The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 22, 2260

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To say that Cassidy was upset about being left in the dark about Mateo would be an understatement. She felt particularly betrayed by Leona, with whom she spent hours in the wilderness, working through their tension. The worst part of it was that everyone else on the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez knew that he was alive, as did Thor. Explaining to her that the others, like Ellie and Trinity, also weren’t told the truth wasn’t helpful at all. She wasn’t impressed by Vitalie reminding everyone that she didn’t care, so it didn’t matter that she knew. Étude tried to comfort her daughter, but Cassidy wasn’t having it. She hid herself away in her grave chamber, and didn’t come out until November 22, 2260. Mateo stayed in his own grave too, as Leona was still not yet ready for them to sleep that close to each other on a regular basis.

He didn’t wake up until long after midnight central, so the AOC had already landed on the surface of their new planet, Glisnia. The planet was a super-Earth, orbiting a star called Gliese 832. Surface gravity was far too high for the average biological human to withstand, so they were required to remain inside one of the ever-growing facilities, or be en route to another. Each was equipped with special technology called a transdimensional gravity platform, and while a Higgs-Boson field could generate artificial gravity to support an otherwise zero-g environment, something like this was necessary to lessen the gravitational pull of a celestial body’s core. Leona’s friend, Hokusai Gimura had utilized it on Varkas Reflex, but it was invented by Leona’s other friend, Hogarth Pudeyonavic, who was set to be one of the few humans living here. Though this amazing technology would allow anyone to survive on this world, Glisnia was allocated for artificial entities. It wasn’t particularly well-suited for nonbiological life, but it was good enough, and so far, many of the other colony planets had been set aside for biologicals. Leona believed better star systems would come about later, but in the meantime, plans were being drawn up for a Dyson shell, in order to gather most of Gliese 832’s energy output, and use it to power the inhabitants.

Ever since the Varkas Reflex incident, standard colonization procedures were drastically altered. Back in 2238, Leona discovered that the factory ships that were sent off to build habitat structures on Varkas had malfunctioned. Their communication with Earth had also gone haywire, leaving the world unfit for settlement, and quite dangerous, actually. Worried that this sort of thing might happen again, it was decided that all colony ships would be preceded by something called a Forerunner. It was a small ship designed for two to five people, and capable of near lightspeed travel. These people were meant to arrive in orbit ahead of the colonists, and solve any problems that Earth might not have been notified about. While automation was originally meant to account for all issues on its own, neighborhood leadership now felt it necessary to maintain a human touch to these endeavors. It was Hogarth and her wife, Hilde’s responsibility to do this here, even though no other biological people were scheduled for transport in the near future. As of now, besides a few mission-necessary automated systems, humans were the only people on Glisnia. The colony ships were not set to arrive until next year.

“Where are we going?” Mateo asked. They were riding across the alien desert in a land vehicle. Though the thing was completely enclosed, they were still required to wear vacuum suits for protection, and be able to attach their helmets at a moment’s notice. He found it more comfortable to stand, and hang onto the grips, rather than sit in the seats like everyone else.

“We’re headed for the Nexus replica,” Leona explained.

“Why didn’t we land closer to it?” Mateo asked. “Honest question; I’m not criticizing.”

“There’s nowhere to land. The replica was placed far from landing zones, specifically so no one would likely discover it accidentally. It’s situated on a bit of land that’s large enough for the structure itself, but no larger, and it’s pretty well hidden.” She was able to treat Mateo like a friend now, but it was as of yet unclear whether she would ever be able to interact with him on a romantic level.

Mateo was willing to accept the possibility that their marriage had suffered too much to continue. Perhaps this was it, and even though it would break his heart, he wanted to do what was best for her. “Again, I’m not trying to be difficult, but how did you find it if it was hidden so well?”

Hogarth threw a looped string at him, which he caught. “I call it the Lanyard of Disturbance. I don’t know with certainty that it was originally attached to the Compass of Disturbance, but it certainly appears that way. You can’t control what it finds, and it doesn’t allow you to do anything with whatever you find, but it can point the way to temporal anomalies. It’s like a divining rod for spacetime tears, and in this case, an interstellar teleportation module.”

“Got it,” Mateo said. Surprisingly, he understood every word she said, even the big ones. He was getting smarter, if only a little.

Cassidy almost looked like she was reading his mind, like maybe the smile from his pride was enough to let her know what he was thinking. And she rolled her eyes because of it.

“Hey,” Mateo began to ask a question, but thought better of it.

“What?” Cassidy asked.

“Nothing,” he tried to backpedal. “I’m sorry.”

“Spit it out!” she demanded.

He sighed, knowing he had to say it, but also knowing how much it would piss her off. “Do you want a year?”

“Do I want a what?” she sassed.

“We can take you off our pattern, temporarily, right? You could have a life, for a year; I’m sure these fine people would protect you.”

Cassidy didn’t respond for a moment, but scowled. “You think all I need to get over this is time?”

“Wull...yeah.”

“Well, that’s probably true, but you’re not trying to help me. You’re just trying to skip over all the grief. Let’s say all I need is one year, that means you only have to deal with me for one more day, and suddenly we can be friends again.”

“Okay, I suppose that’s true,” Mateo had to admit.

He looked to Leona for guidance, but she was staying out of it. Her facial expression said a lot about her, however. She was still upset with him for the lapdance, and slightly uncomfortable with Cassidy for giving him the lapdance. She felt bad about lying to Cassidy, and sorry for Mateo for experiencing the most backlash over it. She secretly felt that it was a good idea to have Cassidy go through her stuff during their interim year, but she also understood how offensive this proffer was.

“I’ll still have to go through it,” Cassidy argued, “but you’ll be able to move on quickly. No, no, no. I’m not giving you the satisfaction.”

“That’s why I decided to not ask you,” Mateo contended, “because I realized it was a dumb thing to suggest.”

“You should have just not opened your mouth in the first place,” Cassidy said.

“I know.”

“That should just be your resting state,” she went on, “shutting the fuck up!”

“Okay.”

She stopped talking for a moment, but the anger didn’t stop building. “Goddammit!”

“Cass—” He tried to say.

“No!” Cassidy interrupted. “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through; dying...Jesus! That must be a horrific memory for you. I know I shouldn’t be pissed off, I just can’t help it.”

“I understand,” he insisted.

“No, you don’t. You can’t, because I don’t!” She didn’t want to go too far, so she found her calm before getting back to it. “It all happened so fast. I didn’t have the chance to confront Briar about this. I kept putting it off, because I was grieving first. If I had known you were alive in some..weird, magic mirror...thing, I might have been able to say something. I might have been able to speak my peace. You robbed me of that, because the fact is that even though you’re still here, you’re also dead, and he still killed you. I don’t know how he’s gonna answer for that, but he didn’t answer to me!”

Mateo didn’t know how to respond to this, so he just sat down and wrapped his palms around his face.

Leona stepped up, literally and figuratively. She approached Cassidy, and placed a hand on her shoulder. “It was my decision to keep it a secret. I’m sorry you went through that. It wasn’t something I considered, and that was unfair.” She pivoted, so she could address both her and Mateo. “The three of us are bonded; not in the way we were with Serif, but it’s undeniable. We all have to find a way to get through this, because we all deserve to be happy; even you, Mateo.”

He lifted his face, but avoided eye contact, and sent a telepathic message that what Leona said to him was probably untrue. He felt a gloved hand on his, and thought it was Leona’s, but when he looked, he saw Cassidy, crouched in front of him.

“She’s right; you do. I don’t understand how this works, but we’re gonna put off your death until we have absolutely no other choice. And I’m gonna be here for as long as it makes sense. I won’t promise it’ll be forever.”

Leona crouched down as well. “I can promise that, though.”

“Why am I the one being comforted?”

“We’re all hurting, Mateo.”

Leona gave him a hug, and then gave one to Cassidy. Then she looked between them. “Okay, it’s actually weirder that you’re not hugging. Please, let’s just pretend that this is a normal relationship.”

They sat in silence for another ten or fifteen minutes, at which point Hogarth announced that they had arrived. After repressurizing the airlock, they exited the vehicle, and Mateo noticed that it looked exactly like the one they had just come from.

Leona noticed too. “This is not a likeness. Did you turn around?”

“I did,” Hogarth answered. “No one is up for a funeral today. Let’s all get some rest, and put it off until tomorrow. Does that sound okay?”

“I think that’s a great idea, hon.” Hilde hugged her wife from the side.

“It’s probably for the best,” Leona agreed.

So they postponed the trip to Dardius in favor of a quiet day of reflection and conversation. Mateo, Leona, and Cassidy tried to talk about anything other than the bad and awkward things that had happened between them. They figured the key was to move on from it, and stop dwelling. It appeared to be working, at least for now. Étude and Cassidy also took the chance to get to know each other a little better. There was so much Étude wasn’t before allowed to tell her daughter about where they came from. She might return to Dardius to her own fanfare, and she had to be prepared for that. In the end, it was a very nice day, and possibly vital to the process. Tomorrow was going to be hectic, and none of them really knew how things were going to shake out.

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Source Variant: Class XI (Part XI)

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For two hundred years, off and on, Saga!Two, Vearden!Three, and Saxon work to ensure that the Orothsew see foreigners as potential allies, rather than dangerous threats. They’re aided in this endeavor by a team of vonearthans, who were dispatched to Orolak for this very purpose. None of them knows who conscripted them for the mission; just that they were called to action for a chance to explore a new world hundreds of light years away. They fabricate a story about a third continent—even though the Orothsew have not yet encountered the second—and claim that this is where another species evolved. They arbitrarily call themselves the Clexa, and never appear in human form. An entirely new substrate is created that one of the operatives designed specifically to be a perfect amalgamation of an Orothsew, and a Gondilak. The idea is to prepare for the inevitable meeting of the two real species, and prevent them from ever warring with each other.

The three primaries show up every once in awhile, and make sure the rest of their new team is doing okay, and they always are. They modify their faces regularly so the Orothsew don’t realize they’re just the same few dozen people who never die. The Orothsew don’t get upset that the Clexa aren’t sharing their technology. If fact, they seem to believe in their own form of the Prime Directive from the Star Trek franchise. They want to develop on their own, because without struggle, they believe that the reward isn’t worth anything. Since this is all going so well, the vonearthans make plans to travel to the other side of the world to do the same thing for the Gondilak, but every attempt is sabotaged. They even try to fly over there in shuttles, but are always forced back. The powers that be have some interesting ideas about how this mission should be handled, and it apparently doesn’t involve reaching out to the other continent until some time later. When exactly that will be, no one knows for sure, but we’re likely talking centuries.

After just over four decades of absence, the primaries exit their portal door, and find themselves exactly two hundred years since this latest job began. A cursory glance at mission status reveals that the vonearthans disappeared eleven years ago, and have never returned. It would seem that the powers consider this chapter to be closed, and now it’s up to the only three humans on the planet right now to figure out what they should do next.

“According to your account, and my calculations,” Saxon begins, “this should be our last mission before the Orothsew cross the ocean.”

“Are you sure?” Vearden!Three asks.

“If we’ve returned to our regular two hundred year jump pattern, then yes, I believe we’ll catch up with the time Saga here, and the other version of you, first landed on this world.”

“Hm,” Saga!Two can only think to say.

Saxon continues, “while the Clexa didn’t give the Orothsew our technology, there’s no way to stop them from having ideas. Now they know what seafaring ships should look like, and they have the inkling to go explore.”

“Well, what else can we do?” Vearden!Three asks. “Either we’ve done all we can to prepare them, and today is our vacation, or we’ve not done enough, and we only have one more chance to stop the war.”

“Well, we could make another appearance,” Saxon suggests. Though the responsibility of pretending to be Clexa rested on the special team that showed up, the three of them used their McIver hats to do the same, though with far less diplomatic experience to back them up.

“Nah, I don’t want to do that,” Saga!Two says. “The other Clexa left, and whatever reason the Orothsew came up with to explain that, we shouldn’t confuse them with more interruptions. I think it’s time they start making their own decisions. We probably won’t be there when they meet the Gondilak, so let’s let them be.”

“So, you think we should do nothing?” Vearden!Three questions.

“Maybe your remark about this being our vacation was a joke,” Saga!Two begins, “but it doesn’t sound like a terrible idea to me.”

The other two don’t know what to say. A break is the last thing they would have thought someone like Saga would suggest. They don’t have much time to think about it before an alarm starts going off. Saxon rolls his chair over to the main computer to find out what is going on.

“What is it?” Saga!Two asks.

“Unauthorized entry,” Saxon replies. “Someone is coming through the quantum network, and unlike the vonearthans from before, this isn’t from the stellar neighborhood.”

“Where is it from?” Vearden!Three asks.

Saxon continues to look through the data. “All systems within fifty light years of Earth are considered to be part of the neighborhood. Project Stargate completely avoided all of these. The world that’s incoming is almost forty light years beyond the threshold, and has a Terrestrial Habitability Similarity Index of point-nine-two-one. Oh, shit, I know that number, and the distance.”

“What is it?”

“Shit!” Saxon exclaims again. “We gotta go!” He jumps out of his chair, and takes off towards the quantum surrogacy section.

The other two follow him. “Tell us what’s wrong! Who is coming through?”

“If we get there in time,” Saxon begins, “no one. We cannot let them through. The natives call their planet Worlon, and Earth designated it Loci Non Grata!”

“You mean like Utah?” Vearden!Three jokes.

“Yes, but worse!” They continue to run down the passageways. “I ran off before I could find out why, but Earth does not take that designation lightly.”

They reach the secret section. Saxon removes an energy weapon from yet another secret compartment, and begins to blast away all of the equipment, including the surrogate pods. He destroys everything. Saga!Two and Vearden!Three can’t be of much help right now, so they just watch until he feels he’s done.

“Explain,” Saga!Two orders.

Saxon removes an extra tablet from the shelf, and quickly connects it to the system. “Let me find out.” They wait for him to retrieve the necessary information, then listen to him recite it. “Worlon is Class XI LNG—that’s loci non grata, which is Latin for a place you don’t wanna go. I’ve never heard of Class XI because Class X is only theoretical. If ever needed, it would be reserved for hostile aliens who pose an immediate and nearly unstoppable threat to life in the entire galaxy. If Worlon is worse than that, then...I think that means they threaten the whole universe.”

“You’re confused,” a sinister voice comes from a dark corner.

Vearden!Three grabs the energy weapon that Saxon set on the table, and trains it on the invader. “Explain yourself, or die.”

“Class IX is for galactic threats.” An alien they’ve never seen before that kind of resembles a dragonfly comes out from the shadows. “Class X is for universal threats, though we’re still not sure there is any life beyond The Milky Way, so both nine and ten are theoretical.”

“Then what’s Class XI?” Saga!Two demands to know.

The alien grimaces. “The multiverse. We’re not sure if that exists either, but uh...” He loses his casual attitude, and becomes quite serious, “if it does, we’ll kill them too.”

“Why?” Saga!Two asks. “What’s your motivation?”

“There’s only so much room in heaven,” it says, as if it’s an accepted truth that she should already understand. “We’re not going to share it.”

“You start killing everyone,” Saxon argues, “you won’t have to worry about how much room there is in heaven. You won’t be going there.”

“Not yet, no,” it acts like it agrees. “Neither will you. Since you killed the rest of my strike team, I suppose all I can do now is give you a message.”

Saga!Two tenses up. “What message?”

“We’re coming. It might take us awhile, since we have a lot of pit stops ahead of us, and you destroyed the quantum link, but we’ll get here eventually.”

Vearden!Three pulls the trigger, and sends a powerful enough blast towards the enemy that it flies apart into a million pieces. “Well, I would say that I did that on accident; that I didn’t realize how sensitive the trigger was, but the truth is that my finger was barely strong enough to squeeze it.”

“No.” Saxon carefully takes the gun from him. “You did the right thing. Now I know what our mission here is really all about.”

“Yes.” Saga!Two steps forward, and examines the bits of the Worlon creature. This was never about the war between the Orothsew and Gondilak.  “We’re here to stop them.”

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Microstory 1245: Merton Casey

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Different people in the world of salmon and choosers were born with different abilities. Some could teleport, others could jump through time. Some could only see the future, or skip time. No one with any given time power was the only one of their kind, but some powers were rarer than others. One of the most coveted of these was anti-aging capabilities. Immortality on its own was possible to obtain, but a difficult series of tasks lie ahead for anyone willing to try for it. The next best thing to this was playfully called reyoungification, and one of the few people capable of this was named Merton Casey. He could alter anyone’s appearance back to how they were at any desired time of their lives. He also necessarily rejuvenated and healed them of whatever age-related diseases they might have contracted. He could make people young and healthy, but it came at great cost to him. Once people discovered what he could do, they started lining up for his services, and most were completely willing to accept the nature of the procedure. The awkwardness was only temporary, and to them, the benefits were too amazing to pass up. Merton couldn’t just wave his hands in front of his patients, and make them young again. He had to physically manipulate their bodies, all over. He had to smooth out wrinkles, and wipe away hair, and in some cases, shorten body parts. Doing this for anyone made him feel uncomfortable, but it was especially problematic when it was for a woman, which, let’s be honest, they made up the majority of his clients. So every case made his life that much more difficult to continue. Somehow being at least a little attracted to the patient made the whole thing worse; like he was violating them, even though they consented to this. A few didn’t consent, and then nothing happened. The worst of it came when he met a young woman named Paige Turner. She was fourteen years old when an antagonist aged her up to her twenties. Her reasons for doing this were her own, but the bottom line was that this woman never returned to reverse what she had done. After a year in this state, Paige decided she wanted to go back to being fifteen, and Merton was the only one they found who could help her. Unfortunately, he had never been asked to do anything like this before. His other patients wanted to be made young again, but never that young, and they were never meant to be that age in the first place. Paige was really just a child in an adult body, so touching her at all was even more offensive than normal. Fortunately, he was rescued from this job, by a woman who ran a special place that was designed to be a haven for people who had been negatively impacted by time travelers. She made an exception for Merton, and let him live in Sanctuary as well, despite having abilities of his own. He was protected from would-be clients here, and finally free of his trauma, so that he could heal, and move on.

Microstory 1244: Cyneric Brennan

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For years of realtime, Quivira Boyce traveled into the somewhat recent past to fix what she and her team believed were bad historical outcomes, though not always the famous events. Sometimes she saved people’s lives in a literal sense, by possessing the bodies of those closest to them, and sometimes it was more up to her colleague to set their subjects on more positive paths through a special brand of therapy. This was a hard life, or lives, as one might say. She was always working to make the world a better place, and didn’t really have time for anything else. But that wasn’t exactly why their mission had to come to an end, or why Cyneric Brennan was called to action. Quivira wasn’t old or tired. By her very nature, her body’s age didn’t matter much. But she had spent so much time as other people, she lost track of who she was. She felt she needed to pass the torch, and Cyneric was...well, he was available. His job was different than hers. He couldn’t possess people in the past, nor could he travel through time on his own. He was, however, a skilled operative with no sense of direction in his life. His work became more action-based, focusing on rescuing people the new team felt deserved to survive. Some of these were being helped by other time travelers, like The Savior, or The Kingmaker, but there were plenty of victims who fell through the cracks. Without these heroes, the statistical numbers of deaths and other tragedies in the world would be so much higher, and Cyneric wanted to be a part of that, even if he didn’t quite realize this himself. It took some time for him to warm up to his new responsibilities, but he eventually couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

Microstory 1243: Vendelin Blackbourne

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Time travelers are constantly going back in time and making changes. Even if they go back only to watch a Broadway musical they weren’t alive to see when it was running, they create a new timeline. This is happening on the quantum level, so no amount of restraint can stop the new branch from taking shape. And when it does, almost no one is aware of the change. Because it’s not really a change at all. Everyone living in the new timeline never lived in the old one, so there’s simply nothing for them to remember. There are a few people with the ability to recall events from alternate realities, but these are still not truly memories; just implanted knowledge. Vendelin Blackbourne was possibly an exception to this rule, though it’s impossible to tell, because his experience with nonlinear time seems to have only ever happened once. Before the incident, his life was a mess. He always thought of himself as a good person, but he was a less skilled web designer than he had hoped, and every job that passed him by pushed him further to the extreme. It started out small. He was just looking for a little company. Everything was consensual, and no one got hurt. But now he was in the dark web, and he couldn’t have predicted how far things would get. Before he knew it, he was actively helping build unindexed websites for extremely illegal activity. He wasn’t selling drugs, or other blackmarket items—and he kept his business firmly away from child exploitation—nor was he involved in the system security and anonymity. He just made the sites themselves look pretty, which was what he was meant to be doing for reputable companies. The FBI found him out, and locked him up. The prison he was sent to was actually not the worst place he had ever lived, especially since he hadn’t directly harmed anyone, but it wasn’t great, and his reputation took the worst hit. He didn’t understand how everything unraveled so quickly. College was only two years ago. But time, as he knew it, was a lot more complicated than that.

A time traveler who Vendelin had never met, and who probably didn’t know he ever existed, went back to before his parents were born, and altered history. By killing Adolf Hitler years before his time, he created a ripple effect that changed more about the future than anyone could fathom. Vendelin was both a victim of these circumstances, and a survivor. Even though the events resulted in him never having been born, here he was, in this new reality. Somehow. No one had any memory of him, so he figured that this was his chance at a fresh start, because all of his past mistakes had been erased. He found himself standing outside, next to what was once his work detail. He was dressed like all the other prisoners assigned to clean up the yard refuse, but the guards had no clue who he was. Since he wasn’t in the system, they had no choice but to assume it was some ludicrous prank, and let him go. He quickly learned that he wasn’t just not in the prison system; he wasn’t in any system. He didn’t have a birth certificate, or a driver’s license, or a social security number. It was like what would happen if the angels in It’s a Wonderful Life just forgot to put George Bailey back to where he belonged, but kept him alive. He was nobody, which would have been frightening for some, but to him, it was a major relief. Vendelin became a day laborer, and saved his money by living modestly. He didn’t commit any crimes, besides not being a real citizen of the country, and he didn’t attract any attention. Most people who realize time travel is real end up encountering other people with powers or patterns, but not Vendelin. He just lived out the rest of his days as a normal person. He never told anyone his secret, or tried to figure out what happened. He considered this new life a gift, and not only was it a risk to try to give the gift back, but it wasn’t likely to work anyway, so what would be the point in investigating? He was truly a better person now, and that was all he ever asked for.

Microstory 1242: Stargazer

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Some people have questioned why it is that temporal manipulators have only appeared somewhat recently in human history. Most of them were born within a hundred years of the turn of the 21st century, and only a handful were born before the common era. Why would that be? Did we somehow evolve time traveling capabilities? That doesn’t explain outliers, so that’s probably not it. Well, the truth is that it has more to do with human intelligence than anything. That’s not to say that there aren’t any dumb people with powers, or that all smart people do. It’s far more complex and nuanced than that, and has more to do with the intelligence of the species as a whole than any one individual’s. The fact is that time manipulation is just like any other witch ability. It requires hacking into the underlying structure of the universe, and exploiting some kind of vulnerability. That’s all done within the consciousness, rather than the body, which is why you don’t see a bunch of apes jumping through time. Afterall, at no point did an ape suddenly birth a human baby. Evolution describes changes over time; thousands of years, and even millions and billions. It’s not simply that other primates are not smart enough, but they certainly can’t grasp what it means to travel through time, and if the mind has no hope of understanding it, then it necessarily has no hope of performing it. Or rather, it won’t be born with such capabilities. It’s unclear when humans began to contemplate traveling through time, but as far as evolutionary time goes, it was just a few seconds ago. Stargazer is the absolute oldest linear human in histories, having been born hundreds of thousands of years before the Anthropocene epoch. He was given this name as it translates from Ancient Egyptian when he took a job at the Great Pyramid of Giza. He was not given a name at birth, nor was anyone else around him. Complex language was something he had to learn after interacting with the advanced peoples who came up with it, for it was not in use yet as he was first growing up. No one fully understands why it is that Stargazer is such an old immortal, or more importantly, why he appears to be the only one from anywhere near his time period. He has never traveled backwards in time, and neither has anyone gone to his early days. Disturbing his personal development is pretty taboo in the world of salmon and choosers, and as bad as some of them are, none of them has had the inclination to break this unwritten rule. Stargazer is completely off limits, almost like he’s more of a historical artifact than a person, and everyone accepts this. He has always lived in the pyramid, and he only has one job. Travel to exoplanets is difficult if you can’t do it naturally, like say, Maqsud Al-Amin, or Aristotle Al-Amin. The pyramid was designed to focus travel for other people, and serves as one of the largest temporal objects in the world. It is Stargazer’s responsibility to keep watch over this activity, and to make sure travelers safely go where they’re meant to be. He is but a facilitator. He cannot travel the stars himself, or he would be abandoning his post, and that is not an option. It is a boring job, but he feels it is necessary, and he is happy to just be doing something with his immortality.

Microstory 1241: Briar de Vries

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No one is born alone, or so the quote goes. This was true of Briar as well, though for him, it was pretty close. His parents lived in a small English village in the 12th century, but a series of events ultimately led him to growing up unfathomably far from Great Britain, on a distant world called Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, and this was the only home he ever knew. He lived there for decades, never meeting a single soul besides his mother, Irene. That eventually ended when she died of age-related causes. So when other people finally started showing up, intending to colonize the planet, he didn’t quite know how to handle it. He sort of latched onto the first person he encountered, because it was just amazing that it even happened at all. Planets are big, and it would have been really easy for him to live out the rest of his days alone. It was just by luck that Leona landed her shuttle somewhat nearby, but it still took months for him to happen upon it. He developed some feelings for her, but she was with someone else. Mateo was literally light years away, but she was showing no signs of having given up on being reunited with him. Still, Briar pursued the matter the best way he could, which was quite respectful; an impressive feat from someone who had zero experience with love, relationships, or hell, even friendship. Unfortunately for him, Mateo did eventually show up, so Briar thought all was lost. Then Briar caught wind that maybe Mateo hadn’t been quite so faithful, and he decided to take matters into his own hands. While his mother had taught him to be a good person, it was difficult for her to show him how, because there weren’t ways to give him practical experience, and teach him lessons after his mistakes. So sadly, things became a lot more violent than they should have. Briar never thought of himself as a killer, not even afterwards. Though, he had to admit that he wasn’t sure if he went out there to end someone’s life, hurt him, or just scare him. He didn’t know whether he did it for love, or for honor, either. He went back to the group, and immediately confessed what he had done. As he was sitting in his cell, he remembered something his mother had tried to explain to him. It was called empathy, and though he thought he knew what she meant, perhaps he didn’t. He felt no remorse for his actions, even though Leona was not exactly thrilled about being widowed. Briar figured that there was only one thing left for him to do. He had to kill himself.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 21, 2259

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Leona didn’t wake up from what was meant to be a nap until thirty minutes to midnight. Of course, by then, it was way too late to launch the AOC. The safest place to be for a time jump was either on the ground, or in outerspace. Somewhere in the middle just wasn’t worth the risk. She kissed Mateo goodbye, then left the grave chamber. Cassidy was there as well, getting out of her own grave, having also apparently slept for longer than she wanted. They crawled out of the ship, and jumped to November 21, 2259 together. The first people they saw when they arrived were Étude and Vitalie. The last Leona saw them was on Proxima Doma, when she and Mateo had to take the Insulator of Life to Bungula to revive Brooke and Sharice Prieto. Cassidy seemed more surprised than anyone. “Mom?”

Étude took Cassidy in a heavy embrace, which they held for minutes on end. While they were waiting, Vitalie and Leona shook hands, all professional-like. She seemed to know who Leona was, but didn’t have any strong feelings about her.

Cassidy finally breaks the hug. “Wait, mom, you’re so young. How do you know who I am?”

Étude sported a smile-frown hybrid. “I’m technically not the woman who birthed and raised you. I had to go back in time once to save a lot of people from disaster. My slightly younger self was the one who went to Earth on a mission, made a quick detour on her way back to Dardius to have you, and then took you back to Earth, in the past.”

Cassidy wasn’t afraid, but she was confused, and it was enough to make her take a half-step back. “If that’s the case, then you still shouldn’t know me.”

“I had my brain blended,” Étude explained.

Cassidy looked to Leona. “That’s the thing where someone gives you memories from an alternate reality?”

“Yes,” Leona answered.

This was all big news. They spent the next few hours catching up with each other. Vitalie wasn’t really Vitalie anymore. She too had been through a lot. Both of them had to take the immortality waters to survive certain death when they ended up trapped in another universe. Vitalie made the choice to stick around while Étude and a man named Tertius Valerius went back home. Vitalie spent four billion years there as an immortal, until finally coming back to this universe through The Prototype. She was only capable of retaining memories from the last fifty-six years of her life, however, which explained her somewhat distant reaction to encountering Leona.

While they were doing this, Leona was apparently not made aware that Pribadium was assigned to make sure the AOC was launch-ready. Mateo didn’t know what to say when she opened the hatch to grave chamber four, and found him still very much alive in there. She had experienced a lot of time travel stuff by now, but she had never seen anyone come back from the dead. She freaked out.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Mateo tried to promise her. “I can explain.”

“How are you here?” Pribadium asked. “Was your death a lie?”

“No, it wasn’t,” Mateo said. “The preservation coffin you’ve seen me in, that’s real. It’s future me...hopefully very, very, very far in the future, but my death is inevitable. Someone brought me back and saved me at the last second.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” she argued. “Then how do you have a body at all?”

“One day,” Mateo started to explain, “I will have to go back and actually die. It’s predestined. It’s already happened.”

“Why, though?” she pressed. “If they could go back in time and rescue you at all, why didn’t that just change the past?”

“Briar was wearing something called the hundemarke. I don’t know how it works, but the past can’t be changed when it’s involved. It prevents it. The extraction mirror is just kind of a loophole.”

Pribadium took a moment to digest the news. “Why aren’t we telling anyone?”

“Leona thought it was best, and I agree. The hundemarke is very delicate. What we know about the future, and what we tell people, can have really bad consequences. The less people know, the better. Everything has to happen how it happened. For as important as it is to not actively interfere with the inevitable, it’s equally important that we don’t try to force the inevitable. We just have to let fate take over.”

“I understand,” she said. “I have to check this chamber, though. Something weird happened.”

“You mean Étude and Vitalie? Leona kept the mic on her tablet open, and has been relaying the entire conversation to me, so I already know.”

“No, not that. I don’t know who those people are, so while it sounds like a strange story, their arrival doesn’t surprise me. What does interest me, however, is how Leona and Cassidy slept for nearly a whole day, and I suppose you as well. I was led to believe that we didn’t leave Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida last year because Leona and Cassidy didn’t feel like it yet. If I had known that it was actually because the stasis features of these grave chambers had possibly acted up, I would have taken a look at them earlier, but I was on a side mission on Waizidi.”

“The stasis features acted up?” Mateo popped the appropriate panel open, revealing the equipment that went over his head. “Ooo, I think that might have been me.”

“How so?”

He popped open the storage panel too. “I didn’t know about all the things that are in here, so I was familiarizing myself with them. I tried my best to avoid the stasis stuff, but I must have punctured a tube, or bumped a switch?” Mateo carefully looked around like a gopher, then crawled out, still not wanting anyone else to know he was there. “You should take a look at it.”

“Okay, you can hide in chamber six while I’m working. No one will be using it.”

Mateo did as he was told, and just went back to his Batwoman marathon. Halfway through his current episode, the new hatch opened up. The first thing he heard was Pribadium saying, “no, not that one!”

Three people were looking down on him: Leona, Étude, and Vitalie.

“Oh,” Étude said.

“Why are you in this one?” Leona asked.

“Hi, I’m Vitalie.” She showed him her hand.

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast,” he echoed a character from the show he was watching, who was quoting from Lewis Carroll.

“Are you still watching that show?” Leona asked.

“So...” Étude hesitated, “can I use this one, or no?”

“Why did you move?” Leona reiterated.

“Pribadium found me, and needed to check some things, so I hid in here.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone about him,” Pribadium assured Leona. She was standing up from grave chamber five, which was Cassidy’s.

“I won’t either,” Étude said.

“I don’t know who you are, and I don’t care,” a sassy but apathetic Vitalie added.

“All right, yes,” Leona said. “Let’s not let it get any further than this.”

“Let what get further than what?” Thor had come in. Mateo wasn’t worried, though. He was really good at keeping people’s secrets, because like Vitalie, he didn’t care.

“All right, no further, though. Jesus.” Leona was growing impatient.

“Do you guys want to hear about the stasis features?” Pribadium offered.

“It’s not something I did?” Mateo asked.

“No,” Pribadium answered. “They were both leaking, though. It’s not enough to put you out completely, but since you were already asleep, you didn’t wake up until the leak was fixed.”

“How was it fixed?” Leona questioned.

“I don’t know,” Pribadium admitted. “I think it was programmed to turn off.”

“Someone wanted to keep us in here?” Leona asked. “Who? Briar? Arcadia?”

“Oh, no,” Mateo realized. “It was Mirage. She knew Étude and Vitalie were coming, and that we would miss them if we left before today. She wasn’t trying to keep us in here, per se. She just wanted us to stay on the planet.”

“Oh, so it’s okay?” Pribadium hoped.

“Make sure it won’t happen again,” Leona instructed. “I’ll work on the rest of the pre-flight check, because I do still want to leave today. You two are still okay with coming?”

Étude and Vitalie nodded. The former elaborated, “Cassidy is safer with you, and I want to be with her, so yeah.”

“I go where she goes.” Vitalie jerked her head towards Étude.

So it was decided. Leona and Mateo would be going off to Glisnia to send off the latter’s future dead body. Cassidy would be going with them, along with her mother, Étude, and her friend Vitalie. Pribadium was going as well, as a much needed engineer. That didn’t mean that everyone was staying on Bida, however. A couple people were interested in starting a brand new adventure.

“This is the Emma González?” Leona asked, marveling at the vessel.

“Yeah,” Étude confirmed. “Kestral and Ishida gave it to us when we went to Gatewood for Cassidy.”

“So the two of them were doing okay?” Cassidy asked.

“They were going through some stuff,” Vitalie replied, “but I think they were going to be fine. We’ve not spoken to them since we left at sublight.”

“If you’re going on the AOC,” Goswin began, “then I suppose you won’t be needing this anymore?”

“What were you thinking?” Leona asked him.

“We don’t know,” Weaver answered instead. “We were kinda just gonna choose a random direction, and start flying.”

“To what end?” Thor questioned.

“The future,” Goswin said. “We’ve decided to not have a plan at all, but only if we have the means of doing so.”

“Fine with me,” Étude told him. “That there ship is yourn.”

“Anyone else wanna come?”

“We’ll come.” Eight Point Seven was walking towards them with a chained up Briar in tow. “Trinity wants him off this planet. Nowhere is as good a place as any. I’ve outlived my usefulness with Pryce’s animal tourism testing, so I’m a free agent too.”

“Were you guys gonna leave without saying goodbye?” Ellie and Trinity were now walking up. The former was likely at a music break. It was her last radio show ever. She had by now racked up thousands of hours of programming, which was enough to last a lifetime for her listeners. She never needed to fill time for the average radio listener, but for very busy time travelers who managed to carve out a little bit of time for relaxation and entertainment.

They began to say their goodbyes. People hugged those they were comfortable enough with to feel at ease doing that. They shook hands with those they weren’t as close to, but these often transformed into hugs as well. They were all friends here, except for Briar, and a little bit Thor. He let his guard down for a moment, and got in on the action as well, though. Mateo wished he could have been there in person, but he was able to watch from the security feed, and that was better than nothing. When it was all over, everyone took their places. Eight Point Seven’s consciousness was uploaded into the González, with Weaver serving as her humanoid engineer, and Goswin as the captain. Briar was stuck in one of the rooms, since the ship was never designed with a hock. Mateo was back in grave chamber four, which Cassidy was told was the culprit for the stasis malfunction. This gave her a good reason to not open it, though come next year, there was probably no reason she wasn’t allowed to know the truth, especially since everyone else on the ship already did know.

Trinity, Ellie, and Thor were the only ones to remain on-world as the two ships launched at the same time, but flew off in different directions. DJ Mount Alias was just closing her show for good as the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was breaking orbit, and preparing to engage the Radiant Lightning reframe engine. “For my last song ever, I’ve chosen something special. This is for a man I once knew, who’s being delivered to his final resting place after a hard, but far too short, life.” Easy Street started playing on the speakers, but stopped after a few seconds. “Just kidding. Friend, if you’re listening sometime in the past, I know what that song means to you.” She started playing Heat of the Moment, which was another traumatic song from Mateo’s past, as well as Leona’s. The Cleanser had tortured him with it during the Tribulation days. She stopped this as well. “That’s also a joke. I hope he appreciates it, or would have. This is the real last song. It’s not technically a single piece, however. It’s eight and a half hours long, and is perfectly designed to induce sleep. Hm. I just now realized that’s probably how it got its name. Live from the Reading Room on September 27, 2015, this...is Sleep, by Max Richter.”

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