The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Monday, July 19, 2134

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They didn’t have time to process the letter Hua managed to get to them before their Cassidy cuffs began to beep. It was not a new transition location, though. An icon of an envelope was bouncing in the corner, indicating that they had a message. Leona tapped on hers, which released a full-sized holographic image of Jupiter Fury. “Dear Mateo and Leona, I left this message for you in the case of my death, or extreme temporal absence. I am a time traveler, which means even if I become preoccupied with something, I should be able to go back to the right time period, and coordinate assignments. If you’re watching this, it likely means my death, because I would have little other reason to not return at some point, and help you carry out your mission. I’ve set contingencies on these cuffs. Should they lose their connections to me for a given period of time, they were programmed to transition you back to The Parallel, where you will have a choice.

“This reality provides you the best chances you’ll have at finding happiness. The powers that be cannot get you here. Tamerlane Pryce cannot get you here. Technology is millennia beyond anything we have in the main sequence. You can finally be free to live your own lives, and make your own choices. As you know, you are capable of removing your cuffs at will, or reprogramming them for other purposes. Leona, I’m sure you’ll think of something. You may instead choose to continue the mission. If you do, the cuffs can give you a list of the people I intended to help, and when they need that help. I make no judgments about which you choose. I’m dead afterall, and I probably shouldn’t have compelled you to wear the cuffs in the first place. Finally, if you are continuing, you will need something else, for it’s something that the cuffs alone will not be able to handle.” At this point, Jupiter’s hologram lifted his hand, and snapped his fingers. Two tiny SIM card-like slots popped out their cuffs; one on each. Inside of Mateo’s was a few drops of blood. Inside of Leona’s was what appeared to be a small shard of metal.

“This is my blood. It is poured out for you, and with it, we make a new agreement. This is the tip of the Sword of Assimilation. Eat these as a way of absorbing my temporal powers. This will allow you to transition to and from the Parallel at will, and help the people from the list. You can add to this list, or make a new one, if that’s your thing. Or, I suppose, you can absorb my powers, and just go take over the world, or whatever. That’s something I’ve always been able to do, and I doubt you would be any more interested in it than me, but again, I don’t judge. I apologize for how we met, and how I approached the mission. I should have tried to recruit you. That would have made it a lot easier on everyone. Thank you for showing me that.” The hologram disappeared.

They stood there in silence for a few moments.

“You wanna vote?” Mateo finally asked.

“We’re not like the other salmon,” Leona began. “Rather, you’re not; I’m not salmon. But one thing I’ve noticed about our lives is that we don’t receive assignments, or mandates. Responsibility presents itself to us. At first, all we needed to do was learn the ropes. Then Reaver showed up, and we were asked to capture him. Boyce gave us the Tribulations, at the behest of Zeferino. Then Arcadia showed up in retaliation, and while you were suffering the consequences of your defiance, I was retrieving Étude, stopping Ulinthra, and getting you back. After that, we just kept ending up on other planets, with various tasks to complete on them, under little sense of formality. No one has been sitting around, thinking of things for us to do, but they do keep needing us just the same. Jupiter asked for our help—in a very unfair manner, but we would have helped either way, because that’s what we do. It’s...our calling. I don’t think we need to vote, Mateo. There’s only one option.”

“I’m lookin’ at this list.” He was scrolling through his cuff. “This isn’t just our assignments; it’s all of them, for these mysterious other teams that we don’t know anything about. He’s not asking us to transition people back and forth. He’s asking us to coordinate all the transitions. I don’t know how our pattern lets us do that.”

“Jupiter never had to be present for the transition windows,” she said. “He somehow set them up ahead of time, and directed his teams towards them. If one of us absorbs his powers, we’ll do the same.”

“If that’s the case, why didn’t he just set them all up? How does his supposed death even affect this?”

She had started looking through the list as well, but with a more critical eye. “There’s a limit. He can only predict so far in the future. Every time someone transitions, it changes the timeline, and each one runs the risk of impacting the next one. You’re just looking at the current list, but we can also see the revision history. Some people were removed, presumably because their transitions were no longer necessary. Likewise, new ones have been added that weren’t necessary before. This guy here? He was supposed to transition in 2103, but he was moved back to 2107, at a different location.”

“We’re on our original pattern now,” he reminded her, “because that’s how Pryce wanted it. Those changes are going to be even more complicated to follow for us. We can’t do this. I am all for continuing the mission as he wanted, but...we’re terrible candidates to replace him. We could never be promoted, not in these bodies. We’re just not cut out for management.”

Leona sighed, somehow letting more air out than she took in. “You’re right. I know you’re right. I don’t know why he chose us.”

“He chose us, because he trusts us. We still don’t know who these other teams are, but maybe none of them could handle it either. We’re just the best out of a roster of bad candidates.”

“Right.” Leona was in the middle of finding an idea. “That’s right. We’re all bad candidates.”

“Yeah, what are we gonna do with that?”

She smiled with her lips, but not her eyes, like a sad clown, but she wasn’t really upset. “We just need to expand the labor pool.”

“Who did you have in mind?” he asked.

Leona was smiling at her cuff, but this time with her eyes, and not her lips. “How about the transitionee from July 19, 2134.”

After realizing she wasn’t just going to say the name out loud, Mateo scrolled back up on his own cuff to hunt for the right date. “Huh. I’ve never believed in fate.”

“Why would you? You’re a time traveler. I have to admit, though, it’s quite fitting.”

“Do you think she’ll go for it?”

“Well, we don’t know who she is. What has she gone through? How many times has she died at this point? Are we even friends?”

“I’d like to think we were always friends,” Mateo decided.

Leona laughed. “Well, we better get back to Earth to find out. She’s supposed to come through soon. Everyone below her on this list is grayed out, which suggests that she was the last transition he prepared for before losing his connection. If we don’t get this blood, and this shard, into someone, we’ll start losing people. Then it really will have to be one of us, because I can’t think of anyone living in the Parallel who could take up the mantle.”

They took the Nexus back to Earth, and a short-range transporter to Belle Fourche, South Dakota. They arrived just in time to witness the transition window open up, defenestrate their candidate, and close back up again. She looked around, unimpressed. “Who dares summon me?” she said in a vocal fry. “Bwahaha.”

“What is the last thing you remember about us?” Leona asked her.

“This is 2134 still?” Nerakali inquired.

“Indeed.”

“And is this...your original 2134, err...?”

“This is our second time around,” Leona confirmed.

“Okay, great. That’s perfect. The last time I saw you was the last time you saw me. We are simpatico.”

“Do you mean that we’re all friends, or is that a time travel term?”

“I dunno, maybe bolth?”

“That sounds like a reference.”

“Kinda. But yes, we’re friends, and because our respective personal timelines have no inconsistencies, we are considered simpatico.”

“That’s nice,” Leona said. “And it’s helpful. Because we would like to interview you for a new position.”

Nerakali was intrigued. “You’re hiring?”

“We developed an understanding with Jupiter. We don’t know what happened to  him, but he can no longer perform his duties.” She removed the shard from her cuff, and then reached out silently so Mateo could hand her the blood from his. “These will give you his powers, so you can do what he did.”

Nerakali took the slides to examine them closely. She chuckled. “I once asked Anatol what happened to the tip of his sword. He said he lost it in a game of Rummikub. Now I know who won.”

“As I recall,” Leona said, “the tip was there when you died. That thing killed you.”

Nerakali grinned kindly. “And now it’s going to give me purpose.”

“So, you’ll do it?” Mateo was hopeful, and ready to be grateful.

“I can’t say no to you two.” She reached out, and took them in a bear hug. “Oh, I missed you so much. Do we have time to catch up? I don’t know what this is gonna do to me, so I would rather we conversate prior to it.”

“I think that can be arranged,” Leona told her. “Pick a star, any star. We’ll find the closest restaurant, and do brunch.”

“Okay. Then you can tell me exactly where we are, and how there are restaurants on other planets.”

Nerakali said that she wanted to eat as far away from Earth as possible, while still being in the Milky Way Galaxy. The Nexus technician knew exactly where that was. They went to a world called Extremus, which both Leona and Nerakali thought they had heard of before. They ate, and they drank, and they were merry. They told her about their adventures with the team, helping people coming through the transition windows, and not always sending them back. They brought up The Transit, which conscripted fighters for some great war. Surprisingly, Nerakali had never heard of it, but she was interested in meeting the people who operated it. They had a lovely time together, and at the end of the night, she consumed the blood and metal, and became one of the most powerful people in the galaxy. Then she disappeared to start her first day on the job.

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The Pryce of Heaven: Hacking Heaven (Part III)

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The three of them sit against the wall. They wish they could save Jupiter, but none of them had the power to do so. Tetra couldn’t summon him to her location, and if she had tried to jump to his location, she would have immediately started dying too, because she has no idea how to survive in the vacuum of space. Missy could have tried to slow time for him, but then what? How would they have gotten him out? Téa doesn’t have any powers to speak of, so she feels even more useless. They just were never the right team to deal with a contingency like that, and now it’s up to them to continue his vision. That won’t be easy, because even though they’re in the matrioshka body now, they have no clue how to find whatever they need to get to, or what they’re going to do when they get there. Missy is still a brilliant engineer, but they just don’t have enough information about this place, or how it works.

“Does anyone know that we’re here?” Téa asks. The reality is that none of them knew Jupiter very well, and as sad as it is, the biggest issue they face is the fact that he had some kind of plan, not that they’ve been traumatized directly.

Missy takes a tablet out of her bag, and starts doing what she can. “I doubt I can hack into this place. For all intents and purposes, we might as well be trying remotely, even though we’re technically in the building. I could do more with a hardline, but if I were to design a matrioshka body, I would compartmentalize the systems to an extreme degree. We would probably not be able to do more than turn the lights on and off in this section.”

“How long would it take if we were to walk from here to where the main system most likely is?” Tetra asks. “I understand we can’t do that, but what would it look like? I’m just having trouble fathoming the size of this thing.”

Missy chuckles. “How long would it take to walk to Jupiter? How long would it take you to drive? Hell, how long would it take you to fly? From head to heel, it’s about the distance from the sun to the orbit of Neptune. We’re in the ass.”

“There has to be some form of faster than light travel,” Téa figures. “You don’t build something this big unless you can get clear to the other side of it in a reasonable amount of time, should you need to.”

“It wasn’t really built for humans,” Missy explains. “Mechs can just transfer their consciousnesses somewhere else instantaneously, and start operating a new body. Like I was saying before, this is not a solid structure. It’s a bunch of gravitationally bound parts, which move in concert. A moon could probably fit within the space between a finger and its hand.”

They sit in silence for a moment while Missy keeps working.

“We’re still in the bubble, right?” Téa inquires.

“Yeah,” Missy confirms. “The rooms around us are frozen in time.”

“I guess that’s good at least.”

They sit for another moment until a voice comes through their cuffs. “Hello? Do you read me?”

“Jupiter?” Tetra asks. “Jupiter, is that you?”

“It is,” he replies.

“Jupiter, how are you al—”

Missy interrupts Téa’s question by cupping her hand around her mouth.

“You guys still there?” Jupiter asks. “If you’re avoiding asking me about my death, don’t worry. There’s no risk of a paradox, or anything. I’m not from the past. I am a quantum duplication of myself. I made a copy just as we were jumping, in case we needed someone to stay with the ship. I don’t really know why I didn’t tell you, but it looks like I made the right call. It’s taken me this long to establish a secure connection with you.”

“So you don’t have to die?” Missy makes sure.

“No, already happened. The good news is that this gives us an opportunity. Is my body there?”

Tetra slides her back up the wall, and stands to look out the viewport. “It’s...it’s close, but...” While his other body is on the other side of the hull, it’s still inside of Missy’s temporal bubble, but that doesn’t matter much, because there’s no way to get to it. They would need an airlock, and a vacuum suit. It might as well be on another planet.

“That’s fine,” Jupiter said. “There’s a teleportation feature built into them. It won’t let you go wherever you want, but it will allow two cuff-wearers to jump directly to one another. The problem is it’s designed as an outgoing feature. You can’t use it to summon someone towards you. Missy, I’m going to need you to hack into them. Shouldn’t be too hard for you, Leona and Sanaa did it all the time. Maybe you could reverse the polarity?”

Missy bursts out laughing. “If that was a joke, it was a good one, if not, it’s probably even funnier. But okay, I’ll see what I can do.” She gets to work on her cuff interface, trying to find a way to make it so they can bring Jupiter’s body into the room. No one bothers asking him why this is even a thing. They can’t fully trust him, but they can probably trust that he isn’t asking them to use his corpse to recreate Weekend at Bernie’s. Within a half hour, Missy has finished what she needs to do. Once she activates the apporter, the body appears on the floor before them.

“Okay,” the living Jupiter says. “Now it’s time to move on to the hard part.”

“That wasn’t the easiest thing I’ve ever done,” Missy points out.

“This isn’t going to be hard on a technical level,” Jupiter begins to clarify, “but a psychological one. If you could reach into my inside breast pocket, and retrieve a little black and white bag thing.”

Tetra does this. “Got it.”

“That is a bag of holding. The white side is a virtual inventory carousel. I need you to look for something called an oligodendroglian interceptor kit.”

“Found it,” Tetra says. She selects the item on the screen, which causes the real thing to appear on the floor. It’s larger than the bag it was in. “What does it do?”

“Open it up.”

Tetra opens the pack, and starts to lay out all the pieces on the provided sanitary cloth. They look like medical devices. No...surgical tools.

Téa is watching it happen. “You’re gonna make us cut into your brain?”

“The body’s already dead,” he reminds them. “You can’t hurt it. Just dig a hole, find a spot to stick the antenna, and connect to it with your tablet. It’s just like syncing your phone with a pair of wireless headphones.”

“It’s absolutely not like that,” Téa argues.

“Oligodendrocytes are all over the brain. You just have to stick it on and connect. I know it’s gross, but this will allow us to hack into the simulation.”

“They don’t do this in The Matrix,” Tetra notes.

“They probably could,” he retorts. “Look, this has to happen quickly. We’re finally at an advantage I never had, because the signal is extremely strong here, but it won’t be long before my copy’s body loses its link to its former consciousness. You have to do this now.”

“Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine,” Tetra says.

“No, I’ll do it,” Téa decides. I’m not a teleporter, or a tech genius, but I’ve cooked meat before, and I feel like I need to contribute something.”

No one argues with her.

Téa gracelessly uses the blade to cut into Jupiter’s head, all the way into the brain. She then drops this little pebble thing into her hole, and waits for Missy to find the connection on her tablet. It really is as easy as he claimed. Within seconds, she’s linked up to his neural signal. It’s fading fast, but it’s enough for her to establish a permanent connection to where the neural signal is going, which is directly into Pryce’s afterlife simulation. From here, they should be able to gain access to the virtual constructs.

“How much time do you need?” Tetra asks as Téa is getting herself cleaned up.

“Impossible to tell. I don’t know how complex this is, or even what language it’s written in. I’m from the 21st century, this is all pretty far beyond me. I hope there are a few cots in that bag, because it could take days, or honestly, even weeks. Sorry.”

Several hours later, Missy has pretty much full control of the simulation. She would be capable of switching it off, or altering its speed of time, or even giving people clone bodies to transfer their minds into. None of that really helps them, though. They don’t need control of the simulation, but the matrioshka body as a whole, and they need to use that control to detrone Pryce himself. Unfortunately, they’re separate systems by design, to prevent something like this very thing from happening.

“We need a distraction,” Tetra suggests as Missy is looking through the simulation specifications. “Someone is going to have to go in, and make a big stink, so the other two can get to the real controls.”

“I think we all know Missy can’t be the person who goes into the simulation,” Téa adds. She needs to stay out here, so it obviously has to be me.”

“It could be me,” Tetra contends. “I’m the one who thought of it.”

“And you also have superpowers, which I’ve already explained. I can make a stink. I made a lot of stinks when I was younger, I was an abolitionist. It has to be me, in case Missy needs you out here.”

The other two give her this look.

Téa continues, “I won’t be dead, so Pryce won’t be able to delete my code, or whatever. I’m just hacking in, and if anything goes wrong, I’ll come right back to my body.”

“I can’t promise that,” Missy says, shaking her head.

“I don’t know if my pattern is over or not,” Téa goes on. “If the powers that be still have a hold of me, then I will ultimately be here for three hundred years, at which point, who knows? But at least there’s a chance they’ll protect me. You two can’t say the same thing.” She lifts her cuff closer to her mouth. “Neither can you, Mister Fury. So jam that needle into the back of my head, give me a halo, stick electrodes on me, or do whatever it is you gotta do. Let’s stop wasting time.”

Jupiter informs them that there is indeed a VR cap in his bag. It isn’t all that difficult to interface it with Missy’s tablet, and the simulation signal. Tetra places the cap on Téa’s head, and Missy prepares to send her into the frametrix, as she calls it jokingly.

“I’m putting you in lurker mode,” Missy goes over. “No one will be able to see you if you don’t want them to. Take as much time as you need to get your bearings, and make a plan. Pryce will probably be able to see you right away, but he might not notice immediately; it just depends on how preoccupied he is already.”

“Got it. Beam me up, Missy.”

Missy activates the sequence, and resolves Téa into the simulation.

She’s standing in a room. A room full of Jupiters. It looks like a party, except that every guest is the same person. They are all wearing different clothes, but all in the same style, and they all have dates and times on their shirts. No one else is around, and Téa wants answers, so she reveals herself to the world. Little by little, they notice her amongst them.

“Who is this?” one of them asks.

“She looks familiar,” observes another.

The Jupiter listed as December 14, 2134 approaches her. “Miss Stendahl, you’ve come. But you’re not dead, right?”

“Nope,” Téa replies. “We hacked into the sim.”

He nods. “That was a contingency, in case you couldn’t gain physical access to the servers.”

“I don’t know if Missy knows where they are, or what,” she explains. “It’s just my job to create a distraction.”

December 14, 2134 lets out a maniacal laugh, and looks around at his quantum duplicates. “We can do that, can’t we boys!”

Responses like, “hell yeah,” and “I’m great at that,” came out of the duplicates. They whoop and holler and smash their glasses on the floor. One of them conjures a baseball bat, and breaks a lamp with it.

“That’s right!” December 14, 2134 concurs. Still smiling, he looks back at Téa. “I knew there was a reason I kept letting my duplicates die.” He nods proudly as they begin rushing out of the party venue. “Let’s go raise some hell.”

< > Entire Story

Microstory 1520: Ruby Ekto, Simon Divto, Kara Trito, Luna Chato, Dana Panto, Tali Hasto, Gaby Sapto, Asher Ashto, Evren Navto, Manny Masto

< > Table of Contents

One is for Growth

For the beginning of the year

We celebrate each other, and our togetherness

It is about new beginnings

We eat desserts

Two is for Scion

For birth and early development

We learn about the circle of life

It is about nature, and all the animals around us

We drink water

Three is for Mask

For make believe and creativity

We dance and sing in the streets

It is about dressing up, and empathizing with others

We eat fruit

Four is for Athletics

For sports and sportsmanship

We compete in challenges, and support our elite

It is about agility and strength

We eat protein

Five is for Fields

For outdoor activities

We plant our seeds, and enjoy the wild

It is about farming and agriculture

We eat grains

Six is for Environment

For the world around us, which keeps us alive

We study our impact on the ecosystem

It is about respecting our planet, and protecting our future

We eat vegetables

Seven is for Community

For the workers in the workforce

We show appreciation for the laborers

It is about ethics, and being a positive contributing member of society

We eat and drink dairy

Eight is for war

For remembering those we’ve lost to our defense

We spread peace, and honor the sacrifices

It is about learning from our past mistakes

We fast

Nine is for Aerobics

For exercise and self-improvement

We promote healthy choices, and an active lifestyle

It is about getting enough sleep, and developing a reasonable schedule

We eat seeds

Ten is for Gratitude

For family and friends

We thank our parents, and our neighbors

It is about loving one’s enemy

We eat a balanced diet

Microstory 1519: The Talking Lamb Who is Talking to You

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I’m a talking lamb

I say little lamby things

If you hate the way I talk

Of course, I can always sing

If you’re too tired to run

And there’s nowhere left to hide

You can shear my mama’s coat

And then you can climb inside

It will make you look like us

And the danger, it will pass

It’s just about your perseverance;

How long you can last

If after a while, you find

Sheep life’s pretty great

You can stay with us forever

Hey, perhaps it’s even fate

If you’d rather go back home

And forget you ever met us

As sheep, we will not stop you

We’ll even help you, if you let us

I like just who I am

I believe you’d like it too

But that is your decision

Just make sure to think it through

Microstory 1518: I Was Born a Mother

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I was born a mother, and I know how crazy that sounds

But it’s completely true

It’s just not the whole story

My mother was also born pregnant

As was her mother

And her mother before that

I am not the result of the immaculate conceptions, though

None of us is

We have all become pregnant with the same child

We take hundreds of days to form

The Quantum Child takes hundreds of years

We just keep passing it down the line

In every generation, a young woman in the family is chosen

Chosen to take on the responsibility

We don’t know who exactly is making this choice

Perhaps the mysterious powers that be

Maybe God

It might even be time itself

But it’s never been a very hard job

Each woman is pregnant for one day out of the year

The earlier Quantum Mothers had it easy

They barely noticed any difference

It was just like getting a little sick once a year

And having to worship the porcelain deity

If that

The latter Quantum Mothers, like me

It’s a little harder

But it’s still easier than a regular pregnancy

Which we have to deal with as well

For the Quantum Child to survive

A new Mother must be born

A new Mother must be chosen

I am in the third trimester

One of my daughters will soon take my place

And she will be the one to deliver this baby

The Quantum Child will finally start its life

And no one knows what that looks like

At least I’ll still be alive to see it

I can’t wait

Microstory 1517: What a Nickel is Worth

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What is a nickel worth?

A nickel is worth nothing

It’s less than nothing

Meeting a nickel is like spending some money, and then being robbed for the rest

A nickel will screech in your ears, and pinch you red

It will corner you, and skunk your face

It will keep you awake, or hold you in water

It won’t drown you, understand

But it won’t let you get out and get dry

The trick to beating a nickel is by getting it to think you’re fine with what it’s doing

Try to run, you will be found

When you think you’ve escaped a nickel, you haven’t

It’s waiting for you around the corner

You can hurt a nickel—even kill it

Nickels are not very strong

They’re just annoying

But even if you do manage to get rid of a nickel, another will come take its place

A nickel is worth nothing, but a group of nickel is worth everything

That is why Adversary created so many

They are expendable and pointless alone, but hellish together

What happens to a nickel when it dies?

Does it simply return to hell?

What if it dies in hell?

If I kill a nickel, could it come back to haunt me later?

There is no way to know

They never stop coming either way

I would pay a million nickels just to never see another nickel

And I would be richer than I have ever been

Microstory 1516: Catalysis Upon The Verge, And All its Cohorts

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The Verge

Why do you exist?

Why are you always pulling us towards you?

And pushing us away?

We cannot go around

We cannot move you

It is not the inconvenience of travel

When you can go anywhere in the universe in a matter of hours

Does it hurt much to double the time?

I say not, but that is not the problem

The problem is control

Whoever controls The Verge controls the universe

We must always pass through you first

Therefore we must always pass through them

They decide who goes where

They decide to accept or reject us

They approve or disapprove our wars

They regulate trade

They do not deserve this control more than anyone else

They are simply the ones powerful enough to have taken it

I do not want this control

I do not want to make the decisions

I say we let the people decide for themselves

No more control

We must have a Verge, that much is physically true

But we can do what we will with this limitation

Can’t we?

I propose we disassemble this regulation

I suggest we dismantle the force that chooses for us

Some will call it chaos

But I call it freedom

I call it justice

I say this is how it is meant to be

This is how we can find true happiness

This will bring peace

Because the protocols they have in place

Only encourage disunion

We can end that

We can end the control

This is the beginning

The beginning...of Catalysis

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Saturday, July 18, 2133

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They stayed in Ladytown for the rest of the day, and ate with the residents. The Ladytowners wanted Mateo to stay, so he could help repopulate their town, but that was an awkward request, and it wasn’t really up to him anyway. Come midnight central, they jumped forward to 2133, and hours later, they had still not yet received an assignment from Jupiter. It was becoming increasingly difficult to justify not sticking around when he could help them with their problem. The conversation continued. Their leader was named Hua. “You have to understand, Mister Matic, that we do not want to sleep with you. I mean, I’m sure plenty of us do, but that’s not the point. We’re not doing this for fun. We need to keep the town alive, or the government will win.”

“You can’t just recruit more rebels from the city?” Mateo suggested. It might have been a little ignorant and insensitive.

“We would love that,” Hua replied. “We would love it if the entire city turned against the Republic, but it’s more complicated than that. Their guard is up right now, and they are just waiting for our surviving fighters to make a move. After the men died from the haemophilia virus, they knew we would be angry, and galvanized. They figure we’ll attack them at any moment, and that we’ll sacrifice our lives just to kill as many of them as we can. We have to be smart, though. We have to rebuild. You can help us do that.”

That’s asking a lot, though,” Mateo said. “I already have a daughter I conceived in this reality who I never even got to meet before she went off to another universe. I have two children from a different reality who we’re not sure are still here, but we’ve never really met them either. I have another daughter who sometimes exists, and sometimes doesn’t, and I’m not entirely certain she even is my daughter, or if time just occasionally brings her into existence. I can’t keep having children I don’t raise. It’s not right. I’m not that kind of guy. If I weren’t a time traveler, I would be a real dad to those kids.”

“We don’t need you to be a dad,” Hua continued. “We just need your seed.”

“I understand that, but that’s not what I need.”

“I see your perspective,” Hua went on, “and I can appreciate your reluctance. You hesitate for good reasons; not bad ones, and I don’t mean to downplay them. But there is more than one way to contribute positively to the worlds. You won’t raise these children either, but they will go on to do great things, and fight for democracy. We will all raise them in your stead. They will grow up to be amazing people, just like I’m sure your other children have.” Mateo tried to say something, but she interrupted before he got a sound out. “Tell me one thing, would those four children even exist if you weren’t a traveler; if you just lived in Kansas City from birth to death, in realtime?”

“Without time travel, no. I don’t know what happens in that scenario. I was twenty-eight years old when I made my first jump, and had not yet met anyone I thought I could have kids with. It may never have happened, or...I would have conceived other children.”

“Yes, reality is quite complex,” Hua agreed. “Few know what would have happened, but the fact is that those four people exist, or existed, because of you, and you should be proud of that, whether you were there or not. I’ll tell you this much, literally not being in control of your life is a good reason to be an absentee father. It’s probably the best reason, and it doesn’t make you a deadbeat. Or to put it more clearly, it makes you not a deadbeat. We will tell stories about you to your biological children here. We will make sure they understand who you are, and what you have done. And believe me when I tell you, Mister Matic, we already do know who you are. Your dealings are in historical, and future historical, records. You’re famous on every planet.”

“I don’t know.” There wasn’t much more he could say about it. He had expressed his position, and Hua had expressed hers. Neither one was right, and neither one was wrong. It was just a question of whether he was willing to sacrifice his own emotional health...or theirs. When looking at it from that angle, the answer became quite clear. His opinion wasn’t the only one that mattered, though, and it was then that he realized how quiet Leona had been this whole time. “I would like to hear your thoughts.”

“My thoughts are irrelevant. Your body, your choice.”

“It’s not that simple,” Mateo said to her, setting his hand on hers.

Hua nodded at her supportively.

“I...I don’t wanna sway your opinion. If you need to do this, then do it. If you can’t, then don’t.”

“Let’s call it a hypothetical,” Mateo began. “Let’s say you’re writing a story—the characters aren’t real, so it really doesn’t matter what they do, because no one will actually get hurt. If you’re writing that story, where would you take it? What would you have the Mateo character do?” He used airquotes.

Leona shut her trap.

“Please. This is important.”

“I know it’s important, that doesn’t mean I’m going to answer your question.”

“I’m your husband, and I need to know what I have to say about it.”

She was silent for a time, but thinking it over now, instead of just refusing to express her feelings outright. She didn’t look at either of them straight on, though. She stared at the wall in front of her, and made glances over at them, having to strain her eyes the most to see Mateo, who was sitting next to her. Sometimes she would look over to the corner on her other side, just to avoid giving anything away. Finally, she gave up holding out. “I think you should do it. I know I should say that I don’t—that it makes me a bad wife—but as a woman, I can’t sit here, and watch this phallocratic government oppress their people. If this is what they need to fight back—if they need future warriors—I...how can we deny them that? If I had...seed, I would give it away. I just don’t have time to donate my womb.”

Mateo reached over, and pulled Leona into a hug. He held on for a long time before releasing her. “I agree.”

Hua smiled softly, but was not overly excited about their decision. “Okay. Obviously, you have the right to back out at any time. This requires consent, just like any other encounter. We would take samples from you if were capable of preserving, or even effectively inseminating them. At the moment, our only real chance is real sex. I have already spoken with the group, and only a handful of them have rejected this plan, and of course, that’s also their right. Most of them are willing to do this. We know you can only do so much in one day anyway, so you’ll be able to pick whoever you want.”

“I don’t need to pick,” Mateo said, shaking his head. “This isn’t a game of kickball. Anyone will be fine. You did say you wanted children. I will do my physical best to...contribute as much as possible before I’m forced to leave.”

He was able to be with five women before they ran out of time. This new body’s refractory period was surprisingly long. He would have thought it would be pretty short, or even instantaneous. Perhaps Pryce didn’t design the clone bodies to want or need sex often. Come to think of it, Mateo’s sex drive was lower than it was with his original body. Culturally, it was less important in the future than it once was. Immortals tended to not feel the compulsion to procreate like their predecessors, or their younger, regular human selves. So it would make sense for Pryce to not put too much emphasis on it. Still, it wasn’t like Mateo’s libido was completely nonexistent. He was able to perform, and it was just as pleasurable as before, if not more. He tried not to enjoy it too much, because of his wife, but if they were completely cold and clinical, the pregnancies might not take. Passion and foreplay were scientifically known to be important components to conception, and could not reasonably be ignored.

Once the job was complete, Mateo retired to their little temporary hunt with Leona, so they could end the night alone together. They started to talk about the experience, and ensure that no one was uncomfortable about it, or felt that their perspective wasn’t being respected. As midnight approached, Leona began to feel a little possessive and left out. She needed physical proof that he was still with her, even though she trusted him, and knew that it wasn’t going to spark some urge to step out. Fortunately, he was reaching the end of his last refractory period, and was up to the task one last time. Whereas before, he was having sex, now he was making love, with the human he loved. The deed was done just as midnight hit, and they were simultaneously swept through a transition window, back to The Parallel.

They were in a bed, but not the same one from Ladytown. It was as if someone in the Parallel was aware that they would be returning, and exactly where. They were in the middle of a lovely crop field of some kind now, though, rather than a building. They stood up, and put on their clothes, which were folded neatly on top of the nightstand. Yes, someone must have traveled to Ladytown during their interim year, and retrieved all of their belongings. Their go-bags were here too. Underneath the last shirt, they found a handwritten note. It was from Hua. Dear Mateo and Leona, I want to thank you for what you tried to do for us last year. It was a heroic act, and meant more to us than you could ever fathom. We will forever be grateful by your attempt, and for your understanding, Leona. I know it wasn’t easy, letting him help a group of strangers in such a way. Sadly, none of the women became pregnant as a result of the endeavor. It would seem that resurrected bodies are incapable of procreation, whether by design, or oversight. Or perhaps the virus the city sent our way had a greater impact on our biology than we realized. Again, we appreciate the effort, and we will not give up hope that our world can change. You have reminded us that there are still good people in the worlds, and that they must exist somewhere in Aljabara. We will find them, and things will get better. Thank you.

Yeah, they should have thought of that.

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