The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Thursday, July 8, 2123

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Mateo had heard of The Shortlist before. While they were on Glisnia long ago, and many years in the future, Hogarth had explained it all to him. He was evidently an honorary member, while Leona was a full member. She enjoyed voting rights and other privileges, but she wasn’t called into action very often. She was only part of it, because of her unique position under the powers that be. If ever they needed a scientist to reach the PTB, she was the only one with any real hope of being the liasson. Mateo was loosely associated with them, but only in the case that Leona wasn’t available. The Shortlist was exactly what it sounded like; a short list of people, all with scientific backgrounds. They felt responsible for the galaxy’s relationship with time travel technology, but not out of some arbitrary grab for power. They were the ones actually inventing all this stuff, so of course they held themselves accountable for what happened to it.

They were a self-policing organization, and the future’s answer for Beaver Haven Rehabilitation Facility. In the past, people weren’t allowed to reveal the truth about time travelers to the world, but in the future, these rules were a little less clear. Perhaps vonearthans had the right to this knowledge, because they had matured enough to handle it. That was why Beaver Haven never had anything to do with time criminals from the 24th century onwards, and why members of the Shortlist felt compelled to oversee such matters. Leona didn’t say why she was sent to this future, or what they voted on, or why the hell J.B. was involved. She didn’t get the chance before Jupiter and Tauno showed up to hold a meeting of their own.

The six of them sat around the table in the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ariadna was doing whatever, Missy had never returned from the Fourth Quadrant, and there was literally not enough room for J.B. around the hexagon, so he gladly sat off to the side.

 “This is going to be...” Sanaa began, smiling as she looked at each of the others around her, “a hell of a lot of fun. We’re gonna argue, we’re gonna call each other names. J’accuse! I can’t see anything going wrong here, though. It’ll be great, you’ll see.”

“Color commentary from everyone’s favorite telepath,” Tauno said.

“I’m not a telepath anymore,” Sanaa corrected.

“She’s right,” Mateo said. “I don’t see this going well. Is it a parlay, or what?”

“We’re just talkin’,” Jupiter tried to assure him.

“Are you mad about the whole Fourth Quadrant thing?” Leona asked Tauno.

“That was a group project,” Tauno began to explain. “Every one of us was involved. Jupiter copied the people, Keanu gave us the weather, I created the pocket dimension, Yatchiko regulated reality. We all had some part to play. When you messed with that, you didn’t just interfere with my work, but all of ours.”

“We understand that,” Mateo said. As sick as this man clearly was, he wanted to remember Rule Number Fifteen. It was kind of the most important one recently, perhaps because all the others had by now become second nature for him.

“It’s okay. To answer your question, Mrs. Matic, I’m not mad. To be honest, it was becoming rather tedious. Man was it exciting for the first few years. Those duplicate Kansas Citians slowly started learning what happened to them, and what they were. Existential crises all across the board. But as the seasons progressed, it overstayed its welcome. I mean, there was a block of about two quadrant years that was boring as all hell. Nothing interesting happened; I probably should have cancelled it after that.”

They shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

“Oh, I wouldn’t have killed them, but I would have reset the time flow, and started ignoring them. It’s okay that you did it for me; like I said, I’m not mad. Unfortunately, also like I said, it’s not all up to me. Others in the group are less...shall we say, understanding. They stopped caring about the Fourth Quadrant even before I did, but they’re purists, and if someone does something without their permission, they wanna see punishment.”

“Who?” Mateo asked. “Whose shitlist do I have to get off of?”

“I?” Tauno asked. “There is no I. There’s all of you, plus your absent friends. But nice try, Mr. Matic, trying to place the whole burden on your own shoulders.”

“I’m their leader,” Mateo explained. “The buck stops with me.”

“Well, see, it’s a little—”

“They’re purists, right?” Mateo interrupted. “A purist would recognize that it’s always management’s fault.”

Tauno leaned back in his chair, and stared at Mateo’s face from various angles. “You’re everything everyone said you were,” he finally said.

“I’m nothing if not consistent.” That wasn’t true about him; he had changed a lot since 2014, but it seemed like the right way to respond to his remark.

“I would use the word predictable,” Tauno volleyed. “They thought you would try to do this. Which is why you have a choice.” He revealed a sinister smile. “You either answer to me, or to them. Now, I’m a psychopath. I mean that literally; I was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder. But I don’t kill. It’s kind of a pet peeve for me. But my friends, being purists, have no such qualms. If you deal with me, I’m going to—for lack of a less frightening term—torture you...all of you.”

“All of us,” Mateo echoed. “Which means if I choose door number two, they’ll kill, but only me.”

“That’s right.”

“Mateo,” Leona said.

“Rule X,” Mateo said to her. It didn’t belong with the rest of the rules, because it wasn’t a universal maxim. It was a secret code that only the two of them agreed upon, and they did this in an old reality, so most people shouldn’t have any clue what they were talking about. Invoking Rule X was so rare that neither of them had ever done it before, in all the time they had known each other. It essentially meant trust me implicitly. Leona was obligated to stop trying to argue, and let Mateo do whatever it was he was choosing to do. By its nature in this situation, this was his last chance to invoke it anyway, so it was perfect timing.

Everyone looked confused, except for Sanaa, whose eyes suggested she had read their minds at some point, and learned what this rule meant. Still, she kept quiet.

“Mateo, I won’t torture you forever; maybe for one season.”

“Why do you keep talking about seasons?” Sanaa questioned. “What the hell does that mean?”

“About fifty-two.”

Sanaa rolled her eyes at this. “Days? Years?”

“Maybe fifty-three.”

“Okay,” Mateo said. “I get it. We’ve been tortured before, though. Zeferino, Arcadia, and even technically right now, with Jupiter Fury. I’m sick of it. I’m done with it. And my answer is final! My only condition is that I get to decide how I die! I choose when, and where, and by what means!”

“Well, I would hardly say that you’re in a position—”

“I! Decide! I don’t think that’s asking too much!”

Tauno took a breath. “When is a complicated concept for us. There has to be some kind of time range; one that we can all agree upon, and which avoids loopholes.”

“Three days,” Mateo offered. “Three of my days, which means realtime three years, which means July 11, 2126. I can’t go until I save Vearden, but by that date, with no detours, no backtracking, no time bubbles, no do-overs, I’ll be gone. Does that sound fair?”

“Christ, Mateo, what are you talking about?” J.B. finally jumped in. He stood up, and stepped closer to the table.

Mateo ignored him, and focused on Tauno. “Do we have a deal?”

Tauno studied his face for a moment. Then he reached into his pocket, and pulled out a phone. He pressed it against his cheek without dialing. “What did they say?” He waited for a response from the other end of the call. “I don’t care what Jesi says; she gets a half vote now.—Well, ask Alexina.—I’m not saying that her vote matters either, but ask her to hunt for loopholes!—Okay.—We don’t have control over that.—I don’t want to call her!—Because she’ll make it all about her, and we don’t have time to tiptoe around her insanity!—He just wants to save his friend first, I have no problem with that, especially since Jupiter ordered him to.—I’ll ask him.—No, I’ll ask him!—Stop talking for a goddamn moment and I’ll do it! Jesus Christ!” He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. “They would like to know how you plan on dying. It’s like a verification, so it’ll be harder for you to back out of it.”

“Blunt force trauma,” Mateo answered.

“Oh my God,” was all Leona could say as she palmed her face. Rule X remained in effect.

“Is that satisfactory?” Tauno asked into the phone. “Okay.—Well, they’re the ones who wanted this. It’s not very fun for me.—I can keep my word. Can they?—Draw up a contract, and I’ll sign on behalf of all of us.—Thank you.” He hung up, and smiled. “Looks like we’re good. I’ll return tomorrow with the paperwork.”

“Why are you doing this?” Ellie asked Mateo.

“I have faith in my friends.” He placed his head against hers. “I have faith in you.” After a moment of peace, he tilted his head up to kiss her forehead. Then he sat back in his chair, and faced Tauno. “One more thing.”

“What is it?” Tauno wasn’t perturbed by this request for a request.

“I know people. Throughout all of time. Some of these people are violent. I’m going to die, and leave this plane of existence, and I don’t want anyone trying to alter that event, so I’m going to do it with the hundemarke. I want to prove that I’m committed. But my death doesn’t mean you’re free to do whatever you want. Everyone I have ever cared about is completely off limits. That means Leona, Ellie, Thor; everyone. Can you do that?”

“Yeah, I guess, I ain’t got no beef with those people, but you were saying something about violent friends?”

“Oh, yeah. If you break this promise, someone will kill you. It won’t be me, because I’ll already be dead, and Past!Me has never heard of any of this. But someone will show up on your doorstep. Even you’re afraid of some people, and before I go, I’ll put a bounty on your head, for anyone who wants it. You stay away from my friends, and this would-be assassin will stay out of your way. You don’t, they’ll do what I ask. Even my enemies wouldn’t turn down a chance to avenge me. No one hates me too much to do that. The Springfield Nine may be powerful, but you’ve isolated yourselves. You don’t have friends amongst the choosing ones, and that’s on you. Does what I’m saying make sense?”

“Perfect sense,” Tauno replied.

“Good. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to prepare for tomorrow. We can’t save Vearden unless we secretly visit Tribulation Island by 2124. I need that dog tag.”

Tauno took out his phone again. “Get me back, Ophir.” He disappeared.

Jupiter had been surprisingly quiet throughout all of this. He looked at Mateo. “I know what you have planned.” To show he wasn’t bluffing, his eyes flickered over to Ellie, then right back to Mateo. “As long as you don’t transfer Mr. Haywood’s consciousness, I don’t care how you do it. Just be careful how you proceed. You walk a fine line.” He too disappeared.

“Mateo,” Leona repeated. This was new territory for them, and she still didn’t know what to say. Anything beyond his name could be construed as an argument, and therefore a violation of Rule X.

He didn’t let it continue. “Why did they do that with the Quadrant? Why did they reverse the time bubble?”

“It was created in 2024,” Ellie started to say. “When we showed up, it had only been seven years for them, but decades for the people in the main sequence. They want to catch up. Whereas before, fourteen days for us was one day for them, now fourteen days for them equals one day for us. In five years, they’ll pop the bubble, and it will be 2129 for both realities.”

“Is that part of your plan?” J.B. asked him.

“No,” Mateo answered. “I just don’t wanna die with any mysteries over my head. Speaking of which, why don’t you tell me what you and Leona were doing in the future with the Shortlist?”

Leona stood up quickly, and fumed, but said nothing. She just left in a huff.

“I’ll go talk to her,” Sanaa said.

“Don’t,” Mateo urged. “She can’t know.”

“Oh, she absolutely can,” Sanaa contended. “I’ll prove it.” She walked away against his wishes.

He turned his head to Ellie. “Have you figured out the plan as well?”

“Yes,” she replied. “It’s a stupid one. We don’t even know if it’ll work. I haven’t seen it. This could just be it, Mateo Matic.”

“Like I said,” Mateo began, “I have faith in you.”

“I hope it’s not misplaced.”

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Glisnia: Role Call (Part V)

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Not everyone had some way to contact them through time, but for anyone who didn’t, they could be reached second-hand by contacting someone who did have a means of cross-temporal communication. Holly Blue had a long-ass phone number, while Dr. Mallory Hammer needed to be more accessible to her patients, so her number was easier to remember. If Hogarth and Holly Blue wanted to get a hold of someone called The Porter, there was a very delicate routine that they needed to get through. It wasn’t dignified, and could be a little embarrassing, but it was certainly easier than doing all the work of finding The Shortlist themselves. Hogarth started to stumble around the room, occasionally stopping to recite the magic words, “I am the Keymaster, are you the Gatekeeper?” Once she had made a right fool of herself, she approached a door, and recited the line one last time. Then she opened the door.

“Are you the Keymaster?” Porter asked. “I am the Gatekeeper.”

“Thank you for coming,” Hogarth said to her.

“What can I get ya?” Porter offered.

Hogarth lifted her hand, and held it there a moment. Realizing what she was asking for, Holly Blue pulled a card out of her pocket, and handed it to her. Hogarth then relayed it to Porter. “This is a list of everyone we need for a meeting. Well, we don’t need everyone on it, but we do need at least seven, including the two that are already here. You think you would be able to retrieve five out of the nine remaining?”

“Six,” Holly Blue corrected.

“Oh, right. I forgot about that.” Hogarth took the card back real quick, and scribbled one more name on it. “We need a mediator too. I always forget about that part.” A mediator was required for every meeting, whether there was a full roster or not. This guide could not be a member of the Shortlist themselves, and they were not allowed to have overseen a meeting beforehand. It was a one time deal. While this might have sounded random and irrational, members agreed they could lose perspective if they kept all outside voices on the outside. Ethesh, Lenkida, and Crimson were disqualified from serving as mediator, because it would be a conflict of interest in this case, so Porter needed to find someone else. Hogarth chose someone she knew would be fair, and careful about this important decision about the kind of technology the galaxy would be allowed to utilize.

Porter looked over the list. She nodded, and gestured towards the door on the opposite wall. “Your guests have arrived.”

“That was quick,” Crimson pointed out.

“It took a lot of time,” Porter explained, “and a lot of work.” Porter had the ability to summon just about anything from any point in time. If you wanted a cheeseburger, she could snap her fingers, and it would appear before you. She wasn’t creating these objects, but stealing them, though, so someone who prepared or ordered that burger had just lost it. Bigger jobs, like finding a half dozen people from all over time and space, took more effort. She couldn’t just pull each one from whenever she wanted. They were time travelers, who crisscrossed the timeline, and ran into each other unpredictably. Sometimes, one person will know something about another’s future, and in order to avoid these incongruencies, Porter had to find the very best version of each. Every person in the next room should be about as knowledgeable about the timeline as every other. Should.

“No,” Crimson said, “I’m an extremely advanced intelligence. Had you just teleported away, and tried to return to the same spot, I would have noticed.”

Holly Blue chuckled. “No, you wouldn’t. She’s that good.” She really was. Lots of time travelers had the ability to return to the spot they left so quickly that a human wouldn’t be able to detect that they were ever gone. Porter was the absolute best at this, however, so that even the most sensitive equipment couldn’t identify a change.

Hogarth opened the door, and stepped through to find all of their friends on the other side. And when she said all of them, she meant all of them. This was no quorum, but a plenum, meaning that every single member of the Shortlist had come. They had never had a full roster before, but that was probably because every invention one of them had come up with thus far had been for the benefit of the inner circle. This was at the request of the people of the Milky Way, so it was more delicate. Porter had done well for them.

“Madam Pudeyonavic,” Hokusai said with a nod.

“Madam Gimura,” Hogarth said back.

“What is this about?” Brooke Prieto asked.

“Obviously, I will explain everything,” Hogarth said. She looked towards their new mediator. “Thank you so much for coming.”

“Uh, I just happened to be with her.” Jeremy Bearimy gestured towards Leona Matic. “Am I meant to be here as well?”

“You are our honored guest,” Holly Blue told him.

Now J.B. looked nervous. “Is this a sex cult, or something?”

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Ramses Abdulrashid joked. “Haven’t made any progress on that front, bud.”

“It’s a meeting,” Holly Blue clarified. “You’re in charge of it.”

“Why me?” J.B. questioned.

“Because you’re not a member,” Brooke’s daughter, Sharice explained to him. “Neither am I.”

“We need you,” Hogarth said to her. “This is important.” She took a half step back to address the whole group. “This impacts the whole galaxy. It’s so important that Holly Blue and I haven’t even invented it yet. We have to consult you first, because it has the potential to literally destroy everything.”

“Ain’t that always how it is?” Kestral McBride pointed out.

“Shall we find somewhere to sit?” Ishida Caldwell suggested.

“Crimson,” Hogarth began, “do you know where we might hold this meeting, obviously in private?”

“Where’s my daughter?” Hokusai asked before Crimson could respond.

“You’ll see her later, mom,” Hogarth said.

“I better.”

“I know where you can go,” Crimson finally answered. It lifted Hogarth’s finger towards Porter’s face. “You can trace objects, right?”

“Indeed.”

Crimson demolecularized its finger, and sent it away, presumably to their meeting room.

Porter smirked, and nodded. “Gross.” With a wave of her hands, she spirited everyone away to follow the finger.

It was sitting in the middle of a table, like a message from a rival mafia family.

“Are we just gonna leave that there?” Pribadium Delgado asked.

Hogarth picked it up, and threw it into the material reclamator that appeared from the wall. It wasn’t something that could be reclaimed, but the sorting machines would filter it out, and dispose of it with the rest of the biowaste. She wished being able to regrow her own body parts was something she knew she could do all along.

They all found seats, and sat down. “First order of business,” Hogarth began, “I move to take point right now, so that J.B. can get up to speed, and understand what it is we do. I request a no-vote, but open the floor for any objections.” She waited a moment to see if anyone would object, which she didn’t think they would. Unlike most governmental bodies, there wasn’t any animosity amongst them. They disagreed with each other all the damn time, but they were always cordial, polite, and respectful. There was nothing wrong with her declaring herself the leader until J.B. was ready to take the job for himself.

She started off by explaining the purpose of the Shortlist, and why they felt it was necessary. Sharice jumped in with a few snide remarks, since she was the most resistant to the group as a whole. The alternate reality version of Holly Blue, who went by Weaver to avoid confusion, added her own thoughts, since she understood it all better than anyone. After that was finished, Hilde’s mother, Hokusai took the reins, and went over the rules of the meeting. She needed some additional help from Weaver in regards to protocol, because again, they had never all been in one place before. There would be times during this meeting when the discussion needed to be formal and blocked out, like a presidential debate. There would also be times when they needed to make it less formal, and more natural. They might even break into groups, and discuss the problem separately before coming back together. There would be no votes until they figured out what the votes would be. It was far more complex than just a question of whether they should allow time-siphoning technology to exist, or not. Once a vote did go through, that didn’t mean it was a done deal. By the end of the meeting, they would vote again, on whether to accept the results of all the other votes. It was this whole thing.

J.B. was a smart fella, so he picked it up right away, and embraced his role appropriately. Not everyone was like that. Nerakali tried to take over the group, and use it towards her own goals, which they should have guessed would happen. The Overseer was quite used to being the one to make decisions, and didn’t understand why her vote didn’t override all others. They once asked The Superintendent himself to mediate, but since his decisions did overrule everyone else’s, it was a disaster. That was how Hokusai and Hogarth ended up swapping technologies. They took a break after the introductions, and let people mingle. J.B. also needed time to look over the procedures guide that Weaver wrote. The rest had to be careful about preserving the timeline so as to avoid creating a paradox, but there were no real rules here, except that they couldn’t leave the room. No one would be able to leave until the first recess, which may never come. This wasn’t congress; they should be able to go through the entire agenda in one sitting. Hokusai was perturbed by this, because she didn’t get to see her daughter a whole lot. She agreed long ago to let Hilde live her own life, but had never truly accepted that. Their separation contract was set to expire after eleven more of their respective personal timeline years. They could see each other before then, but not for an extended period of time.

“So,” Hogarth said to Leona. “Where’s your husband, and when?”

“You ever heard of the Fourth Quadrant?” Leona prompted.

“Oh, that alternate reality, right?”

“Yep. He’s there, helping our friends save some lives, and whatnot.”

“Oh, cool.”

“So, this is Glisnia?” Leona was here a long time ago, when it was only a planet.

“Yeah, it’s a matrioshka brain now.”

Leona nodded. “I would like a tour one day, if at all possible.” She checked her watch out of instinct. I live in the early twenty-second century right now, but I’m scheduled to return to this time period in the next couple of months.”

Kestral, who was in the middle of a conversation with Pribadium, laughed. “It’s gonna be a lot longer than that.”

“Madam McBride, you know the rules,” J.B. said, stepping in. “No future-talk.”

“If you ask me, he’s enjoying this a little too much,” Kestral noted.

“I was gonna ask Sanaa Karimi to mediate,” Hogarth said.

Kestral took a sip from her cup. “Never mind.”

“All right,” J.B. announced. “I believe we are ready to restart. According to this, the next thing we need to do is confirm me as mediator.”

“Confirmed,” Brooke said.

“Seconded,” Sharice added.

“All in favor, say cello,” Kestral’s partner, Ishida declared. This was the random word she chose. Votes were not made by using the traditional aye and nay. No one in this group was liable to slack off, but by choosing a different word each time, they lowered the risk of someone voting after not having paid enough attention to know what it was they were voting on.

“Cello,” everyone voted in relative unison.

Since it was unanimous, no one could now vote against this, but Ishida was obligated to follow through regardless. “All against, say pangolin.”

No one said pangolin, not even Ramses, who was known for voting twice just to piss people off.

“Perfect,” J.B. said with a smile. “I feel so included.” He aimlessly flipped through the pages. “Now, I’ve been going over this manual, and have decided to start with a role-reversal argument. Hogarth, is it true that you are in favor of inventing time-siphoning technology?”

“I’m about as close to that position as anyone,” Hogarth believed. “I’m fairly neutral about it, though.”

“You...gave up your body so you could do it for these people, correct?” J.B. asked.

“I suppose that’s true.”

“Then you will be arguing against invention. Who here is the most against invention in actuality?”

Pribadium raised her hand. “I don’t think we should do it.”

“Scale of one to I’ll kill everyone in this room before I let this kind of technology get out into the universe.”

“Six, I guess,” Pribadium determined. “I don’t wanna kill anybody.”

“Can anyone give me a number higher than six?” J.B. opened it up to the group.

“I think I’m probably at an eight,” Holly Blue declared.

They were all surprised by this. “Miss Blue—” J.B. began.

“My name is Holly Blue; not Holly, not Miss Blue. Holly Blue.”

Apologies,” J.B. said sincerely. “Holly Blue, you co-signed the request for this plenum.”

“I was asked to come here,” Holly Blue began. “So I asked everyone else to come here, to talk Madam Pudeyonavic out of it.”

J.B. nodded understandingly, but stoically. Her attitude on the matter wasn’t at all against the rules. “Can anyone give me a ninth level opposition?”

No one spoke.

“Very well,” J.B. continued. “To recap, Hogarth will be arguing against invention, while Holly Blue will be arguing in favor of invention. Both parties agree?”

“Agreed,” Hogarth said, nervous.

“I’ll do my best,” Holly Blue conceded.

J.B. looked down at the manual. “Both sides are allowed one hour to prepare—”

“Right to waive,” Holly Blue said quickly.

“Preparation time twenty-five percent waived,” J.B. alerted.

“Waive,” Hogarth agreed.

“Fifty. General consensus?”

The crowd all seemed amenable.

“Seventy-five,” J.B. found. “And I waive too. A hundred percent waived. Madam Pudeyonavic, you have the floor.”

The Devil’s Advocate exercise wasn’t the only section of the meeting, but it was the most intense, and probably the one that informed most people’s votes later on. In the end, the group decided to proceed with invention, and that Holly Blue would be in charge of it every step of the way. Hopefully that would be fine.

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Microstory 1465: Deathspring Forward

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Millions, or perhaps billions, of years ago, when an ancient Durus was ejected from its star system, it started flying through interstellar space. Though it initially moved in a fairly straight line, it was consistently being impacted by gravitational perturbations from other systems. This made its journey relatively unpredictable, even if people back then could track its progress throughout the galaxy. In more recent times, the rogue world’s course was adjusted so much that started heading directly towards Sol. Some even claimed that it would one day crash into Earth, but there was no proof of that, because no one possessed the necessary data, or equipment, to study their hypotheses. One of the reasons Earth was so suitable for evolved life was the presence of the gas giants; most notably, Jupiter. It served as the inner planets’ sweeper. Any wayward celestial body that threatened to damage the less massive worlds had more of a chance of being pulled in by Jupiter before they could get there. Of course, it didn’t have every single time—in fact, Earth wouldn’t have a moon if it did—but it happened enough to protect it long enough to promote extended periods of peace. Durus threatened all of that, because no one was sure when exactly it would arrive in the system, or whether the other planets would have enough of an affect on it to keep Earth safe. It was for these reasons that the Aljabaran Republican government denied that there was any danger, even though that didn’t make any sense. While there was a strong chance that Earth would be safe, there was an even stronger chance that there was nothing to keep Durus safe. It was probably going to collide with something, be it Earth, or anything else, and even a small impact from a comet could destroy civilization. Something had to be done about this, which was where Hokusai Gimura came in. She used time technology to steer Durus through the solar system, and avoid impacts from everything in its path, including Earth. Unfortunately, in some ways, it was too little too late, because even though everyone survived, two terrestrial planets brushing up against each other had consequences.

They called it the Deathspring, modeled upon the event that brought the first major population of humans here. But it was not just a seasonal play on words. The Deathfall did happen in autumn, and the Deathspring did happen in spring, but it was more than that. Survivors of the Deathfall reported vertigo, and a feeling of falling into the portal, while the Deathspring survivors were actually flung up into the air, and onto the corresponding world. Earth and Durus exchanged people, objects, buildings, and even some lingering monsters. People with time powers or patterns seemed especially susceptible to this exchange, though no one was safe, and who it happened to proved to ultimately be rather random. Aside from this, there was a lot of other devastation. The event caused quakes on all planets involved—which was all of them, since it happened during a particular celestial event called Syzygy, where all planets were aligned—fires, and other disruptions. Still, despite some backlash from the Republicans, who were trying desperately to hold onto what power they had left, people recognized that Hokusai Gimura just saved billions of lives, including theirs. Now, any normal civilization would have worshiped her as a hero, but done nothing to change whatever system they had in place, or perhaps only done little. But Aljabara had a fixation on gender. Everything they experienced was tinted in either misogyny, or some kind inexplicable example of why women could indeed be trusted. They didn’t do much without considering the ramifications of gender. So when Hokusai, a woman, showed up, and saved two planets with her bare hands, they felt the need to change everything about their way of life. They quickly dismantled the Republic, and prepared to replace it with something else. They didn’t know exactly what that would be, but they knew it needed to be democratic, and inclusive. But first, they formed the provisional government, in order to preserve continuity, and move forward.

Microstory 1464: Hot Take

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In the year 2017, a woman named Hokusai Gimura finally finished building herself a little spaceship. It was decades more advanced than anything the world had at the time, and that was because she had a little help from the world of salmon and choosing ones. She integrated temporal powers into the ship’s systems, which allowed her to travel beyond the reaches of the solar system, and land on Durus. She was looking for her daughter, Hilde, who was in Springfield when the Deathfall transported the entire town to the rogue world. Hokusai knew that her daughter would be long dead by the time she arrived, but she was unable to procure technology that would get her there faster, and she hoped someone at her destination would have the ability to travel backwards in time. She quickly discovered that this was not the case. While the mage remnants did possess extraordinary abilities, none of them was strong enough to get her back to 2016, or even anywhere close to it. She was stuck in 2161, but even though she might never see her daughter again, that didn’t mean there wasn’t work to be done here. As soon as she arrived, the authorities took her in for questioning. Had she come just a few years earlier, she would have been very poorly treated, but since Amrit Bax took over as leader, she was just treated not super great. They didn’t celebrate her like a hero, but they didn’t lock her in a cage, and make her drink her own urine either. Bax and his friends had changed a lot about how the government was run, but they hadn’t fixed everything, and she was still considered an untrustworthy person. The fact that she was smart enough to build a spaceship, and travel here all the way from Earth was something most could not believe. She must have stolen it, and set it to autopilot.

Hokusai started making waves when she showed up, but not because of anything she said. She was kept pretty well hidden from the public, or at least her words were. She knew she was in a different culture, and even if she didn’t agree with it at all, she couldn’t just go around trying to kick up a stink. Her first priority was surviving, and then maybe she could join the revolution, or something. Even so, news of the visitor spread across the city as fast as lightning, and soon people were attributing thoughts and ideas to her for which she couldn’t take credit. Of course, people had already been trying to move the planet towards a state of true equality, but sometimes hearing the same thing from a different source can change how it’s received. Nevertheless, her arrival alone would not be enough. They needed more. They needed her to actually do something. Well, that wouldn’t be easy, but she wouldn’t have much of a choice anyway. Hokusai, and the rest of the world, would soon learn that Durus was hurtling towards Earth, and would collide with it unless something could be done about it. Certain scientists and other experts had been trying to come up with a solution since they found out about this, but the government’s official stance was that it was not happening, and that one day, it would all go away, like a miracle. Hokusai’s ship was vital to a plan that a small group of time travelers had come up with. And Hokusai herself was the one to pilot it. She literally steered Durus through space using time technology, and saved both planets from complete annihilation. This prompted a companion event to the Deathfall, which would later be called the Deathspring, but had she done nothing, they would have all been doomed. Now they owed her, but all she asked was that they change everything about how they did everything.

Microstory 1463: Switcheroo

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The last Remanoir in Durune history was Marley Allen, who was a member of the super secret organization that never bothered coming up with a name for themselves. They were friends who all believed that the system should change, and include women as equals. They did not meet each other by accident. They were brought together by a man named Anchor Nielsen who had the mage remnant power to witness events remotely by opening time windows. These windows could only transmit light in one direction, so he couldn’t use it to communicate with others, or share any other information, but he could spy on others. He used this ability to find men he knew wanted the same thing. He was no leader, though. His life was under too much scrutiny to let himself be too involved with their efforts. In fact, the rest of the people in the group never even knew who he was. He sent them messages to meet at a single location, where a single note was waiting for them, letting them know that they were safe to discuss their feelings about the government together. It was the few men here who started working on the plans to make changes, and Nielsen never had anything else to do with it ever again. Neifion Summerfield, Eskandar Aljabari, Marley Allen, and Amrit Bax weren’t the only members, but they were the only ones who ultimately became the primary leaders of government. It was an impressive feat, to say the least. Each candidate won their respective race, and two of them were joined by a second-in-command who was also a member. In the Republic, primaries and secondaries ran separately, and winners will often have opposing viewpoints. If the primary leader has radical ideas about how to run the city, then the second leader usually balances them with some moderate thoughts. They executed their lies about as perfectly as they could, knowing that they would not simply be free to take over the world, and run it however they liked. They were prepared for the backlash, and were not surprised when Allen was assassinated before he had even been in office for a year. It was time for his second, Amrit to take the reins.

Amrit Bax didn’t know what was going to happen to him, but after his predecessor’s death, security was tightened. The assassins, and their co-conspirators, were quickly found by a couple of mage remnant detectives, and locked up. Though law enforcement and the military didn’t agree with Allen’s policies, killing the primary leader was illegal, so they had no choice but to take action, and to let Bax take over for him. Bax was just as progressively radical, and he wasn’t about to let power slip through his fingers in the same way it had for all his friends before him. This was pretty much the last chance they would get to destroy the phallocracy, so if he didn’t throw down the gauntlet, no one would, unless whomever brought them all together managed to do it again with a new group. As soon as he secured loyalty from the security team, which he hand-picked himself, he went hard. He started passing executive order after executive order, changing everything about how the Republic was run. He ceased all operations against the Thicket, he reopened employment opportunities for women, and for the love of God, he let mothers take care of their own damn children while their husbands were away. People were pissed, but he wasn’t going to let anybody get in his way. They would have to kill him too if they wanted to replace him with someone else, and even though his security team wasn’t comprised of the most progressive men in the world, they stuck to their posts, and showed that they would not let anyone take their leader down. Now it really felt like a conspiracy, which was what the small group wanted at this point. They had to seem so large and daunting that there was nothing the old guard could do to stop progress. If this many men trusted women, had they lost the war already? Essentially, they had. There was still one more absolutely vital step in finally ending the Republic’s misogynistic ways, and no one saw it coming, not even Bax and his friends.

Microstory 1462: Sic Semper Honestus

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Marley Allen was next in line out of the small and secret group of friends who were interested in making the world more like it was before the misogynistic Republic took over. People were not happy with the progressive decisions that Remanoir Aljabari made during his relatively short time as the main leader of the planet. It wasn’t enough to get him kicked out of office, but it was certainly too much to let him be reëlected. That was not only okay, but completely part of the plan. Aljabari never intended to campaign again, but would step aside so that Allen could take over for him. It was his responsibility to give the people a taste of what the world could be like if they let go of their prejudices, and returned to a system of equality. Now it was time for the next step. When Marley Allen replaced him, he believed he would have to lay low for a while, to backpedal on a few of his predecessor’s policies, and make himself out to be the loyal Republican everyone thought he was. It seemed he didn’t have to do that, however, and it was all thanks to Aljabari’s wife, Ceri. Ceri Aljabari was a mage remnant, who had the ability to manipulate other people’s emotions. Very few people were aware of her power, however, as they thought it was Eskandar Aljabari himself who possessed such talent. They didn’t believe that a woman could be so powerful, which gave them leverage, and even plausible deniability. During Eskandar’s administration, he urged congress to agree with the changes he wanted to make, and they didn’t push back as much as one would think. Ceri altered their state of mind, so they would be more open to new ideas. She simultaneously worked on the city residents as a whole, though to a far lower degree, because her ability was only so strong, and it wasn’t like she could create a planet of obedient zombies. By the time Remanoir Allen took his seat at the top, most citizens of Aljabara were willing to consider the possibility that women were perhaps not quite as wholly devious and dishonest as the Republicans had made them out to be for the last six decades.

Unfortunately, most does not ever account for all, and there were more than enough people who never wanted to see the system be replaced. Even if an individual didn’t personally feel any animosity towards women, the phallocratic government was beneficial to them. Women’s rights weren’t just limited, but men’s rights were raised. It was good to be a man on Durus during the first half of the 22nd century, and some weren’t willing to give that up, even if it was better for the planet as a whole. A few of these people got together, and they started plotting. They decided there was something fishy going on with their elections. Summerfield, Aljabari, Allen. Three out of the last four leaders were progressive, even though they claimed not to be. They had lied about themselves the entire time, and there was no reason to believe another election wouldn’t make the same thing happen again. When Summerfield was recalled, Poppet Drumpf took over, but when Drumpf stepped down himself, his entire administration was drained from the proverbial swamp. So what could these people do to fix this? They didn’t want Allen’s second-in-command to take over, because that caused problems before, but a special election was also a travesty in their eyes. They kind of had to pick the lesser of two evils, and hope that Allen’s second, the Prime Minister wouldn’t turn out to be quite as bad as Drumpf. Unlike with Summerfield, however, they did not have the people’s support. If they wanted to get rid of Remanoir Marley Allen, they would have to take care of it themselves. They would have to assassinate him. Fortunately for them, they were radicals, so they didn’t have any problem with killing. The mission was successful, and the Prime Minister took over primary leadership duties, but he would turn out to be just as progressive as his secret friends.

Microstory 1461: Special Election

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Eskandar Aljabari was the polar opposite of former Sekundas Poppet Drumpf. He was kind, progressive, and most of all, a philogynist. Years ago, a very, very small group of men got together and formed an organization. Though organization was probably a strong word to use. Club might have even been too strong for it. Friends. They were friends. More to the point, they were like-minded friends. They all loved women, and not only in the way it sounded like. They believed women ought to be treated equally, just like they were on Earth. The Thicket was great as a rebellious force that was trying to change things by making a lot of noise. People needed to hear dissenting opinions, or they would just go on believing that their opinions—if only the ones indoctrinated into them by the government—were the correct ones. A rebel faction wasn’t the only way to make change, however, and this group of friends believed that their way was what was best for them. They were men, after all, so they didn’t need to fight against oppression if they managed to infiltrate the system, and tear it down from the inside. The first attempt at this was Neifion Summerfield, but he frightened people with his radical ideas about the treatment of women, so they recalled him. His downfall was what led to Drumpf’s regime, and this group didn’t want to see that sort of thing happen again. If Eskandar wanted to win the special election following Drumpf’s removal, then he needed to learn from Summerfield’s mistakes. He needed to be smarter, slower, and far less conspicuous. They had to play the long game, and though it would start with Aljabari, it wouldn’t end with him. The plan was to replace him with someone else in the next election after this one, so people could gradually appreciate the idea of trusting women without even realizing it.

There was a problem, though. One of Poppet Drumpf’s conditions for agreeing to step down as Sekundas was that his successor be a mage remnant. It didn’t matter what weak power the next leader of Durus would have, but he couldn’t just be a regular human. Though Aljabari was smart about concealing his true intentions regarding feminine policy, there were those who saw through his façade. They couldn’t prove who he really was, so they figured they should take him out of contention some other way. Then they never needed to try to oppose him at all. Aljabari was no mage remnant, so it seemed there was nothing they could do to qualify him for office. But there was. Most men had been denying the existence of female mage remnants since the very end of the Interstitial Chaos, and this obvious lie was the Republic’s official position. Some even denied that there were ever female full mages during the Mage Protectorate. The bottom line was that, if your daughter was born with powers, and you didn’t want her to be locked up for her entire life, you had to keep it a secret. You had to teach her to keep it a secret, and you couldn’t trust a soul. Fortunately, though Aljabari and his friends didn’t even reveal to their own wives that they were secretly in favor of women’s rights, his wife did confide in him about her time power. And so she gave them their loophole. She was an empath, so she had the ability to sense other people’s emotions. She could also send emotions to others. Now, this might seem like it didn’t matter, because Aljabari himself obviously had to be the one with powers, but all they had to do was use the Republic’s stance on wives against them. His wife had to be with him literally at all times, because the wife of anyone in a political position was more dangerous than the wife of a regular guy. She wasn’t allowed to campaign for him separately, because she would probably screw it up, or undermine him on purpose. So she was in the room when Eskandar was asked to demonstrate his empathic abilities. When prompted, she sent him a given target’s emotion, let him claim he was the one who sensed it himself, and he was able to pass the test. People were suspicious, since he wasn’t openly remnant before, but there was no law against that, and there seemed to be no way around his demonstration, so that had to let him through. He won handily, and began the long con towards equality.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, July 7, 2122

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After Sanaa was done sending her time message through the phone using a fifty-two digit number, Holly Blue appeared. “Boy, am I popular today,” she said.

“We don’t mean to disturb you,” Mateo said to her.

“Don’t worry about it,” she replied. “Susan knows when my line’s busy. What can I do for ya? Where’s Leona?”

“She’s back in the main sequence,” Ellie began. “You see—”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Holly Blue interrupted. “I’ve known about the four concurrent realities this entire time.”

“You have?” Ellie questioned. “Did you not tell anyone about them?”

“Weaver strongly recommended that I keep it a secret,” Holly Blue said, referring to her alternate timeline counterpart. “What year was it for you when you left the main sequence?”

“July 6, 2121,” Sanaa answered.

“Ah,” Holly Blue said, “there’s no hurry in getting back in that case. Leona won’t be returning until July 8.”

“Really? Where is she?” Mateo was worried, but not in a panic.

“Oh, it’s fine. She just had to get to a meeting in the future. Mr. Fury approved it. Or rather, he doesn’t have much of a choice when it comes to her and her friends.”

Mateo wasn’t entirely sure what she was talking about, but he would discuss it with Leona later. They needed to return to the issue at hand. Time was running out for him to leave the Fourth Quadrant, whether Leona would be waiting for him or not.

“You seem to have some understanding of our situation here,” Ellie said to Holly Blue. “Do you know why we called you?”

“I don’t, but give me a second, and I may be able to guess.” Holly Blue narrowed her eyes, and looked around at everyone, letting her genius-level intellect fill in the blanks for her. “Based on the people who are here, I can surmise that Ellie has finally begun to realize her mission to save the residents of this reality.”

Ellie looked surprised.

“Yes, Miss Underhill,” Holly Blue went on, “I have access to information from alternate timelines. I know more about you than you care for others to remember. Don’t worry, I have no interest in divulging any of your secrets. Judging by the Cassidy cuffs on your wrists, I know that Jupiter did not fully approve of this mission, but he is allowing it. Or perhaps you actually need the cuffs, because everyone knows that Ariadna doesn’t use her powers herself.”

“Does everyone know what I can do?” Ariadna questioned, upset.

“Just everyone in this room,” Holly Blue answered. “Since Missy is here, obviously your plan is to reset the speed of time. It must be pretty important to you people, or Sanaa would not also be here. Do you guys know what she did to her?”

Ellie nodded, but everyone else shook their heads.

“Anyway, you called me, because President Orlova needs the energy that the time discrepancy provides—”

“Wait, you didn’t say anything about me,” Mateo pointed out, but he regretted it immediately.

“Do you really want me to answer that?”

“No,” Mateo said. He wasn’t there because he served some purpose, or was a clue to their situation in any way. He was just there because he had to be somewhere.

“How did I do?” Holly Blue asked the crowd.

“Can you help us?” Missy asked of her. “Can you adapt my ability to make temporal energy generators?”

“They would be more like a converter,” Holly Blue said, her voice rising in the end, like it was a question, but it wasn’t, because she was the one who knew what she was talking about. Then she sighed, and looked between Missy, and for some reason, Ariadna. “Your ability isn’t good enough,” she finally explained. “You can create temporal pocket dimensions.” She looked around, indicating the world in general. “This is a spatio-temporal pocket dimension. Or. Well. It’s not a pocket anymore, but whatever. My point is that you can neither create nor control spatial dimensions.” Now she quite deliberately faced Ariadna. “You, on the other hand...”

“Why does that matter?” Ariadna asked.

“I would need to adapt both of your time powers, and put them together.” Holly Blue raised her hands in front of her chest, and moved them to lock her fingers together at medium speed. “Both of you need to be involved in order for this to work. Otherwise, the bubbles won’t do these people any good.”

“Why not?” Ellie asked. “We don’t need to access the main sequence anymore. That’s just what they’re using now, because that’s how this reality was designed. If we separate from the main sequence, you can just build something that uses time bubble energy.”

Holly Blue shook her head. “You’re not getting it. The main sequence is self-sustaining. You’re stealing energy from it. The fact that they’re moving at different speeds is what powers the grid in this reality, but that only works because time flow on the other side is in turn powered by natural entropy. If Missy were to go off and create her own bubbles, they could not generate any power unless she continued to funnel energy into it from her end.”

“I’m lost,” Mateo said, “as per yuzhe.”

Holly Blue prepared to clarify herself. “Well, let me make a car analogy. Why don’t cars have small wind turbines, instead of using gas or batteries? While the car is driving, the wind flows into the turbine, which spins, and powers the motor.”

“Well, they’ve tried to build them, and they do exist, but they’re inefficient, because the turbines create drag, which means there’s more demand for more wind, and you can’t get over that. The more wind you try to put into it, the more drag you create, and it never ends.”

“Exactly,” Holly Blue agreed. “For Missy’s bubbles to be used to generate energy, she has to keep adding energy, which is fine, assuming her power is infinite, but that’s not what you’re asking me to do. My invention would not be self-sustaining. You wouldn’t be able to get more energy than what you put in to power the converters themselves. If you want me to build you something, it has to extract energy from a separate supply, just like they do now. Otherwise, you could plug  a surge protector into itself, and have infinite energy for no reason, and without paying into it.”

“Bottom line,” Ellie said, “can it be done?”

“Not without Ariadna. She has to consent to let me study her.”

They all waited patiently for Ariadna’s response. She never wanted to be involved in any of this, but from Mateo’s perspective, it was a no-brainer. She had the power to help, and she wasn’t doing anything else with her abilities, so who could say no? “Well, who could say no to that?” she revealed after building a little suspense.

Sanaa reached over, and nearly twisted Mateo’s arm off to check Leona’s watch. “We don’t have long to get out of here, or we’ll be stuck here for a month. So if this is all you need of us, we’re gonna slip back through.”

“How do we do that?” Mateo questioned. “Ellie needs Ariadna to get us back to The Parallel, but Holly Blue needs her to stay here, for however long until she finishes her new invention.”

“I can finish in a month,” Holly Blue said. “My invention can be built and tested within that time frame. She doesn’t have to stick around for us to mass produce it.”

“I really would love to see this all end,” Ellie announced.

“I can hang out here for a month. So can you,” Mateo scolded Sanaa.

Sanaa frowned. “Fine. But I want to stay on the opposite side of the city as her.” She didn’t gesture towards Missy, or even look at her, but she was the established target of all her hatred.

Holly Blue, Missy, and Ariadna stuck around, so President Orlova could find a lab for them to work in. She mentioned something about Duke Andrews, but something in her voice made Mateo worried that she was talking about a dead person. He, Sanaa, and Ellie followed their own escort to the suburbs, where they would be allowed to stay until it was time to return to the main sequence. They were only half surprised to find out that they were assigned to Fletcher House. Based on how Horace talked about it, a few people were left untouched when their enemy, Tauno Nyland created this reality. He copied every single person from Kansas City, and placed them here, except for him, Serkan, Paige, and maybe some others. The true owner of this house, Mercury Fletcher, was always assumed to be one of these other exceptions, but there wasn’t enough data to prove this one way or the other. Until now.

A man stepped out of the house to greet them in the driveway. A presumably different version of Mercury was at Mateo and Leona’s engagement party, so even though they didn’t know each other well, Mateo recognized that this was him.

Ellie shook his hand. “Congressman Fletcher, it is an honor to meet you.”

“Congressman?” Mercury asked, impressed. “It’s nice to know I go places.”

“I figured I ought to call you that, even though it was technically an alternate version of you who ran for office.”

“Please, just call me Mercury, or Dupe!Mercury. Or hell, even Dupe!Merc.

“Will there be anything else, sir?” the driver asked of him.

“Nah, go on and go home. Make sure your batteries are full, though. I would like to take these fine folks on a tour of our fair city tomorrow.”

“Very good, sir,” the driver said before leaving.

“We appreciate you letting us stay here,” Mateo said. “You have a lovely home.”

“Especially the basement,” Mercury agreed. “You each have a room down there. I don’t need to use it as a secret headquarters anymore.”

At the end of the summer in 2024, Mercury Fletcher sold his house, and downsized to something more appropriate while he pursued a career in civil service. Having been outed as the vigilante who was largely responsible for bringing gun violence statistics in the metropolitan area to nearly zero, he was lauded as a hero, and became quite popular around the country. Shortly after he left, a small team of time travelers moved into Fletcher House, and started using its facilities to save lives in the past. The Fourth Quadrant was created about a month before any of this, however, so this version of Mercury was still here.

Holly Blue was finished with her new creation in three weeks, but the window was not yet ready for them to return to the main sequence, so the stayed for the rest of the month. Unfortunately, calculations were a little fuzzy, so it turned out that Ellie was unable to see Missy take down the temporal bubble. Jupiter stepped in, and pulled everyone with a Cassidy cuff back to reality, which was July 7, 2122. They quickly jumped forward a year to find out the plan changed while they were gone. The temporal bubble wasn’t destroyed, but reversed.

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