The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 5, 2363

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Everything had to happen fast, or the team was going to lose everything. Mateo wasn’t raised to be a fighter. His parents taught him to try to reason with people, and understand where they were coming from. Ever since he became a time traveler, very rarely was he expected to use physical violence to solve his problems. Today was one of those times when it was absolutely necessary. Before this Milford asshole could try to shoot Angela again, Mateo reached back, and took one swing. He clocked him right in the jaw, knocking him out instantly. Angela, meanwhile, gracefully fell to her back as Jeremy collapsed on top of her. She instinctively wrapped her arms around his chest, and applied pressure to the bullet wound. Though Ramses was significantly less hurt, he too required medical attention. Olimpia sat him down to tend to him.

“Do you remember Hammer’s pager number?” Mateo asked his wife.

“I shouldn’t need it. We forget, but Jeremy is salmon. Sarka should come. He has to. I know we were resurrected, but he has to.”

Everyone froze, waiting for a portal to open. They often did that, and were usually met with either disappointment, or relief, depending on what they were expecting. This time, the powers that be actually delivered. A portal did open up, and Dr. Baxter Sarka did appear to them. He too was salmon, which meant he didn’t have very much control over how he ran his practice. The PTB even decided what medical supplies would be available to him for any given case. He never knew what he was going to get until he opened his black bag. “Dammit!” he shouted.

“What the hell is this crap?” Leona questioned as she was examining the contents over his shoulder.

“What year is this?” Sarka asked.

“It’s 2341,” Leona replied.

Dr. Sarka shook his head as he was removing something that kind of looked like pliers from his bag. They may have actually been true pliers. “Nothing is sealed, nothing is sanitary. The nature of my tools is largely determined by the time period in which my patient happens to be at the time. These are not 24th century supplies. Do you have alcohol on this vessel?”

Mateo had already retrieved their own first aid kit, and immediately handed it to him. It wasn’t equipped with surgical instruments, but it did have rubbing alcohol. Sarka got to work, cutting Jeremy’s shirt, wiping the blood away, and disinfecting everything he could.

“It’s 1816,” Leona realized.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Sarka didn’t stop working.

“That man on the floor over there?” Leona tried to begin to figure this out. “He claimed he was trying to send Angela to 1816. He seemed to believe shooting her with his gun would do the trick.”

Mateo had retrieved that too. He knelt down, and presented it to Sarka, just in case he had ever seen anything like it before. It was a gun, absolutely, but it was of an unfamiliar design. It looked like modern tech was attached to an antique artifact. Steampunk was probably the best term for it.

“Never seen it before,” Sarka said. “If it was meant to send him through time, it didn’t do a very good job at it, and this certainly looks like a real bullet wound. As far as I’ve ever seen, transporter weapons begin to dissolve on impact, and only leave superficial wounds. This is a potentially fatal injury.”

“I think it’s working,” Leona continued. “I just think it’s slow. I think he’s supposed to die first, then be transported to the past, and somehow be revived? I don’t know why it would work like that, but it would explain your medical bag.”

“Yes, I would call this early 19th century medicine.”

“Can you fix him?” Angela begged.

“With what they gave me to work with?” Sarka presumed. “It’s a toss-up.” He was nothing if not honest.

Everyone’s cuffs began to beep, indicating that they were going to make their next pattern jump in five minutes. “Oh no,” Olimpia exclaimed. “Will he come with us?”

“The cuffs are linked to the AOC,” Leona answered. “Everyone inside should come with. We’ve seen it before.”

Making an executive decision, Mateo began to drag Milford’s unconscious body to the steps.

“What are you doing?” Leona questioned.

“He’s not coming with us.”

“Good idea,” Leona said. “But you’re never gonna get him all the way up to the airlock. Not alone, not in time.” What the others hadn’t noticed was that Leona had quickly inspected the transporter gun after Mateo set it down on the table in front of her. A dial specified a year. She grabbed it, spun it to a random new destination, and shot Milford in the forehead.

“Whoa,” Olimpia said

“Yeah,” Ramses agreed.

“If he wasn’t crazy, then he was just dispatched to...” She took a look at the dial. “Fifteen-sixteen. If he was crazy, then...I suppose I just murdered the man who shot two of my friends, and tried to shoot a third.” Leona surveyed the room. “Does anybody here think I should be butthurt about that?” No one vocalized a reply, but they didn’t seem to think she should feel butthurt. “How are we doing, Sarka?”

“He’s stable, for now. I don’t think I should be in the middle of a procedure when we jump to the future. I’ll resume in a few minutes. It’s not too terribly deep, so it shouldn’t be hard to pull it out.”

So they waited, and they jumped, and then Jeremy howled in pain. Sarka tried to find the source of the issue, but nothing about his chest wound had changed. Then Angela noticed something. “Doctor, his arm.”

Sarka lifted it up. The skin under and around the Cassidy cuff was glowing red, like it was burning. Jeremy never stopped crying out in pain, but he quieted down a bit.

“He must still be linked to 1816, and that jump did not do him any favors,” Sarka assumed.

“What do we do?” Leona asked.

“If you take off that cuff, and he dies, he’ll jump to the past, and end up in whatever condition this time bullet is designed to put him in.”

“What if we don’t take off the cuff?”

“He could still die, but you’ll jump with him,” Sarka warned. “Like I said, I’ve never seen this tech before. I don’t understand why it needs to be a real bullet. They usually aren’t, because there’s not generally any reason to spirit someone away when they’re just going to die anyway.”

Hoping to find some answers, Leona opened up the gun, and dropped the remaining three bullets on the table. “White. They’re white.”

Mateo approached, and looked for himself. “The color of resurrection.” He was quite familiar with it, as were half the people here.

“These things don’t just send you to the past,” Leona explained. “They send you to Pryce’s afterlife simulation. Either you wake up in the simulation itself with a whitecard attachment, or automatically in a new body.”

“I don’t think you killed that guy, Leona,” Mateo said, just in case she actually did feel butthurt. “Not permanently.”

Jeremy was still in pain, but he was whimpering now. He didn’t want to interrupt their conversation.

“Get that bullet out, doctor.”

Sarka got back to work. He reached into the hole with his pliers, and started feeling around for the metal. Something seemed to be wrong, though. “Shit.” He removed the pliers. There was no bullet on the other, but the tip was covered in a whitish-red fluid.

“Explain,” Leona demanded simply.

“It did dissolve,” Sarka began. “I don’t know if it was the time jump, or if it would have happened anyway, but I imagine instead of collapsing upon impact, it was designed to burrow itself into the target, and dissolve in the body, so someone like me couldn’t take it out. I am now almost sure that the reason he hasn’t jumped back yet is because of that cuff. and it’s connection to all of you.”

“Okay,” Leona said confidently. “All I have to do is modify the settings to make his primary, instead of mine. That should be enough to send us all back with him. We’ll deal with the repercussions later.”

“No,” Jeremy insisted. Without warning, he reached over with his good hand, and removed the cuff from his arm. He disappeared pretty much instantly.

They all just kind of sat there, regarding the space where Jeremy once was.

“That’s okay,” Leona said finally. “All we have to do is get back to 1816. We have friends, we can make that happen.”

“We have to help Ramses first,” Olimpia reminded them. “He was shot as well.”

“I think I’m fine,” he contended. “The bullet went through and through. I’m just glad it didn’t hit Angela after it came out.”

“Still, you need to be treated. I do at least have a sewing ki—” Before Dr. Sarka could finish his sentence, he disappeared as well. Being not salmon, Ramses apparently didn’t deserve the PTB’s medical assistance. Yet they had seen plenty of exceptions before.

“That’s also okay,” Leona said. “I can sew.”

“No,” Angela asked. “Let me do it. I’m the one at fault here.”

“You know that none of us blames you, right?” Mateo asked.

“You don’t have to,” she said.

“Let’s just say it was your turn,” Mateo told her. “We’ve all brought bad juju to the team. It’s like a rite of passage now. I can’t tell you how many bad guys I’ve unwittingly summoned.”

“All right,” Angela allowed, but she wasn’t completely convinced, or relieved. “I’m still going to be the one to sew him up.”

After Angela was finished, Olimpia agreed to stay with Ramses on the ship while he recovered. The other three then went off in search of someone who could send them back in time to 1816 so they could retrieve their lost comrade. If all went according to plan, he would spend less than a day there before being able to return to his rightful place on the team. They decided that their best option would be to go to Dardius, where everyone they met would know about time travel, and they could speak freely. To their surprise, they didn’t even need to find a specific person with time travel abilities. Scientists had long ago figured out how to use the Nexus for such purposes. They even had a pretty good idea of Jeremy’s arrival date. After putting on authentic blending-in clothes, they stepped down onto the platform, and waited for the tech to send them to a settlement in pre-union Missouri.

They spent a few hours searching for Jeremy by canvassing the area with an artificially antiquated photograph of him. They were able to find him working at a tailor. It seemed to be his job to roll up the cloth, and clean the equipment. He seemed to be trying to mind his own business, and not make any trouble. Mateo asked to go in alone while the ladies waited outside.

“Evenin’,” the tailor greeted him at the door.

“I’m lookin’ for a new suit,” Mateo said. He tried to lock eyes with Jeremy, who wasn’t paying any attention.

“What you’re wearing looks to be pretty nice. Get it in New York?”

“That’s right,” Mateo lied. Now he was just staring.

“Well, what were you thinking now?”

“Get me something out the back.”

“Nothing out here is of any interest to you?”

“I want something...different. You must have...patterns that most men don’t wear.” He tried to hit that word pretty hard, but Jeremy didn’t blink. “Perhaps something in salmon.”

“I’ll have my assistant look for you. Boy!”

Now Jeremy finally faced the right direction.

“No,” Mateo said. “I want your eyes. You are the artist, correct?”

“Very good, sir.” The tailor left to find something that Mateo didn’t care about.

Even as Mateo approached, Jeremy still didn’t seem to recognize him. “What’s your name?”

“Job, sir.” He was afraid to make eye contact.

“How long have you worked here?”

At this, Jeremy couldn’t help but chuckle. “All my life.”

“Really?”

“Just about as long as I can remember. I’m touched, you see. I can’t recall a single thing from my life past five weeks ago.”

“You must wonder,” Mateo guessed, “who you were before. You must have left someone you cared about behind.”

“If they cared about me,” Jeremy reasoned, “they could have found me. My story was in all the papers.”

“Perhaps...you come from a distant land.”

“Perhaps,” Jeremy conceded.

“Are you happy..with this life?”

“Happy is the life you make, sir. I believe God took my memories for a reason. The physicians can find no brain damage. As far as they can tell, my mind has chosen to forget. This is my life now.”

Mateo placed a hand on his good friend’s shoulder. Milford wanted to get his ex-wife back to this year, so they could restart their life together. She was never meant to remember anything about the future. In Jeremy’s case, he wasn’t originally in the 19th century, so all of his memories were taken. Philosophically speaking, this wasn’t really Jeremy Bearimy at all. It was a new man, and this new man, Job wanted to stay. Mateo could see it in his eyes. “I’ve been there, brother.”

Jeremy squinted for half a second before letting go.

“You take care, ya hear?”

“Sir.”

Before he left, Mateo placed his purse in Jeremy’s hands. In it were 20 half eagle coins, each worth five dollars. “For the conversation.”

The tailor returned before Mateo could exit the shop. When he asked his assistant where the potential customer was going, Job didn’t have an answer. He took a peek in the purse, and just said, “I quit.”

It was hard, leaving him behind, but Mateo was confident that it was the right thing to do. Could someone like Tertius Valerius, or a version of Nerakali, restore his memories? Probably. But was that ethical? He would never get the answer to that question. He would just have to move on, and hope that it wasn’t all a mistake. When Leona and Angela asked him what was going on, he simply repeated Job’s words, which were a mantra he often said himself, about their own lives. They made their way back to 2363, and never saw Jeremy again.

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Extremus: Year 13

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The election is over, and there is no going back now. Ovan is going to be smart about his takeover of the ship. He isn’t going to suddenly start trying to order the security team around. He drops a few hints here, makes a quippy remark there. Everything he says out loud says fine when you first hear it, but if you think about it too hard, you realize how some people could interpret it to mean that the passengers should become hostile towards the crew, probably without even realizing it. He’ll grow bolder as his plans begin to bear fruit, but right now, Halan has other things to worry about.

“How do we know he’s not one of them? He and Vesper could have been working together,” Omega suggests.

“We don’t, but I’m not getting the sense of that,” Halan says. “I feel like Ovan, and his drive to take over the ship, is completely separate from the people trying to kill me. Getting rid of one Captain is not going to do the passengers any good if they have a problem with the entire crew. I’ll just be backfilled by the Admiral, or maybe even the Bridgers. No, Ovan wants this to become a fully civilian operation. More to the point, he wants to be in charge.”

“Why didn’t he just get on the Captain’s track?” Omega questions.

“He’s not the right age. It’s a timing issue, you see. It’s the reason why the crew shifts in and out at different times. My shift lasts for 24 years, but if everyone was like that, everything would have to change hands all at once. That’s a logistical nightmare. By staggering them, we allow for people to apply for positions even when they come of age in the middle of a cycle. Still, on the individual level, this can potentially exclude a lot of people. There is no law that says a 32-year-old can’t become Captain, but it’s unlikely he would ever get the job, since he’ll be in his fifties by the time he’s done.

“That’s not that old,” Omega argues. “I’m 64 if you count my rapid aging as part of my lifespan, rather than just subtracting this year from the year I was manufactured.”

“True, it’s not,” Halan agrees, “but if there is a single worst character flaw that Ansutahan humans have, it’s probably ageism. Life expectancy used to be a lot lower for us, since medical science was stunted by a number of factors, all stemming from the fact that we were constrained to one continent. Younger people have always been better at securing leadership positions, and then they are strongly urged to step down when they get too old.”

“Why does that same unwritten rule not apply to Ovan’s position as Passenger Chair?” Omega asks.

“It’s a shorter term. Even the term limit is shorter than a captain’s shift. Anyway, he might not have known what he wanted until it was too late. Captain’s track starts in the single digits. There’s a decent chance that my successor was born here. Now let’s get back to Vesper’s co-conspirators.”

Omega nods, but still isn’t convinced that they should be focusing on this. Yes, the extremist group hiding in their midst is a greater threat, but they don’t know where to begin. At least the anti-crew movement has a face. And a punchable one, at that. Even so, he keeps his mouth shut, and concedes to the Captain’s decision. Most problems need to be solved either way. “Indeed,” he says simply.

“So,” Mercer begins after having been silent most of the time. “Omega’s right about one thing.”

Halan gets it. “We still don’t know how to find these true Extremusians.”

“First order of business, I believe, is we should try to come up with a new name,” Mercer decides.

“Agreed,” Halan replies. “We are true Extremusians. If anyone on this ship is under the impression that they are somehow special, and different from the lot of us, then this misunderstanding must be rectified. Henceforth, in all reports, they will be known as...” He trails off, not knowing what would be a better word to use.

It is then that Omega realizes that he already came up with a name for them in his own headcanon. “True Extremists,” he offers.

“Hm.” Halan considers this. “I imagine that could be quite insulting to them. It is close enough to what they apparently call themselves for us to pretend our words are an accident, but different enough for them to know in their hearts that we do not respect them.”

“Perfect,” Mercer says. “To begin again, how do we root out these True Extremists? We must get them to reveal themselves without realizing they’re doing it, and without alarming the rest of the ship.”

“Right,” Omega says. “And why exactly can’t we tell the ship that they’re out there?”

“For the moment,” Halan explains, “they appear to be rather contained. I do not think there are very many of them, and I do not think they are recruiting. Vesper strongly suggested he was from a planet that they consider to be Extremus. I don’t know exactly how they arrived there, but they take a strong disliking to everyone else. Still, we don’t need to turn anyone to their side, and the only way to do that is to prevent any would-be sympathizers from finding out they even exist.”

“Well, it’s not the only way, sir,” Mercer clarifies for him. “It may be the best, but honesty is always an option.”

“I am aware of that, Lieutenant, thank you.”

Mercer knows he’s being sarcastic, and to combat that, he closes his eyes and nods respectfully so as to make it look like he’s taking the response sincerely.

Halan moves on, “any ideas?”

“The Elder Shuttle,” Omega says cryptically.

“What about it?”

“Advanced, powerful, compact. Time travel-capable, self-sustaining...and coded to my DNA.”

“Where would you take it?” Halan questions.

“May 29, 2272,” Omega answers.

“We are nearly 7,000 light years from their position,” Halan argues, “and we still don’t know where they were teleported to. You would have to hunt for them, and who knows how long that could take?”

“That’s the self-sustaining part. It was engineered with something that I haven’t mentioned yet, because it’s dangerous technology, and Veca and I agreed it would be best if no one else knew. But I suppose now is the right time.”

“What?” Halan prompts. “Some kind of highly destructive weapons system that would be capable of taking out our ship?”

“Nothing like that,” Omega assures him. “It has no weapons at all. It does, however, have—”

“A quantum replicator!” Valencia has since retired from her position as the temporal engineer. Unlike other jobs, however, it’s important that she remain available in case they need her for an emergency. Just about anyone can learn engineering, but people like her are rare, so while August Voll has taken over as head of the department, Valencia still helps out. She’s more like a consultant now.”

“How did you know?” Omega asks.

“How did you get in this room?” Mercer asks.

Valencia is the one who designed the teleportation systems on this ship, and all the ways they can control who has access to what sections, and when. If she wants to bypass a restriction, she will, and she’ll do it with her eyes closed while she’s composing a new sonata. Knowing this about her, Omega rolls his eyes, and emphasizes his own question. “Did Veca tell you?”

She smiles, and removes something from her ear to present them with it. “It’s a sangsterbud.”

“What the hell is that?” Halan doesn’t like people inventing things without him knowing about it.

“Simple tech,” she says. “All it does is transduce future soundwaves—in this case, from about five seconds—and plays them for me to hear.”

“Why are you wearing it?” Halan presses. “Knowing what people are going to say just before they say it isn’t that helpful unless you want to prevent them from saying it, or in this case, show off what you can do.”

“I’m just tryna figure out who I am now that I’m no longer Head Temporal Engineer,” Valencia says.

“I offered to extend your shift,” Halan reminds her. “Now that Vesper turned out to be a mole, we’re down one member of the already small team anyway.”

Valencia shakes her head. “August needed the job. She deserved it. I just underestimated how bored I would be. Now I see there’s more for me to do. I can go on this mission with Omega. Together, we can find out what happened to Rita, and those other three people who we don’t really care about personally.”

Omega shakes his head too. “No, the mission could take years. I can go, because I’m immortal. You don’t wanna die out there, in that tiny little ship, with dumb ol’ me.”

“I’m immortal too,” Valencia reveals.

“You are?” Halan asks. “Extremus is generational. We all agreed...”

“Yeah, I broke the rules,” Valencia confirms. “I guess you better kick me out, and force me on the Elder Shuttle.”

“Can we come up with a better name for that too?” Mercer poses.

“What kind of upgrades do you have?” Omega is pleased to finally be around someone else like him again. No one else on this ship understands him, and they never will.

“Cellular countersenescent.”

“How do you accomplish this?” Omega is even more interested now.

“Antintropic technology that I invented myself. I got the idea from my refrigerator.”

“Holy shit. Is it a constant process?”

“As we speak.”

“Holy shit,” he repeats.

“Could you dumb it down for the rest of us?” Halan requests.

Omega opens his mouth to explain, but realizes that Valencia should do it. He gives her the floor.

She begins. “When your cells lose the ability to replicate themselves, they become senescent. They are essentially dead, but they’re a problem, because they sort of just sit there in your body. On the whole, this is what causes you to degrade and age. It’s obviously a complex process, but the most important aspect of longevity treatments is our ability to reprogram the body, and command it to undergo a process called transdifferentiation, which basically means the organism reverts to a less mature state. That’s what allows the vonearthans to live incredibly long lifespans.”

“So that’s what you did to yourself,” Mercer figures.

“No. I’m not allowed to do that. I’m not even allowed to access the research that allows the vonearthans to do that. But I did do something similar. I’m a temporal engineer, so what I do is command my cells to become young again, but by essentially reversing the flow of time for them. This creates issues for the natural laws of entropy, but it’s fine on smaller scales, like my tiny little body. It wouldn’t be okay to do that to the whole universe. Anyway, when a cell of mine begins to deteriorate, it releases a chemical, which triggers something I’ve deemed a tempomere to activate the countersenescence. So you see, I’m perfect for this mission. I don’t belong here anymore, and I won’t age out there.”

“What does any of this have to do with that quantum regulator?” Mercer questions.

“Replicator,” Omega and Valencia correct in unison. She continues alone, “it’s exactly what it sounds like. Place one grape in there, push the button, and you’ll have two grapes. It’s technically the same grape, but one of them was stolen from an alternate reality. Now put those two back in the replicator, push the button, and you have four. Rinse, repeat, and eat as many grapes as you’d like. As long as you got power, and at least one copy of something that you need, you got as many of that thing for replacements.”

“This one has a fairly extensive database,” Omega adds. “We can spontaneously generate an object without ever actually bringing it on board. Evidently, Old Man spent a lot of time encoding everything he could get his hands on.”

“Great,” Valencia says. “Even better. Does it have ice cream?”

“Hold on, I haven’t agreed to anything,” Halan warns the both of them. “If we’re doing this, we have to be careful. We can’t let anyone else know about it, not even Old Man. If you show up in the past to meet him before he has a chance to invent the damn thing in the first place, it could cause a paradox. It could cause one even if he has already invented it.”

“So we’ll modify it,” Valencia promises. “It shouldn’t be too hard to make it look like something completely different, and alter its specifications. I already have some ideas on how I can improve power efficiency, and safety protocols. Old Man obviously didn’t give that sort of thing much thought. It’s a time machine, so it doesn’t matter how long it takes us.”

“I will...remember that when I’m making my decision. For now, we should all return to our duties. Now that you’re in the braintrust, Miss Raddle, I trust you understand not to tell anyone about any of this?”

Valencia zips her mouth shut, locks it up, and throws away the key. Then she leaves with Omega to begin making the modifications. But first, they have to find a way to get the thing out of the cargo bay, and into a secure area.

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Microstory 1730: The Crux

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No one is old enough to remember what happened. It’s always just sort of been this way; a hill in the center of our little doughnut-shaped town where four roads meet. I don’t mean that it’s two roads crossing each other. Each of the four has its own name, and while it’s not impossible to get from one to the other by driving over what we unofficially call The Crux, it’s not recommended for regular cars. The hill is deceptively steep, and for some reason, it’s always rather muddy halfway up, on all sides. It’s a bit of a pain, but it’s much more reasonable to go around it on one of the other roads. It’s not a problem for people who live here. We know the hill is there, and we know heading towards it is going to get us nowhere...unless we’re trying to get to the hill itself, of course. Tourism is already hard to come by for us, and this just makes it harder. None of the internet maps knows it’s there, and don’t know it’s a bit of an impediment, so they direct folks right through it. We keep trying to get them to remove it from their system as a traversable road, but we’ve had no luck so far. Again, with the right vehicle, it’s possible to drive over it, but we’ve had some issues with people who don’t know what they’re doing. We actually have four ways of getting out of such a mess if it happens to you. The auto repair shop is on South Avenue, the county’s largest tow truck company is on Backbone Road, the dealership is on Krouka, and there’s a gas station on Heap Lane. It’s not all that necessary—problems don’t occur all that often—but it’s nice to know that people will have options, so they’ll think twice about saying bad things about us. Crux notwithstanding, ours is a fine town, with good, progressive people, who like to lead the simple life, but understand how the city operates, and why others would prefer it.

Anyway, today I’m sitting on top of the Crux with a bunch of friends. It’s got a good vantage point of the surrounding area, so we hang out there all the time. Flat Kansas being what it is, it’s nice to be above it all sometimes, ya know? So we’re sitting there, watching a small car we don’t recognize come down Krouka. They probably drove in from Great Bend, looking to fish in our world famous pond, where it’s pretty much guaranteed you’ll catch something. As the car approaches, we realize just how tiny it is. I bet only two people could fit in that thing, and maybe one bag each. There is no way it’s gonna make it up the Crux. We don’t even bother picking up our chairs to get out of the way this time. That little thing comes up there, from this perspective, lookin’ like a ground squirrel wondering if the mailbox poll drops nuts. It slows down, but doesn’t stop. Most people get out, and take a look around when they don’t know what the hell is going on here. They’re holding their phones, and spinning around to see if they’re facing the wrong direction. These people don’t even do that. They stop for five seconds, back up about fifty meters, and then gun it. They go towards this hill as fast as they possibly can, and they make it up pretty far. My best friend inches over to the side, afraid we’re all wrong, and they’ll actually go all the way. It doesn’t. It stops midway, and rolls back down, smoothly, though, like they saw it was gonna happen, and put it in neutral to be safe. Some of us laugh, but most are relieved, because we know how bad it can get. We’re about to go down to tell them about the dealership when their car transforms. This...laser gun—I guess you would call it—comes out from under the hood, and blasts a tunnel into the hill. We later see it’s large enough to fit a semi-truck. They even laser the other two roads, before driving off without so much as a you’re welcome.

Microstory 1729: Crater

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I have not been able to get very much sleep for the last few weeks. Really, when I think about it, it’s been a lifelong problem. I have too much stress. At first it was because of my parents’ hostile divorce, then my schoolwork was too hard, then I was trying to get into a good college, then I was looking for a job, then I had to deal with a terrible job. It just never ends with me. I keep thinking that things will get better if I can just solve this one major problem. Then I do, and I find that the grass actually isn’t greener on the other side. It’s mostly more dirt and I have to cross yet another void to get to something better. My therapist says that things actually have gotten better, and that just because some people at my high school reunion are CEOs and city council members, doesn’t mean I’m a failure. She suggests I stay positive. But I was born optimism-blind, and I don’t think there’s a cure. I finally get to sleep when the ground shakes, and the loudest sound that has ever pounded on my eardrums attacks me from all sides. It’s a crash, but there’s also this sizzling electrical sound. I order my smartspeaker to turn on my lights, and watch as my glass figurine collection threatens to topple over, but never does. I swear to God, some of them actually do tip before straightening back up, like some kind of ghost is there to protect them for me. The ground continues to tremble, and a deeper darkness overwhelms my windows. I switch the lights back off as I get out of bed, and move over to look outside. All I see is the black. I stand there for hours, watching it ever so slowly dissipate. It’s dust and debris, and it takes a long time to settle. No one answers the phone, not even the police. The sun comes out, and I can see a crater.

I check every window in my little house. The crater wraps all around me. It doesn’t look like a bunch of different craters, but a single one, of which I rest in the middle. A massive doughnut must have fallen from the sky, and left me unscathed. If there really was a big space doughnut, though, it still shouldn’t have spared me. I mean, the tremors alone should have sent me to hell with everyone else in my neighborhood. The hole is so large than I can’t even make out the houses that weren’t crushed by it. I see the edge in the distance, but everything left above is too far away to discern. I cautiously step outside, and crawl to the edge of my little protected patch of land. I realize, though, that if I were capable of dying, it probably would have happened already. The thing that protected my figures wasn’t likely a ghost, but a guardian angel. I don’t think I have to be careful anymore. I peek over the edge of my patch, and look for the bottom of the crater, but I can’t tell if I see it, for the light does not reach as far down. I check the GPS on my phone. No, I’m not in La Brea, so I doubt there’s a portal below me that will send me to prehistoric times where CGI monsters still roam the lands. I check all around my—I don’t know whether to call this a butte, or a mesa, or a plateau, because it’s as tall as all hell, but narrower than my now-dead neighbor’s political beliefs—patch. I see nothing that would explain what saved me, or whether the theoretical angel is still here. Just then, two helicopters fly over from different directions. One appears to be military, and the other from a news station. As they’re inspecting me, trying to figure out what the hell is going on, their rotors just stop, and they fall out of the sky, into the crater. Others come, hoping to understand, including an AirEvac, but they all suffer the same fate. I was wrong. An angel has not saved me. A demon has doomed me.

Microstory 1728: Jim Crow

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Your Honor, my name is Jim Crow. My first name is not James or Jacob, or anything like that. It’s actually Jim. My parents were named Beckett Crowley, and Geraldine Devlin. When they got married, instead of my mother taking my father’s last name, they decided to shorten it to Crow. When they had me in 1984, they named me Jim. Believe me when I tell you that this was no accident, nor coincidence. My parents are two of the most racist people I know, and they knew exactly what they were doing. They believe in white supremacy, and they believe in segregation. They may even believe that all black people should be exterminated. They’ve hinted at such evil thoughts on more than one occasion. I literally witnessed them spitting on a young black girl just because her family wasn’t around, and no one could stop them. When I was a child, my mother told me a story she made up, about how the people of Africa so displeased the Lord that he glued dirt to their skin, and forced them to live in filth from then on. Their skin isn’t black, it’s that there is actual grime all over their bodies. I never bought into it, obviously. Had I grown up during the actual time of segregation, I might have seen no other choice, but I developed my sense of right and wrong during the 1980s. My relatively small city in Maryland was not at all without its racism, but I had something that some people in the past did not. I had Star Trek. I remember seeing Whoopi Goldberg on The Next Generation. Here was this black woman who had standing on the ship...who people trusted, listened to, and cared about. That very night, as young as I was, I thought long and hard about who my parents are, and what they were trying to teach me. I made a conscious decision to reject their hatred, and come to my own conclusions. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of informing my parents of my intentions.

They started to punish me. They withheld dessert, and when that didn’t work, they took away my dinner, and when that wasn’t enough, they stopped letting me have water. They eventually realized I was going to die if they didn’t do something, so they changed tactics. They developed their own Jim Crow laws. I was allowed to eat, but I had to make it myself, and I had to find somewhere else to do it. An old lady lived next door, so she let me use her kitchen. I did try to explain to her what was happening, but she was senile, so she barely understood, and never remembered. She introduced herself to me every day. She wasn’t abusive, but about as racist as my parents, so I didn’t want to spend much time over there. Still, she had a bathroom I could use too, which was nice, because I wasn’t allowed to use mine anymore. Basically what my parents did was show me what it was like to experience segregation. I can imagine the non-racist parents of a racist child doing the same thing to teach them a lesson, but my parents didn’t see it that way. They figured I would grow tired of the restrictions, and finally admit that it was both easier, and better, to be white. Of course, their methods only enforced my conviction that they were completely wrong about everything. When I was seventeen, they started to see that they were losing me, so they maneuvered the legal system, and had me declared unfit for independence. I was a ward of the state for the last twenty years under false pretenses, and it has taken me this long to get out. That, Your Honor, is why I’m only now getting around—as you put it—to changing my name. I haven’t been allowed to until now. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for you to grant me this.

Microstory 1727: Northern Crown

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I am responsible for the safety of everyone who falls under the protection of the Northern Crown. Throughout all of history, we have experienced much peace. There are some wars in some regions, but they have not spread beyond their borders. Now we face a threat that threatens us all, and the only way we’ll survive is if we come together. But we can only come together spiritually, for it is the closeness that kills us. We may have lost some of the knowledge and technology that our ancestors once used, but we still have a basic understanding of how the world works. There is no such thing as the coldness of an object. Its coldness is simply a measurement of its warmness, or lack thereof, as it were. You cannot make something cold, you can only take away its heat. Someone should tell that to the insidious enemy that has made its way to every corner of our planet; even The Southern Crown. It is true, they have fared better with this problem than we, but nothing can destroy the evil. We can combat it, but it’s going to take a lot of work if we want to get rid of it altogether. We call it The Shudder. It is a darkness, and a coldness that is more than merely the absence of warmth. We have all been touched by it, and though it brings more harm to some than to others, we are all capable of sharing it, and we are all at risk. Much has been done to prevent the Shudder from winning, but it is not enough. Many doubt that it exists at all, and even when they admit that it must be real, they do not want to inconvenience themselves, for they believe they can survive its wrath.

We have built walls to keep the Shudder at bay, but these barriers have created a sense of loneliness amongst our people, the likes of which they have never seen before. They cannot see their neighbors over the walls, and cannot feel the comfort of closeness. It has been so long, and they just want it to magically disappear. Unfortunately, it can’t end soon, because the closer two people get to each other, the more concentrated the Shudder becomes, and the stronger it is. This compression gives it power. Whereas once the touch of a loved one brought comfort and joy, it now only takes the warmth away, and sends it to oblivion. As explained, not everyone is affected by the Shudder as badly as others. It mostly attacks the weak, leaving the strong to go on thinking that they are invincible. But they are not without fault. The strong can still compress the Shudder, and place their neighbors in terrible danger. They can make it deadlier. If they just remained behind the walls, they would be safe. They would be isolated, scared, and sad, but they would be alive, and so would their neighbors. I have been trying to convince people of the risk that they take when they don’t take the Shudder seriously. I have tried to show them how well the South is doing with their walls. They will not hear me. They are tired of following rules that they didn’t have to follow before. They believe the past and the future should be the same thing, but if we allow that to happen, what will become of our world? What would have become of our world if we had held onto this unproductive attitude? What I’ve realized is that it all comes down to fear, even if the detractors would deny that they feel fear at all. They’re afraid of setting a precedent, and of us coming up with even more rules for them to live by. They no longer trust the royal court, and I am not sure they ever will again. We must restore their faith in us, and prove to them that we have their best interests at heart, and we’re trying to help.

Microstory 1726: Southern Crown

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I am a member of the royal court for the Southern Crown. There are two kingdoms in our world. One holds domain over the entire Northern hemisphere, and we rule over the South. We are a fair and just regime, and while not technically democratic, we do listen to our people and recognize their needs. We do not condemn those who would criticize us, and we do our best to make everyone happy. It was a long road that took us to this point, and no one here would welcome the opportunity to endure it again. We used to be broken into hundreds of independent nations, and though the majority of them were indeed run by democracies, they were full of corruption and selfishness. It was quite easy to get elected when you had the money, knew what to say to your voters, and had the right people backing you. That didn’t mean you would act in the best interests of your people, and it didn’t mean that you were peaceful. Now that there are only two separate states, things are much better for everyone. We don’t pay much attention to the goingson of the North, but according to our intelligence, they feel the same as we do. We have always met each other in peace, but not warmly. We are not allies, and we are not friends. Each kingdom can provide for itself, so we are not even trading partners. For the most part, we leave each other alone. But things have now changed. The threat we face threatens us all equally, which means there is no one to help us but our collective selves. We all have to do our part, and we all have to agree about what that means. A dragon has been on the attack for decades, even before the two kingdoms were formed. Some believe in the dragon, and others do not. Some believe, but are still not worried about it. To them, the dragon is always either far away in time, or in space.

The dragon is invisible, you see. Like the wind, we detect its impact on the world. We see the fires, and the smoke. We feel the heat as the water boils around us. We suffer the great storms that ravage our lands. We know that it’s there; we just can’t prove it, and without proof, stopping it from destroying everything may be impossible. Some of us have taken measures to slay this dragon, but it is too heavy a task for us, the brave few. Everyone must first admit that it is real, and help with the effort, if only in their own way. I am one of the more vocal proponents of fighting against the dragon, but there are not many who feel the same. The others, they laugh at me, or simply dismiss my concerns as not much of a priority. This region needs to send food to this other region, because they are not getting enough rain for their crops. This other region has had a bad fishing season. These are the issues that must be prioritized, according to the rest of the royals. I try to tell them that it is the dragon that is burning the crops, and it is the dragon that is poisoning the fish. They will not hear of it. It couldn’t be. No way could a dragon do so much worldwide. And if I make any attempt to convince them that we were the ones who released the dragon in the first place, they will surely have my head! No man could birth a dragon, and if he did, it would be easy to maintain, so that cannot be the problem. But no man birthed the dragon. We summoned it. Together. We summoned it when we did not take care of this world. It has come in response to our neglect, and the only way we’ll be able to kill it is if this becomes the accepted truth. I fear this cannot happen until the right person places that Southern Crown atop their head. And if it must be me, then it will be me. I cannot let the dragon consume us all.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: February 11, 2341

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There were eleven Cassidy cuffs, and twelve people. The time of requirement was over, though, so no one had to put one on if they didn’t want to. Leona grew to be quite comfortable with the Bearimy-Matic pattern, but there was no guarantee Jeremy would want to have anything to do with them anymore. According to their calculations, The Warrior was the last person with the power to transition them back and forth between the main sequence and The Parallel. It hopped from Jupiter to Nerakali, but seemed to end with him. Kivi pointed out that this didn’t mean no one could control them anymore. He didn’t use that power very much, and it wasn’t the only use of the primary cuff. Before they made the jump to 2341, Leona and Ramses worked on the cuffs to make sure no one could use them without their full authorization. Someone had to take ownership of the primary in order for them to function properly, so it had to be someone committed to the pattern, and to the team.

Bran, Aeolia, Siria, Dalton, and D.B. had never become full members of that team, and didn’t express any interest in joining officially now. So their numbers problem was instantly solved right there. Now they just needed to pose the question to the others. Ramses said he was tired of being left behind, and going off on tangents. He wanted to stick to his best friends, and not let anything take him away again. Jeremy also wanted to keep going like this. He didn’t know what they were going to do with their time, but it didn’t make sense to live one day at a time, and his original pattern forced him to isolate himself from others. This was the best solution. Olimpia said she had to stay, so her voice wouldn’t have to echo anymore. Leona explained that this didn’t mean she had to stay on the team. She could wear her own cuff, and just go off to live her life. Each one was perfectly capable of operating on its own. Her reaction to this truth made it clear that the suppression of her time illness wasn’t the only reason she wanted to stay, so they dropped the subject, and pretended like this was her only choice. Angela and Kivi didn’t give reasons, but they too chose to remain.

So now they were seven. After saying their goodbyes to their other friends, who had their own lives to lead, they synced up the cuffs, and made the next jump. It was February 11, 2341. Leona revealed that they were now back on track. Had Anatol never pushed them back to the 16th century, based on the number of temporal jumps they had since made, this was the date they would have ended up on. The question remained, what were they going to do? The pattern was one thing, but were they just going to relax by the sea for the rest of their lives? The primary reason they wore the cuffs before was because someone had intel about people needing saving, and how to go about doing it. Even Anatol had served them in this capacity, in his own twisted way. Now they had no purpose. Now they only had time.

Near the end of the day, they were still sitting around the table in the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which was parked on an ocean cliff. They weren’t saying anything. They expected to start discussing their plans for the future, but no one seemed to have any ideas. “Did Anatol have any friends or family?” Olimpia asked finally, breaking the silence.

“Well, not that we know of,” Leona answered. “Why?”

“I’m thinking about retaliation,” Olimpia furthered. We defeated him, so who might come for revenge? Isn’t that always what happens?”

“It was a draw,” Mateo reminded her. “Yes, we convinced him to give up, but he still made his own choice. I don’t think anyone would have anything to be vengeful about, it’s not like we killed him with the hundemarke. Like Lee-Lee said, he seemed to be rather alone. As far as I can tell, Juan Ponce de León was the closest thing he had to a friend. The Sergeant was a rival, and we all know how complicated frenemy relationships are. But still, if he was as close to someone as we are to each other, they haven’t revealed themselves yet.”

“That is who I’m worried about, someone we don’t even know exists,” Olimpia maintained. “You didn’t know how many Prestons there were in the beginning, did you?”

“I can’t recall,” Mateo said honestly. “I think I met Nerakali without knowing she was related to Zef.”

Leona stood up, and addressed the aether. “If anyone has anything against us, they might as well present themselves to us now! There is no point in dilly-dallying!”

They all looked around, waiting for a portal to open up. None did.

“I believe all of our enemies have been defeated,” Ramses figured. “Or turned to our side. I don’t think there is anyone left.”

“We are rather close to The Edge,” Kivi said casually, but also made it sound like she was talking about a capital-e edge.

“Is that a concept we’re supposed to know about already?” Angela questioned.

“The edge...of time travel?” Kivi put forth, thinking it would trigger something in their memories. “The year 2400?”

“What are you talking about?” Mateo asked.

“Is there some sort of event in 2400 that prevents time travelers from existing?” Ramses continued. “Like the Panikon?”

“I don’t know what that is, but it’s not some kind of temporal barrier. It’s just kind of...the end of our history.”

“Explain,” Leona pretty much demanded.

Kivi laughed. “People travel through time for what they believe to be various reasons, but it really all comes down to the one reason. They wanna see something interesting. They wanna save people’s lives...or troll on them. They like being around people who don’t understand what the universe is really like.”

“That changes in fifty-nine years?” Angela guessed.

“I don’t have all the details about how it comes to pass, but more than one version of me lived naturally on the other side of 2400. The humans become aware of advanced temporal mechanics, and begin to use it to develop their technology. Travelers don’t often visit the timeline past this point, because they’re not unique anymore, and life isn’t as exciting. Death has been conquered, and from what I gather, the reframe engine becomes public knowledge, and then ubiquitous. It’s not illegal to jump as far into the future, but it’s not done very much, as far as I can tell. I hear they call it the Edge.”

“Love, how quickly will we get there?”

“Assuming we stay on the Bearimy-Matic pattern?” Leona assumes. “Eight more jumps.”

“Is that bad?” Angela asked the obvious question.

“No,” Kivi said confidently. “The world changes in that year, but the world changes every year, doesn’t it? It never stops changing. It’s easy for a traveler to forget that normal humans still experience time travel. They watch the shaping of the timeline as well, they just see more detail.”

“We still need to figure out what we’re doing with our lives. This changes nothing,” Olimpia noted.

“It changes everything,” Leona contended. “We came here under the assumption that our problem is that there could be people out there who need our help, but we don’t know where and when. But this new information is suggesting that they probably don’t exist. Even if they do exist, they’ll probably not exist by next week. We have eight more jumps before the humans start taking care of themselves completely. We’ve always known about this. That’s why the Savior of Earth program was shut down a century prior, and why Anatol sent us back several centuries.”

“Are you suggesting that we recreate what he did to us?” Ramses asked.

“Maybe not quite as far as that,” Leona thought. “But there must be some time period that isn’t protected by someone else. The Salmon Runners have the end of the 20th century, and beginning of the 21st. Camden and the IAC are in the middle of that, and Mercury’s crusade is near the end of it, parallel to Serkan, Ace, and Paige. I’ve never heard of anyone protecting the mid-20th century, though.”

“Except for the Saviors,” Mateo said.

“Right,” she admitted. “I suppose the whole timeline is covered; that’s what the powers that be do. We keep having the same conversation about what we’re meant to do with our lives, and it never gets resolved. We just end up being distracted by some new or old antagonist.”

Angela spoke, “I think we all need to acknowledge the fact that life was a lot easier when someone was telling us how to live it. If we’re right, and there are no more bad guys, angry at us for what we did to someone else, then it’s up to us to come up with ideas. And I believe what we’re saying now is that those ideas don’t come from this region of the timeline.”

“Unless we go to other planets,” Jeremy said as if everyone was thinking the same thing.

“Those are pretty well taken care of too,” Leona tried to explain. I think there’s at least one traveler in every colony in the stellar neighborhood.”

“So we go beyond it,” Jeremy offered.

“Leona shook her head. “Operation Starseed launched in 2250, which means it’s nearly a hundred light years away from Gatewood by now. While that is indeed beyond the neighborhood, there hasn’t been enough time for a culture to develop to the point where they need our help. If they’re young enough, and expected to advance on their own, they’re probably being secretly protected by the artificial intelligence assigned to their planet. If they were made aware of their own Earthan origins, then they probably don’t need to be protected. We would be looking for a culture in the middle, who was eventually left alone by its AI, and is still struggling to learn from their mistakes. I don’t think those cultures exist yet.”

“Then we’re already on the path to reaching them,” Jeremy argued. “The Bearimy-Matic pattern should get us there pretty quickly according to the dimension of time, and the AOC should get us there quickly in the dimensions of space. We just need to wait, and then find the right planet. Maybe we look for a world that looks like a less advanced version of Earth.”

“I know exactly where you can find a world like that.” A man was standing at the bottom of the steps. No one seemed to have seen him arrive, suggesting he teleported in. He had a gun trained on them.

“Milford?” Angela asked, fear in her voice.

“I have been looking a long time for you.”

“How did you get out?” she asked him. She stood up, and backed away. Ramses stood as well, and made sure he was standing between them.

“There was new management in the afterlife simulation after you left,” Milford explained.

“Ellie Underhill, yes,” Angela said, thinking she understood.

Milford shook his head. “She and her friends disappeared. Someone else took over after her. He found me in the red, woke me up, and gave me the gift of resurrection.”

“What was the red level again?” Kivi asked the group.

“Static,” Milford answered instead. “People think that being shelved is the worst punishment after the black death, but nothing is compared to the torture of being in a room for centuries, unable to communicate with anyone, or do anything. That is the true hell, and I will never forgive you for putting me there.”

“I didn’t put you there,” Angela shouted. “You murdered me, and then when you died yourself, you suffered consequences for it. I had nothing to do with that decision. That’s on you, buddy. What are you even doing here? This has nothing to do with you!”

“You’re right,” Milford agreed. “I don’t care what’s happening here. I’ve only come to put you back where you belong. I regret accidentally killing you. Don’t forget that I didn’t mean to do it, and now I have the chance to undo it. I’m sending you back to 1816, so we can restart our lives together.” He shot Ramses, knowing he would fall down, and give him a clear shot at his true target. Unfortunately for him, Ramses wasn’t the only one who wanted to protect her. While Mateo was going after the shooter, Jeremy stepped in as the new shield. Whereas Ramses was hit in the shoulder, Jeremy’s bullet landed right in his chest. He didn’t die, but it didn’t look good.

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