Source Variant: Public Friend Number One (Part X)

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For the most part, if any version of Saga and Vearden wants to open a door to another time and place, there’s about a one in three chance that it’ll take them when and where they want to go. There’s a one in three chance that it’ll take them to some point in spacetime out of their control, that the powers that be have decided. And then there’s a one in three chance that it will simply take them to the other side of the door, like it will for any regular person. There are ways for them to increase the odds of getting what they want, but it takes a lot of concentration, plus the ability to kind of act like they don’t want it. They have to trick the spacetime continuum into believing they’re neutral about it, like a bit of metaphysical reverse psychology. As one might imagine, this is incredibly difficult to pull off, and none of them is sure the theory is even true. Still, Vearden!Two, and Saga!Three found themselves energized by their conversation with The Delegator. He wanted them to do some very bad things, which didn’t discourage them from going against him, but galvanized them into action. They became even more certain of their convictions.

Their determination alone seemed powerful enough to literally open doors for them. They started jumping forwards in time separately from their preset two-hundred year pattern, and it was unclear how hard the powers that be were fighting them on it. They thought maybe, perhaps, they were actually rooting for the three of them to do the right thing, and that this was all part of the plan. As far as their plan went, they had to refine it after owning their power. They chose to not throw out the McIver hats, but instead used them to their advantage. They each chose a random face from their past; someone they knew wasn’t a real time traveler, and would have no chance of showing up as themselves. Then they revealed themselves to the Gondilak, and made up a half-true story about being visitors from another world, here to help them develop as a race, and a nation. Saga!Three used her medical background to treat some of the sick and injured, to show that they could be trusted. Then they turned themselves invisible, and walked away. They returned a year later, but this time, the doorwalkers remained invisible, while Zektene appeared in a completely new form. She used her power of teleportation to save a few lives here and there.

They continued to do this; jumping a little bit further in time, putting on new illusions, helping the natives in some small way, and then leaving. As far as the Gondilak knew, humans were a species of temporal manipulators, who frequently traveled to other worlds, and altruistically helped the aliens they found there. This was in stark contrast to Vearden!Two’s timeline, where salmon were only dispatched to provide aid to the Orothsew, while Gondilak were either ignored, or actively offended. The Gondilak here felt special, cared for, and most importantly, worthy.

Neither the Delegator, nor the powers that be themselves—nor anyone else, for that matter—did anything to prevent their actions. They just kept opening magical doors, and making more jumps; a day or two here, a couple decades there. One day, they realized that it had been exactly two hundred years since they began their little rebellious crusade. They were back on their pattern, and wondering whether it was time to change strategies, not because it wasn’t working, but because so much about the world was different. Maybe it was time to regroup, and see if there was something else they should be doing.

“How are they doing?” Saga!Three asks.

They’ve been gone for the last seven years, so before they do anything, they need a progress report. Zektene is at the computer. “Two million, forty-four thousand, two hundred and fifty six people are presently living on the continent, plus the three of us.”

“Not too bad, according to projections,” Vearden!Two notes.

“How’s that internal conflict on the Uilkeh Peninsula faring?”

Zektene pulls up the survey from that region. “Still at a stalemate. Things have not gotten worse, but it appears they’ve not gotten better either.”

“If they can just last until the lunar eclipse next year,” Saga!Three begins, “they’ll see that the moon has nothing to do with crop yield, and the five families might come together again for the Harvest Meal.” She’s become the de facto leader of their group. While Vearden!Two knows more about the people they’re dealing with, Saga is the one with the leadership skills.

“Do you wanna intervene?” Zektene offers.

“The youngest Rekohs son’s condition should remind the Oppetara matriarch of her late sister. All they need to do is find out about it. Let’s wait it out,” Saga!Three decides.

“Okay.” Zektene switches the Uilkeh Peninsula file from a red flag to a green flag, indicating that they’ll monitor the situation closely, but not intervene unless there’s an immediate threat to life.

“Any other threats?” Saga!Three prompts.

Zektene scans the files quickly. “None the drones have marked as urgent. This is a pretty good jump.”

“All right, let’s get some sleep.” They sleep every night, and never specifically address it. When Saga!Three uses the word, she means that they’re going to be taking a break for at least three days. They’re no good to the Gondilak, or the world as a whole, if they burn out in the middle of a mission.

After a literal night’s rest, Saga!Three steps into Vearden!Two’s room uninvited. She does this, because Vearden!Two doesn’t look like himself at the moment.

He quickly drops the illusion, and slips off his balaclava, but it’s too late. She saw what he looked like.

She laughs. “I’m sorry, did you think I didn’t know about this?”

“It’s not what it looks like.”

“Don’t be a cliché. I know what you’re up to.”

“I assure you, you don’t,” Vearden!Two hopes.

“You’ve been sneaking out, dressed like him, doing good deeds, and making him look like the best person in the world.”

“Okay, maybe it is what you think.”

“Vearden!Two, they have shrines dedicated to Mateo Matic. Did you really think you were getting away with it?”

“I was just hoping to do this as long as possible without being stopped, whether you found out about it or not.”

“Why is this so important to you?” she asks.

“Mateo has had a rough go of it. He’s not always welcome when he shows up. I’m just trying to protect him, so if he ever finds himself on this planet, people will already have good thoughts about him.”

Saga!Three sighs. “Come with me. I need to show you something.”

Vearden!Two follows her out of the room, and down the hallway, back into the main section of the facility. Zektene is having a midnight snack, but doesn’t say anything, because this doesn’t have anything to do with her.

Saga!Three turns the computer monitor away, so Vearden!Two can’t see it. “When did you start sneaking out, and pretending to be Mateo?”

“A hundred and twenty-one years ago. I got the idea from—”

Saga!Three turns the monitor back around, so Vearden!Two can see what’s on it now. He tilts his head to get a different angle. “Yeah, that’s an incredible likeness. I’ve never seen that one before. Where is it?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Saga!Three explains. “This cave painting is over eight hundred years old.”

“What? No, that’s impossible. That’s after we...” He hesitates. “That would mean—” Vearden!Two can’t finish his sentence.

“Vearden!Two,” Saga!Three says reluctantly, “Mateo has already been here.” She taps a button, and moves over to the next picture. “So has Leona. I don’t think they’re coming back.” She goes to the next picture of the cave drawings. “I don’t know who these people are.”

“So I’ve just been wasting my time?” he asks sadly.

“You haven’t been wasting your time,” Saga!Three promises, “but you have been wasting your vacation. He doesn’t need our help.

Zektene is suddenly right next to them. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

“Wadya mean?”

Zektene takes over, and pulls up a different set of photos that the monitoring drones took a very long time ago.

“Whoa,” Saga!Three says.

“No!” Vearden!Two cries.

“Are they burning him at the stake?” Saga!Three asks.

Zektene giggles. “They tried to.” She shows them the next picture. The fire has been turned to smoldering ash, and Mateo’s likeness isn’t there anymore.

“He disappeared before he died,” Saga!Three assumes.

“That was my guess,” Zektene says. “But I don’t know who he is.”

“He lives for one day every year; jumps forward at midnight, according to central time zone.”

“Ah.” Zektene nods. “Well, I would have said something had I known you knew him. I just archived these photos, and let it go.”

“So he may come back?” Vearden!Two asks.

“We’re time travelers,” Saga!Three answers with a shrug. “Anyone could come back at any time. Maybe you making him look good wasn’t a big waste. Maybe you changed everybody’s minds on him. I don’t know.”

Vearden!Two breathes a sigh of relief. “I know it seems stupid, to be protecting this one guy. He’s just...if you met him, you might understand. He’s just so...”

“Brave?”

“Amazing?”

“Brilliant?”

“Strong?”

“Helpless,” Vearden!Two clarifies. “People don’t help him because he’s a good person—though, he definitely is—we help him because we know he can’t do this on his own. He needs people like me. I feel very protective of him; have since day one.”

Zektene places her hand on his shoulder. “That makes sense, Vearden!Two.”

Meanwhile, Saga!Three steps off to the side to think about their situation. She’s not thinking about Mateo. She has no strong feelings about him. His presence in those cave drawings does pose an interesting question, however. She should have taken it more seriously before. They are not the only time travelers, and theirs is not the only agenda. This is a big planet, and even with the insect drones, flying around, keeping track of progress, lots of things can fall through the cracks. Even if a drone catches something on camera, the artificial intelligence in charge of them may not tell the three of them about it. Not everything it sees seems like a threat worth mentioning. It’s particularly difficult for them to elicit information from it since the system wasn’t designed for humans. Almost everything they do to get it to work is done through force. “Zektene?”

“Sir?”

“I know we’re on vacation, but...”

“What do you need, sir?” Zektene is always ready to get down to business.

“I need you to...write a program, or run an algorithm, or whatever. Make it so that the computer spits out every human it’s ever seen, including us.”

“Sir?” Zektene questions again, but this time because she doesn’t fully understand.

“Where are you going with this?” Vearden!Two elaborates on the question.

“The Delegator seemed too cagey, but also too confident. I’m worried we actually aren’t the only humans on this continent. Even with our recent shorter time jumps, there’s a lot of gaps we don’t know as much about. Someone else could even show up at the same time as us, but in some other village, and we may never learn about it.”

“If a drone saw someone,” Zetkene begins, “I’ll find that footage.”

Two days later, the computer has finished sorting all of the data collected over the last eight centuries. Saga!Three happens to be in the room when the computer beeps, letting her know that it found someone who shouldn’t be there. She pulls up the image, and sees a man. He’s standing before Atlimai Valley, smiling sinisterly and waving at the camera. When she summons her two partners to come take a look, it’s clear that both of them know exactly who he is.

“That’s Cain,” Vearden!Two reveals. “And if he’s here, the Gondilak aren’t the ones in trouble. We are.”

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Microstory 1240: Erlendr Preston

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When the thousands of people who were in charge of The Temporal Gallery abandoned their responsibilities to protect the timeline, and exited the dimension, only three people remained. Athanaric Fury had the ability to create entire people, and even gift them with time powers, so it was he who designed the replacements for the people who left, but he did not start completely from scratch. He modeled the first three—and ultimately only three—new workers after the other two remainders, as if creating their children for them. Erlendr Preston was the leader of their people, whose job it was to keep watch over the Gallery, and assign duties, so there was no way he was ever going to leave his home. They called him The Curator; an honor that he took quite seriously. He and his wife were the driving forces in the movement. They were the first to see that time travel was causing problems, and it wasn’t ever going to stop unless they found a way to rise above it. They had to separate themselves from time, in some way, or the people they were up against would have too much of an advantage over them. They were heartbroken when their whole plan fell apart, and no one took it harder than Savannah. She hid herself away so deep in the gallery dimension that not even Erlendr could find her. He searched for years, but never came up with any evidence that she was even still there. He might have thought she escaped after all the others, but there was no evidence of that either. There wasn’t much for him to do anymore. Fury had built for him a skeleton crew to take control over the timeline, and though they would eventually come with their own headaches, managing the few of them wasn’t exactly a fulltime job. And so Erlendr spent most of his time watching the people on Earth go about their lives. He watched them like a normal person would watch television. He watched television too. He also read all the books, and saw all the plays. His life was busy, but boring, and depressing for him. He was secretly relieved when everything came tumbling down, and his whole purpose in life died. But he stayed. Even though the Gallery was useless without Athanaric’s temporal energy, he just could not bring himself to leave. Some say he’s still up there, all alone, watching the world with no hope of protecting the timeline from paradoxes. Others say he’s been reunited with his missing wife. Most seem to think he’s dead, either up there with a perfectly preserved body, or turned to dust with the rest of us.

Microstory 1239: Daria Matic

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When the teleporting Savior program first began millennia ago, the powers that be didn’t know how they were going to do it. They started out with one person, and increased from there, according to need. As the world was coming up on the turn of the 21st century, they determined that only one Savior would be necessary at any one time, and maybe not even always that. Humans would soon be expected to save themselves, and even before that, there were plenty of other time travelers operating in the time period who could pick up the slack. Exactly thirteen years before the death of the second concurrent 20th century Saviors, Daria Matic was born. When she was old enough—which, by the standards of the powers that be, was thirteen—she was activated, and started teleporting all over the world. She helped an unknown number of people for over two decades, until she saved the man she thought would be her last assignment. He was a police detective, not too far from where she first grew up, and she would later come to realize that they attended the same elementary school at the same time. But she could not tell him this truth, because she had been missing since the early 1980s, and she didn’t have any reasonable explanation for that. It was always kind of dangerous for her to be anywhere near her old life, but this was the riskiest it had ever been. This jump felt completely different than all the others, and there was no sign that it was going to end anytime soon. She went to bed at night, and she woke up in the morning, just like a normal person would. It would seem the powers that be were done with her, and wanted her to have a real life.

Daria started seeing the man regularly, and after only a few months, they were set to have what they believed would be their first child. They hadn’t planned on it happening quite this early in the relationship, but it felt right, and they were happy. They remained together throughout the whole pregnancy. She was even able to reconnect with some family, and friends from her younger days, who she felt she could trust with the revelation that she was still alive. Then it all ended. She was allowed but one week with her Asier and Danica before the mysterious people in control of her called her to work again. That was the cruelest thing they did, giving her a child, and then keeping them apart. She knew Danica would be in good hands with her father, but what purpose did it serve giving her a year-long sabbatical, and then just forcing her away again? With no answers for why it had to be the way it was, Daria continued with her work. The powers rarely let her go anywhere near the Kansas City area again, but it was sometimes unavoidable, because people needed help there too. She tried to keep up with what the two of them were dealing with, but it was almost impossible. Her responsibilities afforded her very little time off, and that was mainly reserved for eating and sleeping. She eventually had to come to terms with the fact that she and Asier weren’t meant to be together, and that her daughter would never know her mother. This was her life, and that wasn’t going to change...until it did. She finally retired at age 65, not exactly to give her rest, but because she was no longer useful to the people in charge. Danica’s father had been dead for years, but Danica herself was still alive, and this was their opportunity to meet each other. They would never think they had enough time, though. Being a Savior is one of the toughest jobs out there, and those who are called to serve do not generally become the longest-living people on Earth. Daria died at a fairly young age, having made a greater mark on the world than most, but receiving very little credit. As for Danica, her story was far from over.

Microstory 1238: Madoc Raptis

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While the tyrant, Smith always recognized the potential in the first newborn children of Durus, no one truly understood their power until they were much older. While in womb, they seemed to possess deflective capabilities when it came to the monsters, but this hardly extended beyond protecting their mothers from attack, and that was presumed to be mostly about protecting themselves. Once they were old enough, the people of what was formerly Springfield, Kansas discovered that the children had the ability to give other people time powers. Later, these gifts would be decided according to a formal competition known as the mage games, but the precursor to this tradition came in the form of smaller challenges, and the occasional personal favor. Shortly after Madoc Raptis first accidentally gave his cousin the ability to distort other people’s perception of the flow of time, the source mages found out that they could give each other powers as well. There was a limit to what powers they could possess, and the more they accumulated, the less effective they were at each one of them, but it still increased their social power in the new world. The source mages could exchange their powers for new ones at will, but they each had to work to see which power, or powers, they were best at using, and concentrate the most energy on nurturing those. None was luckier than Madoc, whose level of skill for any given power seemed almost irrelevant when it came to what he did with them. The kids liked to go against each other, not just to tailor their strengths, but to see who among them was the very best. Madoc won these contests frequently; a little too frequently, actually. It didn’t matter who he was competing against, or what time power they were using, he just kept winning.

His favorite game was called Air Gap; a variation of capture the flag, where there was only one flag in the center of the field. The object was to try to reach the target first, while simultaneously superimposing more and more space between one’s opponent, and the center. It was his favorite, because he never lost even once. Everyone else called it luck. Madoc also called it luck. He recognized that he wasn’t actually better than them, and if they ever wanted to win the war with the time monsters, he wouldn’t be able to do it alone. Mad Dog Raptis is what they called him, though he wasn’t mad, and he didn’t possess any canine qualities. It was really just a play on his name. But he couldn’t care less about his nickname. He just liked to wield his power, and test his limits. He didn’t care for the mage games either, though they were his twin sister, Yeong’s creation. He was pretty vocal with his opposition to the very concept, believing it unfair to require others to prove their worth when the source mages themselves hadn’t done anything to earn them. They were just conceived at the right time, in the right city, and he knew this could have happened to anybody. This argument was the biggest thing he ever lost, and he didn’t quite accept the outcome. Every year, whether the mage games were held or not, Madoc reserved the right to source an individual from anywhere in the world. They didn’t have to fight for the honor, or plead their case. They just had to exist, be of sufficient age, and of course, consent. These special selections sometimes went on to protect their respective towns, but others joined a special army of Madoc’s devising, which served as balance against the source mages’ power. Madoc placed no expectations on his personal selections, and though he ultimately sourced fewer people over the course of the Mage Protectorate than any of his peers, many came to be known as some of the most honorable, respected, contributive, fearless...and lucky mages in history.

Microstory 1237: Rebecca Halcyon

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Much like Camden Voss, Rebecca Halcyon worked in the past. For him it was a hundred years ago, but for her, thirty-eight. She never quite understood the significance of the time difference, but then again, she never understood why she was chosen in the first place. Back at home, before all this time travel business began, Rebecca was a real estate agent in 2049. So it wasn’t the most noble profession, but at least she wasn’t a car salesman. Though to be fair, car salesmen were a dying breed—since people weren’t buying cars in person anymore, if at all—so she might have done that had she been born earlier. Though perhaps, not even that was true, because when she found herself stuck in 2011, the first thing she did was start helping people. No one told her what to do, but people around her were suffering from having lost their homes to a mudslide, and she seemed to be in a position to help. Rebecca “volunteered” there for a couple hours before she even realized that she had somehow traveled into the past, and not just to the other side of the world. She didn’t know how it happened, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t the last time. The work started off pretty irregular at first; two days on, three days off, one day on, four days off. But then the pattern leveled out, and pretty soon, she was spending all her work hours in the past, and all her evenings and weekends at home with her live-in girlfriend. Hers was a rough working schedule for someone who was supposed to be living in the mid-21st century. By then, the standard workweek was closer to thirty hours, with some people choosing to not work at all, and live solely by the universal basic income they received from automated corporations, via the government. Still, even though it wasn’t the easiest job in the world, Rebecca came to love her new life. She might have felt differently had she been stuck in the past forever, with no way to go home, but she was allowed to stay with Judy when she wasn’t busy, just like most working professionals. Other time travelers weren’t so lucky. She would later meet other people like her, who were sent off to different points in time and space, sometimes never to return to where and when they came from. So this was her life. She lived and worked at two different time periods, neither of which ever lined up with each other. She did eventually catch up with her life’s timeline, and even encountered her younger self, but she never reached the day it was when she first disappeared. In fact, she was allowed to retire the day before, effectively closing her loop.

Microstory 1236: Sanela Matic

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Sanela Kolar was born in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929, though the borders and national identities were a little more complicated back then, so she identified as Croatian. She immigrated to the United States in 1941 with the rest of the Four Croatian Families: the Matics, the Petrićs, and the Horvatinčićs. Three of the families would settle and thrive in the Kansas City area for generations to come, while the Horvatinčićs pushed westward after a few years, and spread out along the coast. Sanela found herself drawn to a member of the Matic family who was a couple years younger named Marko. He was mysterious and broody, but it was another few years before young Sanela realized what was particularly different about him; he never looked anyone in the eye. His teachers would punish him for being rude and distant, but Sanela could tell that there was more to it. She did everything she could to make sure he knew he could trust her, and then one day, he apparently realized she was being sincere. He revealed that he had a special ability that he didn’t understand. He couldn’t see the future, per se, or witness people’s deaths, but he could sense when it was they would die. With one look, he could pick out the exact date someone would leave this universe, and he was never wrong. What Sanela came to realize herself was that Marko never decided he could trust her. It was just that he could see she was different too. He didn’t have much control over his time power, and accidentally making eye contact with other people was a regular occurrence. He evidently discovered, after having done this more than once with Sanela, that she was destined to die at different points in time. Sometimes she was going to die in the future, and sometimes the past, indicating that she wouldn’t always be experiencing linear time, like everyone else did.

After a little while, Marko grew used to being around his new best friend, and he stopped being able to detect her death date passively. If he wanted to know when it was at any given moment, he would have to concentrate on it. She taught him that he could come out of his shell, and exercise more control over his curse, so that it didn’t force him to avoid other people. They started courting each other, got married before too long, and had three children. But their life together could not last forever. Marko died of tuberculosis in 1968, soon after the birth of his daughter, Daria. However, things only got worse from there. The Petrićs had to step up when Sanela found herself jumping all through time; a bit of a late bloomer, really. She couldn’t change the past, but she could watch it unfold. With practice, she learned to control when and where she went, but not before witnessing her son and daughter grow up without her. They both became fine people in their own right, and were ultimately conscripted by the powers that be to save hundreds of people. Mario did this throughout time and space, while Daria was the Savior of Earth, who helped strangers all over the world. The two of them clearly had no control over their patterns, but Sanela’s situation was a little less clear. Did she have a power, or was she bound to a preset pattern? The funny thing was that not even Sanela herself knew whether she was a salmon, or a chooser. The Delegator had never asked her to do anything, but she also never traveled by her will alone. She always ended up wherever her instincts led her. She didn’t have that much interest in witnessing history herself, but she enjoyed helping others. She found it rewarding to let people see important moments in the past without risking changing these events. Though many others had the ability to access an observation dimension, she traveled exclusively in this manner, and was most famous for it, so they chose to call her The Screener.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 20, 2258

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Perhaps death was inevitable, for anyone and everyone, and everything. Even those who managed to upgrade their substrates, or even transfer their consciousnesses to new ones, were going to end one day. Because the longer any given entity lives, the chances that something goes wrong increase. If people only lived for two weeks, most would probably survive that long, but as the lifetime expands, so too does the distribution. These were the ideas Mateo picked up on while he was waiting to return to his time period. Evidently, this philosophy magazine was left here to help him cope with his new situation. He decided to inject himself with the recovery solution while he was still in the future, and sleep it off until the next day. He had enough experience to know that when it came to time travel, the amount of time you waited to travel almost only ever had an impact on the amount of time you lived in the meantime, and rarely on the time you arrived once you finally did go through with it.

He could have stayed in his recovery room for five years, and still ended up back in 2258, though of course, he had no intention of waiting that long. He still wanted to see Leona, but he also dreaded seeing her again. What was she feeling now? How would she react to his unexpected return? Had she felt relieved when he finally died, because then she would never have to forgive him his indiscretion? Should he even go back at all, or was she better off without him? Older!Ellie came back into the room about a minute before he planned on finally getting out of bed on his own accord, making it look like he might never have made the choice without her nagging. He told her it wasn’t she who urged the end of his procrastination; that he had his own timetable, but he couldn’t tell whether she believed him or not. She led him down the nondescript hallway, placed him in the time chamber, and sent him on his way.

It was a few hours after midnight central when Mateo came back to Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, in the exact same spot where he died by the cliff wall. Had he landed on the top of the cliff, he would have had trouble navigating back to Homebase, but here, it was even more difficult. He trudged through the wilderness for hours, just going in the general direction of the campus, but never really knowing how close he was. It was more by miracle than skill that he eventually succeeded. The first person he saw was Goswin, planting flowers in the garden. He didn’t look like one of his friends had just died, but Mateo had to remember that that was two years ago for him. The mourning period was long over for everyone, except for Leona, and maybe Cassidy. He didn’t avoid Goswin because he thought he should keep his resurrection a secret, but because he wanted Leona to be the first person who saw him. As irrational as it might have been, it was important to him. So he started sneaking around, trying to get an idea of where everyone was, and hoping to find his wife alone somewhere. She was.

“Mateo.” She didn’t say it enthusiastically, or inquisitively. It was more of a statement of fact, or at least an assumption of fact. The man standing before her might not have been Mateo at all, but an imposter, like Arcadia tried to do with her two weeks ago.

He had to be patient with her as he tried to prove himself to real deal. “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” he said.

She was silent for a moment, but then gathered herself. “Report.”

“Extraction mirror. I don’t know who, or when, or even where I was. It didn’t look like Palace Glubbdubdrib, though.”

“Has anyone else seen you yet?”

“I don’t think so. I wanted to see you first.”

She considered her next move for a moment, then grabbed Mateo by the shirt, and dragged him across the hangar, into the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. No one else was in there at the time.

“Are you hiding me away?” he asked.

“I think we should keep it on the down low, for now.”

“People are gonna find out sometime.”

“Yes,” Leona agreed. “But not everybody. We can keep the circle tight. You and I are leaving this planet today, and I don’t think a whole lot of others are coming with us. I just need to hang onto the secret until then. Can you handle this?”

“Leona, I need to—”

“I don’t have time for apologies. I need you to get into grave chamber four, and stay there until I reopen it.” She kind of stuffed him down in there.

“How am I going to pee?”

“Are you kidding me? How long did you live here? Ramses thought of just about everything.” She pointed to one corner of the chamber. “Open that small panel right there.”

Mateo opened it and found a tube. He also found what looked like a resuscitator mask. He held one in each hand, and looked up at his wife with puppy dog eyes.

“You don’t need the female attachment. Just...I think you can figure it out,” she joked.

“Leona.”

She nabbed a tablet from the table, and dropped it down to him, presumably for entertainment. “Okay, I love you. Bye!” she said as she was closing the hatch, but then she quickly reopened it. “I mean...were I you.”

“Leona!” he repeated, but she couldn’t hear him, because these things were soundproof. He could have opened it himself, but maybe she was right. The best way to prevent Ellie from learning anything about what her future self was going to do was to prevent her from seeing the product of her choices. This version of Mateo might never see her again, nor necessarily anyone else on this planet.

He hadn’t really thought to open any of the other panels before, which was a huge failure on his part. Besides the urine tube, the chamber was equipped with a bedpan, and disposal chute, both of which had to be cleaned manually, which was possible, because it also had a freshwater line. It was stocked with emergency meal bars for an amount of time Mateo didn’t want to do the math to calculate, and various other essential tools. There also seemed to be a way to convert the chamber into a stasis pod, but he deliberately avoided all of that stuff so as not to break anything. Instead, he just went back to the magazine he found in the future.

After hiding her resurrected husband in the ship, Leona went back outside, and started making inquiries. Who was coming with her to Glisnia, and would they be ready to leave today? Cassidy was so in, but no one else expressed any interest, except for maybe Pribadium.

“Do you want me to go with you?” Pribadium asked.

“Only if you want to,” Leona answered. “We can handle it alone. The ship is almost fully automated.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Should those two be alone together?” Thor insensitively asked, referring to Leona and Cassidy.

“We’re okay,” Cassidy spoke up. “What do you think we were doing when we were alone the other day?”

Thor shrugged. “Something weird?”

“Pribadium, you’re welcome to join us, but I don’t want to pressure you. Ramses and Weaver both created excellent operator’s manuals, dumbed down enough for a 21st century girl.” Leona was about to say something about Pribadium being a great addition to the crew, with her genius-level intellect, and familiarity with current technological advancement, but she decided against it. She wanted this to be Pribadium’s choice, not something she did because no one else was around to do it.

“I just want to make sure I’m not butting in,” Pribadium said. “I quite like the AOC, and I think it would be interesting to see what Glisnia is like.”

“It’s not that great of a place,” Thor jumped in, “and it’s certainly not interesting.” That was rude, which everybody’s facial expression showed. “What? I’m just being honest. There’s a reason it has the lowest biological colonist signup rate. Everybody’s coming here, or going to Teagarden.”

“I don’t intend to stay there very long,” Leona explained. “The plan is to use it to deliver Mateo’s remains to Dardius, then head back to Earth.”

The room fell quiet. Not only was Mateo’s death sad, but they also didn’t want to talk about the fact that everyone who wasn’t volunteering to go to Glisnia was simultaneously declining an invite to Mateo’s services.

“All right,” Leona said after a respectful pause, knowing full well that Mateo was still technically alive. “I’ve had a pretty eventful last few days, so I need a nap. I’ll run a preflight check after I wake up, and then the four of us can go.”

“Four?” Goswin asked.

Oh, crap. She was referring to Cassidy, Pribadium, as well as Mateo, along with herself. “I mean three.” She laughed it off. “That’s why I need the nap.”

“I thought we were going to have our own memorial before you leave,” Goswin reminded her.

Oh yeah, that was another thing. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now it just seemed weird. They would be holding it but meters away from the supposed deceased, who was trapped in the ship, bored and unable to attend. “Well, I’ll think about it. It all depends on when I wake up.”

Most of the others nodded solemnly, while Thor was totally indifferent. But she knew he liked Mateo more than he wanted to let on.

When the group dispersed, Leona went straight back to the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and opened grave chamber four, where she found Mateo watching an episode of Batwoman.

“As far as I know,” Mateo began, “this show didn’t exist in my reality.”

Leona began to climb in. “It did not, no.”

“Do we need to talk?” he asked after Leona closed the hatch back up.

“Yes, but not about what you think. Honest hour? I don’t want to talk about that ever again.”

“Leona...”

“I’m serious. Cassidy and I are okay now. I just needed to get to know her. I can’t say I’m over it, but your death kind of...put things in perspective. My forgiveness is like a marble on a hill. Eventually, it will even out. Until then, however, the marble rolls a little closer with each passing second. Just let it roll, Mateo. Don’t try to make it go faster.” She removed a slip of paper from her pocket, and looked at it for the upteenth time, not yet showing it to him.

“What is that?”

“Proof,” she answered. “Briar couldn’t have killed you on his own. Trinity could have gone back and saved you, and actually did try that.”

“Oh, I didn’t know.” Mateo thought about it for a second, and had a realization. “He had the hundemarke.”

“That’s right.”

“Where did he get it?”

“He tried to throw me off the trail by referring to the culprit as a man,” Leona began, “but I had Eight Point Seven hack into his brain.” She presented the picture.

Mateo stared at it, not knowing what to say.

Leona continued. “I’ve heard stories, about terrible things happening that should have been prevented. Time travelers tried to stop them, but couldn’t. Because she gives the killer the hundemarke. So now we know the who. All we need is a why.”

That was a good question. She had never been nice, but had always exhibited a sort of obsession with Mateo. Why did Arcadia Preston finally want him dead?

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Source Variant: The Friend of My Friend (Part IX)

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Two hundred years ago, Saga!Two, Vearden!Three, and Saxon use their advanced technology, and their McIver hats, to bridge the gap between the two separate groups of Orothsew. The Telijir and the originals needed to come together, and see the world as a unified culture, full of diversity and new ideas. It was not an easy task. The humans spent the longest they ever had in one time period. For a year, they introduced diplomats to each other, and mediated trade negotiations. A literal highway was beginning to take shape between their lands when suddenly it was the year 800 OAC. The abbreviation was a calendar designation that stood for Orothsew Affirmation Count, as translated into Standard English. Affirmation was the best approximation of the concept that the humans could come up with. The Orothsew decided upon it during the reunion process, as they were establishing themselves as a singular peoples.

Though the Orothsew were unaware of their origins, they were able to trace their history to about five hundred years prior to the reunion, according to stories passed down the generations. They figured their species had lived at least another century before that, and were astonishingly accurate. They were only off by nine years; an imprecision that the humans were able to remedy with a little dumbed down science. A year for the Orothsew, based on the planet’s orbit around its parent star, took 1.1383 Earthan years, so the math wasn’t too terribly difficult to calculate. At the moment, now two centuries after the reunion, it should be the year 4210. But based on Alyssa’s claims of a new Earthan calendar being created, it’s apparently actually the year 1610 on Earth.

Over 600,000 people live on this continent now, which is about half what the human population was around 10,000 years before the common era. This is sometimes considered to be the dawn of the human epoch, even though humans and other hominids existed on Earth well before that.

“It’s not half,” Saga!Two argues. “It’s closer to the same. There are probably around a million inhabitants on this rock right now.”

“How do you figure?” Vearden!Three asks her.

“The Gondilak,” Saxon reminds Vearden!Three. “They’re on the other continent right now, doing their own thing.”

“Oh. Yeah, I remember that now,” Vearden!Three says. “When do they finally run into each other?”

“I have no idea,” Saga!Two replies. “The other Vearden and I never knew what year it was in that reality.”

“You told us a little bit about their level of advancement, though,” Saxon begins. “We might be able to estimate a future date from that data. Well, the computer could, that is.”

“Does it matter that much?” Vearden!Three questions. “We’re either going to catch up to that time period, or not. How does that impact what we do today?”

“I fear we made an error,” Saga!Two says solemnly.

“Explain.”

“We’ve unified the Orothsew.”

“Yeah, that’s a good thing.”

“This could be how it begins,” Saga!Two continues. “This could be why the Orothsew are so hellbent on conquering the Gondilak. In trying to teach unity, we may have inadvertently also taught them xenophobia.”

“I think that’s a stretch,” Vearden!Three disagrees. “We don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. Maybe we prevented the war you saw in the alternate reality.”

“Or we precipitated it,” Saga!Two argues. “Time travel is complicated. You’re talking about an alternate reality, but that’s not exactly the same thing as an alternate timeline. When you call it a reality, you’re referring to the world as it is in any given instance. A timeline refers to how things developed over, well...time. How much of what we’re seeing now is different than what happened before? More importantly, how much is the same?”

“What do you suggest we do, Saga?” Saxon asks.

Saga!Two takes a moment before responding. “We have to come out of the closet.”

“What does that mean?”

“We should throw out our McIver hats, and introduce ourselves to the Orothsew as humans. You’re right, Vearden!Three, it doesn’t matter when your counterpart and I were dealing with this in the other timeline. Our best course of action is to start early, and show them that non-Orothsew aren’t all bad. So when they finally do meet the Gondilak, whenever that is, they might not have an immediate violent reaction.”

“That sounds like too much work for the three of us.” Vearden!Three didn’t say that because he isn’t willing to put in the effort. He’s just not sure it’s possible. Bridging the gap between two independent states is one thing, but deveiling a species so early in its development, proving that other intelligent life exists out there, feels like an insurmountable task, even if they had a large and well-qualified team.

The other two understand what he means. “I think it’s worth a try. Yeah, it’s possible that we ultimately make things worse, but I can’t imagine anything will get better if we don’t even try.”

“That’s true,” Saxon admits. “We’re here to do something, according to the Delegator’s directives.”

“Well, how would we even go about this?” Vearden!Three asks. “When I was living on Earth, humans expected aliens to come down in gigantic ships, usually landing in or around important cities, like New York, and Tokyo. But I don’t know what earlier humans thought of aliens.”

“I know a little bit about this,” Saga!Two begins. “When Vearden!Two and I were being sent backwards in time, we considered who it was that did this to us. We made some inquiries regarding what it was that people believed. We found that the first speculation about aliens from other worlds appeared sometime in the fifteenth century. The people we were around in the years before that time period had no concept of extraterrestrials. Of course, every species if going to be different, but if the Orothsew are anything like us, they are indeed far too young to understand who it is we are. Your point is well made.”

“I didn’t make the point,” Vearden!Two acknowledges. “You just did that yourself.”

“Now, hold on,” Saxon stops them from giving up. “You asked a good question, Vearden!Three, and then we skipped over it. If strange beings were to come, how would the Orothsew expect them? Flying ships? Teleportation? Crawling out of the ground? Probably not. But what about an ocean vessel?”

“They haven’t built seaworthy ships yet,” Saga!Two reminds him. “This world’s moon causes far too violent tides and waves for them to survive it. They’ve barely tried.”

“True,” Saxon agrees, “but they do have riverboats. The cities of Wonblajse and Dodeglu exchange goods, and experience seasonal migration, with this method of transport.”

Vearden!Three shakes his head. “There’s still so much to consider. Do we speak their language, or is it reasonable to teach them ours? Do we share our seafaring technology with them, or do we make them do it themselves. That could anger them, and either make things worse with the Gondilak down the line, or create friction between us and them. Quite frankly, I don’t think we can pull this off. Saga!Three, you said salmon from all over time and space were transported here by the powers that be. It sounds like it was a centuries-long enterprise. We can’t do this alone, and we have no way of asking for help.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Saxon contends.

“Do you have a way of contacting The Trotter?” Saga!Two hopes, or someone else capable of traversing interstellar space?”

“No particular individual,” Saxon starts to clarify. “I have the ability to reach the vonearthans, though.”

“Explain,” Saga!Two echoes Vearden!Two’s earlier imperative.

Saxon breathes in deeply through his nose, and the other two aren’t sure when he exhales it. “Follow me.” He proceeds to lead them down the hallways, and into a section of the facility they’ve passed a million times, ending up in a storage room full of random and boring replacement parts for the shuttles. “You have to understand,” he says as he’s moving some of the crates of parts out of the way, “I didn’t lie to you about this. I even mentioned it once, but I quickly changed the subject, so you wouldn’t dwell on it, and then you seemed to eventually forget about it.”

“What is this, Saxon?” Saga!Two questions.

Saxon goes on, “every single star system either has something like this, or will one day. Sometimes it’s built on a planet, sometimes on an asteroid, or even a comet. There’s a whole protocol the artificial intelligence follows to determine the most ethical and safest way to do it.” He moves enough of the supplies to reveal a secret door neither Saga!Two, or Vearden!Three ever noticed.

“I should have guessed something like this existed,” Vearden!Three muses. “What’s on the other side of that door?”

“I think I know what he’s talking about,” Saga!Two says, remembering something they never discussed after first arriving here. “It’s the quantum surrogacy room, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” Saxon says, placing his hand on the door handle. “I disabled the link when I arrived here. I wanted to decide when and if other people came here.”

“I’ve been to a lot of different universes,” Vearden!Three says. “People often throw that word quantum around, as if it solves everything. What does it mean here?”

Saxon opens the door, revealing nothing more than a staircase. Once they descend, they see an entire wing of the facility. Dozens of more growth pods line the walls, along with all kinds of computers and other equipment. It doesn’t look a whole lot different than the rest of this place, but they can clearly see that it serves a very specific purpose. Saxon approaches one of the opaque pods, and flips a switch to make it transparent. Inside of it is a person, or at least the approximation of one. It has two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth, and a chin. Then it has a neck, a torso, two arms, two hands, barbie doll hips, two legs, and two feet. It looks like a person, but doesn’t really have any discerning features; like it was built out of clay, and the details haven’t been carved yet. It’s the base model of a human, but not unique. Surely these other pods house merely the same model, copied over and over again.

It’s the hips that really give it away. “It doesn’t have any genitals,” Vearden!Three crudely points out.

“That’s right,” Saxon says. “When a traveler—and I don’t use that word to refer to salmon, choosers, or any other kind of temporal manipulator—is transferred to this substrate, it doesn’t need to eat or drink, so it doesn’t need to make waste either. Nor can it procreate. This thing is just so the person who comes here can move around, and explore the star system.”

“It’s like a robot body that you 3D printed,” VeardenThree notes.

“Basically, yes.”

Saga!Three looks around some more. “So you’ve been in communication with Earth, or the other colonies?”

“Definitely not,” Saxon assures them. “And not just for your benefit. It’s true that you’re not meant to be here, but neither am I. Hell, I don’t even know if the greater vonearthan population has been made aware of Project Stargate, or Operation Starseed, by now. Most people may be completely in the dark, and believe that the only human establishments beyond the Sol were made with the fleet of colony ships.”

“Why haven’t you opened communication with them?” Vearden!Three asks. “Or, like, with the people you know already know about this whole secret project?”

“That is because of you,” Saxon says. “I didn’t know how the powers that be would react to this. I had the impression that they wanted you two to have to do all this on your own, and that my personal involvement has always been a concession on their part, rather than a mandate. I always thought letting other people here would anger them.”

Vearden!Three makes a closer examination of the surrogate’s face. “So you do have faster-than-light communication in this universe?”

“Quantum communication, yes,” Saxon confirms. “We can send data, but not massive objects. Ships are still limited to sublight speeds. Though, obviously we all know FTL travel is possible, but a time traveler would have to introduce that, and the way I understand it, that’s against the rules.”

“It is,” Saga!Two says. “I believe you made the right call, not allowing the other vonearthans to come here.”

“It’s not guaranteed,” Saxon says. “This place was formed centuries ago. That’s more than enough time for the vonearthans to come here on their own.”

“True,” Saga!Two says. “We’re not too terribly far from Earth.”

“Even if we were,” Saxon begins, “it wouldn’t matter. We could be thousands of light years from Earth’s region of the galaxy, and it would still only take them a couple years to arrive. Like I said, this thing is going to be built somewhere in every star system. If they find themselves locked out of one, they could always access the next closest star, use one of the interstellar ships that the robots built for them, and come in no time. That aspect of the project is vital. I can’t remember the exact failure rate, but some of the factory modules we sent have, and will inevitably, experience functional errors. Some stars will rely on neighboring modules to fill in the gaps.”

Saga!Two sighs. “Well, like I said. I think you were right to shut this place down, but I don’t think you were right to not tell us. We’re both aware of how dangerous the powers that be are. We wouldn’t have done anything to jeopardize our mission.”

“To that end,” Vearden!Three says, “nothing has changed. We still can’t open communication. The powers may destroy all the surrogates, and might even kill us for defying them. We do this alone, just as they intended.”

The other two nod. It might not be the best way to get the job done, but it’s the safest. Just as they’re trying to walk away, the computers start booting up. More lights flicker on, and the air conditioning kicks in.

“What did you do?” Saga!Two asks, not so much accusatorily, but inquisitively.

“Absolutely nothing,” Saxon answers sincerely.

“Neither did I,” Vearden!Three makes sure the both of them understand.

They turn around and watch as all the equipment starts operating on its own, including the humanoid growth pods. They watch it all for several minutes, afraid to interfere, and risk breaking something. Once it’s over, the humanoids begin to wake up.

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