The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Friday, July 2, 2117

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RPS stood for rock, paper, scissors, which was a simple game to play on its own. A player can throw one of the three choices, and can beat or lose to the other player, depending on which one they choose, or draw if both throw the same one. RPS-101 was an insane variant of this game that involved ninety-eight additional gestures, each one capable of beating about half of the others. It was practically impossible to play without a cheat sheet and patience, or genius-level intellect. RPS-101 Plus was a computerized version of this, complete with graphics, visualized consequences, and a total abandonment of the original concept of throwing gestures. It was a video game. Each player will choose a gesture out of the entire list, and stick with that gesture throughout the whole round. It will be represented by an actual interactive image. Should a player choose lightning, for instance, they will see their lightning bolt on the screen, and control how it moves about. They will then use this character to navigate a hazardous playing field, where other characters attempt to attack. But since only half of them pose a threat, the other half of the gestures are available for the player to attack instead. Doing so will gain that player points, speed, and agility. This game was designed to be played by one to a hundred and one players, with all unused gestures falling under control of the computer. Upon learning from Sanaa that the AOC’s system contained a local copy of it, the group played for hours together, and barely got any sleep. Before they knew it it was 2117, and their cuffs were directing them into the city.

The window wasn’t going to be for awhile, so instead of teleporting to the location, they decided to walk, and get some fresh air. Since they didn’t really talk about anything during the games, they took this opportunity to catch Mateo up with what they figured about Xearea. The reason her story didn’t match up with their recollection of it was because she was from a different timeline in the main sequence. In this version of events, the bad men from the future were more successful in their mission, and would have been able to finish the job if Leona hadn’t intervened. It was presumably with knowledge of this outcome that prompted The Cleanser to conscript Mateo, Gilbert, and Horace to fix things.

“So, wait,” Mateo said. “You sent Xearea back to her timeline, knowing that it would collapse soon anyway.”

“No, we didn’t,” J.B. clarified. “Jericho went back, even though we warned him he might not survive, just like Ariadna wouldn’t have. We kept her here, though.”

“Where is she now?” Mateo asked.

“We don’t know anymore,” Ariadna replied. “Ramses showed up, and offered to help set her up with a new life here. We never spoke to her, though. She was still asleep when they took her away.”

“I’m right here.” It was Xearea, but she was much older now. Seventeen years had passed for her.

“Oh, Miss Voss,” Leona said, surprised. “You’ve fully recovered.”

“Of course,” Xearea said. “These people have excellent medical technology. I was intending to finally reunite with you, and thank you for saving me, but then I caught wind that you have an appointment here.” She looked towards the building they were standing in front of.

“What is this place?” Sanaa asked.

“It’s like an airport,” Xearea answered. “It’ll take you to other worlds. Your trip is scheduled for the Andromeda room. Follow me, I’ll show you where to go.”

“We’re going to Dardius, aren’t we?” Leona guessed.

“That’s the thing,” Xearea began. “It says you have an appointment there, but no final destination is listed. We don’t know where you’re going. Andromeda 21 isn’t the only galactic neighbor.”

“Surely it’s the island, isn’t it?” Mateo figured. “That’s what makes the most sense to me.”

“We can’t know that for sure,” Leona advised him.

Perhaps Tribulation Island only seemed like the logical choice, because that was where they were in this time. But they didn’t have a personal connection to everyone they rescued, like Jericho. Still, Jupiter sent them to the intergalactic portal, so…

“Sanaa?” J.B. prompted.

She consulted her cuff. “The cuffs can access information from satellites orbiting the planet we’re on, so we don’t just have to follow the arrows, but they can’t see beyond that. There’s no proof we’re going to Tribulation Island, or even Dardius, for that matter.”

They arrived at the Andromeda room, where a portal operator was waiting for their coordinates.

“If we go to the wrong place, can we come back, and try again?”

“Certainly,” she responded. “You may make as many jumps as you need.” People here were really friendly and accommodating. It was even better than the future in the main sequence. All these god-like powers probably made it really difficult to encounter an inconvenience. The way they understood it, energy and other resources were infinite, so there was no reason to deny anyone anything unless it infringed upon someone else’s wishes. If someone wanted to have an entire galaxy to themselves, for instance, where no one else could go, that was kind of all right, as long as that galaxy wasn’t already occupied, because whatever.

After the operator input the coordinates, everyone stepped onto the platform, and transported across millions of light years of space, to Tribulation Island, Dardius, Beorht, Miridir. The operator on the other side greeted them politely, and welcomed them to the island. They expected it to be heavily developed in this reality, but it was actually more sparse than it ultimately became in the main sequence. They were presumably conserving the wildlife here. The portaling seemed to have interfered with the Cassidy cuffs, but after they recalibrated themselves, the directive arrow came back to lead them down the beach.

“Who is it?” Sanaa asked them. “I’m not alive yet, so I don’t know that much about y’all’s time here.”

“I don’t know anyone who it could be,” Leona said, “unless they’re from a different timeline. No one disappeared that we can remember.”

“Maybe they’ll only disappear briefly, and then we’ll put them back,” Ariadna suggested.

“Why would we need to transition anyone?” J.B. asked. “I thought you said Jupiter admitted that we’re rescuing people. Is someone in danger here?”

“I don’t think so,” Leona answered. “Vearden dies here, but that’s not for several years. I think everyone else is okay.”

“Whoa. This is a nice place. What is that, a helicopter?” They had come into a clearing, where a lavish resort sat up against the water.

“It’s a jet with vertical take off,” came a voice from behind them.

“Baudin!” Mateo shouted, with a little more excitement than he would have liked to express. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve been here for eight years,” he answered. “This is where I live now, I s’pose.”

“Wait, you don’t exist anymore,” Leona said to him.

“I don’t?” Baudin feigned shock, and looked at the palms of his hands. “Oh, no. What about the others? Do they exist?”

“Stop screwing with them.” Samsonite was walking out of the hotel, followed by Gilbert. “We do exist. You can’t stop people from existing. You can just make other people think that’s what you’ve done.”

“This is the explanation,” Leona asked rhetorically. “When Arcadia was taking people out of time, all she was doing was bringing them here?”

“No, some other guy is doing it for her,” Samsonite corrected.

Mateo nodded. “Jupiter.”

“This is crazy.” Leona mused. “That means either all of you lie about it when we see you again, or someone alters your memories. I don’t even wanna think about what this means for when it happens to you, Mateo.”

“Well, I’m different,” Mateo reminded her. “The Superintendent was the one who took me. Maybe he really can rip people from the timeline. That’s not really the point, though, is it?” He directed his attention back to the other three. “You’re not alone here, are you?”

Gilbert smiled, and lifted one eye to a window above them. A group of people was watching them from inside their hotel room.

“Aldona’s family,” Leona realized.

“They’ve been here the longest,” Samsonite acknowledged.

“We’re here to add to your ranks,” Ariadna told them. “We don’t know who, or exactly where.”

“Yes, we do,” Sanaa said. “It’s across the ocean.”

“Lorania,” Mateo confirmed. It’s 2117. We’re here to save Xearea Voss. Again.” He looked back up at the Buchanan-Lanka-Calligaris window. “Those people don’t seem to wanna talk to us. Could you ask Gino to come help us, though. We need a doctor.”

Aldona’s family simply didn’t know who they were, which was why they didn’t come out initially. Aldona’s husband, Gino was more than happy to provide his services, once he understood the need for them. They didn’t need anyone else to go, though, so while everyone else stayed at the resort to relax, only he and Mateo flew off to retrieve Xearea, who was about to be stabbed by a very unstable immortal named Ambrosios. She came through the transition window, Gino stabilized her on site, and then they transported her to the mainland, where she could be treated in the Parallel facilities. Mateo wasn’t worried about whether she would survive or not, because he knew she would later return to the main sequence, and continue with her pattern as the penultimate Savior of Earth.

Jupiter Fury showed up while Mateo was alone in the waiting room, and sat down next to him. “You were working with Arcadia the entire time?” Mateo presumed. This was just another layer to the mystery of what happened to them during Arcadia’s expiations. A lot was going on in the background that they never knew about.

“No, I’m not,” Jupiter contended. “Everything she says is the truth as she sees it. She believes that she’s taking people out of time, because that’s precisely what she’s capable of. What she doesn’t know is that her memory-wiper is working with me. I’ve been transitioning your friends at the moment Arcadia attempts to pull them. She has a lot less influence over people than she thinks she does. I don’t really need you for this, because most of them aren’t in danger, and they won’t be receiving egress windows until it’s time for all of them to go back at once. I only brought you into it now, because it fits with your pattern, and I wanted you to see it for yourself.”

“So, who will we be saving next year, and then on?” Mateo asked him.

Jupiter breathed deeply, and stared into empty space. “You have about a week to figure out how you’re gonna save Vearden Haywood’s life, if it’s even possible. You cannot alter the timeline. Whatever the truth, everyone in the main sequence has to believe that he dies on Tribulation Island, millions of years ago. You have to preserve that, so the future unfolds as it should. Yet you still have to rescue him, so he can transition for medical treatment. Again, I’m not sure it’s possible, but that’ll be your responsibility. Until then, go back to the resort. You’re on vacation.” He patted Mateo on the knee, used it to help himself out of his chair, and then he walked away coolly.

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Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida: Deeply (Part IV)

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I blink and look around, immediately seeing a mirror next to my chair. It’s facing away from me, though, so I turn it. It’s my old body. Well, no it’s not. But it’s at least my original face. “Report,” I say to the girl standing on the other side of me. I just keep looking at my reflection, though.

“I was gonna put you back in your new body,” the girl replies, “but then I thought maybe you would prefer to look as you did before. Everything my father explained to you about how it works—how strong and resilient this substrate is—remains true. Now you look like yourself, though.”

I sigh, and lean my head back. I close my eyes, but it doesn’t have the same relaxing effect as it once did. Even after I started upgrading my body with technology, this would help make me feel better. Way back in the day, futurists would boast about how powerful we would one day be. They were right, I installed incredible physical strength, endurance, faster processing speeds, and lots of other stuff. What they failed to realize was just how beautiful it was to be a living organism. These upgrades cause you to lose something about what it feels like to be alive. Sleep was something I always took for granted, because it took eight hours out of my day, and I didn’t have a choice. Ancillary to that was the ability to close my eyes, and shut the world out. While I could still hear, suppressing some of the stimuli still helped slow my brain, so I could calm down when my emotions got the better of me. I actually had to downgrade my systems after I realized I added too much, and lost my ability to sleep. But that only lasted so long. I never want to age or die, so I later had to upgrade again. Sleep and immortality just don’t mix, I guess; I don’t know.

The only solace I took in my new situation was that I could turn my systems off. I could shut myself down, not entirely, but close. I could still maintain my perception of the passage of time. Other people would find this horrific, existing inside a void, conscious of their own existence, but unable to do anything. I embraced it, because it was the closest thing I could find to sleep. In fact, I loved it so much that I set a timer to not wake me back up for five hundred years. I wasn’t even in there for a hundred and fifty years before this girl’s father forced me back awake by transferring my mind into a new body, and then promptly destroying the old one. I don’t blame her, though. I’ve only known her for a few minutes, but she doesn’t seem to be on his side. She may actually be the best person I’ve ever met in my life. After several seconds of my eyes closed, I start feeling a sense of sleepiness. It’s not enough to make me fall asleep, or even start nodding off, but it’s definitely more what I’ve been missing for centuries. I almost feel human again. “What’s going on? I’m a little tired.”

She smiles. “That means it’s working. I modified more than just your face. I installed a hibernation mode. You still won’t need to sleep, but you can, whenever you want. You’ll also wake up if, say, a saber-toothed cat shows up to attack you, but you should otherwise be good.”

“That asshole could have given me the power of sleep, but chose not to?”

“With more time, yes,” the girl answers. “He didn’t think to include that, but I’ve been working on it for months. You’ve been completely dormant this whole time.”

I stand up out of the chair. She’s right about how she changed me. I’m a little weak, like a regular person would be. It’s nothing I can’t get over, but...it’s amazing. “Oh my God, thank you so much. I don’t think I could explain just how important this is to me. I haven’t felt this great in centuries.”

“I’m glad you like it. My name is Abigail, by the way.”

“Oh, yes, sorry. How rude of me. I’m sure you know this, but let me introduce myself. I’m Thor Thompson.”

“It’s nice to finally meet you. I grew up on this planet, and I passed your storage case every day to get to Trinity and Ellie’s labs. I always wondered what you were like.”

I accidentally release a scoff, but it’s a Freudian slip, because what she said deserves it. “I’m not that great,” I admit.

“Oh, I’m not so sure about that. Way I hear it, you were one of the first colonizers of Mars, and you were directly involved with Operation Starseed.”

Project Stargate was a secret endeavor to send automated ships to every single star system in the galaxy, so people could travel to them instantly with quantum communication technology. Operation Starseed was a super secret companion to that, which added biological samples from Earth, so life could be seeded on those planets. The public wasn’t sure whether they wanted us to conquer the Milky Way, which is why a few key people in the government gave the greenlight without telling anyone. The public was pretty much completely opposed to Starseed, though. Some people were cool with it, but the majority found the prospect irresponsible, and upsetting. Together with my friend, Saxon, I was in charge with transporting the samples to the launch site in a star system called the Gatewood Collective. Only an even fewer number of government officials, time travelers, and time-traveler adjacent people knew anything about it. “Those are just accomplishments, and they say nothing about my character. Your father is quite accomplished too, isn’t it?”

“That’s true, but Trinity and Ellie have said good things about you, and I trust them.”

“Are they still here, or did they move on?” I ask.

Abigail checks her watch. “They’re at work right now.”

“Why did use airquotes?” I question.

“It’s because of something I learned about in my studies,” she says. “People used to have set hours that they would work. They had these things called jobs, so they could make money and if they wanted to survive, they had to have one.”

“They didn’t have to have a job, or even money, to survive; only if they wanted to live in town. They could go off and live off the land, if they wanted to. But go on.”

“Obviously we don’t have jobs anymore. People just work on things that they want to do. But Ellinity like to pretend it’s the olden days. They live farther away from their workspaces than they used to, and they go into work every day. They don’t leave until the work day is over.” She seems to think this is silly, and it is.

The old ways made some bit of sense at one point, but not in a galaxy where quite literally all work can be automated. I have a better appreciation for it, though, since I grew up in a time period where work was ubiquitous. The only people who didn’t have jobs were too rich to need them, or too poor to get them. The irony in that is precisely why we did away with money. I nod. “That’s hilarious.”

The doorbell rings. Abigail answers it, then lets Trinity and Ellie into the room.

“Mr. Thompson,” Trinity says. “How are you feeling?”

“Better than ever.”

They look at me funny, not because it’s a bad answer, but because it’s uncharacteristically genuine of me to say.

“No, really, I am. I’ve always wanted to live forever, but never wanted to lose what it means to actually be alive. If I were to ever consume the Immortality Waters, I wouldn’t take Energy. I like sleep. You guys get it.” They’re both immortal too, but in their own ways, and they’re still fully biological.

“That’s great,” Ellie says. She almost sounds bubbly again. It’s not that she was faking it, but she does kind of have two sides to her. When she meets someone new, she’s really outgoing and carefree, but once she learns to trust them, she’ll let a little bit of that go, and act more reserved. I hope this doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel she can trust me anymore.

“What are you two working on?” I ask them.

They look at each other, like two secret agents, who know they can’t talk about their work with their old roommate from college, who they’ve just run into in a bar.

“Whoa, sorry I asked.”

“No, it’s okay. It’s just—” Trinity closes her mouth tightly, not to keep herself from explaining, but so she doesn’t say it the wrong way.

“It’s a crazy idea.” Ellie can’t go any further either.

I look to Abigail, who shakes her head. “They won’t tell me either. It has something to do with dead people.”

“We didn’t wanna say anything until we knew we could do it.” Trinity finally feels like she’s ready to talk. “Making ourselves look insane is a lot easier now that we know it’s a real possibility. We’re just not sure about the ethics.”

“And some of the logistics,” Ellie adds.

“Come on guys, what is it? Dead people?”

Trinity gestures towards Ellie. “I’ve learned something about her ability. She can teleport people’s minds. Regular people. Of course, you can upload yourself into another body, but she can do that with anyone, or herself, with no technology.”

“We’ve figured out how to harness that, and mass produce it,” Ellie explains.

“You’re gonna use that to bring dead people back to life?” I imagine.

“Yes,” Trinity answers. “All of them.”

“All of them?”

“Literally everyone who has ever died.”

“How?”

“With these.” Ellie holds up a stack of microscope slides. “I call them synthetic central nervous neurolemmocytes. They will change everything about everyone.”

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Microstory 1435: A Child is Born

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As the source mages were coming into control over Springfield and Splitsville, they came up with a lot of rules about how to keep the town safe, from the monsters, and any other threat. Some of these rules were for the people to follow, while others were internal. But these internal laws were still devised in order to protect the citizens. There were certain things the source mages would allow each other to do, and things that they would not. For one, they would not let themselves become the leaders of some kind of religious cult. There was a scientific explanation for their time powers, whether anyone understood the science, or not. They were still just people, and God should be left out of it. Furthermore, ruling power could not be consolidated into one of the mages, or even all of them. It would remain a fair and democratic society, even though a lot of their conventions would feel very medieval. That was only because of their combination of magic, and only enough technology to survive, rather than an actual feudal system of government and justice. One thing they decided, in order to prevent any abuse of their position over others, was to outlaw mage children. This was especially important for the sources, but town mages couldn’t conceive children either. This made the logistics of competition a little difficult, but not impossible to overcome. Two mages could raise a child, of course, but only if that child was born before either of them had their powers. This meant that a twelve-year-old mage—that being the minimum age at the time of the Selection Games—simply would not be able to have kids. Unless they waited to be sourced their abilities. Like deferring college enrollment, a winner could delay being given powers until after they had however many kids they wanted. This delay was limited to ten years, however, so if they didn’t think they could make it happen by then, it was probably best for them to just wait the full twenty years before the next competition. Again, this complicated matters, but the source mages didn’t know what kind of power a legacy child would have, and they weren’t jazzed about finding out. It just seemed like too much of a risk, except in one case. Knowing which power a new mage received—and how powerful it was exactly—could take too long if they just waited for them to figure out on their own. The holistic diagnosticians belonged to a single bloodline of people with the ability to understand a patient’s abilities just by examining them. The Taggart family was the only exception to the no-child policy. Breaking it was kind of a big deal.

Out of all of the source mages, only Valda Ramsey and Lubomir Resnik were in a relationship. It wasn’t technically disallowed, but the others did discourage it, because it could lead to a breach of their other internal rules. None of the others took any romantic interest in anyone else. They were absolutely not asexual, and they didn’t think of themselves as elitist, but they certainly had trouble relating to other people. In 2077, Valda and Lubomir took their relationship to the next level by having unprotected sex with each other. They weren’t trying to get pregnant, but they weren’t trying not to either. A part of them wasn’t thinking about the consequences, or how upset the others would be for it. They were just in love, and caught up in the moment. Another part of them, however, was terribly curious what the child of two source mages would be able to do. Nine months later, Valda delivered a little baby girl. Fortunately, the source mages saw time move differently, and fully expected to live forever, so the fact that they didn’t see Valda for seven months didn’t seem strange to them. Most of them didn’t even notice she wasn’t just busy in the other room. They named the baby Jayde, even though they knew they couldn’t keep her. If she developed powerful abilities, she would have to do it somewhere else. No one could know that she was the offspring of two source mages. They searched through the census, and found a nice couple to raise their daughter for them. The Kovacs had been wanting a child of their own, and Valda and Lubomir knew that they would take care of her, and also not tell anyone that Sadie never carried a pregnancy. Jayde would grow up to change everything about life on Durus, but for now, she was just an infant, and she didn’t deserve to be treated differently because of her unique origins. Valda and Lubomir regretted letting her go, but they would see her again one day, and they would never regret having her.

Microstory 1434: Fort Salient

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Now that Durus had a decent number of mages, it was so much easier to get things done. Construction was easier than it would probably ever be on Earth, and the monsters had become more of a common nuisance than a real enemy. A monster came in, a town mage was assigned to dispense with it, and they did. No one had died from an attack in decades, and no one had been seriously injured in several years. The Durune humans knew what they were doing, and their population continued to rise at a predictable rate. They stopped planning for new towns ahead of time, because each one would only take a matter of weeks, depending on which mages they had access to for a given development, and how complex they wanted that town to be. People did still want to move to new places though; that was a value that wasn’t going to change anytime soon, so whenever the need arose, someone would be there to make it happen. They would keep planning to build them until something changed about their situation, which it did. Fort Frontline proved to be one of the best ideas that the mages had ever come up with, but it was beginning to be less effective. The monsters were seeking out people, and to get to most of these people, they would usually end up going through Frontline first. That stopped being such a reliable outcome, though. For reasons no one could tell from this end of the broken portal, starting around 2077, monsters were coming in faster, and more abundantly. Experts still weren’t sure exactly what was on the other side or even what these things were—and no one was brave enough to investigate—so there was really no way to know what was causing the influx, but it could prove to be a problem.

The Fort Frontline method was no longer good enough on its own. The monsters were simply going around the fort, and not because they were becoming smart enough to avoid it, but because there were too many of them now, and they didn’t exactly travel in a single file line. Fortunately, there was a simple solution to this. All they would need to do was build a second military outpost. The tenth town, insomuch as it was a town, would be called Fort Salient. It was built closest to the portal ring than anyone ever thought it was possible to survive. While it was a crapshoot where on that ring a monster appeared, they did seem to come through more often on the Southwest side. So that was where Fort Salient sat, within clear view of the ring. It was the first thing these monsters saw, so they always went right for it. The strongest fighters in Fort Frontline, and elsewhere, were assigned there. If you were posted at Salient, it meant that the source mages saw potential in you. They wanted you to fight in the war until its bitter end, and there wasn’t a question whether that would happen, only when. Seers were predicting the end of the war, but seers are always purposefully vague. They’ll only give you enough information to make it to your destiny. If they just laid it all out on a roadmap, you would probably try to change it, and screw everything up. Some people interpreted this omen to mean they needed to go on the offensive, instead of just defending themselves, and Fort Salient became the first staging ground for these battles. This was when it turned back into a true war, complete with damage to infrastructure, and casualties. Some called this year the beginning of the end of the Protectorate, but most agree that it would have fallen much sooner if not for the brave men and women who fought here.

Microstory 1433: Peak Valley

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Before there was even a spark of an idea to build the eighth town of Astau, construction began on a new town called Peak Valley. It may seem like an oxymoron, but there really was a smallish mountain to the south of Springfield and Splitsville, on top of which was a sort of bowl that looked like any other valley. Experts believed it once housed a glacier, but they couldn’t explain what would have happened to all the water on the surface. In fact, it was a question they never answered about the whole world. There were signs of water erosion all over the place, but no liquid or solid water anywhere. The planet must have ventured close enough to its star to evaporate it all away before that star expelled it from its system, but there really wasn’t any proof of that either. Regardless, the real magic of the Peak Valley was that there was an extra seed portal from Earth there. For the most part, seeds only showed up on Durus in a certain region, and any plants that grew beyond it did so due to the normal spread of vegetation. They appeared from small flashes of light, like fireflies. It wasn’t particularly safe, because of the monsters, but teenagers liked to go there on quick romantic getaways, and watch the seeds appear. The Peak Valley was the only other place where this happened. It would have been a nice place to live all along. While monsters definitely had the ability to climb up the side of the mountain, or simply fly, it was still a well-fortified area. It was easy to see them coming from pretty much anywhere in the valley, which would give mages enough time to prepare for an attack. As always, the main reason they never settled there before was because of resources. It was difficult to pump water up from Watershed, but as time went on, both technology and time powers promoted progress. By the 2070s, it was a sufficiently viable option. The filter portaler would remain in Distante Remoto, where she belonged—even though they could have used her—because there were other ways of getting what they needed, which they didn’t always have. Laying pipe in the ground was a fairly easy endeavor when dirt could be teleported out of a hole, the pipe could be teleported into the hole, and then the dirt could be teleported back on top of it. The new town was initially planned for a 2075 completion date, but in 2072, a new member of Mad Dog’s Army was sourced who could make quantum replications of objects. A single pipe could be manufactured once, and then copied thousands of times. This process was not instantaneous, but it started moving a lot quicker once the quantum replicator joined the project. Peak Valley was finished in 2073, and prospered for seventeen years.

Microstory 1432: Astau

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The third vicennial Mage Games were a huge hit. The population of Durus, across the seven towns, was booming. The number of people applying to become town mages was unprecedented. The number of mages needed to protect the towns was lower than expected. The number of people who performed excellently was incredibly impressive. The inception of the fourth town, Hardtland showed that a pattern had formed. The number of towns was rising proportionately to the growth of the population. People were moving out to new places, and over the next twenty years, it was becoming clear that the ability to do this was an expectation. In 2070, the only ones applying for mage selection were those born on Durus. They had never known what it was like to live on Earth, besides the stories their parents and grandparents told them. They fully understood why it was so important that the competition happened, and that the people who were selected knew what they were doing. So they trained. And they trained, and they trained. They prepared their whole lives for the chance to prove that they had what it took to be part of security. Some just wanted cool powers, but it was easy to weed them out, because they lacked true heart, and the dedication that was required to succeed in the contest. Still, there were more winners than there needed to be to serve the towns. Both Hidden Depths and Distante Remoto required fewer mages, because of their strategic locations. Engineers had made the technological solutions surrounding Springfield stronger, and more reliable over the years, even after their original inventor left the planet, so they didn’t need a whole team either. The source mages could not decide who they would select out of all the people who deserved it. They didn’t just want to raise their standards higher; they wanted to reward the people who had dedicated themselves to the cause. So they did something new. They built an entire town in a day, and nearly everyone in it would be a mage. There were a few families, but for the most part, the ones who moved there were single, and ready to go out into the world without their parents’ oversight. They called it Astau. This was based on the root for eight, because it was the eighth town on Durus. They weren’t going for originality here.

It was really important to the founders that this mage town not be seen as elitist, or separatist, but there was always tension. They tried to alleviate these problems before they began by situating the construction site as equidistant from the other towns as possible. Of course, Distante Remoto was farther away than anything, but they found a pretty good spot to be in the middle of everything else. They encouraged people to visit, and their residents to travel to other places, but the friction remained. Things weren’t any better within Astau’s borders. Everyone there thought they were too good for menial jobs, so no one wanted to work in the fields, or on the repair detail. They wanted to use their time powers, and sometimes, they weren’t necessary. They didn’t really feel the need to keep any border security, because when a monster came by, there would always be someone around with the necessary skills to get rid of it. So there was no one working, and no one in the other towns who liked them. They weren’t real mages, because they weren’t protecting people who needed it. They were just there, hanging out by themselves, not contributing to the community, or even being capable of supporting themselves. It was the first major failure since the Mage Protectorate rose to power, and an embarrassment for all involved. In less than a year, many of the residents moved back to the towns they had come from, or requested assignments elsewhere. Some stayed, formed the usual border patrol, and allowed regular people to come in. It became just like any town. In fact, it was probably considered to be the most normal out of all of them. It wasn’t original, like Springfield; tech-based like Splitsville; well-irrigated, like Parade; forested, like Hardtland; militaristic, like Fort Frontline; concealed, like Hidden Depths; or far away, like Distante Remoto. It was just a town in the middle of Durus, with regular people, who were trying their best to live their lives. Perhaps that was what made it special. On Earth, most towns didn’t have some kind of niche, or defining characteristic. They were just places that people lived, instead of living somewhere else. And that was completely okay.

Microstory 1431: Distante Remoto

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In the year 2058, a woman was sourced with a power that Durus had seen once before. She was a filter portaler, meaning she could transport clumps of molecules, but nothing too large. This really only helped her move water and air from one place to another, because nothing else was small enough to fit through the filter. No one knew why it was that this rogue planet held an atmosphere, or more importantly, where the air was coming from. They did have a pretty good idea of where this air first showed up. Several kilometers North of Hartland was a special location they called Gaspunui. A seer town mage had named it that many years ago, but never said how he thought of the word before he died in 2054. There was nothing particularly special about the land itself. It looked just as the land looked anywhere else. But the oxygen levels here were slightly higher than anywhere else. The atmosphere originated here, and spread everywhere else, but it wasn’t evenly distributed. The air was thinner the farther away one traveled from this spot. All six towns were well within normal range, but if one attempted to spend a significant amount of time on the other side of the world, they would have a harder time breathing. It wasn’t impossible, and certainly people could acclimate to it, just like people on Earth did with higher elevation, but it wasn’t ideal, and there wasn’t much reason to try.

It was too far from Watershed to build irrigation pipes, so why bother? Well, the people in charge of coming up with the seventh town knew why it was worth a try. Being so far from everything included the time monster portal ring. As far as they knew, these monsters never traveled so far, because they sought out life to destroy, and there wasn’t anything out there. Much of the planet was covered in weedy plants they simply called the thicket, but not even that extended this far out, because the seeds that portaled there from Earth couldn’t float that far; and the now native plants had not yet done so themselves. But the filter portaler changed everything. She could give hopeful inhabitants of a distant new town the opportunity to live peacefully, free from the monster attacks. She just needed to be convinced. Filtering worked both ways. She could transport molecules nearby to somewhere far away, or she could summon these molecules from somewhere else, to her location. The latter was a lot easier. Portaling something away took more energy, and more concentration, than bringing it to her. So if she wanted to help the people of the new town, she would pretty much have to be one of them, and that wasn’t something she was naturally interested in. In the end, though, she agreed to leave Springfield, and the rest of the Mad Dog Army, to make sure these people had what they needed. She sacrificed her own happiness for the good of the community. It wasn’t entirely without its advantages, however. She met a good man there, and later married him under the Arch of Endless Water, which she created with two looping portals that stayed open permanently on their own. She was also given the honor of naming the town whatever she wanted. She chose Distante Remoto, which was obviously redundant, but she liked the cadence, and everyone else liked it too. Walking to Distante Remoto became a journey that people trained to be able to do, and was ultimately incorporated into the 2070 Mage Selection Games.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Wednesday, July 1, 2116

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Mateo met with Camden Voss of the IAC, who agreed to send him up to the year 2114. That was about as close as he could get to his people. Other time travelers would have been able to get him closer, but he knew Camden would do it without asking for anything in return, and he just wanted to get as close as possible. If he had to wait two years until the next transition window, then so be it. In fact, maybe this was best, because he had no way of knowing where exactly the window would show up, so he needed time to figure that out. That could be left as a problem for tomorrow, though, or maybe next week. For now, he just wanted to relax, and take in the sights. The powers that be couldn’t get to him, even though he was in the main sequence, because this new clone body didn’t have his original pattern. He was finally free—away from Leona, but still free, and if it could be done for him, it could be done for her too.

In 2030, workers finished the construction of a highly advanced intentional community called Hexagon City. They broke ground on former farmland just outside the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. Starting from scratch so late in human history allowed them to build with a better understanding of the future in mind. Living spaces were predominantly vertical; not nearly as large as the megastructures people were erecting all over the world right now, but taller than most skyscrapers of 2030, and designed for maximum efficiency. A railway loop, two-way buses, elevators, and people movers connected the residents to one another, and they were all connected, so traffic jams were a thing of the past. It was completely self-sustainable, growing its produce in vertical farm cylinders, and producing its own renewable energy. It wasn’t a prison; people could come and go as they pleased, but no cars were allowed within its borders, so if you wanted in on this, you had to get with the program.

Following the Kansas model, several more like it were built over the decades, in various locations that were inspired by the original designers, but not a whole hell of a lot. Engineers and futurists knew it was only a matter of time before the extremely consolidated arcologies would be possible, so it never really caught on. Their heyday was short, like the one car phones enjoyed before cell phones overtook them in popularity. The hexagons would one day be bulldozed, but for now, they remained, and just as many people still lived there, even though there were better options. Mateo and Leona had heard of this place back when they were first jumping through this time period, but never managed to see it before it faded away. She probably never would. That reminded him of how sad it was—

“Mateo.”

“Yes? Oh, it’s you.”

“I finally found you,” Jupiter said. “It was not easy. I had to contact a lot of your friends, and they all thought they knew where you were, because there are two versions of you in this reality.”

“Ah, yes,” Mateo remembered. “I’m on Tribulation Island right now, though. I wouldn’t go back there. Too many people would recognize me.”

“I figured,” he said. “I didn’t bother checking.”

“How did you even know that I existed at all?” Mateo asked. “Didn’t I die in the Parallel?”

“You did,” Jupiter confirmed. “You’re completely dead. There’s a body, and everything. Which doesn’t make any sense, because you’re fated to die on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. The universe should have automagically transported you there to avoid a temporal paradox. So it was suspicious.”

“Yeah, I can’t explain that,” Mateo said.

“Can’t, or won’t?”

“You’re right, I won’t.”

“Let’s sit.”

“Okay, but I’ll lead.”

“What?”

“I’ll ask the questions here!” Mateo said jokingly. “Seriously, though, I will. When we’re done, you’ll agree that I legit can’t explain myself to you, even though I technically could indeed tell you my truth. Let us begin. Are you my enemy?”

This question made Jupiter squirm. “No, sir.”

“Why did you pretend to be?”

“Would you have helped, if my brother and I had asked?”

“Why wouldn’t we?”

Jupiter bobbed his head, like he was weighing his options. “We toyed with the idea, but we decided that there was no way for us to explain our motivations to you. You help people all the time, of course, but only people who seem to need it. We didn’t need it; we just wanted it. Perhaps we chose the wrong path, but we determined the best way of recruiting you was to make you think you had no choice. You always make the right call when someone tries to get you to be bad. You’re used to having an enemy to fight, or an obstacle to overcome, so we gave you that.”

Mateo nodded his head. “I still don’t get your motivations, though. You’re pushing people through transition windows to the Parallel, but then letting us send them back? Why? Surely there would be easier ways to save their lives, if that’s really all you’re going for. It feels like there’s some master plan that we can’t see, because we’re too close to it.”

“There’s no grand plan. I mean, obviously we’re rescuing people we think can help the future. Jericho Hagen, for instance, is better for the timeline when he embraces the future of the adjudicative system than he is when he operates against it. The best way to do that was to stop him from being around while the new system was forming. Fourteen years ago, Jericho returned to this reality, pretended to be his own son—to avoid having to explain where he had been for the last twenty-two years—and started a new life; a better life. But that’s a personal situation. We’re not grooming him to have some profound impact on the people he meets. We mainly wanted to help him, just like we wanted to save your once-mother from the 2025 pathogen, and The Escapologist from the collapse of her reality.”

“But why these people?” Mateo questioned. “Sometimes we skip, like twenty years worth of people who can be saved. It seems a little unbelievable that the only ones you care about are the ones we’re around to help.”

Jupiter giggled. “These are the people that you’re helping, because you’re around to do so. You’re not my only team. You just never see the others.”

“Oh.”

He smiled. “I know you know you’re not special. You’re part of something great, and that’s good enough for you.”

“Yes, of course. I guess I still just don’t understand why you felt the need to create the Parallel in the first place? Why don’t you just teleport in and pull people to safety?”

“I can’t teleport, Mateo, just like you can’t jump backwards in time on your own, or see the future. The Saviors, like Daria and Xearea, are responsible for doing what you describe. They break into hotel rooms to stop men from beating their sex workers. They appear behind someone sitting on a park bench, choking on their sandwich. That’s what they can do. The Kingmaker goes all throughout time, doing similar things, for a particular breed of person. I’m different. I can access alternate realities, but only for a specific reason. I have the power to copy myself, and I do this by reaching into a different reality, and extracting my alternate self from it. But I can’t actually go explore his reality, because it doesn’t really exist. He’s from an unstable, collapsing timeline. The difference between our two worlds has only happened on the quantum level. The Arborist can go to truly separate timelines, because she’s reaching backwards in meta-time. Maybe I’m not explaining this right. When you go back in time and change something—take note of the airquotes—you’re not really going back at all. What you’re doing is staying in place, and pulling the past to the present, so that you can branch into a new timeline. Again, I don’t have the ability to do this, but the Parallel is a loophole. It’s an alternate reality that is not also an alternate timeline, which means I can access it physically. I created it so I can help people in my way, because that’s all I got.”

“I understand,” Mateo told him. “You’re doing what you can. What can I do? How do I get back to my friends?”

Jupiter removed a pair of Cassidy cuffs from his bag. “I repossessed these from your other body. There’s a proximity feature that will transport you to one of the others, should you choose to go that route.”

“What other route would I go?” Mateo was confused.

“I told you about those other teams. You could join one of them, and do the same thing, but with a different pattern. You might wanna consider it. Leona has mourned your passing twice now. It could be traumatic to make her go through that again. This really is a choice, which you have to make. I’m not trying to coerce you, or even persuade you to go either way. I’m just giving you the option, which I probably should have done in the first place.”

Mateo had to seriously consider this offer. For a while now, Mateo had felt like a burden for Leona. It kind of started from the very beginning. When they met, his situation was so intriguing to her that trying to move on from him would have seemed like a wasted opportunity to learn something interesting about the universe. Then he gave her his kidney, and brought her onto the pattern. Even after creating the new timeline, which changed all of that, he couldn’t do anything to stop her from reentering his world. Then he disappeared from existence, and she had to go through a lot to get him back. Then they got separated by the intergalactic void, and then he had his indiscretion with Cassidy Long, and then he died. He had put her through too much, and if he let himself go back to her, he would probably do it again. He had two patterns; uncontrollably jumping forwards in time, and also making his wife’s life more difficult. But that was the caveat, wasn’t it? She was his wife, and suggesting that everything was his fault was actually also taking away her agency as an independent human being. She made a lot of her own choices, and it wasn’t fair for him to dismiss those because of his guilt. Her being his wife also meant that he had to do everything he could to put them back together, because that was what marriage was.

“Get me to 2116.” Mateo extended his arms, like a bank robber who knew he had been caught.

“As you wish.” Jupiter snapped the cuffs onto his wrists, while simultaneously pulling them both through a transition window. Then he tapped on one of the cuff’s interfaces to activate the proximity feature.

Mateo jumped two years and three months into the future.

“I knew it,” Leona said, taking him into a neck hug. “I knew you couldn’t be dead. There’s something fishy with the extraction mirror they used to bring you back. What do you know? Where have you been?”

While he was talking to Jupiter, Mateo was working through an explanation for his absence in the back of his mind. He wanted to get as close to the truth as possible. There was no reason his friends weren’t allowed to know about 2014, or Camden, or even his discussion with Jupiter Fury. He just couldn’t say anything about Bida, the clone tank, the people who brought him back to life, or how they did it. That was a secret that deserved to remain hidden. “Do you remember walking through Holly Blue’s homeportal? Do you remember what it felt like?”

“Yeah,” Leona said. “It was kind of slimy, but it didn’t leave behind residue. Still, I felt pretty warm for a long time afterwards. My theory is that the de-aging process is a form of reversing entropy, so heat concentrates into you.”

“Well, that’s what I felt, just after I died.” Mateo used airquotes. “One second, I was heading for the ground, and the next, I was walking through the cemetery, and I felt very warm. It’s like the homeportal did leave a residue, which saved me from death, I guess by making a new copy of me, or something. Anyway, I made my way to the IAC, asked Camden to send me to 2114, where Jupiter found me, and gave me back my cuffs.” There, that was it. That was a good version of the truth. “I don’t want you thinking you’re invincible, though, Leona. It might have been a one-time deal, or it’s just now worn off for you, I don’t know. Don’t tempt fate.”

“I don’t intend to let myself almost die,” she assured him.

Mateo was glad to hear it. “So, what did I miss with you guys? I assume Jericho went back to the main sequence through Xearea’s window? Did Ariadna go with them?”

“I’m here.” Ariadna popped her head out of the AOC’s airlock. “I was thinking about leaving this year, but there doesn’t seem to be an upcoming window for me to stowaway.”

“Well,” J.B. began, “you only got one more year. We’re in July now, so the Bearimy-Matic pattern is exactly like the original Matic pattern was, and will stay this way for thirty more days.”

“Let’s not waste our day off,” Sanaa said. “I, for one, could use a break. Who’s up for a game or RPS-101 Plus?”

“What’s RPS-101 Plus?”

“Oh...you’ll see. I just hope I don’t get fenced again.”

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