Dardius: Amanda Moss (Part I)

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Roughly two-point-eight-three million light years from Earth, there is a galaxy called Andromeda XXI. This galaxy is also known as Miridir by its native inhabitants, nearly all of which live on a planet in the Beorht system called Dardius. This world is remarkably similar to Earth in as many ways as possible. From the mass and radius, to its distance from its parent star; from the ratio of dry land to water, to its atmospheric composition. Dardius enjoys a Terrestrial Habitability Similarity Index of .998, which is the highest ever discovered anywhere in the known universe. It was chosen as a second home for humanity for this very reason. A man with a special connection to time and space intuited that Dardius existed without ever having gone anywhere near it, but it was a woman named Meliora Rutherford Delaney-Reaver who sparked civilization there. She founded a hotel she called Sanctuary, which she built to protect those who were in everlasting danger from certain people with time powers. She named it after her first rescue, Dardan Lusha, who she believed was under constant threat from her very own father. Though Meliora was in charge of how Sanctuary was run, even she answered to someone. She was leasing space from the man who actually owned Dardius, Gilbert Boyce. And when he died, he passed it on to his good frenemy, Mateo Matic.

Another one of Meliora’s early rescues was a woman named Amanda Moss. She presently served as the Transportation Administrator for the entire planet. She was responsible for making sure the planes, trains, and automobiles ran smoothly, but she also had to worry about how to transport more rescues from Earth. This was traditionally done using a special machine called the Muster Beacon, which was capable of summoning large numbers of people, even from millions of light years away. Unfortunately, the machine became corrupted in its attempt to save the crews of two ships in recent past, and Moss had no choice but to allow the Muster Beacon’s destruction. Shortly thereafter, the other machine they used to connect to other civilizations was also destroyed, but this time by terrorists. The Nexus replica could only transport a handful of people at a time, and required a second machine on the other end, but it was at least better than nothing. So the Dardieti were isolated from the universe. They couldn’t save anyone, and they couldn’t communicate with their allies. The Muster Beacon was far too complicated to replicate. No one knew how it worked, or really even where it came from, so their only hope was to figure out how to rebuild the Nexus replica. It was also complicated, but not impossible, and about six years ago, the world’s top scientists finally figured out, and got it operational.

The first thing they discovered after rebuilding the machine was that there was a new destination that wasn’t there before. While they were working on it, a sixth replica was built on a new world, which they eventually learned was called Glisnia. It was only about sixteen light years from Earth, and very few entities lived on it as of yet. They had no knowledge of who built it, or why, and no reason to believe any permanent resident would have any interest in visiting Dardius. There were, however, several people on it right now that needed to come. The co-owner of the whole planet was recently murdered. Thanks to time travel, Mateo was actually still around and kicking, but that didn’t mean the Dardieti didn’t need to mourn his passing. He and a group of his friends were on their way to do just that. The Administration had just spent over a year preparing for this moment, and now the day was finally here. Administrator Moss was standing on the edge of the Nexus replica, eagerly awaiting arrival. After an hour, eight people magically appeared in the cavus. Just as one stepped out to greet Moss, the other seven disappeared again.

“What was that?” Moss asked.

Étude turned around. “Where did they go?”

“Are they back on Glisnia?” Moss asked, to no one in particular. Then she turned to one of the machine’s operators. “Did they go back to Glisnia?”

“I don’t know,” the technician replied.

“Well, find them!” Moss cried.

As the scientists and engineers were scrambling to figure out what went wrong, a voice came on the radio. “Transportation Administrator Moss.”

“Not now,” she spoke into the mouthpiece. “We’re gonna figure this out,” she assured Étude, who was concerned about all her friends, but mostly her daughter.

“It’s important,” the voice returned.

“I’m dealing with a crisis here,” Moss argued.

“And I have a solution to that crisis,” the voice claimed.

“How could you possibly?” Moss asked. “Who is this?”

The voice cleared her throat. “This is Meliora.”

Holy shit. Meliora Rutherford Delaney-Reaver was probably the absolute most powerful person in the universe. As a choosing one, she had pretty much every time power anyone had ever heard of. She could teleport, travel through time, see the future, even de-age herself, and rapidly heal from her wounds, among many other things. She was the one who built Sanctuary out of nothing, but after it became self-sufficient, she disappeared. Her last sighting was more than thirty years ago, and that one was never confirmed. “Madam Rutherford, I’m so sorry. Wha—I...” Moss didn’t know what to say. What can you say to someone who was practically a god? Well, there was only one reasonable response. It was respectful but neutral; brief, but eliciting. It could be said by superiors and subordinates alike, because it made no assumptions about status or potential.  “Report.”

“Everyone is here and accounted for,” Meliora replied.

“How?” Moss asked. “We saw them disappear.”

“Eh,” Meliora began. “Time, right?” It was a common phrase, spoken by those who understood the flexibility of time, and time travel. For people like this, encountering alternate versions of the same individual, or even one’s self, seeing people come back from death, or meeting someone who knew something about the future were everyday occurrences. Simply taking note that time was indeed a thing was sometimes the only explanation needed for what most would consider a supernatural event.

Moss nodded her head, as did Étude. They didn’t know what the other seven people had been through, or how they had made their way back to present-day Dardius. It could have been years since they disappeared, even though it was seconds ago for everyone in this room. Or it could have been seconds for them as well.

“Would we be able to transport to your location?” Moss asked her—for lack of a better term—boss.

Meliora didn’t technically have an official position on Dardius, but neither did Mateo’s wife, Leona. That didn’t mean they couldn’t ask for anything they wanted, and pretty much get it every time. “Come to the hotel. Main restaurant.” The original Sanctuary hotel was no longer in service, and was converted into a museum years ago, but it also sort of became a holy place. People didn’t visit, not because they weren’t interested in history, but because they felt contaminating the space would have been disrespectful, and irreverent.

Moss hadn’t returned to the hotel since she and the rest of the original rescues left. It was an amazing place to live, but it was becoming overcrowded, and they needed to branch out. This was their opportunity to start fresh, and to make the new world as they wished Earth could be. The problem was that everyone in those early days was from Earth. They still couldn’t ignore all that history; good or bad. They could do better, though. Luckily, they had people like Amanda Moss to make sure they didn’t make all the same mistakes that their ancestors had. This was how Dardius ultimately became, not a paradise, but a safer and more prosperous version of Earth.

She pulled up a map of the planet, and showed Étude where Sanctuary was. Then they took each other’s hands, and teleported there. “Madam Rutherford,” Moss said, taking the goddess’ hand in both of hers. “It is such an honor to see you.”

“We’ve met before,” Meliora reminded her.

“I know, and you saved me, but that was before we made all this. Now what you did is so much more amazing.”

Meliora smiled. “I give you and your friends the credit for all that.”

“I thought you said everyone was accounted for.” Étude forced herself to separate from the hug with her daughter. They just kept losing each other, and they were both clearly growing tired of it.

“They are,” Meliora said. “Mateo, Leona, and Cassidy are here, while the others are in other places on the planet.”

“Why aren’t we doing this together?” Étude asked.

“Respect,” Moss whispered to her.

“No, it’s okay,” Meliora said, not offended at all. “There’s something you should know.” She pointed to the three who had been temporarily missing. “Theses people are from the future, as are Miss Pudeyonavic, Miss Unger, Miss Delgado, and Miss Crawville. When the Nexus replica was sabotaged—”

“It was sabotaged!” Moss cried.

Okay, now Meliora was a little perturbed. “It all worked out, so we’re gonna fix it, but we’re not gonna try to undo it. As I was saying, they’re from the future, but not the same points in the future. They were relocated elsewhere in time, and eventually made their respective ways to this point in history, but they’ve each experienced various amounts of the future. Leona here is a few days ahead of Mateo, while I believe Vitalie is from the 24th century.” She seemed to notice Étude giving her daughter the same sad look she always does. “You’ve not lost that much time with Cass,” she assured her, though it kind of sounded like a lie. “She’s actually why we’re here.”

“Forgive me, but what is this about?” Étude wasn’t as astounded by being in the same room with such an important woman as most people were. Though, to be fair, most people were awestruck by being around Mateo and Leona, while Moss had no strong feelings about it, so she understood where Étude was coming from.

“We’re here to discuss some legal matters. What with the Patronus clause being activated several decades ago, and Mateo’s death, things are kind of complicated. They’ve made some decisions, though, and it’s time we discuss that. We’re just waiting on your third.”

“Our third what?” Étude questioned.

Meliora held up her fingers, and dropped them one by one as she counted. “Five, four, three...” then she only mouthed the word two, and when it was time for one, she pointed out the door across the room. Right on time, the door opened. Étude’s mother—Cassidy’s grandmother—was on the other side, along with her partner.

“Mom?” Étude asked. She hadn’t seen her mother in...she didn’t even know how long, but she was a child back then.

“Grandma?” Cassidy echoed. The two of them had never met.

Saga Einarsson ran over the threshold, which was actually a portal to a different time and place. Her partner, Vearden Haywood closed the door behind them, and stepped over to shake Mateo and Leona’s hands. They had been good friends for awhile now.

After the tearful greetings and introductions, Étude looked back over at Meliora. “What is this? Not that I’m complaining, but why are we finally all together?”

“Oh, you don’t understand?” Meliora asked. She looked around to see if anyone knew what was going on, but only Mateo and Leona were apparently cognizant of what this was all about.

Not even Moss knew what the hell was happening.

“Well,” Meliora began, “it’s about Dardius. The Matics have decided that it’s impractical to own a planet when they’re hardly ever even on it. They would like to transfer ownership to you three.”

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Microstory 1270: The Bird and the Cat

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When a cat’s owner first brought home a new pet bird, the cat was hungry. He eyed the bird up in her cage, and dreamed of chomping down on her meat. The bird showed no fear, but did not antagonize the cat either. Over time, the bird and the cat became friends. The cat always had plenty of food to eat, and there was no need for them to be enemies. She would sing him sweet songs, and he would tell her fun stories. The cunning cat even figured out how to open the bird’s cage, so she could fly free when their owner was not home. One night, the owner left some chestnuts to roast under the fire. “Oh, how we would like those chestnuts,” tweeted the bird.

“They would be mighty tasty,” purred the cat. “But we could never get them.”

“You could,” the bird said to him. “You are quick and sly. Pull them out one at a time.”

“They are too hard for my teeth,” the cat lamented. “The owner cracks them open for me, and lets me have a little every year.”

“If you get us the chestnuts,” suggested the bird, “I will crack them open for us.”

“You promise to share?” the cat asked.

“I promise,” said the bird.

And so the cat reached into the fire, and retrieved the savory nuts with his fast paws. As he did this, the bird cracked them open with her mighty beak. All told, they were able to secure nearly two dozen chestnuts between the two of them! The bird ate eleven, and the cat ate eleven. They then buried the remaining nut into the rug, hoping to spring a new chestnut tree, because they were animals, and they didn’t know any better. But they were full animals, and happy, and together.

This story was inspired by, and revised from, an Aesop Fable called The Monkey and the Cat.

Microstory 1269: The Tortoise and the Rabbit

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A rabbit was bragging to a tortoise about how much faster he could run. He kept goading the tortoise, and challenging him to a race. The tortoise was wise, and he understood his own limits, so he kept refusing. But the rabbit did not let go of this. He had already beaten all of the other animals in the forest in races, and the tortoise was the only one left. He knew he could beat him too, but he desperately wanted to prove it, so there could be no question. He also wanted to see the look on the tortoise’s face after he ran all the way to the finish line, and then ran back to mock him further. Finally, the tortoise agreed to the race, and of course, he lost. He barely made five steps before the rabbit came running back to laugh at him. Some of the animals laughed at him too for trying, even though they too had lost to the rabbit. The tortoise merely walked off, and carried about his life, not even bothering to reach the finish line. Meanwhile, the rabbit tried to move on as well, but he couldn’t. He was still stuck in the glory days. Now that he had become fastest in the forest, there was no more to accomplish, and it hadn’t really gotten him anywhere. The tortoise ended up living forty times longer than the rabbit, but even so, his life also ended in death. All the other animals who had tried to race the rabbit died as well. No one remembered them, nor cared who was the most skillful. Over the years, more rabbits raced more tortoises, and it always ended the same.

This story was inspired by, and revised from, an Aesop Fable called The Hare and the Tortoise.

Microstory 1268: The Fables and the Introduction

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At some point, on or before March 2, 2015, I read an Aesop Fable called The Scorpion and the Frog. It’s about a frog who tries to help a scorpion cross a river, but before they reach the other side, the latter stings the former, which of course, drowns them both. The moral of the lesson here is that people can’t change, but I call bullshit on that. In fact, this whole series is going to be about calling bullshit on some of the terrible lessons I found during my research. I only have room for thirty-one fables, so I can’t cover them all, but that’s not the point. By reading these, as well as the original texts—which I’ll link for you—maybe it’ll help you become a more critical person. You see, when the average individual reads this fable, they accept the lesson it gives them, but just because someone wrote it down for you, doesn’t mean it’s right. I’m not talking about misinterpreting the moral here; I’m talking about a bad moral, which I believe is harmful to society, even in some small way. The reality is that fables are by no means indicative of the way things are in general, even though they purport to be. If you read a single news article about a black man going out and stealing a car, you might conclude that black people are bad, and/or that they’re thieves. What the article doesn’t do is tell you about all the white people that steal the cars, or—more importantly—all the good things that black people do, or even the good that that particular man has done in his life. You’ve only read one article, and no matter how many articles you read, you haven’t read everything about everybody. You can’t read these little #MondayMotivation, #TransformationTuesday, #WednesdayWisdom, #ThursdayThoughts, and #FearlessFriday posts, and expect to truly learn something from them. Life is not a series of snapshots, sewn together to tell a story, and easily teased apart when you want to tell a shorter part of the story. The whole story is what holds the lesson. Don’t take me to mean you can’t ever share stories. Just be careful. Everyday is a chance for improvement, but more to the point, all days combined are available for improvement.

So when I read that story about the scorpion and the frog, I decided to rework it into a fable that I believed to be superior. In the end, the scorpion does not sting the fox. (I likely changed the animal just because I like foxes.) The lesson here is that you can’t put people in boxes. Each individual is an array of characteristics which, even knowing every entry into the array, is not enough to understand them. If you think you know a person, you are doing them, and yourself, a disservice by presuming they could never do anything unexpected, or perhaps better. So while I hope you get something out of these updated fables, don’t focus on any one of them too much. Use them to question the world a little more, and not simply accept what’s been put in front of you. There are people out there, especially on social media, who are working really hard to find some way of summarizing some incredibly complicated issues in 280 characters or less. Be wary of these. Even if they come with some truly good advice—and aren’t just meaningless aphoroids (look that word up, and keep it in the back of your mind at all times)—they only give you part of the story. Life is complicated, and you can’t boil it down. It takes a hundred years to understand a hundred years of it, and despite what people tell you, there aren’t really any shortcuts. Those people are trying to sell you something. Even if they’re not asking for your money, they’re asking for your attention. That’s what I’m doing right now, and this installment keeps getting longer, because I keep realizing how impossible it is to simplify the lesson. So I’ll end it here, so you can move on, and I hope that these Revised Fables aren’t just as absurd as the ones that I’m trying to improve.

PS: Speaking of length, these stories will be a lot shorter than normal, but still probably longer than most original fables.

Microstory 1267: Harlan Baer

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Harlan Baer was a criminal, and he never tried to get anyone to believe that he wasn’t. He was a very low-ranking member of the Business Ends gang of Kansas City in the 21st century. When he was caught selling drugs on the corner, his superiors made no attempt to help him in any way. Nor did they ask him to do things for them while he was inside. He just wasn’t important enough to them, and this lack of mutual loyalty made him a perfect candidate for a new gang. While he was in jail, a very powerful temporal manipulator called The Cleanser pulled him out of his cell, and relocated him to several decades in the future, along with a small group of other guests. He had no strong feelings about these other criminals, and they had no strong feelings about him. The Cleanser had conscripted them for a mission, but because none of them was a salmon or choosing one, the trip itself could eventually kill them. And so the man they were asked to kill arranged for them to be transported to a special place called Sanctuary. There they would be allowed to recover, serve out their likely sentences in more humane conditions, and remain in the hotel forever. Harlan wasn’t interested in this, though. He wanted to go back to the real world, and armed with the knowledge that there was more to life than peddling drugs, do something good. So he asked to go back to Kansas City, where he soon became one of the first members of the Tracer gang. He never intended to start a movement, but more rehabilitating criminals followed suit over the course of the next few years. Harlan had few further interactions with people who could manipulate time, but he did help make the world a better place in his own special way.

Microstory 1266: Defirnod Taggart

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As it turned out, the source mages had a little bit more control over who received which time powers than they led their people to believe. They were certain this was a necessary deception, however. They couldn’t be honest about what they were doing, both because  it could be dangerous, and because they didn’t want any accusations of favoritism. The truth is that they never gave certain people certain abilities, but when the truth came about about what they did, convincing people of this was the most difficult part. Some powers are more useful than others, and some aren’t really useful at all. For instance, Alyssa McIver was born with the ability to create illusions. She couldn’t simply create something out of her imagination. She could only show people things that existed somewhere, at some point in history. All she was doing was taking a magical video recording of some remote event, and overlaying it on reality to make it look like it was happening somewhere that it wasn’t. Her illusions were extremely precise, and impossible for the average person to detect, but as amazing as that is, the people of Durus had little use for it. The monsters they were fighting didn’t care who or what it was they were attacking; if they wanted to attack, they would. Yeah, someone with this ability could turn an entire town invisible, but the monsters could probably see right through the false image, and then nothing would matter. The source mages had to be careful not to let anyone get this power, or say, the ability to see what someone will look like when they’re older. They just could not risk wasting an entire mage for something they didn’t need. In order to keep the lie about the complete unpredictability of town mage powers, they created a special mage called a holistic diagnostician. It was his responsibility to identify a new mage’s powers, and to examine the extent of their gifts. As the diagnostician grew older, the source mages knew that he would one day have to pass the torch onto someone else, so they selected his two grandchildren, and made up an ancillary lie about this one ability, for whatever reason, being hereditary. While Elasy and Defirnod Taggart were both chosen, it was really only the former who fully embraced her role in society. Though the boy didn’t reject it, he would rather be doing something else. They found that his sister was much better at the job than he was. He was skillful, to be sure, but he had terrible bedside manner, and he didn’t much like it. That was fine; she could handle everything on her own. He had his own goals in life. Powers or no, he wanted to be a fighter. It was his dream to one day rid the entire planet of time monsters, and if they couldn’t ever figure out how to stop them from coming through the portal altogether, he wanted the mages to change tactics, and always stop them from even getting anywhere near the towns in the first place. Why bother protecting the towns when the enemies always came from the same place? His new plan was never realized, and before the humans won the war for good, a lot of innocent people had to die. He grew angry about this, and he blamed the source mages for their inefficient use of resources. Sadly for him, his outrage ultimately got him killed, along with a few more innocent people.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 26, 2264

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All right. So Mateo and some of his friends were stuck on a planet as many light years from Earth as they were in the past. Leona could have been delivered back to the future, or really any point in time and space. There was just no way to know. He scanned the beach, just in case a real life message in a bottle had made its way to him, but no such luck. They didn’t have an exact date of when it was, but he would end up staying there for days. But before all that, they had to receive a visit from an old frenemy.

“You knew we were going to be here?” Mateo asked.

“I had my suspicions,” Arcadia Preston replied.

“You had Kayetan create the merge point between this time period, and the 22nd century for this purpose.”

“Who said anything about Kayetan Glaston? I never said he was the one who created the merge point.”

“Did he not?”

Arcadia just shrugged.

“You can get us back to Leona, though. All we have to do is cross the merge border, and you can take us anywhere we need to go.”

“Why would I do that?” Arcadia questioned.

“Because you’re in love with me.” He didn’t want to say it, and it might have been too strong a word to use, but it was the only card he had left to play.

Arcadia seemed notably upset by this, which almost made him regret saying anything. “You’re right. The problem is that I spent centuries in a higher plane of existence, where there was only one person there who I wasn’t related to. And Athanaric was more into my sister, Nerakali.” She tilted her head, then continued, “and also my mother, but we don’t talk about that. The point is that I don’t know what to do with my feelings, in any situation. I’m crazy.” She bobbed her head around, and rolled her eyes to demonstrate her supposed insanity. “So those feelings you’re referring to are enough to keep me from killing you and everyone you care about, but that doesn’t mean I have a healthy way of handling them. If you want me to help you, you’re gonna have to help me first.”

“Another expiation,” Mateo guessed.

“The current one,” Arcadia corrected. “You only have twelve friends right now. The math on that just doesn’t add up. When I brought Xearea to the island, I promised the powers that be, that I would personally see to it that Earth would enjoy comparable replacements for the years that she was missing.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Mateo said.

“Well, twelve friends, plus you; three years each. That’s not quite enough. I need three more people to fill in the gap from 2148 to 2356.”

“Xearea didn’t return to the timestream from non-existence until 2158,” Mateo warned her, but was worried about her reaction. None of that had happened to Arcadia yet, unless she knew more about the future than he realized, which wouldn’t ever explain how he ever bested her at anything.

“No, I’m going to give her an early release.” She jerked her head up to Cassidy, Pribadium, and Vitalie, who were watching their conversation suspiciously from twenty meters away. “If you can convince your new friends to pick up the slack for your old friends, I’ll take you wherever you need to go.”

He wasn’t worried about Pribadium very much, and definitely not immortal Vitalie. Cassidy didn’t deserve this, though. He looked back at them sadly, not knowing whether he should agree to this, or if he should just hope Pribadium figures out how to get out of here.

Arcadia obviously picked up on his hesitation. “Okay. Give me two. I will...actually...release Xearea even earlier. Don’t expect me to tell Past!Mateo about it, though.”

“That is acceptable,” he agreed, “as long as it is acceptable to them.”

And so Mateo returned to his friends, and explained the situation to them. He didn’t say that he was trying to protect Cassidy further, but claimed her being on Mateo’s pattern simply disqualified her from being able to help. He also didn’t say Arcadia was accommodating them in this regard by scratching three entire years of Savior duty from the schedule. Pribadium agreed to the deal, likely hoping to redeem herself for what she believed to be all her fault. Vitalie agreed to it too, but that was because she no longer cared what she did anyway. Even though she didn’t have memories any further back than fifty-six years, she was still billions of years old, and her soul still felt that. Three years out of her life was negligible.

After Arcadia apported the ladies to meet with the First Savior, Sabra, she turned back to the two remaining. “You’re not getting off that easy, though. I still need you to do something.”

“What is it?” It wasn’t always bad, so he didn’t want to sport a bad attitude before he even knew what she was going to ask of him.

Arcadia removed the Compass of Disturbance from her back pocket, and handed it to them. “I’m just borrowing it. I’ll give it back to Juan when you’re done.”

“What do I need this for?”

“This merge point is unstable,” Arcadia began to explain. “Since you’re from the future, you obviously know what I need it for; what Lita needs it for. There is evidently some interference coming from Lorania. It is apparently a natural merge point. I need you to find it, and destroy it.”

“How am I meant to do that?” Mateo asked. “It’s not that I don’t want to; I know how this story ends, so I don’t feel like you’re asking me to do something evil, but I don’t know how to destroy time rifts.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Arcadia said. “Use the compass.”

Mateo didn’t argue the mission. He and Cassidy just walked out to the driving track where he once attempted to teach Xearea how to drive. It was here that they found a nice 2016 Nissan Rogue, waiting for them just inside the garage. He chuckled, assuming this to be a reference to The Rogue, Gilbert Boyce, who currently did not exist. It was July 2, 2117.

They drove the car over the magical oceanic highway, until reaching the nearest bit of land to Tribulation Island, which was Lorania. Just after they shut their doors, they jumped forward in time one year. He kind of wished they had gotten there early enough to stop the actually insane immortal, Ambrosios from quite nearly killing Xearea, but her near-death experience had set of a series of events, the altering of which could lead to disaster. It was best to let things play out as he knew they did, and stay on mission. Cassidy followed him as he opened the special compass, and started walking, hoping he eventually learned how to make the damn thing work. It took him all day, but he did finally understand, to a minimal degree, how to make the object direct him towards the merge point. By then, Cassidy needed a personal break, but he was determined to find the source of this merge point that Arcadia was so bothered by. In doing so, he nearly ran into something. No, it wasn’t something, it was someone.

The newcomer had presumably been focusing on eating his lionfruit, which he recalled doing months ago. It was Mateo Matic himself. He had run into his own doppelgänger. The two Matics stared at each other for a few seconds. The younger Mateo cleared his throat and wiped some juice from his chin. Navigator Mateo looked back at his compass and walked past without saying a word. It was only then that he found his breath again. Leona’s fourth rule for time travel, avoid alternate versions of yourself. The other one would try to forget about the encounter as best he could, paranoid that anything short of total obliviousness could result in the collapse of the spacetime continuum. The tactic clearly worked perfectly, because he had totally forgotten about this incident.

He wasn’t worried about Cassidy running into the younger version of him, because everything seemed to be playing out just as it did before, and that never happened. He was right when she caught up with him a few minutes later, and didn’t know what he was talking about. Soon thereafter, the compass found what they were looking for. The merge point was large, and easily accessible simply by taking one step forward. But the source of this tear in the spacetime continuum was infinitely smaller. The compass acted like a flashlight, illuminating the slight ripples in space that gave it away. These ripples were all streaming from the same place, where they became tighter and tighter, until it looked like a t-shirt that someone was trying to stuff into a thimble. Mateo placed the compass just under this point, and then snapped it shut. He knew he wasn’t actually capturing the tear, but it did effectively repair it. Unfortunately, it appeared to have done much more than that.

Now that this was finished, Mateo and Cassidy went straight back to the beach, where their car should have been waiting for them. But it wasn’t there, and neither was anything else. Nothing around them looked familiar. Trees were trees, and grass was grass, but he could have sworn all the plant life around them was different than it was when they first arrived. If he had to guess, he would say that closing the natural merge point had a side effect, and that was trapping them in the past. There was no way to know whether it was anywhere near the time Pribadium and Vitalie would be returning to, or if it was another three million years prior. He should have asked Arcadia for details, or spent more time learning how the compass worked. Well, perhaps he would have the time now. He worked on it for a week before Pribadium showed up in a spaceship to rescue them.

“Well, then we could rescue them,” Hilde suggested.

“We can’t rescue them with the AOC,” Leona tried to explain.

“Can’t it go really fast?” she argued. “How long would it take to get to Dardius with the ship?”

“Four thousand years,” Hogarth answered instead.

“Oh,” Hilde said. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” Leona assured her. “I’m on edge, because I’m powerless. I mean, this just keeps happening to us. He runs away, I’m taken out of time, he’s taken out of time, the Halifax grave isn’t big enough, someone steals our ship, he dies. I feel like everything the powers that be did to us in the beginning was to get us to fall in love, and then everything after that was to torture us. Even Mateo’s indiscretion drove us apart a little bit. So I’m just wondering, when we finally do find each other again, how long will it have been for one of us, and what’s gonna happen next?”

“We can’t get to Dardius from here,” Hogarth said sadly. She was holding to mangled pieces of what was once this planet’s Nexus replica. “These things keep getting destroyed, but there’s one thing I know will never be destroyed.”

“What’s that?” Hilde asked.

“It’s on Earth,” Hogarth replied. “It’s protected by the oldest linear immortal besides The Concierge.”

“The Pyramid,” Leona realized. “It can get me to Dardius.”

“Present-day Dardius,” Hogarth reminded her of the caveat. “Mateo isn’t there, but if you go, you could find Étude, tell her where our friends are, and have her jump you back.”

“Why are you talking in second-person?” Hilde questioned. “We’re going with her.”

Hogarth shook her head. “I don’t know what happened to this thing, but it’s the backup plan, and even if Leona doesn’t need it, someone may in the future. I have to rebuild it. I have to figure out how.”

“It’s okay,” Leona promised. “I can go alone. It’s just one day.”

Hilde frowned. “I don’t care how long it’ll be for you. That’s days of travel time the ship has to operate on its own. What if it blows up while you’re out of the timestream? You’ll just be coming back to your death.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Leona said, recalling when the Vosa was sabotaged, leaving her exposed to the vacuum of space. It was what led to her unborn babies’ deaths.

Hilde was shaking her head. “I just don’t like you going out there alone. It’s not just you either. I don’t like when people are alone; it’s always bothered me. The scariest horror movies are when there’s only one victim being terrorized. If they’re in a group, I feel a lot safer.”

“It’s okay,” came a voice that Leona knew. “I’ll go with her.”

“Nerakali,” Leona said. “What have you experienced?”

“Well, your friend, Étude recently tried to shoot me on Proxima Doma.”

Leona was mortified.

“Oh, no. It’s okay,” Nerakali claimed. “I asked her to do it. It was the only way for me to help her find her daughter. I’m currently on my fifth life, and I’ve been spending a lot of time tracking someone really bad. I need your help. Something is happening in the timeline, and I think it’s partially my fault.”

“What did you do?”

“The hundemarke, these Nexus replicas that keep getting destroyed,” Nerakali began. “Someone is messing with people’s lives, and I recognize the pattern.”

“Is it you?” Hogarth asked. “Is a younger version of you screwing things up?”

Nerakali laughed. “That would be a funny twist, but no. Close, though.”

“I already know the answer to this,” Leona believed. “I don’t know about the Nexus replicas, but Arcadia is the one who’s been sending the hundemarke all over time to kill people permanently.”

Nerakali shook her head. “No, it’s not Arcadia, but you can be forgiven for coming to that conclusion. Out of the three Preston kids, Arcadia’s the one who looks the most like our mother. She’s the one causing problems, Leona. I need you to help me find Savannah Preston. We’re gonna need Mateo’s help too.”

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Source Variant: Moving On... (Part XV)

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“I’m sorry about your friend,” Hokusai Gimura says. “Is there anything we can do to get him back?”

“No,” Saga!Two says sadly. “This is fate. It’s his fate. I was hoping to stave it off as long as possible, but the truth is that he’s already dead.”

Hokusai nods her head reverently. “Well, maybe you’ll see him again one day. For now, we should get to work.”

They all eye her cautiously. “Get to work doing what?” Saxon asks her.

“I don’t know,” Hokusai answers. “You’re the ones who called on me.”

“You stepped over the threshold,” Vearden!Three points out, “like you thought you were supposed to be over here.”

Hokusai gestures towards both versions of Saga. “My friend obviously needs my help. I don’t know with what, or what I can do, but I trust that.”

“We’re not gonna hold a memorial, or something?” Zektene questions.

“Miss Gimura is right,” Saga!Two says. “We have too much work to do.” She directs her attention to Hokusai herself. “Saxon Parker here can fill you in on what we’re after, and hopefully you’ll have everything you need to handle it. This facility is equipped with a Calibre 8 industrial synthesizer, but the humans left a megastructure synthesizer in orbit, so you’re only limited by your imagination.” She’s trying to hold it together, but recent events have forced her to relive one of the most tragic moments of her life. She didn’t exist when her Vearden died, which was perhaps worse, because they always kind of thought they would die together. She remembers feeling bad when she was returned to the timestream, and her first thought was that she wasn’t there to see it happen. It really just made her feel powerless, and rational or no, seeing Arcadia take him to meet his destiny gave her the same pit in her stomach.

“Come on,” Saga!Three says kindly. “Let’s go talk this out alone.”

Vearden!Three leaves when the two Sagas do, because he doesn’t know how to feel about all this. It’s another Vearden, and not one he’ll become, or once was. He was a completely different person. But it’s still him, right? I mean, it’s like he died as well. How is he meant to live his life now, knowing what he knows, and having witnessed what he did? This is all too confusing, and he wants to talk with the Sagas about it, but this isn’t about him, so he just goes off on his own. He returns only minutes later, because everywhere in the building he tries to go to feels uncomfortable, or unsafe. Saxon is in the middle of explaining to Hokusai what’s going on.

“You want to move the planet?” Hokusai asks.

“No, the solar system,” Saxon clarifies. “They’re still gonna need a sun.”

“Well, I can’t do that,” she contends. “I can’t even do the first one.”

“They say you did it before, with the rogue world, Durus.”

“Yeah,” she admits, “I had a magical object called a Rothko Torch to do it for me. Everyone seems to give me credit for it, but all I did was switch it on, and point it towards the sky.”

“You can’t build this torch again?” Saxon suggests.

“I didn’t build it; I found it.” She looks around, but knows she won’t find anything. “I don’t imagine you have another one just lying around.

Vearden!Three continues to half-listen to them discuss the early stages of the plan, even though he has no idea what they’re talking about. His mind wanders as he’s thinking about everything that’s happened since that day he had the urge to travel to Kansas City, and met his first two time travelers, Serkan and Ace.

“I suppose we could use an adapted Caplan thruster. I’m sure the designs are in your database somewhere. I would need to modify it to account for this properties of this star, and it’s not going to be easy, but also not impossible.”

“Won’t that take too long?” Saxon figures. “Those operate in the millions of years.”

“Well, what’s our time table for this Ochivari invasion?”

“We don’t know,” he says, “but probably not millions of years.”

Hokusai takes a deep breath. “We could skip acceleration. I could design a cylicone-dependent velocity jumper that gets us to maximum speed in a matter of weeks. Months would be safer, but either way that’s only a light year every fifteen hundred years. I might be able to make it go a little faster, but not too much. There’s also the issue with the overall design of the Caplan.”

Saxon nods, knowing exactly what she means. “The dyson swarm we use for energy redirection would be visible from the surface of the planet. The Orolak would know we’re doing something.”

“Can’t you make this swarm thing invisible?” Vearden!Three didn’t know he was going to say anything until he already did.

The two geniuses seem open to the concept. “We have to make the system invisible anyway,” Saxon acknowledges. “It doesn’t matter where we move it if the Ochivari go looking for what they see is missing. We could blanket the atmosphere in a hologram to make it look like everything is copacetic.”

Hokusai smiles. “One glitch, and it’s over. They could wrap their religion around it.”

“Yes,” Saxon says, “we’ve seen that already. We accidentally made them worship a rock.”

They keep talking over the possibilities, while Vearden!Three tunes them out again, knowing he probably can’t contribute much more than he already has. Thirty minutes into it, Saga!Three comes back into the room. “Where are they?” Her eyes are puffy and red, indicative that she’s been mourning with her alternate self. Hopefully it was a productive cry for the both of them.

This whole time, Zektene has been looking through the Maramon database, in case the good monsters left anything behind that might help. “Where are what?”

“The Ochivari,” Saga!Three clarifies. “Where is their home planet? What planets have they conquered?”

“We don’t have that information,” Saxon replies. “We know where Worlon is, but we lost all quantum communication when I had to destroy the uplink back at the vonearthan base, so we don’t know anything beyond that.”

“But they’re really advanced,” Saga!Three presumes. She steps forward slowly as she’s talking. “They have spaceships, and aerosol cans, and firearms.”

“Yes,” Saxon says. “Where are you going with this?”

Vearden!Three stands up, also wanting to know the answer to this, and worried about what she’s saying.

“If they have all these amazing things, then they probably have really simple things. Things like...doors?”

Zektene looks horrified. “Saga, don’t think like that.”

“Doors like that one?” Saga!Three jerks her head over to the door that leads to the section of the facility that once housed the Gondilak growth pods.

“Don’t even think about it.” Zektene almost looks defensive.

“We need intel,” Saga!Three reasons. And if we can, we need to slow them down, or hell, even destroy them.”

“You’re not going to be able to do that with a door,” Saxon tries to reason right back, “unless you can find one large enough to fit the Death Star, or Lexx.”

“I have to do something,” Saga!Three explains. “I can’t just sit here. I can’t help you build your magical protection machines. I don’t even care much about it. This is so much bigger than this one little planet. Has anyone on Earth ever considered that? Are they going to war?”

“Way I understand it,” Saxon regrets saying, “no. Some disagree, but the vonearthan leadership has decided against interference.”

“You mean they’re sticking their heads in the sand,” Saga!Three spits. She drew closer to the door.

Zektene jumps a few meters over to block her path.“Do not go through that,” she nearly orders.

“I wouldn’t mind having a teleporter at my side,” Saga!Three says to her.

“We can’t fight these creatures by ourselves,” Zektene excuses.

“You’re right, which is why I’m not going straight there. We need a few things; fighters, scientists, weapons, maybe even transportation.” The list is obviously not comprehensive, but she couldn’t have been thinking about doing this for very long.

“I can get you transportation,” Vearden!Three volunteered. “You may need to travel to other universes, and I happen to know a little bit about that.”

“We don’t want to take The Crossover from whoever’s operating it, or The Prototype from the Laymen,” Saga!Three says.

“No,” Vearden!Three says. “Those wouldn’t help you much anyway. They can make jumps, but they’re not spacefaring ships. What you’ll need is The Transit.” He steps over, and opens the door for them. There’s a room on the other side, but not the one that’s meant to be there. “If you truly want to do this, that’s where you should start.”

“Wadya say, Zek?” Saga!Three offers. “While they go on the defensive, you wanna help me take offense?”

Zektene sighs, and considers it. “If you’re going to anyway, I guess I have to.”

Saga!Three smiles, and wipes her face of the remaining evidence that she was crying. “Are you coming too?” she asks Vearden!Three.

He shakes his head. “I have my own mission.”

Saga!Three nods. She takes Zektene’s hand, and leads her through the portal. Vearden!Three waves one last time, and closes the door behind them.

“Are they gonna be okay?” Hokusai asks.

“You can count on it,” Vearden!Three replies.

“You’ve already seen it, haven’t you?” Saxon guesses. “You know what happens to them.”

Vearden!Three smirks, and prepares to open the door again, but this time for himself.

“What’s your mission?” Saga!Two has just stepped into the room, but she was listening to the conversation the entire time from around the corner.

Vearden!Three looks back at her. “I’m gonna go get your friend.”

“No, don’t,” Saga!Two reaches out towards him. “You can’t change the past. I mean, you can, but you shouldn’t. My experience, it’s...it led me here. It resulted in my daughter.”

He smiles at her. “Vearden!Two doesn’t have to die. You just have to think he died.” He looks back at the door that had the potential to take him anywhere in time and space, as long as he was worthy of making it do that. “I finally know my purpose.” He opens the door, and closes it behind him before the other three can see much of what’s on the other side, other than the woods, presumably on Tribulation Island, where he plans on switching places with his alternate self.

A second later, the door opens again, and Vearden!Two walks in from the beach. His face is unreadable. “Saga?”

“Vearden,” is all that Saga can say.

“What did I just agree to?” Vearden asks.

“Self-sacrifice,” Saxon answers.

“What do we do now?” Saga wonders. She’s still trying to work up the nerve to hug her best friend.

“There’s nothing more you can do here,” Saxon says. “Why don’t you try to open that door too, and see where it takes you?”

“Everybody’s doing it,” Hokusai adds.

They laugh. And then Saga walks over to try what they’ve recommended. She and Vearden take hold of the handle together, and pull it open.

Two beautiful and amazing women are waiting for them on the other side of it. “Mom?” one of them asks.

“Grandma?” asks the other.

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