Mateo explained how it happened the last time; how he lost his mind in the
void. At least, he explained it as best he could. It wasn’t like he was some
expert on the matter. Of course, everyone came to the same conclusion, that
Mateo was essentially suffering from extreme boredom. He didn’t need to
sleep, or center himself, or even clear his mind. He just needed to not be
presently caring about anything. Apathy, as Sanaa put it, was like the death
of a soul. It was a death he could come back from, but that didn’t mean he
wouldn’t suffer serious psychological consequences down the road. It also
wasn’t going to be a piece of cake. People grew bored all the time, it
didn’t kill their souls. Perhaps Mateo’s newfound connection to the
dreamvoid was the secret ingredient these other people didn’t have, but now
that they were cognizant of the goal, would that prevent them from reaching
it? Could he get bored if he was trying, or was it inherently something that
would always have to happen naturally, on its own?
Nerakali was too far away to transport to The Imzadi, but she was still able
to quantum communicate with them, and she had an idea. As they were all
connected through the Cassidy cuffs, someone else could use her brain
blending ability on Mateo. They could scoop the thoughts out of Mateo’s
mind, leaving him with the stuff that didn’t matter. Living organisms were
all born with the instinct for self-preservation. It was the one thing they
all had in common. If a creature did not evolve this trait, it did not
survive, so by its very nature, such a creature did not exist. A movie came
out many decades ago where evil plants took this trait away from the humans
around, which caused them to commit suicide. Accepting the premise as a
given, this probably would not be the natural result. The opposite of
self-preservation was not self-harm; it was apathy, which was perfect.
Nerakali’s psychic powers were generally used to manipulate memories, and
not other neural functions, but there was a loophole. If they took away all
the memories he had of love, it wouldn’t destroy his capacity for it
forever, but it could suppress it long enough for them to complete the
mission. They were running out of time. It had to work.
“You can’t do this,” Leona said defiantly.
“It’s the only way,” Mateo argued.
“Nerakali knows we can’t get there in time,” Leona fought back. “She can
just send someone else on the mission.”
“No one else is on a ship close enough,” Jeremy pointed out.
“What are you talking about?” Leona questioned. “Literally everyone in this
reality has a ship, and all those ships have FTL. Hell, when you think about
it, the natives could handle all the missions. They don’t need us at all!”
“We’re the only ones with Cassidy cuffs. Only we can get the timing right,”
Sanaa added. “Besides, this is our calling.”
“She’s a time traveler!” Leona shouted. “None of this is dire.”
“We have to get back to the stellar neighborhood either way,” Bran noted
calmly, juxtapositioning her passion.
Leona shook her head. “The Parallel natives can come rescue us. It might
take them a little time, but they can send a rescue ship using an off-grid
Nexus egress, and they can transport us to the nearest inhabited star
system. “Imzadi, where is that?”
“Fifty-thousand light years away,” Imzadi replied.
Leona looked confused. “Viewscreen.” A hologram popped up, showing the space
outside. They didn’t see lone stars, but a sea of them, all turning around
the galactic core of the Milky Way. “You didn’t tell us we were in the
intergalactic void.”
Imzadi pretended to clear her throat. “We’re in the intergalactic void.”
Leona sighed.
“Love, we’ve been through worse,” Mateo reminded her. “Nerakali assures us
the brain blending can be reversed. You’re just going to borrow my memories,
and then put them back.”
“Me?”
“Yes, I want you to do it. You have the most experience with sharing her
power, and I trust you the most.”
“Goddammit,” Leona said. “I’ve been an asshole to you all day. How can you
trust me?”
“It’s fine. Please. We have to do this now.”
Leona took a beat. “Walk me through it,” she ordered into her cuff
Nerakali was ashamed that she had done this procedure before, but glad it
would help now. She taught Leona alone how to remove Mateo’s decent
memories, leaving only boring ones, like standing in line, and waiting for
dial-up to connect to the internet.
Mateo could feel his memories leaving his mind. He was reliving the time his
parents first took him to see his birth mother, once she was finally ready
to form some kind of relationship with him. At first, he couldn’t remember
what she said to him, and then he couldn’t remember her face, and then he
couldn’t remember anything else about her. Soon after that, he forgot that
he even had a...uh... Well, he must have... Ya know. There was someone, er,
something. Or maybe it was the other. Oh my God, this lecture is so
uninteresting. What is he talking about? The war? Some war. Who cares? Why
do I keep getting all this junk mail, and why am I bothering sorting this
anyway? Everything important comes through the inter—inter-something. Oh,
there’s Leona. She’s drunk and so young right now, but she’ll... What was I
talking about again? I feel like I’ve been in this waiting room forever. I
don’t even remember what I’m here for. I don’t remember anything. I just
remember sitting. And waiting. And doing nothing. My life is nothing. And
now...it’s just blackness.
“Report!”
“Calculating status.”
“Calculate faster! Where are we? When are we?”
More waiting, this sounded important. “Eight hundred kilometers from mission
coordinates. Friday, July 24, 2139. Time to first defenestration, eleven
seconds.”
“Is that enough time for you?”
“Does the pope not exist anymore, because religion is an outdated and
antiprogressive institution that only ever served to justify selfishness,
encourage disunity, and segregate the masses?” The teleportation drive
booted up, and sent them to their destination. Enough momentum was added to
the jump to keep the Imzadi moving at a fast enough pace to pick up
passenger after passenger. One, two, three. All told, eleven people were
rescued. It would turn out that they were sent off on a secret mission to
study the long-term effects of interstellar travel on the human mind and
body, and to test the technology necessary to keep them alive. It was a
reasonable endeavor, and the crew was unable to explain why it was they kept
the truth from the public. They would have died on the way, however, as the
micrometeorite shield they placed in the front of the vessel was
insufficient and inadequate. Their stasis pods weren’t working well either,
and they did not have enough resources to last the forty-two years it was
bound to take them to get to Proxima Doma, which was harsh and uninhabitable
anyway.
Aeolia suggested they erase the crew’s memories, but humanity would never
learn from its mistakes if it didn’t remember making them. Instead, they
came up with a lie that was as close to the truth as possible. They
purported to be aliens, presenting themselves in forms the humans would be
most comfortable with. They scolded the crew for developing technology that
wasn’t ready for primetime, and set out to return them to Earth, where a
transition window would be waiting for them. As their mission was so
secretive, the survivors would only need to tell this lie to a very select
few people in Earthan government, who would be compelled to retain the
secret as well. Leona and her team warned the humans that they were not
generally benevolent aliens, and would retaliate decisively should the
secret of their existence be revealed to the world. It wasn’t a perfect
plan, but they were able to use Sanaa’s mind-reading powers to ensure the
scouting crew was well fearful of their alien rescuers.
Mateo, meanwhile, sat there in a stupor. He could hear everything people
were saying, and even respond to questions, but he couldn’t care about
anything, and he couldn’t volunteer information, or actively engage. It felt
like he was half asleep, unable to wake up, and also not really worrying
about it anyway. Leona spent the rest of the day trying to fix his brain
with absolutely no luck. Sanaa tried as well, but if she couldn’t combine it
with her own telepathy, there was probably no reason for any of the others
to try. It could not be irreversible, though. There had to be a way to fix
him. They needed Nerakali herself, and they didn’t reach her until next
year. In order to prevent him from accidentally slinging them back out to
the outer bulkverse, they were forced to give him psychedelics. He wasn’t as
fascinated by the visions that a normal person would, but they were enough
to keep him busy until he could be repaired tomorrow.
Once tomorrow came, and they were finally back on Earth in the main
sequence, they broke off into groups. Angela and Aeolia stayed with Imzadi
to help make sure the latter cleared herself of all connection to the
galactic blockchain. Sanaa escorted the human guinea pig crew back to their
top secret facility, where she continued to press upon them how important it
was that the fewer the people who knew anything about the “truth” the
better. Bran went with her, in case they needed him to use his
mind-controlling powers to urge the government officials deeper, and strike
fear into their hearts. Ramses went off with Jeremy to complete whatever
mission he needed to in order to protect his own future. Mateo would hear
about that later, when he was capable of even giving a flying fuck. Until
then, Leona took him to Nerakali, where she would start working on the
problem.
“Let me guess,” Leona began, “you can’t fix him, and this was all a
monumental mistake that has ruined my life.”
“I don’t understand what happened,” Nerakali said, upset. “I’ve never been
nice enough to undo when I’ve done this to other people, but I’ve blended
billions of brains, this shouldn’t be any different. The fact that he’s
missing memories shouldn’t mean he can’t get them replaced.”
Leona was working very hard not to freak out, and attack her friend. “What
are our options? Is there anyone else who can help? The Warrior has your
power too.”
“As do you,” Nerakali said. “If you can’t, and I can’t, he can’t either.”
“Then what are we going to do?” she reiterated.
Nerakali stared into space for a good long while.
Leona had to be patient.
“There is so much about this dreamvoid place that we don’t know. In all my
millennia, I have never heard of it. Mateo said someone who wasn’t a
dreamwalker built it for them? We need to figure out who that is, and ask
them for help.”
How hard could that be?
