”

“Which is it for us?” Vearden!Three questions. “Why are you here now?”

“It’s a little of all three. Saga!Two, you seem to be having a little trouble making decisions. Vearden!Three, you’ve obviously become quite jaded about this whole thing. And Saxon, you like facts. You’re a facts guy. I’m a fact. I’m here, and you’re here, and this planet needs you. Those are the facts.”

“Why are the powers that be having us show up every two hundred years, and not a year too soon. That actually is random,” Saga!Two complains. “It may seem like a pattern, but socio-political events don’t follow it, so neither should we.”

“You’re right,” the Delegator begins, “it’s a temporal pattern, but not a logical one. But that’s how they all work. We got a few guys who jump through time based on temperature scales, as they convert from Fahrenheit, Celsius, and Kelvin. We have another group that only lives during repdigit years; year eleven, year two hundred and twenty-two, year three thousand three hundred and thirty-three, and everything in between. One guy only exists on Tuesdays, and July. His name is JB. Anyway, that’s part of the suspense, and it mirrors real life more than you would think.” He starts pacing around demonstratively, like a college professor in the middle of a lecture. “The question that everyone should be asking themselves, whether salmon, or choosing one, or just regular human, is what do I do with the time that I’ve been allotted? The question doesn’t really apply to immortals, so don’t worry about them. Most fully biological people know, assuming nothing goes wrong, that they’re gonna live about eighty years; maybe a hundred. They have to grow, mature, learn, become wise, contribute positively to society, and leave a legacy. Some do better than others, but that’s besides the point. They all ask themselves the question, whether they’re conscious of it, or not.

“You have to ask yourself this as well. Just because you’re not limited to the linear eighty years doesn’t mean you don’t have a limit at all. You have a few days, maybe weeks, to help these people. You have to help them in any way that’s possible, based on where they are in their development right now. You can’t help them in fifty years, or a hundred and fifty. You’re gonna come back in two hundred. And when you do, you’re gonna try to help them again. Neither I nor the powers that be are going to tell you how to do that. They don’t..know. They’re not giving it any thought. They, honestly, probably don’t really care. They’re sort of...into math. Your appearances are mathematical, and they wanna see how that turns out. What you do here is totally up to you, but once you decide what your job is, the powers are going to wait until it’s done before forcing you to move on. This is how it’s been working, even if you didn’t realize it. So Mister Haywood, you intend to sit this one out?”

“Yes.” Nothing the Delegator said has changed Vearden!Three’s mind.

“You can’t,” the Delegator says definitively. “If you attempt to do nothing, you’ll be stuck here. You’ll be stuck here...for eighty years. Do you understand what I’m saying? Your life will mean nothing. You will have failed to answer your question appropriately. What are you going to do with the time you’ve been allotted cannot be answered with nothing of value.”

“So what if I’m stuck here?” Vearden!Three begins to argue. “What’s the difference between living eighty years in one place, and living eighty years jumping through time. That might be preferable anyway.”

“If you do your job, you are not going to be living here for eighty years.” The Delegator chuckles. “My God, man, that’s hundreds of thousands of years in realtime. How long do you think civilizations survive? This is your last assignment. Did you not realize that?”

“No,” Saga!Two says. “Why would we know that?”

“What does that mean?” Saxon asks.

“When you’re finished here, we’re going to let you live out the rest of your lives in Havenverse.” The Delegator pretends that this is a reasonably sufficient explanation.

“What the hell is that?” Vearden!Three asks angrily.

“It’s safe,” the Delegator answers. “Saga!Two, you will be reunited with your daughter. Vearden!Three, you will find where you belong. And Saxon?”

Saxon smiles with one side of his face, curious about the answer. He’s never really seemed to know what he’s wanted out of life, but safe has never been it.

The Delegator continues, “Saxon, we’ll let you go wherever you want, I guess. The powers that be have no real control over you. We’ve let you tag along with the other two, because we recognize your value, but you can quit anytime.”

“No, thank you,” Saxon says politely.

They stand in silence for a few moments.

“Well.” Vearden!Three finally says, but waits another moment to find all his words. “Any suggestions for this point in time? What could we do to help the Orothsew, and provoke the next jump?” He seems to have accepted his role.

The Delegator thinks about this. “You could be a bridge.”

“A bridge between what and what?” Saga!Two asks.

“Two cultures have appeared on this continent. They originated from the same one forty-seven, but they’ve been separate for centuries. Perhaps it is time to bring them back together.”

That’s not the worst idea ever.

The Delegator speaks again, “but that really is but a suggestion; one I’ve just now thought of. It’s not a mandate. You do what you wish.” With that, he disappears, along with all of Stonehenge.

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Microstory 1225: Irving Hummel

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Irving Hummel was a reality corruptor, but not an exceptionally good one. His ability to alter reality was fairly limited, and often only significantly impacted his own life. If he wasn’t careful, any changes he made could quite easily revert, and he might not be strong enough to change them back to the way he wanted. He wasn’t that great of a person in general, and the power he wielded only made him worse. He was by no means evil, but he lacked both drive and skill. Ambition wasn’t a problem, but that and drive are not the same concept. He wanted to do great things, and to be recognized for them, but he didn’t want to put in the effort. And so, thanks to his time power, he forced the world to become what he needed in order to realize his dreams. He barely scraped by at the police academy, but he did make it, and he didn’t do anything bad to get there. Unfortunately, he just couldn’t reach any of his goals beyond that. He was stuck as a regular uniformed officer, and it wasn’t looking like things were going to get better, so he changed them. He arbitrarily turned himself into a Sergeant. It was no Lieutenant, or Captain, but it was kind of the best he could muster. You see, the modifications he could make to reality had to have some kind of plausible basis. He couldn’t just make himself king of the world, because no world would accept him as such. He did have the potential to become a sergeant, if only he worked harder at it, but that would always be the best he could do. The problem—though he wasn’t sure he saw it like this—was that his corruptions also had an effect on his personality. He couldn’t just slip his mind into his new life. He had to become the person he would be if he had done it in a more conventional way, and apparently, the more conventional way led him down a somewhat darker path.

Sergeant Hummel was a lot grumpier and harder to get along with than Officer Hummel. He was snarky, and short with people, and constantly pushed them away. Even though he could still remember his life before the corruption, he couldn’t help but adopt this new behavior, and start treating people poorly. There was only one person he knew who could see through him. A colleague of his evidently had his own temporal power. It was immediately clear to Irving that Detective Bran could see the discrepancies between the two conflicting realities. He didn’t want to let on that he was not only fully aware of the changes as well, but that he was responsible for them. Well, he didn’t think he was responsible for all the changes. Bran was regularly concerned about the town literally shrinking in size with no logical explanation, but Irving had no clue what he was talking about, and couldn’t believe that it had anything to do with him. He just kept doing his thing; transforming himself into what he hoped was a better person, eventually faltering, and going back to the way he was, and then trying again once he was strong enough. In the end, none of his efforts mattered. Irving was in the wrong part of town when the phenomenon Bran kept talking about swallowed it up. Presumably because of his own ability, Irving managed to survive the trip through the portal, and landed on a different planet entirely, as one of very few who weren’t torn apart, and scattered throughout time. Now what was he going to do? There was no reality where this dead world wasn’t a terrible place to live.

Microstory 1224: Vito Bulgari

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Vito Bulgari was born on Durus in 2161, which meant he had no recollection of how the world was during the phallocratic state. He was never taught to distrust women, or disrespect people in general. To him, such notions belonged in the past, and he had no use for them. But his outlook on what makes a decent society wasn’t the only thing different about him. After the Mage Protectorate fell, devastated by the final battle against the temporal monsters, people were only ever born with weak powers, if any. They were deemed mage remnants, and weren’t generally strong enough to do much good with their abilities. Once Hokusai Gimura saved the planet from colliding with Earth, however, something changed. While a few full paramounts were born with all the strength that they would have had if they were regular choosing ones on Earth, it did not become common until Vito’s generation. Like Alyssa McIver and Joanna Zegers, Vito had the ability to turn invisible. His power fell somewhere in the middle of those two. He could turn visible whenever he wanted, and also make other people and objects visible, but he wasn’t capable of making them look like other things. Alyssa was an illusionist, who could substitute whatever she wanted in place of whatever was actually there, while Vito was only able to make something look like it wasn’t there at all. When the small interstellar ship, The Elizabeth Warren was preparing to return to Earth, a movement formed on Durus, of people who felt entitled to become passengers. Despite their inappropriate means of making their desire known, many of them were ultimately accepted into the vessel. Space was made to accommodate them using pocket dimensions. Vito was not one of these people. He did not even hear about it until the future-passengers had taken some of the crew hostage in order to force the issue. He applied for transport with the Durune government once he discovered it to be a possibility. The crew of the ship was so impressed with him for having been the only person in the entire world to think of that, so they let him in as well. They even excluded another hopeful passenger, just to make room. Vito went on to have an adventurous life. His ability—and abilities, once he was transformed into something greater—got him into trouble as often as they got him out of it, but he never used them for selfish reasons, or to harm the innocent. His decency and compassion earned him the role of second-in-command of a special machine that could travel to other universes. Captain Cabral felt that he was the only one who could be trusted with the responsibility, and he did not let her down. He went on to be a major force for change, taking down more white monsters by himself across the bulkverse than anyone could count. He became a legend on many worlds as a hero.

Microstory 1223: Lanolin Foley

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Until it found its home star to orbit, there was never a time when the planet of Durus was not at war. It was at war when the first of the Springfielders arrived on the Deathfall, and had to battle frightening temporal monsters. It was at war when the Mage Protectorate formed, and started enforcing boundaries against these monsters. It was at war again after those monsters were finally defeated, and a new threat rose to power. In the hunt for votes, a group of small men grew bold, and started making complaints about the women of history. They didn’t start out explicitly stating that women were inferior, but they certainly catered to a demographic that already believed that. They just kept adding more and more outrageous statements to their repertoire, and increasing their numbers, until there was no hope in reasoning with them. They played on the worst fears of some of the least decent people in the world, and that was enough to make dramatic and terrible changes. The war continued as the rebellion against this tyranny did everything it could to put a stop to it. Unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of places to hide on Durus. Sure, only a tiny fraction of the surface was settled, but that was for a very good reason. There was only a single source of water, in a region known as Watershed. It never stopped raining, and it was extremely difficult to get to. A system of pipes had to be constructed to accommodate the population beyond its original several hundred, because there was almost no land within kilometers of the area. The rebels had to find somewhere else to live, and set up a convoluted system of water theft just to survive. They chose a region called the thicket, which was what they themselves came to be called. There was plantlife for minimal cover, which survived on what little moisture the wind carried over to it, but none of it was edible, and conditions were terrible. The Thicket spent so much time just making sure their people didn’t die that they didn’t have any time to actually fight against their oppressors. Lanolin Foley wanted to do things differently. She never planned on becoming the leader, but she knew she could do it when the responsibility fell to her. The cause was important, to her, and to the world at large. This was her chance to effect change in a way her predecessors never could. Though she retained the name, she moved their operations out of the thicket, and into the city. The government hadn’t been spending many resources catching them when they weren’t really doing anything except barely scraping by, and when Lanolin reintegrated the rebels into society, the government still didn’t do anything, because they did not know about it. Gradually, things began to get better. It was easier to find sympathizers than The Thicket ever knew. They had spent so much time in isolation that they didn’t realize things had already been changing, at least for the general population. With help, Lanolin ushered in a new era, and paved the way for people like Ludvig to keep the torches burning, and find peace on Durus.

Microstory 1222: Ludvig Portillion

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While the end of the phallocracy on Durus was suddenly brought about by a visitor from Earth who refused to accept the status quo, her arrival was not the only thing that brought the system down. Women had been living under oppression for over sixty-five years, and a lot had changed since the new rules were first implemented. For one, everyone responsible for the new world order was dead, leaving their descendants to decide for themselves whether they still agreed with their ways. For the most part, the system held up on its own. Anyone who disagreed with it feared retaliation for voicing their concerns, so they simply kept quiet. Active rebels were few and far between, but there were even more people who secretly supported them, and needed but a push to stand against the injustice. Ludvig Portillion was one of these people. He didn’t see women as inferior, but he also didn’t think he could do anything to help. He was born into a world that not only mistreated over half its population, but also into one that discouraged questioning the government, or coming to one’s own conclusions. It wasn’t tyrannical. Criticism—by men, at least—was usually met with dismissal, rather than explicit punishment, but it certainly wasn’t a democracy, and it wasn’t set up with sufficient change-making procedures. The truth was that Ludvig thought he was doing everything he could when he pursued a relationship with Loa Nielsen. Her father, Anchor was infamous for his understanding of the progressive Earthan culture, and thusly developed empathy for the female condition. Ludvig thought that, by courting a strong and independent woman, he was showing that he wasn’t afraid of female independence, nor would he attempt to take control over her. He also thought that being around both Loa and her father made him a better person. He never considered himself to be a bad guy, and the women who knew him didn’t either. It just took him too long to realize that, since he wasn’t really part of the solution, he was still technically part of the problem. He could have done more. Treating this one woman fairly, was the absolute bare minimum, and wasn’t nearly enough to demonstrate his goodness, let alone make the world a better place. Fortunately, he came to have an opportunity to contribute positively. After Hokusai Gimura came to the planet, and changed everything about it, Ludvig stepped up. He raised his voice, in support of progressive changes, and against any who would see society crumble back down to the way it was. And by his words, along with the words and actions of many others, the world did finally become its best self.

Microstory 1221: Sanaa Karimi

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Sanaa Karimi belonged to a bloodline of telepaths that were specifically designated The Casters. The first girl to come of age after the death of the last Caster—which was usually the grandmother—will have the ability to communicate with others on a psychic level. Each individual’s strength and range varies from woman to woman, and will not follow any sort of pattern. Some are better than others, and there appears to be no reason for this. Most choosing ones do not not come from a bloodline, so understanding of it is limited. Sanaa ended up being the most powerful in all her family history, essentially sharing her power with The Emissary. Like him, she could reach out to people in other universes, though because of her personality, didn’t really use it all that much, and it never occurred to her to try to speak with the powers that be. In fact, she didn’t much care to use her ability at all, because she was grouchy, and somewhat misanthropic, so holding conversations with others just wasn’t her thing. People often sought her out to send messages to each other, and she never demanded payment for it, but she certainly would have preferred it if they just left her alone. There was kind of this unwritten rule in her family that no Caster was allowed to time travel, because there was meant to always be one of them at a time. This meant no overlap, and no gaps. But Sanaa never did like following rules. A series of events forced her to throw in with a group of women she would ultimately come to know as her friends. They encouraged her to relax, and be more personable; not generally through deliberate moral lessons, but just because they accepted her in a way that no one before had. Okay, maybe Leona tried to teach her a few lessons, but the others mostly just let her be herself, while simultaneously showing her that she didn’t have to be so guarded around them. It was for them that she sacrificed her safety and life, and she didn’t regret it one bit.

On a nearby planet called Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, she and her friends discovered a hidden cave. It acted both as a portal to Earth centuries ago, and also a time trap, where time moved much slower than it did outside. This was a dangerous thing to exist, for either planet, so she agreed to cross over, and destroy Earth’s entrance. They made a plan to bring her back once she was done, but this wasn’t what happened. As soon as she stepped through to the other side, Sanaa lost her psychic ability. Though she wasn’t specifically told it would happen, the stories her ancestors passed down over the years implied that this was exactly why time travel was forbidden; that their link to the cosmos was directly dependent on their own respective time periods. She suddenly saw that she could live her life free from the thing she hated most about it, and she was worried trying to go back would ruin that. But this wasn’t her only reason for scrapping their plan. She never had any intention of returning to her life on Bida. She liked her new friends, and was very appreciative of how patient and kind Leona had been with her, but it was time to move on. To make it easier, she decided to make a clean break. She wrote a note, and made sure it would be delivered to the exact right place, at the exact right time, for her friends to read it almost a millennium later. She didn’t want them trying to get her back; not just because this risked her freedom from the gift, but also because it was dangerous for them. She didn’t always stay in the same time period, and in fact, was worried her power might come back if she didn’t keep moving, but she quite purposefully avoided her original lifetime, with a good fifty year padding on either side, just to be safe. Years later, from her perspective, she sent a second message to her friends, letting them know that she ended up living a good life, and wished only that she could have seen them again.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 17, 2255

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During Leona’s interim year, Trinity received a letter in Sanaa’s handwriting, urging them to not look for her. She didn’t explain what had happened to her, or where she had gone, but she was clear that their plan had worked. She safely made it to the other side of the time cave, and filled it in so that no one else could pass. She implied an Earthan had aided her in this mission, but didn’t explicitly say who or why. She seemed to know that someone had blasted the Bida-side entrance for them, and she didn’t want them trying to dig it up again. According to her, this was the best outcome. Again, vaguely, Sanaa made it seem like Leona would never see her again. That was sad, but it was also not the first time it had happened. Even with all this travel, there were still some people she would forever miss. The last thing Sanaa said was that Leona should be happy, for by the time she would be reading the letter, Mateo should have finally showed up. She was right.

The Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was sitting in the hangar, right next to Radiant Lightning. It had arrived a couple months ago, but of course, neither Leona nor Mateo were there at the time. As she was exiting her quarters, he was exiting their ship, followed by the mysterious Cassidy, whose presence Leona never fully understood. She ignored this for a moment, and ran up to hug her husband. It had only been ten days for them, but that was long enough. They held each other in the embrace for a good three minutes before the rest of their now much larger group came in, and something distracted Leona.

“Pribadium! When did you get here?”

“I was on the AOC,” Pribadium explained. “Arcadia used me as part of the punishment for you crashing your own wedding.”

“Oh. That explains it...kind of.” There were still a lot of questions to be asked and answered. They spent the next couple of hours either eating, or just sitting around the large dining table. There was so much to catch up on, including a lot of information from before the wedding that Leona and Mateo just hadn’t had enough time to go over. All the while, Leona noticed that Weaver kept staring at the two ships on the other side of the large space.

Trinity noticed this as well. “Weaver, what is it?”

“What are the dimensions of that thing?”

Leona eyed it, trying to remember. “Uh...the passenger tube is about one-point-four meters wide, I think. It’s three meters tall, but with all the instrumentation, there’s still only enough space for one person. Why?”

“What about the inverted umbrella thing?”

“The main engine?” Trinity confirmed. “A little over six and a half meters in diameter. What are you thinking?”

Weaver kept staring at them. “They fit together. They fit together perfectly.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your passenger tube is about as wide as the AOC’s antimatter fusion drive.” Weaver held both her hands into claws, and visualized maneuvering the two ships in different formations. She appeared to be right. It was like they were built to fit together. It could be the easiest way to incorporate the reframe engine into the AOC.

“How long might that take you?” Trinity wondered.

“I need to study the engine first,” Weaver figured. “I guess it could take two years, because of Mateo and Leona’s temporal restrictions. I would hope to have it done in under a year, though.”

“That might be a little too soon anyway,” Leona said. “I’m still hoping Sanaa shows up, having lost Trinity’s picture. We still have a couple more colony ships on their way over the next few years. Maybe she just had to hitch a ride with someone else.”

Everyone got quiet. No one believed Sanaa was coming back; via ship, magic photo, or by any other means. Mateo was supportive of her, but he wasn’t around before, so he didn’t know what he was talking about. “We’ll leave whenever you want,” he said, wrapping one arm around her shoulders. “I’m not even sure who would be coming with us.”

“I’m probably gonna stick around here for a couple decades,” Thor decided.

“I would like to go with Leona,” Briar said. “Or rather, I would like to leave this planet finally.”

“One for one,” Eight Point Seven pointed out. “It’s perfect.”

“You’re staying too?” Leona asked her.

“I like my job,” Eight Point Seven answered. “You don’t need me anymore.”

“No one needs friends,” Leona argued.

“This isn’t the end. I promised to get you back to Mateo. I’ve followed through, so focus on that. I’m immortal. We will meet again. It might be, like, six hundred and eighty years from now, but it’ll happen.”

Ellie gave Eight Point Seven a look.

“Speaking of which.” Mateo pulled Leona closer. “Could we talk in private?”

“Sure. Let’s go for a walk; burn off some of these calories.”

“Do you want me to come?” Cassidy asked as she was standing up with them.

Mateo shook his head, but didn’t say anything. That was weird, Leona couldn’t help but think.

This felt familiar. Mateo had taken her on a walk on Tribulation Island a few days ago when they were briefly reunited. There was something he was reluctant to tell her. Was this it? If it was, he was certainly taking his time spitting it out.

Leona had to break the ice, or she would go insane right here. “When I was a little girl, my parents let me get a dog. The Gelens, that is. She was so smart; picked up on most commands so quickly, but sometimes she refused to obey. Our friends and neighbors thought she was stupid, but it was actually quite the opposite. Think about it; if I ask you to ram your face into that tree, would you do it? Probably not. Is that ‘cause you’re too dumb to figure out how? Of course not. You wouldn’t do it, because you’re smart enough to know you don’t want to, and you know the consequences for insubordination are far less than the severe head trauma it would cause. Freya—that was her name, by the way; after the Norse goddess—was the same way. If she didn’t want to sit, then she didn’t, because the treat she would get for doing it wasn’t worth it for her in that particular moment.

“One of the hardest commands for me to teach her was to speak. I wanted her to bark when I said so, because I didn’t want her to bark at inappropriate times. And she knew that. She screamed her head off when she heard an owl three houses down in the middle of the night, but she never did it when I was around, so conditioning her was practically impossible. I couldn’t get Freya to associate my hand signal with her bark, because they rarely happened at the same time. I understand, Mateo, that whatever it is you want to tell me is something you’ve probably been talking about for the last x-number of days, but that doesn’t do me any good. I don’t just need you to speak. I need you to speak to me. Does that make sense?”

“I didn’t sleep with her,” Mateo said, fully grasping Leona’s moral lesson.

She waited for a moment. “Obviously you’re not trying to confess what you didn’t do. So what did you do?”

“She was a stripper before all this.”

“I assume you’re talking about Cassidy.”

“Yes.”

“So, she put on a show?”

“Just for me.”

Leona waited again, but not so he could explain in greater detail, but just because she didn’t know what to say.

“I’m sorry.”

“She touched you?”

“Yes.”

“You touched her?”

“A little. I had just watched your bottle messages. Seeing your...decline—for lack of a better term—in such a short amount of time was heartbreaking. For you, it was days, but I watched you feel worse and worse over the course of only minutes. I’m not saying that my witnessing your pain was more difficult than you actually going through it. It just made me feel so alone. This ship full of other people, but not the one person I really wanted to be there. I guess Cassidy was...as close as I thought I was gonna get. You know, you two aren’t so dissim—.”

“No, you don’t need to talk about your fetishes.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“You’re saying that you have a type,” Leona argued, “and that both of us fit into it. But that’s what makes it worse. You took a substitute, because I wasn’t there.”

“If you were there, I wouldn’t have needed anything!”

“Do you want to pretend you didn’t just say that.”

“Yes, please!”

“Do you want to stop yelling at me, since I didn’t do anything wrong?”

Mateo took a breath, and lowered his voice. “I do.”

“Now. You had a lapdance. It’s not illegal. I’ve had friends who bought their partners dances at the club for their birthdays. The problem is you didn’t tell me. You didn’t ask me, and you didn’t tell me. I’m guessing this happened before we returned to Tribulation Island, which means you actually did have an opportunity. That lost you points. I’m a hundred percent certain we’ll get through this, Mateo, but we’re not supposed to lie to each other anymore. I don’t even want to look at you, but there is someone I do want to talk to.”

“Eight Point Seven?” he presumed.

“You’re gonna run up ahead, or stay behind. I don’t care who gets there first, but we won’t be walking back to Homebase together. Because when I get back, I’m taking the shuttle, and I’m heading for another continent. I won’t return until 2257, and where you and I will stand at that point, I make no guarantees. I’ll be going there with someone else, but no, it won’t be Eight Point Seven.”

“Then who?”

Mateo wandered around the woods for a couple hours. He was only planning on giving her a thirty-minute head start, but he got lost somewhere along the way. When he returned to Homebase, Leona was already gone, but he had to do a headcount to find out who had gone with her. After Eight Point Seven, his first guess would have been Trinity, who was just a different version of Paige Turner. But nope, she was still here. Briar was too. Mateo hadn’t picked up on any sexual tension between them, but he was an eligible bachelor, and a part of Mateo was honestly hoping she was doing something that would alleviate his guilt. Weaver, Thor, Goswin, and Ellie. Everyone was accounted for, except for one. He had no reason to believe that Leona would hurt Cassidy, but if they were going to be alone together on the other side of the world, there was no telling what was going to happen.

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Source Variant: Steady as a Rock (Part VI)

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The three of them—Saga!Three, Vearden!Two, and Zektene—are stumped. After Vearden attempts to walk through the literal magic mirror, which sends him right back into the room, the others try as well, but also fail. There are two other exits in the facility that haven’t been buried by the robots to keep the planet’s natives from discovering the truth about their origins. They too are mirror portals, leaving the humans wondering what the powers that be are thinking. After this last jump forward two centuries, they continue to remain in the same linear series of moments in time. So their overlords want them to be in this time period, but they don’t want them to do anything while they’re here? That doesn’t make any sense.

Zektene gets on the computer. While the system was designed by Maramon engineers, before he left, Ramses showed them how to operate in English mode. Still, language isn’t the only problem. It was designed with Maramon psychology in mind, and they have a completely different outlook, which means understanding their computing logic can be tricky. She’s proven herself to be the most competent when it comes to grasping the fundamentals. “Perhaps there’s something wrong outside that we wouldn’t survive, like a dust storm, or something.” She checks a few readings. “Atmospheric pressure within nominal range. Composition same as it ever was. Immediate terrain hasn’t changed beyond predictions.”

“Can’t you just teleport us out there?” Saga!Three asks.

“Well, yeah, probably, but...should I?” Zektene answers, and asks.

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“Because there must be some reason we’re trapped here,” Vearden!Two says. “Maybe we’re not ready. We could try to practice more with the McIver hats.”

“We are great with the hats,” Saga!Three asserts. “You couldn’t find three better illusionists if you quantum duplicated two other versions of Alyssa herself.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Zektene disagrees.

Saga!Three sighs loudly.

“Why are you so anxious to go out there?” Vearden!Two asks her.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Saga!Three echoes herself.

“We have no personal interest in this mission, or missions, as it were. We’ve just been ordered to do this. We don’t gain anything from it ourselves, so what do we care? Maybe the powers are trying to give us a quick vacation, or maybe they think we just need a bit of extra sleep. Ya know what? Even if that’s not their intention, I wouldn’t mind a good rest. We might as well take advantage of the time, and then, if we’re feeling up to it, we can try to tackle this problem in the morning. You may wake up and stop seeing it as a problem.”

“I guess it’s hard to argue with that,” Saga!Three has to admit. He’s right in that anything they do on this planet is at someone else’s behest. Staying in the lab is apparently their present directive, so there’s no point in fighting it. They all wake up later with the same supposition. They’re not alone.

“Who is it, and where could they be hiding?” Zektene questions. “We didn’t search the whole facility when we came back, but we didn’t stay in one room either.”

“We don’t know that they’re hiding,” Vearden!Two reasons. “Maybe they’re hurt, or lost. They’re surely scared, since this type of advanced structure is nowhere near being built by the Gondilak.”

“If we’re not careful,” Saga!Three says, “they’ll start worshiping us. But first, we have to find them, so we can see what we’re dealing with. We’ll spli—”

“Nope,” Vearden!Two interrupts. “We’re not splitting up. It’s not that big of a place. We’ll go together.”

“Okay.”

So they start to search the facility, which turns out to be larger than they realized. Or maybe it wasn’t their fault. There’s one room that couldn’t have been there before without them knowing it. The lab has been growing. For whatever reason, the automated systems have been constructing more space. There’s no telling how large it’s become; not until they find the end of it. After twenty minutes of checking every single new room they come across, Vearden!Two stops them from leaving for the next one.

“I’ve been here before.”

“You have? That’s impossible,” Saga!Three contends. “This entire section is, like, a kilometer from the lab.”

“Not recently,” Vearden!Two begins to clarify. “In the future. I don’t know when in the future, but in the other reality, when the Gondilak capture me, they bring me here.”

“This is where they do experiments on you,” Zektene presses, “to see how come you had healing powers.”

“Yeah,” Vearden!Two confirms. “Yeah, the more I look at it, the more sure I am that this is it. It looks exactly like I remember.”

“I thought the Gondilak were less technologically advanced than the Orothsew,” Saga!Three recalls. “If they’ve discovered this place this early on, surely they would skyrocket in technology, and surpass them by centuries.”

Vearden!Two shakes his head. “I don’t think there’s anyone here. I don’t think that’s why we’re not allowed to go outside. I think the facility’s growth itself is a problem we need to solve.” He breathes deeply through his nostrils. “We have to find the edge of this, and now. We’re not super far from the nearest Gondilak village. If the robots are still building, they’ll eventually crash the party.”

And so they keep moving through the corridors, maybe a little faster now. They stop checking the rooms, because they’re confident that’s not the point. The sooner they find the edge, the sooner they can stop this. They’re not sure how they’re going to accomplish that, since none of them is educated or experienced enough to reprogram robots, but they can’t think about that right now. They just need answers. When they finally do reach the edge, their best guess is that they’re about a kilometer from the Gondilak village.

It’s happening a lot slower than they thought, but that shouldn’t come as a surprise to them. This might have been going on for the last two hundred years, so the entire planet would have been consumed if the bots were eating up resources as fast as they had imagined. Either way, though, something has to be done, and they have to figure out what that is. They don’t see any bots; or at least not what they’re used to. They just see this gray goo on the edge of the floor, walls, and ceiling. Little by little, it’s expanding, somehow converting the soil and rock it finds into building material, which it then incorporates into the preexisting structure.

“You can jump back to the main lab, right?” Vearden!Two asks Zektene.

“At any time, yes,” she replies.

“Okay,” Vearden!Two says. “Umm...cease production,” he orders the goo. “Cease...operations.”

“Shut down,” Saga!Three attempts.

“Computer!” Zektene starts. “End expansion program!”

The goo makes no indication that it’s so much as detected their presence, let alone understood their demands.

“All right,” Vearden!Two resolves. “You two go back to the main lab, and see what the command console has to say about this. Bring me back a radio, so we can stay in touch. I’ll monitor the situation here.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Zektene says. She takes Saga!Three by the arm, and teleports them both to main section. She grabs a radio, quickly delivers it to Vearden!Two, then returns to get to work.

Saga!Three watches, but isn’t able to help in any significant way. Perhaps they weren’t the most suited for this mission at all. What they need is an engineer, or hell, even a physicist. Somebody smart needs to be here to explain just what the hell is going on. They can’t stop it unless they understand how this became a problem in the first place.

“Looks like it hasn’t been an issue until somewhat recently. Let me see.” Zektene refocuses on the information she’s reading from the logs. “Fifty-six years. It was a mudslide. Horrible rains came, and threatened the entire village, so the bots were dispatched to build a secret retaining wall of some kind.” She did a bit more clicking. “There was a glitch in the code, and bots failed to deploy the delivery system. Apparently the gray goo we saw are nanobots. They would have built the wall faster, but they couldn’t get to the site on their own. Even without help, though,” she says, stepping back from the monitor, “the nanobots tried...and they’re still trying.”

“Any idea how we can stop it?” Vearden!Two asks from the other side.

“Let me look through this more,” Zektene requests. She continues to pore through the information, trying to find a shutdown protocol, or a loophole, or something.

“Do we really need to stop it?” Saga!Three asks after almost an hour of this. “What happened to the village. I thought you said the terrain hadn’t changed too much.”

“I guess the computer didn’t acknowledge this as a big enough change since it technically predicted it at one point,” Zektene says, still working with one half of her brain. “The village took a hit, and some did die, but the majority survived. They rebuilt a few hundred meters away, and actually...” She stops to read more. “They built their own wall. Huh. Yeah, I think we have to stop this. I get what you’re saying. Even decades late, the nanobots should know not to reveal themselves to the natives, but it’ll disrupt the structure they have there now. The nanobots just aren’t that smart. And there’s no way to shut them down, unless...”

“Unless what?” Vearden!Two asks.

“It’s morbid,” Zektene complains.

“Just say it,” Saga!Three prompts.

Zektene gulps. “They are programmed to ignore organic material. That’s why it’s even taken it this long to get as close as it finally is, because it had to wind around roots, and the like. If we were to place, um...dead bodies around the edge, the nanobots would immediately halt production.”

The other two don’t respond for a beat. “Why would we need to use dead bodies if it also ignores plants?” he questions.

“It moves around plants,” Zektene explains. “It’ll just restart somewhere else. Gondilak, however, dead or alive, are too valuable. If it detects the specimens it’s meant to protect, it will stop, and await further instructions. That will give us time to clean them out, and dispose of them properly.”

“You want us to go get dead bodies?” Saga!Three asks her.

“I don’t want to do that, but I’ve not been able to find a better solution. The computer didn’t tell me this was solution. I had to come up with it based on what I learned about its behavior.”

“There has to be another way!” Saga!Three suspects.

“Well, we have to wait until nightfall anyway. I can teleport Vearden to the cemetery; maybe make a few trips. Until then, I’ll keep looking.”

Zektene makes good on her promise to search for an alternative, but never finds one. When darkness comes, she teleports Vearden!Two to the graveyard, and helps him dig. Then they transport one body at a time to the edge of the gray goo, where Saga!Three carefully and respectfully puts it in place. It doesn’t work with just one body, so they keep going. They will never be the same after this.

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