The Advancement of Mateo Matic: December 1, 2269

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It  was still 2268 when Mateo woke up from having been knocked out. He asked what had happened, but no one answered. As he was massaging his head, he struggled to get to his knees, and looked around. All three of the others were lying on the floor as well. He crawled over to Leona, and checked for a pulse. She was alive, but unconscious. He checked Nerakali too, and she was the same way. He might have checked on Arcadia, but he couldn’t bring himself to care enough about her. Besides, it wasn’t long before they all started to wake up as well. The first thing Nerakali did was slither over to the now dead body of the man they were talking to. She felt around his neck, but came up short. “Where the hell did it go?”

“The hundemarke isn’t there?” Arcadia questioned, turning herself over to her back.

“It’s gone,” her sister confirmed. “It can’t just disappear, though. Someone has to physically move it from place to place.”

“Maybe our mother placed a temporal enchantment on it. Maybe it will always go back to her after each time it’s used.”

“No,” Leona said. “Though she was the last to reawaken, she was the strongest of them, and was recovering fastest. She was up on her feet, and looking around. “Someone was here. Someone slipped in while we were unconscious, and stole it. It probably wasn’t your mother. I imagine she would have stayed, if only to figure out what you were doing here.”

“What happened to us?” Mateo was finally able to ask.

“The hundemarke, when activated, won’t allow its own history to be altered,” Arcadia began to explain. “It does this by whatever means necessary. Sometimes that means redirecting your teleportation destination. Sometimes it just means creating a spatial barrier between it, and anyone who would interfere. Mateo, when you tried to stop this dude from killing himself, the dog tag reacted, and literally kept you from reaching him.”

“That doesn’t explain what happened to all of you,” he said. “Did you all try the same thing, even knowing it wouldn’t work?”

“We’re connected, remember?” Nerakali asked. “You hit the barrier, so we did too.”

“Wait, so if I run into a door frame, you’ll feel the pain?”

“No,” Leona answered. “It’s not a magic spell. Door frames are just regular things, but the barrier was beyond three-dimensional space.”

“That’s comforting,” Arcadia noted, “since he obviously intends to throw himself into a bunch of door frames.”

“That was just an example,” Mateo tried to defend himself. After a few moments of silence, while they reoriented themselves, he spoke again. “Does anyone have any clue who he was?”

“No idea,” Nerakali said. “He was apparently from the future, though.”

Leona was clearly working things out in her head, but it didn’t seem to have anything to do with the mysterious suicidal man’s identity. “I thought this was meant to be the first step.”

“Huh?”

“You suggested we were playing the long game here, and that this was just going to give us a clue to the hundemarke’s location.”

“Yeah...”

“We almost had it, though,” Leona pointed out. “If one of you had stopped Mateo from trying to stop the suicide, we wouldn’t have struck the barrier, and we would have been able to take the hundemarke after he was done using it.”

“Well, that’s not what happened,” Arcadia said.

“Yes, but you couldn’t have known that.” Leona rethought what she said. “I mean, of course you could have known, but if that’s the case, then why didn’t you tell us what was going to happen, and why didn’t you warn us someone was going to sneak in and steal it out from under us, and why didn’t you try to stop that?”

Nerakali yawned. “Those are a lot of questions, so I’ll skip them all, and just try to explain myself. I’m not trying to find the hundemarke as much as I’m trying to find my mother. This is the last known location where the dog tag was used. I didn’t know how it was going to be used, but I knew it would lead us to Savannah, which is the real mission here. It’s still going to do that. All we need to do is jump to two more years, and find our next clue. Nothing here went wrong. It wasn’t pleasant, but it couldn’t have happened any other way. I wouldn’t have been able to stop Mateo from trying to stop this guy’s death. Nor would either of you have been happy with me if I had. To preserve our relationship, I made a call. The good news is that this is obviously not the last time we see him. The bad news is we can’t change today. We all know that; it’s why we’re here.”

Leona might not have wanted to admit it, but Mateo understood. The hundemarke was a terrible and dangerous thing. There was no way they were going to complete this mission without seeing at least one person die permanently from it. “We’re all hungry, and tired,” he mediated. “I assume there is nothing we can do today, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Then let’s move on from this, and try to make things better next year.”

A year later, they found themselves in a very different place, but also the exact same place. In the interim, someone must have come in here, and repaired everything. They somehow restored it to its former glory. It looked like a very large basement now, mooded with purple lights, like maybe it was always meant to be underground. Who would do this, though, and why? “How is it like this now?”

“Do not be alarmed,” came the distinctive voice of the man they just watched die. He rounded the corner, and came into view. “This place is suffering from a temporal anomaly. Sometimes it’s whole; sometimes it’s ramshackle. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern to it.”

“You know us,” Leona said, rather than asked.

“I do, yes.”

“We still need an introduction,” Nerakali told him.

“Forgive me. I’ve still not gotten used to you not knowing me very well.” He stretched out his hand, towards no one in particular. “I’m Matt Cameo.”

“Matt Cameo?” Leona asked in disbelief. “That sounds made up.”

“Don’t be rude, love.”

“No, she’s right, Matt said. “They started calling me Cameo, because of how infrequently I show up. My real last name is Caimeo.”

“You expect us to believe that’s a coincidence?” Leona asked, still suspicious.

“It’s absolutely not a coincidence.” Matt tapped on a device that was wrapped around his arm, and let a hologram of the name MATT CAIMEO appear above it. He then used his other hand to rearrange the letters in the air.

Well before he was finished, Leona gasped. “Holy shit.”

She ended up being right about the holy shit. His name was a perfect anagram for Mateo’s. The hologram now read MATEO MATIC. No letters needed to be removed, or added. “That’s your real name?”

“Afraid so,” Matt claimed. “My parents didn’t even name me Matthew. Matt is what’s on my birth certificate.”

Nerakali chuckled. “Lemme guess, you only live for one day every year. At the end of every day, you jump backwards in time three hundred and sixty-six days?”

“That’s exactly right,” Matt said. He looked back over to Leona. “No, it’s not a coincidence at all. The powers that be specifically chose me to be his opposite.”

“They do like their games and poetry,” Nerakali rationalized.

They continued to talk to their new...friend? He explained that he preferred to go by Cameo now, but would say little about his life. He refused to reveal what year he started this, or how long he had been doing it. Mateo had met lots of time travelers before, but no one quite like this. He wasn’t just generally going in the opposite direction, but very precisely so, and it had repercussions. This meant that every time they encountered him, they would know him a little bit more, and he would know them a little bit less, so Mateo couldn’t help but feel that that was just a little bit sad. No one else seemed to have strong feelings about it. It didn’t seem to bother them at all. While they were still trying to get something out of them, Arcadia suddenly blurted out, “Deana Noelle!”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you know someone named Deana Noelle?” Arcadia pressed.

“Oh,” Leona said. “That name is missing the y.”

“Your name’s not Leona Delane?”

Leona rolled her eyes.

“I do this alone,” Cameo explained.

“You don’t do it with us?” Mateo asked.

Now Cameo got all sad. “Our paths do not intertwine as much as you would think. We do not become close.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Mateo said. “Perhaps that can be changed?”

“Please don’t try,” Cameo requested.

“Could we..possibly...have a sidebar?” Leona asked as she was gently tugging at Mateo’s sleeve.

“Not a problem,” Cameo said. “I’ll be in the jail.” When they widened their eyes, he realized that he needed to clarify. “This place has a tiny little jail. Do you not know where we are?”

“It looks like the Arrow bunker,” Mateo said, looking up at the televisions hanging from the ceiling. “One of them, anyway.”

“Not a bad guess, but wrong franchise. It’s probably for the best if I don’t say anything more.”

When he was hopefully out of earshot, Leona started to vocalize her concerns. “This guy is hiding something.”

“Everyone is always doing that all the time,” Arcadia mused.

“How optimistic of you.”

“I’m serious,” Leona continued. “Does he look like he’s about to kill himself?”

“Are you saying that didn’t happen?” Nerakali questioned.

“No,” Leona replied, “I’m saying he must be lying about his temporal pattern. I mean, something really bad would have to happen today to make him want to end his own life tomorrow. The only logical explanation is that it’s not really going to happen tomorrow for him.”

“That’s not the only explanation,” Mateo argued. “You don’t know what’s happening in his head, or what he’s gone through. I mean, he just implied that he lives in a jail, and I find it hard to believe he has to. Lots of suicidal people keep their feelings locked away deep inside, and don’t show any signs that anything’s wrong. What you see on TV, with the loner wearing the beanie, and drawing disturbing pictures of his classmates—those are the ones who are asking for help. People who end up actually going through with it often don’t let anyone know what they’re planning, because they truly want it to end; not to just get better.”

“The only question is what we should do with him now,” Nerakali determined. “How do we interact with him, knowing what we know?”

“Well, surely he knows that we know,” Leona reasoned, “because he knows, and he knows when we’re from.”

“He may not,” Mateo said. “Or it may not matter. Or he may not be planning to do it tomorrow, but that’s what becomes inevitable over the course of the next thirty-six hours for him. It’s like Nerakali said, we can’t change the past. All we can do is move forward, and maybe make him feel a little less alone during his final days.”

“Jesus.” Arcadia rests her shoulder against a pillar, and places her forehead in her hand. “This is rough, even for me. I mean, I’m sadistic, but I don’t like knowing this much about his future. How can we not warn him, or try to stop him? Hundemarke or no, how can we just go on like everything’s fine?”

“Maybe we don’t have to,” Nerakali said, a bit cryptically.

It took them a minute to realize what she meant, and as always, Mateo was the last to figure it out. He did manage to get there on his own, though. Nerakali was suggesting that she manipulate their memories, so that they no longer remembered Cameo’s future. It was entirely possible; definitely for Mateo and Leona, presumably for Arcadia too, but maybe not so easy for Nerakali herself.

“I can make you recall meeting him yesterday, since that’s what he likely assumes happened. I can make you forget what he did, though.”

“What about you?” Arcadia asked. The fact that she was asking implied that Mateo was right, and her sister was incapable of screwing with her own mind.

“I can get through it,” Nerakali answered. “I can carry the burden. It’s the only way, anyway.”

“No, it’s not,” Mateo said. He lifted his arm. “These connect us. You said we have your brain blending powers. You don’t have to be the one to do this.”

“Not technically,” Nerakali agreed, “but I still do.”

“No, you don’t, sister,” Arcadia said. “I can do it.”

“Or we can draw straws,” Leona suggested.

“No,” Mateo said. “It’s just been decided, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. I’m sorry.”

“What is that, love?”

He didn’t bother answering her. Before they could stop him, he figured out on his own how to use Nerakali’s brain blending time powers, and erase everyone’s foreknowledge of Cameo’s ultimate fate. Only he would remember, and that was a weight he would never be free of. That was okay, though, because it probably wouldn’t be very long before he had to go back in time, and greet his own fate at the bottom of that cliff on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. After it was done, they freed Cameo from jail, and tried to get to know him a little better.

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Dardius: Pribadium Delgado (Part V)

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Pribadium Delgado never saw herself becoming a parent. She was still pretty young when she found herself introduced to the world of salmon and choosers, but the plan was always to become transhumanistic. Given enough upgrades, an individual will be incapable of conceiving or gestating a human. Their body will just no longer be hospitable to new life. Of course, this didn’t mean she couldn’t raise children, or even that she couldn’t have them before she received these upgrades, but it was still never in her plans. This did not change when she was forced to mother baby Brooke Prieto-Matic, but it did give her an idea. In the year she spent taking care of this precious little thing, Pribadium did form a bond, and it was unclear whether the woman who forced her to care for someone else’s child, Arcadia knew this was going to happen, or not. That didn’t matter, though. The point was that she could use this situation to her advantage. There was something she needed to get done, and convincing Arcadia, and all the others, that she felt compelled to continue raising Brooke was the best way to do it.

The year was 2129, and Leona was preparing to take Brooke home to the 21st century. The latter was incapable of experiencing nonlinear time, so the only way to get her to Earth was with the relativistic ship that Pribadium had built. It would take millions of realtime years, and thousands of years from the perspective of anyone inside the ship. Brooke was set to be placed in stasis, while Leona had to pass the time in an unusual way. Arcadia set things up for her to stay awake the entire time, but unable to hold onto short-term memories. She would recall enough to maintain the ship, and correct issues, but would not be totally aware of the passage of time. Technically, she could have been placed in a stasis pod as well, but Arcadia wasn’t allowing that. As terrible as that was, it was what gave Pribadium her big idea.

“What are you doing here?” Arcadia questioned. “I thought I let you cross back over to the other side of the merge border.

A man named Kayetan Glaston had the ability to put two different points in spacetime together, so that one could walk back and forth at will. He had merged modern-day Tribulation Island with ancient Tribulation Island. Pribadium, Vitalie, and Cassidy were sent over to the other side, so they could make their way back to the future, but the other two agreed to do things differently. They had formed a bond with Brooke as well. So when Arcadia wasn’t looking, they snuck back over to the ancient side. “We want on that ship,” Pribadium demanded.

“Who are these people, Arcadia?” Leona asked.

“You’ve not met them yet,” Arcadia explained to her, before turning her attention back to Pribadium. “This wasn’t part of the deal.”

“It’s a new deal,” Vitalie said. “We’re going back to Earth with the two of them. There’s plenty of room. It was built with three pods that you’re not even using. It’s perfect.”

“Do you even need a pod?” Arcadia asked.

“I’m immortal,” Vitalie replied, “but I still get bored.”

“Why do you want to do this?”

“I can’t let Brooke go,” Pribadium said. “I want to be there for her.”

“Really?” Arcadia wasn’t so convinced.

“You’re the one what made me nurse her,” Pribadium tried to explain. “What did you think was gonna happen? That I could just walk away?”

“Say what?” Leona asked.

Arcadia pointed to the ship. “This thing is going to arrive on Earth in the year 2025. That’s essentially random for you. None of you has been there before, and it’s not anywhere near when and where you need to be.”

“I was close once,” Cassidy noted. She first disappeared from her old life in 2019.

“Don’t you need to get to Mateo’s memorial?” Arcadia questioned.

“Mateo’s memorial?” Leona asked, upset. “What are you talking about?”

“This is many centuries in the future,” Arcadia lied to her, which only seemed to make her feel a little bit better. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you don’t remember any of this when you get to Earth.”

“There’s no reason to not let us do this,” Pribadium said, trying to get back to the matter at hand. “Not only does it not hinder your plan to make Leona stay awake for thousands of years, but it reinforces it. Now there really aren’t enough stasis pods for her.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Arcadia had to agree. “But what do you plan to do when you get there? I’ve already set things up so that Leona takes care of her on her own for a little bit, and then Brooke’s cousin, Mireille takes over. How do you plan to insert yourself into her life, and how long do you intend to remain there?”

“You let me worry about that,” Pribadium said. “Again, this has nothing to do with you. What do you care where we go, when we go there, and whose child we raise while we’re there?”

On paper, Arcadia obviously knew that Pribadium was right, but she was the kind of person who didn’t like being dictated to. She liked to come up with the rules, and the plans, and she didn’t appreciate when someone came along and changed things on her. Her face transformed as she was considering the options. When at first she was annoyed, now she was apathetic. “Whatever. Do what you want. I don’t care. It’s your responsibility to return to your own time period when you’re ready. That ain’t got nothin’ to do with me.” She started to walk away. “You best get on your way, though. That does have to do with me.”

Leona gently took Arcadia by the arm. “Thank you,” she said. “I don’t know who these people are, but they seem really nice, and I’m happy to see that you have a heart...even if you won’t admit it.”

Arcadia scoffed. “You don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about.” She reached down to the ground, and lifted the fabric of space like it legit was indeed fabric. She slipped under the magic curtain, and let it fall back into place behind her.

Fifteen minutes later, Brooke, Vitalie, and Cassidy were safely tucked away in their stasis pods. Pribadium was meant to be the only one left, but she had other plans. Leona and her husband, Mateo were always very kind to her. They immediately accepted her into their group without question. She felt that she had made a lot of mistakes, and still felt responsible for them all becoming trapped in the past. This version of Leona had no idea who she was, but she was still herself, and she deserved something good to come to her. There was really only one gift that Pribadium could give, and it came in the form of the last stasis pod.

“This is not meant for me,” Leona argued.

“No,” Pribadium agreed, shaking her head. “Arcadia wanted you to be awake, so you’ll end up around the same age as your husband. But who cares? Arcadia’s not here, and neither you nor Mateo is going to fall out of love with the other because of the age difference. It’s not even really an age difference. Mateo hardly thinks about the time he was stuck in that crazy spatio-temporal dimension. He’s not four thousand years old, and you don’t need to be either. So this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to sip on this Youth water, and sit here in the pilot’s seat. You’re a great physicist, Leona, but I built this ship. I know how it works, and how to fix any problem we come across. You just need to go to sleep, and forget about all this. When we get to Earth, no one will know what happened. I’ll wake you up first, and tell no one that we switched places. The worlds will keep turning.”

“I don’t know if I can let you do this for me,” Leona lamented. “You’re a stranger.”

“No,” Pribadium said with a kind smile. “I’m not.”

“Are you sure?”

“Hundred percent.”

Leona agreed to the new plan. She crawled into the stasis pod, and let Pribadium put her to sleep. Pribadium went on to live for thousands of years, but she didn’t do it the same way that Arcadia had planned. She switched off the temporal distortion feature, and passed the time in a totally different way. Stasis pods served two primary functions. First, they were designed to keep the subject alive and young, so they could actually survive long enough to see the end of the journey. They were also made to put the subject in a dreamless sleep, so that they woke up however much time later with no memory of it. To the four of them, the whole thing would last mere seconds; not centuries. But that was a human necessity, and Pribadium Delgado wasn’t entirely human.

Transhumanistic upgrades were not black and white. At no point did someone transform from human to android. It was a gradient, full of complicated choices and variables. While Pribadium was predominantly a biological entity, she was also a little something more. The Youth water that was meant for Leona was more than enough to keep her alive like suspended animation would, but that was easily rigged up as an IV fluid. In order to capitalize on that second function, all Pribadium needed to do was program her brain to experience time differently. Arcadia was wanting to do this for Leona using magicks, but Pribadium was capable of it through technology, and she could exercise her own control over it. The ship was going to be traveling through space for 2.83 million years, and her body was going to be sitting in the ship for just a hair over four thousand years, but her mind was only going to be there for twenty-four days. She could have sped time up for herself even more, but this made it easier to snap out of it for any maintenance issues. Hopefully, when this was all over, she would feel better about everything she had done, even if it didn’t really make up for it.

Millions of years later, they were on Earth in the year 2025, and no one discovered what Pribadium had done. She didn’t wake her friends up until Leona and Brooke were exactly where they were meant to be. When Vitalie and Cassidy asked why it was she wasn’t helping take care of baby Brooke, she said she didn’t want to talk about it. This was easier than coming up with a lie, and it seemed to be good enough for them. Now the only question was how the hell they were going to get back to Dardius in 2263. Surprisingly, it was Cassidy who came up with a good plan to accomplish this.

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Microstory 1290: The Fox and His Friends

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A dog and a chicken were bored of the farm where they had both lived their entire lives. They wanted to see the world, so they broke through the fence, and started their journey. They weren’t able to travel very fast, because the chicken couldn’t keep up with the dog, and the dog couldn’t move very fast when she had a chicken on her back. Still they continued, because it was important for them to see things they never had before, and to gain valuable experiences. As the hour grew late, they knew they had to find a place to sleep, so they settled on a nice, large tree. The lowest branch was high enough to keep the chicken away from danger, and the trunk was hollowed out, so the dog could crawl inside. When morning came, the chicken woke up with a start. For a second, she forgot where she was, and fell off the branch. She clucked louder than she ever had before. Had she still been at the farm, she would have awoken everyone else there. As it happened, only a fox was alerted to her presence. Fearful and worried, the chicken flew back up to the branch, and looked around for danger. The dog, meanwhile, ran off to patrol the area, to make sure her little chicken friend was safe. It was at this time that the fox glided up to the tree to see what the fuss was about. “Get away from me,” the chicken said to him. “I will not be your meal today!”

“Please do not be frightened.” The fox couldn’t remember where he had gone wrong in his life, or how he had generated such a terrible reputation, but he wanted to change that. Yes, this prey looked tasty, but he also desperately needed friends, and that had to be more important. “I promise that I am not here to hurt you.”

“My dog friend will return soon, and then you will be sorry.”

Then the fox got an idea. It wasn’t the best he ever had, but he felt he had to do something. He threw a grape into the air with his mouth, and then struck it with his tail. It flew up towards the trunk, and knocked the chicken from her roost. The fox then proceeded to sit there without hurting the chicken, so that when the dog returned, he could show them that he was telling the truth. Their friendship did not come easy, but over time, the fox was able to prove himself a better friend than an enemy.

This story was inspired by, and revised from, an Aesop Fable called The Dog, the Cock, and the Fox.

Microstory 1289: The Man and His Breath

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A satyr was walking along the path in the dead of winter when he came across a human doing the same. The man looked cold and weary, and he explained that he had many steps yet to go, so the satyr offered to let him stay in his little hut for the night. The satyr led his friend along the path, towards his home. As they were walking, the satyr noticed the man breathing into his hands. “Why do you do that?” the satyr asked.

“This keeps both my hands, and my face, warm.”

The satyr believed he knew what the man meant, even though the temperature didn’t bother him much. He was built for this kind of weather. When they arrived at his place, he sat his new friend at the table while he started a fire, and prepared a nice meal for them to eat together. Once the porridge was ready, he sat down himself, and started to eat. He didn’t even notice how hot it was. The man, however, first blew on his porridge, just like he had when he was outside. “Why do you do that?” the satyr found himself asking again.

“This cools the porridge down,” the man explained.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” the satyr complained. “Why not one hour ago, you did the same thing to make something warm!”

“Yes,” said the man. “It’s called the second law of thermodynamics. My breath is about the same temperature as it always is. Which means it’s warmer than the winter air outside, and cooler than the porridge that was heated by fire. When my breath mixes with these things, they make each other change temperatures. Which direction that temperature goes—colder, or hotter—depends entirely on which end of the spectrum they are to begin with.”

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

Microstory 1288: The Mule and Its Burden

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A mule was carrying a load of salt for his master, so that the master could sell his product at the market. The trail there was treacherous and long, and there was one particular spot that always gave them trouble. The mule was always able to cross the stream, but it required a lot of patience and care, and there was always a risk that something would go wrong. The master once tried to take them on an alternate route, but the trail was far longer, and was more dangerous overall. Their luck ran out when the mule slipped on a wet rock, and fell to his side. Luckily, he wasn’t hurt, and was able to stand back up. In fact, he felt better than ever, because much of the salt had spilled into the stream, to be lost forever. The master was disappointed, but he knew it was only a matter of time. Hopefully it would never happen again. But the mule had other plans. The next time they took the journey, he had the idea to slip again, and lighten his load a bit. His plan worked perfectly; too good, actually. He lost more of the salt than he had planned on, which made his master become suspicious of him. Still, they kept trying. When it happened a third time, the master knew that something was wrong. He was unable to communicate with his mule, but he realized there was only one solution to the problem. The next time they went out, he loaded his mule up with less salt than normal, and carried the rest of it himself. The mule was grateful, and decided to cross the stream safely once more. All was well.


This story was inspired by, and revised from, an Aesop Fable called The Ass and the Load of Salt.

Microstory 1287: The Father and the Snake

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A father and his son were coming back from the market one day when the son accidentally stepped on a pile of eggs. The father examined the remains, and discovered that they belonged to a snake. The son was upset about what he had done, but his father assured him that these things happen. He was also afraid the mother would return, and be stricken with sadness for what happened, but the father also knew that this variety of snake always abandons her eggs, and would move on with her life, never knowing something had happened. Unfortunately, he was wrong. This particular mother snake was a little different. For whatever reason she felt the urge to return to her nest, and check on her babies. She was horrified by what she found there, and even though it was not in her nature, felt compelled to seek revenge on whoever killed her young. She sniffed around, and picked up the scent. Then she slithered off to hunt for the culprit. She found him, and bit the boy in the ankle. The boy nearly died, but the father acted quickly, and got him medical attention. He was angry, though, so he hunted the mother snake right back, and cut off her tail with a shovel. Now even angrier, the snake returned to the father’s home, and bit several of his cows. She bit each one of them many times, in the dead of night, so he would not be able to tend to them in time. Angrier too, the father went out to get his revenge again, but this time, he was determined to kill her, and just be done with it. But the son did not want this to happen. While he was still recovering, he struggled out of bed, and followed his father to the woods. He finally caught up with him just as they were coming upon the snake. She was prepared for a fight, and so was the father. “No,” the son declared. “You will not do this. No good can come of it.” He continued his speech, trying desperately to dissuade them from their bloodlust. The cycle of violence had to end, and both of them knew it. Neither believed the other should concede first. It was just that each worried the other wouldn’t take kindly to a truce, and that it might make things worse. But someone had to risk it. The boy’s words were enough to change them both for the better. The father apologized for the snake’s young, and the snake apologized for his cattle. She tried to apologize for the boy, but the boy insisted that all was forgiven on his end. The father and the snake did not become friends that day, but they were no longer enemies.

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

Microstory 1286: The Turtle and Her Home

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It came to pass in the very early days of creation that the god of the animals, and the god of the plants, decided to marry each other. They wanted to better blend all life in the world, and manage them together. Only then did they think life would thrive, and multiply. All the animals living at the time were invited to the wedding, and nearly all of them showed up. Notably absent, however, was the turtle. No one knew why she wasn’t there to honor the god who created her, but they were worried that something terrible had happened to her. After the ceremony was over, they came to learn that the turtle was perfectly safe, and that she had simply chosen to not attend. The others said it was rude and inconsiderate, but if they were being honest with themselves, perhaps they would realize that they were mostly upset because they had felt obligated to come. She wasn’t afraid to make her own decisions, like they were. It was only the two gods that were willing to listen to her explanation. “My house is not much,” she explained, “but it is mine, and I love it, and it is where I feel the safest. You invited the sharks and the seabirds, and though you placed a temporary truce on us, I was too afraid that my predators would not honor it.” And so the two gods thought over her concerns, and decided to make things better. They wanted her to feel safe all the time, even though they knew that she would forever remain part of the circle of life, just as everyone else was. The best idea they could come up with was to allow the turtle to carry her home with her wherever she went. So the turtle was happy.

This story was inspired by, and revised from, an Aesop Fable called Zeus and the Tortoise, though I can’t seem to find the source that I drew from, and I don’t feel that it would be right to link to some other version of it that uses different wording.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 30, 2268

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Mateo felt something hit him in the groin. It was clearly meant to wake him up, but even the pain wasn’t enough to stir him. A voice apologized, but it was so scratchy that he couldn’t tell whether it belonged to Leona or Nerakali. He was feeling groggier than he ever had before, almost like he had been drugged. The hand came back down on him, but this time higher, upon his chest, so it wasn’t painful.

“You gotta wake up,” Leona said, sounding groggy too. “We all gotta wake up.”

He could hear Nerakali making a ruckus on the other side of the tent. “Where’s my cuff,” she asked like a drunkard.

“It’s on your wrist,” Leona answered. She struggled to roll over on top of Mateo, seemingly in an attempt to get to the other side of him, but she just got stuck.

“Which one?” Nerakali asked.

“Pick one,” Leona instructed. “If it’s not there, then pick the other.”

“What is going on!” Mateo demanded to know.

“Something’s wrong with the wards!” Nerakali yelled back. “I can’t figure out how to get us out of here.”

Mateo lifted his own arm, and looked at it over Leona’s shoulder. She was still on top of him. “I’ve got a blinking button here that says EMERGENCY SUPERPOSITION.”

“No!” Nerakali cried. “Don’t push that one!”

“This is an emergency, it seems. Is someone coming?”

“Someone is indeed coming, but you can’t save us that way.”

“I’m gonna do it.”

“Don’t do it.”

“I’m doing it.”

“No.”

But it was too late. Mateo managed to get his other hand out from between him and Leona, so he could press the button. The tent above them disappeared, but they were still in the woods. Well, it might not have been the exact same woods, but it was close enough. Then the trees disappeared, only to be replaced by different trees. Those trees disappeared, replaced with a clear sky. Mateo turned his head to watch the ground. The scenery continued to change, and not only that, but it was getting faster. Much faster. Much, much faster. Mountain summit, prairie, tundra, underneath an arcological tower, on the deck of a boat, on the bank of a river, on the side of Mateo and Leona’s special hillside. They just kept jumping over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. They must have gone to a hundred places before Nerakali got a grip, and stopped it using her own Cassidy cuff.

“What the hell was that?” Leona asked. She managed to get herself off her husband, and safely onto her own ass. It looked like they were on a hiking trail now.

“That button placed us in a state of quantum superposition. We would have continued to jump forever—generally far away from other people, and too quickly for anyone to be able to track us. I got the idea from a TV show about angels. I don’t know why that was an option on your cuff, and I sure as hell don’t know why you pressed it.”

“We were being attacked.” Then Mateo looked around. He actually wasn’t so certain of that. “Weren’t we?”

“Quite possibly,” Nerakali said. “The ward alarms went off, and we were experiencing the temporal sickness that was meant to be inflicted upon our intruder. I was trying to get us out of there, but not by doing that.”

“No matter,” Leona said as she was standing up and finding her footing. “It worked. Whoever found us, we’re here now.”

“So am I,” came a fourth voice.

Mateo closed his eyes. They just can’t get rid of her.

“Arcadia,” Nerakali said. There was some disdain in her voice, but also some love.

“Hello, sister,” Arcadia replied.

“You’re the one who attacked us?”

“No,” Arcadia argued. “I’m the one who tried to find you, not realizing you would place a gene blocker on your spatial wards. That’s why my approach jacked you up so much.”

“I did that so our mother wouldn’t be able to get to us,” Nerakali explained. “I guess I need to work on my technique. They obviously backfired.”

“Yes,” Arcadia agreed.

“No,” Nerakali said, “not because you should have been let through, but because they shouldn’t have done us harm. I don’t want you here either. Why are you here?”

“I want to help,” Arcadia claimed.

Nerakali chuckled. “Have you ever...said those words before? Perhaps you don’t know what they mean.”

“Ha-ha,” Arcadia said sarcastically. “I’m serious. I know you thought I was always mama’s little girl, but I want to stop her as much as you. That bitch is running around, giving me a bad reputation. People think she’s me. It used to not bother me, but my power-aides are losing faith in me.”

“A sports drink worships you?” Leona asked.

“Not the drink.” Arcadia rolled her eyes. “I’m talking about people who aid me with their powers. I can’t teleport, or travel through time on my own. I can’t create a spacetime merge point, or possess people’s bodies. If I want to do these things, I employ someone who can. They’re my aides.”

“You created a pretty sophisticated system,” Leona pointed out. “It always looked like you had the powers.”

“Nope,” Arcadia said. “Like most people, I just have the one power.”

Leona looked over at Nerakali. “Yeah, I’ve always wanted to ask, why do you have more than one temporal ability? You can blend brains, and travel spacetime. Why is that?”

“I dunno,” Nerakali replied. She sounded sincere. “Athanaric never explained why he built me this way. Why would a blender need to travel through time when she was designed to live in a higher dimension where time travel is impossible anyway? It’s like he knew I would end up on Earth one day.”

“Maybe he did,” Arcadia guessed.

“Are we gonna keep talking about this?” Mateo questioned. “Or are we going to figure out what to do. I can barely force myself to trust one Preston, but now I’m expected to trust another? What happens when Zeferino shows up? Are we going to end up at one giant hyper-destructive family reunion, or something?”

“It won’t be truly destructive unless our father is there,” Arcadia said. She mocked the sign of the cross.

“He’s right,” Nerakali said to Arcadia. “You can’t be here. You’re dangerous.”

“I really do want to help. I’m being honest about that. I’m not planning a doublecross, and I won’t get bored, and lose interest. I’m with you; one hundred percent.”

“Sometimes you’re kind of okay,” Mateo said to her, finally well enough to stand on his own two feet. “Sometimes you make Satan shiver in his seat. That means those times when you’re okay don’t really matter that much, because no one can ever trust you.”

Arcadia looked legitimately hurt by his words, and he almost regretted them. She stared at him for a moment before looking to her sister. “Self-cleaning mode.”

“What?” Nerakali asked. “Don’t even joke about that.”

“Not now,” Arcadia said. “Give me one of those cuffs. I know you have an extra, because they come in pairs. Program mine with an SCM protocol. If I step out of line, any one of you can activate it, and be done with me for good.”

“I can’t imagine you would agree to this,” Nerakali doubted.

Mateo looked over at Leona, but she seemed to have no clue what they were talking about either. They both decided to be patient.

“I’m not just agreeing to it,” Arcadia said. “It was my idea.”

“You must have some defense against it,” Nerakali assumed.

“Yeah, maybe. I mean...I guess that’s a possibility. I can’t really prove that I don’t, but I’m extending a sign of good faith. This makes it so that you don’t have to trust me. You just have to trust your own abilities.”

Nerakali shook her head for a bit, weighing her options. “It’s up to them, if they want to risk it.”

“We don’t know what an SCM is,” Leona reminded them.

“Self-cleaning mode,” Nerakali began to explain. “It’s a blender term. I can make an individual recall things that didn’t happen to them, by blending their brain with that of their alternate self. You know this about me. What you don’t know is that I don’t have to add memories; I can also take them away. In fact, I can take them all away. I can turn you into a vegetable, which isn’t..holding to the analogy very well. I can make it so that you remember nothing; total amnesia as a weapon, or a fresh start as a gift.”

Mateo was working through it. “So Arcadia is agreeing to wear a cuff that can be programmed to erase her entire mind if she steps out of line?”

“Basically, yes,” Nerakali confirmed. “It’s an insurance policy.” She looked back over to her sister. “I don’t like that she was the one who came up with it, though. It’s obviously suspicious.”

“You’re the one in control,” Arcadia said. “I can help. I know Savannah better than anyone. She liked to talk to me up in The Gallery, because I always agreed with her. I was a dumb child who couldn’t think for myself, but now that I can, I can use what I know about her against her. Let me do this. You said it yourself, Mateo; sometimes I’m okay. This is one of those times.”

“I said you’re sometimes kind of okay. You’re never good.”

Leona stepped forward, and got herself closer to Arcadia. She stared into her eyes, and studied the thoughts swimming through them for at least thirty seconds. “Give her the cuff. Even if it doesn’t work, we always beat her. We’ll get through it either way. If there’s a chance she can do some good, I’mma risk it.”

Nerakali took Arcadia by the arm. “The other cuff is back at the camp.” She teleported all four of them back to where they were before. It was here that they packed up, had some breakfast, and prepared to head out for their first mission.

According to what Leona knew of history, when the cities were torn asunder, and replaced by far more efficient arcologies, only a few things were left whole. Besides truly magnificent historical locations, like The Great Wall and Machu Picchu, there were also a few small outposts that didn’t necessarily serve a purpose, but were ignored anyway. These small pockets of history were only known to a few people, and they were pretty much all underground, because that was really the only way regular humans knew how to hide things. The reasons they remained were never recorded, but they might have had sentimental value to the people in charge of destroying them, so that was probably how they survived. Most were apparently too innocuous for the government to bother with them now. The Space Corp base where the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was presently stashed was one such of these places. Nerakali teleported the group to another place, which those who knew it existed called the Bucket. Water was dripping from the ceiling, and it possessed a certain sweet fungal scent. They carefully walked through the hallways, but she assured them that there was nothing to be afraid of, and they didn’t need to know exactly what they were there for. It almost sounded like she didn’t really know.

“I knew a friend who could find special temporal objects. The hundemarke was pinged at this location. “I do not believe we will be able to take possession of it,” Nerakali whispered, “but we’ll be able to trace its journey from here, as long as we get there in time.”

“Oh, you’re here in time,” came an echoing voice from down the passageway. They picked up the pace a little, and entered the room. A man was sitting against the dirty wall. He had a bottle of alcohol in one hand, and a gun in the other. “You’re always on time,” he slurred. “No matter what I do, you always find me. I just can’t get away.”

“Who are you?” Mateo asked, stepping a little closer. Leona tried to hold him back, but he was too curious.

“You don’t know me yet?” the man asked, then he took another drink. “I suppose that means my plan is successful, and I die here tonight.”

“No one has to die,” Mateo promised him. “We can talk about this. I’ve met people before who have already met me. Whatever I did to you, I’m sorry. Maybe I can change it. Just tell me what I can do to help you. Tell me what you need.”

The man closed his eyes, and nodded his head. “I don’t need anything, and someone does indeed have to die.” He reached into his shirt, and pulled out the hundemarke. “It ain’t gonna be you. I know this, because you’re right, I’ve seen you in the future. You do try to help me, and you fail. But that’s okay, because I’m here now, and I can end it. I can end it right here.” He jangled the dog tag. “I already have. I don’t mean to sound like some kind of mad purple alien, or anything, but I’m...inevitable.” He lifted the gun, and pressed it against his head. He also tipped the bottle down his throat, and finished it off.

“No!” Mateo shouted. He dove forward, and tried to reach for the man, but a mysterious force threw him across the room, and against the opposite wall. Then he heard a gunshot. Then everything went black.

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