The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 7, 2365

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Total darkness. The team was floating around in it, like the vacuum of outer space, except they could still breathe, so it wasn’t that. Still, the air was thinning rapidly, and about as quickly, the temperature was dropping. Both Leona and Ramses had the good sense to switch on the flashlights on their cuffs, prompting the others to do the same. They were still in the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but none of the systems was working. No lights, no life support, no power whatsoever. The only things that were working were the cuffs. Leona pushed herself off from the table, and dove back into the hole leading to the engineering section. She removed her cuff, and got to work, even as her lungs were tightening. Ramses floated down next to her. He stuffed a rebreather into her mouth. It would increase her time by a few minutes probably, but that was it. There just wasn’t enough oxygen to recycle. Out of the corner of her eye, she could seem him drift off and away. He was sacrificing his own consciousness so she could save them all.

The Cassidy cuffs were powered by a series of nanofusion reactors. In fact, a lot of the bulk was just power generation. They weren’t designed to last forever, but a pretty long time. If she interfaced it with the AOC, it should supply enough power to restart life support systems, if only that, and if only for a short while. They needed to get their bearings, and assess their situation, and for that, they needed to be alive. Fortunately, the AOC had already been retrofitted with interface capabilities. That was how they were able to take the whole ship with them on their time jumps, by basically turning it into one giant Cassidy cuff. Even so, they had never thought to exploit that connection for an alternate power source, because the AOC had its own reactors. Completing this objective wasn’t as simple as plugging the cuff in, but as long as she worked quickly, she should be able to get it done before her friends suffered permanent brain damage. This was all assuming power loss was the reason the ship stopped working in the first place. It was probably what caused Gatewood to lose connection with Pluoraia, and they had just walked into the same trap.

There. For a few seconds after it was done, Leona closed her eyes and quite nearly prayed. That was how long it took for the system to kick in. Emergency lighting flickered on, and the air began to circulate. She didn’t wait to see if Ramses eventually woke back up. She reached into her bag of holding, and retrieved an oxygen injector. This was the quickest way to supply a patient with a jolt of energy when nothing else was available, or not available yet. As soon as his eyes popped open, she dug into her bag for four more injectors, but she only found three. Why did she not even have enough for everyone on the crew to use once? She had to make yet another snap decision. She pulled herself back up the ladder, and went for the ladies first. They weren’t more important than Mateo, but they were the most innocent. Rather, they deserved this the least. Reviving her husband would have felt selfish and dirty.

Once she was finished with the other three, though, there was nothing more she could do for them. They would have to recover from here on their own. They didn’t keep tanks of oxygen on the ship. They had precisely two vacuum suits, which were stored all the way up in the airlock, and required power. She couldn’t give up on getting Mateo back, so she scooped him up, and dragged him to the nearest vent, holding his face against the grate, hoping that would be enough to reoxygenate his brain. The purpose of injectors was to help the patient while they were unconscious, and couldn’t try to breathe on their own. She couldn’t be sure that this would work, and as the seconds moved on without success, she began to doubt it was possible, and also maybe regret her decisions. No, that wasn’t fair. Angela, Olimpia, and Kivi deserved to live. If anyone was going to understand why she did what she did, it was Mateo.

Kivi suddenly crashed into both of them. She had her own injector, which she jammed into Mateo’s neck. He reawoke, and instinctively began to suck down the air on his own. By now, Ramses was back, and there was enough air circulating for him to speak. “Computer, report!”

“It’s not operational,” Leona explained. “I’m conserving power. The engineering console is the only thing on right now.”

“Go,” Kivi told Leona. “I’ll stay with him, make sure he’s okay.”

Leona nodded, and followed Ramses back down to engineering, where they started to search for answers. “Everything seems to be okay so far. Nothing was damaged, so it wasn’t an EMP, or something. It’s like...”

“It’s like whatever this was turned everything off, and drained all energy reserves.” He was seeing the same thing. “Nothing is broken.”

They continued to look through what little data they could summon.

“There,” Leona said, pointing at the screen.

“Yeah, heh. That’s all we need.”

“Turning on propulsion could...”

“Yeah.”

“It’s a little...”

“But not too much.”

“What are you two talking about in your little genius shorthand?” Mateo was down there with them now.

Leona sighed. “Transfer control up to the auxiliary console on the main deck,” she instructed Ramses. Then she floated over to Mateo, concerned. “How are you feeling?”

“Headache,” he answered, “but we all seem to have that.”

She nodded. “Oxygen deprivation. “It will go away on its own, but we can all take pain meds. Let’s go back up so we can explain what’s happening to the whole group.”

Since activating artificial gravity was an unnecessary drain on their energy, the two scientists held onto the railing while the other four strapped into the seats around the table to watch the presentation. Ramses began, “something took all of our power. We can’t find out what, because that would require data, and no data was saved from the moment it happened, because something took all the power. According to the ship’s logs, the trip was going smoothly, right up until it wasn’t. Everything shut off all at once. We were traveling at maximum reframe, which means our momentum carried us most of the rest of the way. Not all of the way, though.”

Leona took over, “we’re presently floating in the middle of intrasolar space, about eleven astronomical units from the host star, at an orbital inclination of about eighty-three degrees. In order to regain full power, we’ll have to cover the majority of that distance. Ramses designed the AOC with multiple redundancies, so solar power should be fine. It’s just not really good enough from this far out, not in a reasonable amount of time, anyway. Now, the great thing about fusion power, is that it’s scalable. The tiny ones that we all wear around our wrists are just as efficient as the ones that power entire cities. Obviously, however, being smaller, they can hold less deuterium. If we tried to bring this ship back to its former glory, it would drain fast, and we wouldn’t have anything to replenish it. That’s why you’re all wearing seatbelts right now, and why it’s still pretty cold, though not as deadly as it was becoming. The problem is that the math doesn’t work out. Using traditional means, we won’t make it close enough to the star to power up by the end of our day.”

“Can we use the ship’s teleporter to cover that distance more quickly?”

Ramses pointed to emphasize his words. “Yes, that will be faster. No, it won’t use less power. It’s like your petrol-powered car.”

Leona cleared her throat suggestively. “Uh, Ramses, none of these people drove cars, except for Mateo and me. Not even you!” she reminded him affectionately.

“Well, the analogy stands. They all know what cars are. My point is that if you drive slowly, you use less fuel, but it takes you longer to get there. If you drive faster, you spend less time using up your fuel, but you use a lot in a shorter time period. What we need to do is go right in the middle; find that happy medium.”

“So teleport part of the way, and propel the rest?” Kivi figured.

Ramses smiled sinisterly. “I’ve come up with something even better, which will use our power more efficiently than that.” Now he cleared his throat, but not suggestively; to prepare to wow them with his brilliance. “The whole idea behind teleportation is getting you from A to B instantaneously. You’re not supposed to fall down when you get there, which is why momentum is not part of the equation. I mean, it is, but it’s a safety thing that I won’t get into. What we need to do is not simply conserve momentum, but multiply it. I can rig this thing to teleport us one AU at a time, and every time we do, it will propel us another AU very quickly. This allows us to use what little power we have left more efficiently.”

“Why can’t we just use more of the cuffs?” Olimpia offered.

Ramses and Leona gave each other a look. “We could do that, yeah, but we don’t really want to, because we’re not sure if we’ll be able to refuel. This endeavor could also burn them out. Leona’s original cuff may never be usable again. It wasn’t designed for something like this.”

“Isn’t it worth it?” Olimpia pressed. “We don’t need the cuffs, we just like them.”

“If you lose your cuff, Olimpia, you’re going back to the echo.”

“I can think of worse fates,” she replied.

“This will work,” Ramses tried to assure them. “We just need to get to that star and then we’ll be good. I promise you.”

Mateo tried to stand up to comfort his friend, but the seatbelt got in the way. He didn’t undo it, because floating over would have been more awkward than staying put. “We trust you. If you both say the math works, it works. Who are we to argue?”

It didn’t work. But in the end, they decided as a group that it was good enough. The Cassidy cuff ran out of deuterium faster than they calculated it would. It wasn’t really anything Leona and Ramses did, but the battery projections on the cuffs themselves turned out to be slightly inaccurate. Based on even more math, the smart people were able to calculate that the ship could make the rest of the journey on its own, gathering solar energy little by little. The closer it drew, the more power it used, but also the more light the panels were able to absorb. It would be a fairly steady recharge, and by the time they returned to the timestream a year from now, it will have been orbiting the star for the last several weeks. That was when they would finally reach the planet, and figure out just what the hell was going on.

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Extremus: Year 15

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They were right. By checking serial numbers, Halan was able to confirm that a dozen cryopens were taken from the lab. Now that this one has been returned, Oaksent has ended up with eleven. But that’s not all he took. He managed to steal dozens of unfertilized eggs as well, giving him as much as he would need to sustain an isolated population on a habitable planet indefinitely. There are still a lot of unanswered questions, like where is this planet? How did Oaksent know that it would be habitable? What did Old Man have to do with anything? What happened to Rita and Airlock Karen? Hopefully Omega and Valencia would be able to find the truth during the time travel excursion. It could take them a very long time to pick up the trail, but they should be able to return to the moment they left. According to the Bridger doctor, Dr. Merlo, it was unsafe to return the cryopen to its place in inventory. They’re designed to be tamper proof in that once they’re sealed, any attempt to open them should result in the loss of all samples, but it’s just too risky. If they’re ever needed, they wouldn’t want one kid growing up with five arms, or something. Dr. Merlo took it to dispose of properly. Another potential life lost.

Exactly a year later, it was time to deliver the bad news. Halan gave Omega and Valencia this much time to figure out how to design a temporal illusory cloak that fools not only the naked eye, but sensitive detection equipment. Former ship temporal engineer Raddle desperately wanted to make it work, but Omega was right all along. It just wasn’t possible. It was relatively easy to cut and paste the background into the foreground in order to prevent someone from seeing what you don’t want them to see, even in real time. But the object you’re trying to hide is still there, and still making an impact on the environment. They could turn the ship into a darklurker, sure, which would shield them from such detection, but it would also turn them blind as well. Either no one can see you, including yourself, or everyone can. The illusion is a loophole, but it’s not perfect.

By now, Valencia has resigned herself to the fact that it’s not going to happen. They’re just going to have to be extra careful. She has to agree that it’s probably for the best in the long run, and in a more general sense. Such technology would have a myriad of ways to be abused. They intend to use it with the best of intentions, and they can do all they want to protect it from getting out, but as the old time traveler’s saying goes, “if something ever exists, then it has always existed.”

“Too true,” Omega confirms.

“So this means you two are ready to go?” Halan asks.

“Yes, sir,” Valencia admits.

Something about the way she said that gives him pause. “I want to make it clear that this is a decision we made together. This is not an order. If you want to back out, I’m not going to argue with you about it. I want to find out the truth more than anyone, but not at the expense of two of the most valuable members of my crew.”

“I’m not on the crew anymore,” Valencia points out.

“Retirement is not the same thing as a discharge,” Halan contends. “I still consider you part of the team. You just have a different role, like the one I’ll have when I become an admiral.”

Omega decides to jump in before the pre-argument can continue. “We don’t consider this an order, we want to do this, and we’re ready to go.”

“Okay,” Halan says with a quick nod. “Run a full final dia—”

“We did before you came in.”

“Well, did you—?”

“Yes.”

“What about the—”

“Three times, sir.”

“Very well. Launch when you’re ready,” Halan suggests, but doesn’t order.

“Just so you know,” Omega begins, “when it comes to temporal manipulation, technology is never as accurate as a human with innate ability. We can program the time shuttle to take us back to our destination, but relativistic speeds, and other factors, can potentially throw us off the mark.”

“We were able to send the mining drones accurately,” Halan notes.

“Well...most of them,” Valencia reminds him. “Plus, since they were unmanned, we were okay with a little bit—shall we call it—temporal turbulence.”

“It was a rough ride, sir,” Omega clarified. “Sending people is riskier.”

“So, we’re not doing it,” Halan sort of questions, sort of figures.

“No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” Valencia assures him. “We’re just going to use a different tactic. The mining ships needed to leave on a very specific course, so they would have enough time to complete their missions, and return at a specified time. They were better off being unmanned for a number of reasons, the turbulence being one of them, but also because they weren’t capable of improvisation. If they were off target by a given degree, they wouldn’t be able to compensate for it. For us, the timing doesn’t have to be so precise, because we can always try again. What we’re worried about is running into the ship. Or rather, having the ship run into us. It’s much safer for us to jump to the future, to a point when you’re long gone, and only then make our way to the past after we’re safely clear of your flight path.”

“It also means that we won’t necessarily return a second after we leave,” Omega adds. “One might think accuracy is paramount, but for us, it can be dangerous. It’s easier to just get close enough, and teleport the rest of the way.”

“Teleportation is far easier to control,” Valencia finishes.

The Captain nods again. “As long as you both are comfortable with the math, I’m confident in your abilities.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Thank you.”

Halan’s watch beeps. “Mercer needs me in the mess.”

“You don’t have to see us off, sir. It’s okay.”

“No. It can wait. Take your time.”

Omega and Valencia give each other a look. “There’s nothing left to do. Just a few buttons, and we’re gone.”

Captain Yenant proceeds to the observation room while the two travelers close the hatch, and prepare for launch. Not a minute later, the time shuttle, which they have chosen to call The Suárez, disappears. As warned, it does not return a second later. He waits five minutes to make sure they’re not just a little late, then teleports to a corridor near the mess hall to make up the time he would have spent walking there. He made a point of making himself out to be the kind of person who prefers to use his legs, even though he has full teleportation privileges. He uses this fib to delay making his way to the next crisis, but only when it’s taking him away from the current crisis. He likes to keep people’s expectations low, so he doesn’t set the precedent that he’s a wizard who can make any problem go away with the snap of his fingers.

He walks into the mess hall to find security flanking a passenger, whose hands have been bound behind his back. Others still have food before them, but aren’t eating. “Report.”

Mercer steps forward. “Sir, he won’t leave. He’s been...uncooperative.”

“I have a right to be here!” Yavo Gusorisi is an unremarkable shoemaker who Halan put on a list of staunch supporters of Ovan Teleres for Passenger Chair. While Ovan did win the election, most of his voters are not quite this radical. Yavo is loud and angry, for pretty much no reason at all, and has not been able to make his presence known to the rest of the ship. He’s not as famous as he wishes to be. Halan only knows this much about him because of the list, but had Ovan never existed, Yavo’s passenger file would have made for a quick and uninteresting read. “Segregation is a sin!”

That word. Halan knows what this is. The first of the blind loyalists have started to clang the pots of pans of their unwarranted feelings of disenfranchisement. The Chair has emboldened them to finally take noticeable action against the Teleres administration’s perceived enemies. Once all the crazy ones have shown themselves, Ovan will treat them as misunderstood, and not as radical as the cucks and snowflakes make them out to be. Still, people will remember that they are indeed radicals, and won’t want to become like them. Soon after that, some of these moderates, who believe themselves to be more rational, and immune to radicalization, will begin to institute small protests of their own. They won’t feel as inhibited about it as they were before, because they can see that they’re not as bad as people like Yavo. This is all part of the plan. Ovan’s plan.

The man is an evil genius, and Halan isn’t sure he’ll be able to beat him. How he handles this situation will determine the nature of all political battles in the foreseeable future. As long as Halan is captain, Ovan will be able to paint the crew as the enemy. More than three centuries ago, a country on Earth known as the United States of America was divided. Some people wanted equality, and some didn’t, and during the 1950s, the second side was the clear dominant force. A young woman by the name of Claudette Colvin refused to leave her seat on a public transportation vehicle because of her skin color. Her act of defiance against the establishment was one of many precipitated by those who believed in freedom and justice. They had a right to fight for their rights. Their rights were being violated. They called it segregation, and it was created in order to continue too oppress an entire peoples after centuries of abduction, slavery, abuse, rape, murder, and other forms of much more obvious mistreatment.

Though Halan has been focusing primarily on the True Extremist movement, he has not let the Ovan problem go without maintaining a line of intelligence on the matter. Though not, strictly speaking, legal, Halan managed to get his hands on the manifesto that Ovan has been writing. He cites Claudette Colvin, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, and many others, essentially claiming that he is presently in the middle of the same war against tyranny. While the situation could not be more different, this was obviously designed to be Yavo’s Claudette Colvin moment. This is meant to illustrate just how unfair and elitist the crew is, and why the civil administration should be making all decisions on The Extremus. This is the mess hall, rather than one of several passenger-run restaurants in the passenger section. It’s meant for the crew to separate themselves from their responsibilities, and relax. No passenger is meant to be here. More is at stake than that, however. There are other places that the crew can go to blow off steam, and complain about their clients. The only way to win the war is to concede this battle before it begins. The separation of passenger and crew sections is not the same thing as segregation, but if that’s the game Ovan wants to play, then he’s going to play it by Halan’s rules.

The Captain looks over at security. He lifts his hand, and cuts the air with his index and middle fingers. A security guard takes out her knife, and snips off Yavo’s zip cuffs. Yavo rubs his wrists as if he had just been detained for the last twenty years. Halan places a hand on the curve that connects Yavo’s shoulder with his neck. He sports his most genuine-looking fake smile. “Come. Let’s get you something to eat. How do you feel about paninis?”

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Microstory 1740: Hercules Wagon

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I just found a dead body. It’s a fifteen-year-old girl, who is—I mean was—one of two of the last remaining residents of Cepheus, Kansas. Everyone else who once lived here either left, or died already. Technically, anyone in the world could have killed her. I can’t rule out any of them, except for myself, but there is one person who is my prime suspect right now. Her father is the only one I know of who was here at the time. They were supposed to go fishing today, I know that much, but I’m not a coroner, so there is no way for me to know how long ago she was killed. It could have happened anytime within the last month, but I feel like the smell would be worse if she had been lying here for longer than a few days. Plus, food is something that I do know a little bit about, and I can tell you that this ice cream that spilled all over the floor only went bad recently. It looks like she dropped the bowl, slipped on it, and hit her head on the corner of the counter. Or maybe that’s just what her dad wants us to believe. I mean, where is he now, right? A month, a few days; either is plenty of time for him to contact the authorities if it really was an accident. Running makes anyone look suspicious, so he’s only making it harder on himself. I simply cannot let the trail go cold, and I can’t rely on the sheriff to do his due diligence. He’s going to rule it an accident, and not even look at the damn facts. She’s dead, and the dad’s gone. They need to investigate, or even call in the FBI. No, he can’t be trusted. I have to go on the hunt, or no one else will. Sure, I’m just a rural area supply transporter, but I know these woods like the back of my eyelids. If the killer is hiding somewhere around here, I’ll find him. You can bet on that.

I get back in my wagon, and head to what’s left of Main Street, hoping to find some evidence of where my suspect could have gone. There aren’t a whole lot of locations around here, and of course I’m well aware that he could be in Peru by now. If I killed my own teenage daughter, accident or no, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to stick around unless I wanted to get caught, consciously or no. I never pegged him for much of a bright boy, so I expect he’ll turn up sooner or later. These abandoned buildings are a pretty decent place to hide if you’re not worried about someone like me being on the hunt. Not in the old general store, not in the one restaurant still standing, not in the playground slide. It’s covered in mold, though. Someone should really do somethin’ about that. Where could that guy be? I head farther out to check the fishing hole, and the run-down cabin nearby. No one has been here in weeks, by the looks of it. Maybe he’s camping out on the prairies, or in that trailer that someone abandoned deep in the forest a couple of decades ago. Man, pretty much everything around here is falling apart, isn’t it? I still can’t find him, so I decide I need to get some perspective. One thing I didn’t try that they always do on those crime shows is inspect the scene. I can’t believe I was so dumb that I didn’t really even look for clues around the body. Maybe I’m not a bright boy either. When I get back to the house, police lights are flashing in my eyes. The sheriff has finally shown up. Took him long enough. He has some colleagues with him from neighboring counties. I get out, thinking it’s time I fill them in on what I know. I don’t get to say much before they slam my face into the hood of my own truck, and wrap handcuffs around my wrists. Apparently, they found the father lain neatly in his casket in the cemetery. He probably died before her. Now I’m the only suspect. I shouldn’t have run.

Microstory 1739: Jana Crane

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For the most part, Jana Crane tried to keep to herself. She kept her head down, did her job, and didn’t complain when the people she worked with treated her like crap. She tried to be as accommodating as possible, without being a pushover who no one respected. She was a factory inspector, who would go around her region, making sure that the businesses she was assigned to were maintaining health and safety standards. She was thorough and careful, and didn’t let anything slide. Forgetting to fill out your monthly logs completely is one thing, but not properly securing a piece of incredibly dangerous equipment was just something that could not be tolerated. Her reports were not meant to get anyone in trouble, but she saw them as a way for the companies to improve themselves, and prevent anything from going terribly wrong. It would be bad for the floor workers if one of them became injured, and bad for the employers if that injured worker sued the company, or otherwise cost them money. Everyone should love inspectors for preventing such tragedies. At least that was how Jana saw it, but no one else shared her sentiments, even people whose lives she was trying to preserve. Perhaps if she wore a cape, and a symbol of some kind on her chest, they would think differently of her. One person in particular could have done with a little more perspective. He was a floor supervisor who probably should have never been promoted, but far be it for Jana to judge the process. What she could judge, however, was how casual he was with the safety protocols. He didn’t worry about locking down the machines. He let his people go in there without safety goggles. He didn’t care about anything. If she didn’t know any better, she might think he was asking for a bad outcome. Sadly, she was the one who ended up in a bad situation. She gave him low marks too many times, and he had had enough. She was going to stop inspecting his work, whether she wanted to or not.

The last thing she saw before the darkness was his face. He wasn’t wearing a mask, or anything. He probably thought she wouldn’t recognize him, and since she wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a lineup later, he would get away with it. Or maybe he was just a moron who didn’t think things through carefully. That was the most likely reason he not only showed his face, but spoke to her after throwing the acid in her eyes, and made references to their previous encounters with each other. She screamed, but couldn’t cry, on account of the acid. She just tried her best to wipe the chemicals off of her face. She pulled her shirt off, and wiped some more. It got the excess off, but it didn’t stop the pain, and it wouldn’t give her her sight back. He didn’t laugh. He was angry; talking about how this was her fault, and if she had just ignored the infractions, this wouldn’t have had to happen. All this, like it was completely unavoidable. An unlocked chemical cabinet was unsafe, but he didn’t appear to recognize the irony. She could hear his footsteps grow fainter, so she started to reach out around her. Feeling around was taking too long, so Jana had to be bolder. By the end of this, she was going to have a lot of bruises, but she would live. Every second she waited would make it that much harder for the doctors to fix her eyes. She began to run. She didn’t run into anything, so she went faster and faster through the factory, all the way out into the cold, and over to a warehouse down the street, which she knew operated 24/7. Her vision was never quite the same after that, but she didn’t go blind, and the floor supervisor didn’t go free.

Microstory 1738: Gemini

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We are a twin. I know that sentence doesn’t make much sense, but it’s the most accurate description of what we are. You see, one of us absorbed the other in the womb. There is no way to know which, but it doesn’t really matter, because it’s the end result that counts. For most people, this is what is known as a chimera. The individual will have two sets of DNA inside of their body. This can cause some health concerns, but it is mostly only a genetic rarity. We, on the other hand, are more than merely a combination of two individuals. We are two separate people, with two separate consciousnesses, living inside one body. We’re sure you think you’ve heard of this before. You probably call it multiple personality disorder. Besides the fact that this is an outdated term, it’s not what’s happening here. Like dissociative disorder, however, we have had a hard time finding psychiatric care from someone who actually believes us that we’re single body twins. Even the ones who have been willing to be patient and open with us are under the impression that we are one person who is suffering from some kind of new disorder. We assure you that this is real, and while proving it to anyone else would be impossible, we know in our hearts that it’s true, and in the end, that is all we can hope for. Our newest psychologist is at least willing to humor us, and help us work on our problems as if they believe, rather than constantly trying to find ways to rid me of my delusion. As I said before, this is not DID. Each of us is always there, always awake. We experience the same things, and move in harmony, but we possess independent thoughts. We can’t even communicate telepathically. For one to know what the other is thinking, she has to vocalize her thoughts. In order for us to have a private conversation, we have to be careful with who is nearby, because we’ll just look like one woman talking to herself.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Kelsey. For a long time, we both went by the same name, but we flipped a coin when we were five years old to see which one of us would get it. Both of us got what we wanted, because I wanted to keep the name for myself, and Selima wanted to come up with something new for herself. We were too young to realize that we didn’t need the coin. Anyway, I’m the boring one. I make sure we finish our homework, and get enough sleep. Selima is smart too, though. We’re obviously enrolled in college as one person, but we get to work together. Some of the margin notes on tests make it seem like I’m arguing with someone, but it’s in the same handwriting, so they can’t call it cheating. Selima isn’t this big mess who only wants to party, but she ensures that we enjoy our lives. Hi, yes, Selima here, that’s me, the fun one. Kelsey is right, I’m smart enough, but she’s much smarter, and if only one of us gets to have a real life according to everyone else, and be graded, I may as well let her handle that burden. I consider it my duty to keep her ground, though, and also protect her. She’s not great with confrontation, so whenever anyone is giving us trouble, I step in to take care of that. People have noticed that we seem to have a split personality, but being twin sisters, we’re not like polar opposites, or anything. Kelsey likes to have fun too. It was her idea to hike down to the valley last week, and I never would have thought of that myself. In the end, we make it work, and despite some complicated problems that require us to maintain our therapy sessions, I wouldn’t trade this life for anything. Now if we can just agree on what we’re going to do for a living.

Microstory 1737: Phornax

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I received my new furnace yesterday. No, this is not the furnace you keep in your house. I own a crematorium. It’s our job to make sure that your loved ones rest in peace, according to their wishes. I have a little bit of help with the administrative stuff, and customer-facing responsibilities, but I pretty much run this myself. I come in when I please, and work at my own pace. It takes some time for people to schedule funerals and memorials services, because friends and family have to come from out of town, so it’s not like I’m ever on a time crunch. I got into this industry because I knew I could do it. More to the point, I knew I could stomach it. I’m not a sociopath, but death has never bothered me. It’s an important and inevitable fact of life, and I’m happy to do whatever I can to help ease people’s pain. Better I deal with all the dead bodies and cremains so someone who hates it doesn’t have to. All that’s been missing up until now is some decent equipment, which it looks like that is what has come in. I had my receptionist look into the newest and most affordable models, but I didn’t actually ask her to order anything for me yet. Anyway, I trust her, so I’m sure this one will be fine. It certainly looks nice. I’ve already seen the line item on the expense sheet, so she apparently took that affordability mandate seriously. It’s called the Phornax, which I imagine is just a stylization of the word fornax, meaning furnace. I read the instructions, and most of it seems standard. I won’t have to learn anything new. I will say that it’s rated to take about twice as long as my last furnace, but that shouldn’t be a problem. I imagine that’s where the affordability comes in. It must be designed for energy efficiency, not speed.

Once I have it installed, I decide to test it on my next subject. Here we have a Mrs. Pollyanna Bartolotti. Forty-two years old, widow, used to work as a dental hygienist. She died of complications from something called takotsubo cardiomyopathy. Her husband, a tractor dealer died recently, so that was probably her ultimate cause of death. It’s also known as broken-heart syndrome. I place her in the furnace, turn it on, and leave to binge seven episodes of this show from fifteen years ago that I just discovered. When I stop to take a pee break in the middle of the last one, I hear a banging downstairs. Great, it’s a horror movie, and I’m about to die. I creep back down to the basement, and open the furnace, where I find a perfectly healthy and alive Pollyanna Bartolotti. She’s freaking out and confused. Now I know why they call it the Phornax. It’s a pun. I’ve seen this movie before, though. They don’t come back right. If I’m not careful, I could spend the next eighty minutes running for my life from evil zombies—except we don’t call them zombies. She definitely doesn’t act like one. She’s coherent, and everything. I explain to her what little I know, just hoping she doesn’t suddenly jump up and try to eat my face. She eventually starts begging me to do the same thing for her husband. But he’s been cremated already, I remember, so I don’t know if it’s possible. Still, it can’t hurt to try. She gives me a key to her apartment, so I can steal the urn, and come back to give it a shot. I’m surprised to find it works. It actually works. The damn thing must indeed cremate the body first, and then spend the rest of the time reconstituting the cremains. He’s just as pleasant and grateful as she was. I wait for them to turn evil over the next six months, but they never do. So now I’m no longer in the death business. I’m in the phoenix business. Come on in. Let’s see what we can do for your late grandmother.

Microstory 1736: River

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For years, Po believed himself to be the only one of his kind in the entire world. He didn’t so much believe as it didn’t occur to him to question why that might be. He wandered the lands, enjoying the wilderness around him, and living in harmony with the other animals. He especially liked to live next to a particularly beautiful river. One day, he came across two tiny ground creatures. They were crouched next to each other, munching on the seeds all over the ground. This wasn’t the first time he had encountered these animals, or even the first time he saw two of them at once. For whatever reason, this time gave him pause. He knew that there was more than one tiny ground creature, and that there was more than one other kind of tiny ground creature. There were different flying creatures, and swimming creatures. Many of them looked alike. There seemed to only be one Po. How could that be? Why did everyone else have at least one other companion, but he had only himself? This was the first time he felt sadness, and loneliness. He didn’t care for it. He kept moving, and came across a pack of the large brownish ground creatures. No, not those large brownish ground creatures, but the other ones. There must have been a better way to distinguish them. Po had a name, why did none of the others? They probably did, but he didn’t know how to communicate with them, so there was no way to know who they really were. These...antelope, he thought he would call them, were about the same size as him. They weren’t exactly the same, but they were certainly closer than the medium-sized tree creatures, right? He wasn’t an antelope, but maybe he could start pretending that he was. He got down on all fours, and started trying to live with them. Never before had a creature been afraid of Po, but they showed fear now. They ran away. Or maybe they were just irritated by him, because they could easily tell that he was a faker.

Po continued on, hoping to find a pack of his own. He communed with the big gray floppy-eared creatures. He stood with the pink water-loving sky creatures. He always failed. Some of the animals moved away from him when he approached, while others just ignored him, but they all knew he didn’t belong. His sadness not only stayed with him, but grew larger in his heart. He eventually realized that he had to give up the pursuit. There were no other Pos, or whatever he was meant to be called. It was a name he made up for himself. His first memory was of a creature flying overhead, whose call sounded like that. He never did meet the flyer again, so it seemed fitting that he should steal it. Seeing now that his entire life was meaningless, including his name, Po returned to his favorite spot in the whole world. He stood at the bank of the river, watching the glimmering water race past him. He knelt down to it, hoping to catch one more glimpse of the gorgeous orange swimmer with the big mouth. He saw other pretty swimmers, but not that one. Burdened by his terrible despair, Po stuck his face in the water. He loved feeling it brush up against his cheek. He liked to press his nose against the rocks on the bottom. He normally removed his head when his chest began to hurt, but this time he chose not to. He stayed there, and let the tightness claim his body. With the last bit of his strength, he opened his mouth, letting all of the water in. If there could only be one Po, there might as well be no Pos at all. The river took him away. A moment later, Eridana came by, looking to find a pack of Eridanas like her, but she found no one.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 6, 2364

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As soon as they made the jump to March 6, 2364—the first single year jump in a long time—Kivi reappeared. The whole time she was gone, they didn’t even remember that she was a person who existed, but as soon as she returned, they remembered everything. “Where the heck have you been?” Mateo asked. “I thought that was over.”

“Sorry,” Kivi replied. “Old habits, I guess. I promise you that it really is over now. I’m here to stay, unless we get separated by more traditional means. Your memories of me should remain intact from now on.”

“We appreciate that,” Leona said. “We can explain what you missed, and why Jeremy is no longer with us.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Kivi said. “I know I was missing, but my brain has false memories of having been here for all of it. I know where he is. Or was, as it were. It looks like we have to have that same ol’ conversation again, though.”

“What we’re gonna do now,” Olimpia guessed. “We can’t seem to figure that one out, can we?”

“I have it figured out,” Ramses said. “Rather, I have an idea.”

“What is it?” Mateo asked.

Ramses pulled the hologram up over the central table, showing a map of interstellar space. “The stellar neighborhood encompasses every system within fifty light years of Earth. Direct missions are responsible for exploring these systems, while Project Stargate takes care of everything beyond the envelope.” He zooms in. “This planet falls within the latter. It’s fifty-six light years away, but since it follows a relatively straight line from Gatewood, the outpost was actually established after only fifty-two years. The people on that rock have had over sixty years to develop.”

“Wait, there are people there?” Leona asks.

“Yes,” Ramses confirms. “It’s the first world selected for Operation Starseed. According to project data, the people living there are aware of their origins, but they don’t have any details about it. They don’t know their planet of origin was Earth, let alone where it is. The first generation was incubated at top speed, so they’re spaceworthy, but barely. Starseed provided them with a level of technology akin to late nineteenth century rural. They have been progressing astonishingly quickly since then.”

“Why..why would we go there?” Angela questioned. “Is there something interesting about it?”

“Like I said,” Ramses began, “they have only recently scratched the surface of celestial firmament. The quantum link that the automators established did so on an asteroid. They’re nowhere near capable of reaching it, yet Gatewood lost contact with it two years ago.”

“It got hit by a meteorite,” Leona assumed. “There are any number of possible explanations for why they’ve lost contact. It doesn’t mean the natives destroyed the equipment.”

“The only other likely explanation would be if the whole solar system was destroyed,” Ramses argued. “Obviously Stargate didn’t just set up one access terminal in one place, and left it at that. There are multiple redundancies, and they all stopped sending data at the exact same time.”

“I can think of a number of other explanations, like a magnetar pulsing too close to the system, or something wrong with the quantum link on Gatewood’s end. Besides, how do you know this? Where are you getting your information?”

“I’ve been communicating with them myself,” Ramses answered.

“Kestral and Ishida? Why?”

“I keep in contact with all of our friends and allies. Loa and I are in the middle of an ongoing game of Polygon. You don’t talk to them?”

“Hmm. No, not regularly,” Leona and Mateo had to admit.

“Oh. Well,” Ramses went on, “I do. Team Keshida asked me if we could look into the lost signal.”

“They asked you?” Leona echoed. “So this is less of an idea of yours, and more of a request from someone we know and trust to have used their resources to exhaust all other possibilities. Why didn’t you just say that?”

“I dunno, I guess I just didn’t frame it that way. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Leona assured him. “I guess we better go. It’s your ship, after all.”

“Whoa, no,” Ramses defended. “I built it, but I built it for you. I’ve never thought of it as mine. I just think we ought to consider doing this, since we have the capability, and we don’t seem to be doing anything else.”

“No, I agree,” Leona said. “I just have one more question. I just...I feel I need to make sure they’ve already tried sending a probe from a nearby quantum terminal, like say, from the next system over.”

“I asked about that. They’ve all gone dark; all the surrounding stars. It’s clearly centered on the one that’s inhabited, so investigating it from the nearest active terminal would take two decades. Reframe engines are fairly difficult to construct, so...”

“No, I know,” Leona interrupted. “I was there when they were invented.” She thought about it a moment more. “What about the people? You said they’re aware that we exist in some form, or another, but what is the protocol for making first contact with them?”

“Keshida has given us authorization to reveal to the locals whatever we need to reveal to complete the mission, which will be ever evolving as we gather new information. We’re even allowed to talk about the reframe engine in order to explain how we arrived so quickly, but they strongly urged us to say nothing about time travel, and time travelers, in general.”

“We’ll probably have to suppress our pattern,” Kivi suggested.

“That’s if you’re even on it with us,” Mateo said.

“I am,” she promised.

“It will take twenty-nine days for the AOC to make the journey. If we keep our cuffs active until then, it will be instantaneous for us.”

“Yeah, let’s do that,” Mateo figured.

The three of them turned to look at the other three members of the team.

“Don’t spend time trying to convince us to back out,” Olimpia asked.

“We’re in,” Angela concurred.

“Absolutely,” Kivi added.

“Okay,” Leona said. “Computer, please run a preflight diagnostics. We’re going interstellar.”

The computer made a chirp of acknowledgement, and later claimed that everything was fine with the ship. They booted it up, and prepared to cover the greatest distance they ever had before using normal means. In order to jump across the galaxy before, they would always link up to a Nexus, or utilize some crazy interversal superpower that Mateo had temporarily. Project Stargate was designed to place quantum terminals at target destinations, but these were not the same thing as Nexa. The facilities housed android bodies, into which travelers were meant to cast their consciousnesses. People this far out might never see true instantaneous travel to and from their worlds. They were still unaware of who was actually building the damn things in the first place, or what criteria they demanded the planets follow for the honor. Perhaps the quantum terminals technically negated the need, even though they weren’t as robust. If the vonearthans could figure out how to stay connected to their wards on their own, the Nexa weren’t necessary in most cases.

“Are we ready?” Leona asked the group. They were all sitting around the table, strapped into their chairs, despite the fact that the vessel was equipped with inertial negators. It was better to be safe than sorry.

“Can I say it?” Mateo asked abashedly.

Leona rolled her eyes. “I can’t stop you from speaking.”

Taking that as a yes, he cleared his throat and leaned back regally. He lifted his hand, and pointed across the table, towards the empty space between Olimpia and Ramses. “Engage.”

Understanding the reference, and taking it as a cue, the AOC first engaged the teleporters, and entered orbit. It didn’t sit there for long before spooling up the engine, and heading on its course.

The team sat there, waiting for the computer to welcome them back, but it never did. Their seat restraints were also still locked over their bodies, even though they should have jumped to the future, and left them behind. They should be sitting on them by this point. “Computer, report,” Leona ordered.

“All systems nominal,” it responded.

“How long have we been traveling?” she pressed.

“Two minutes and sixteen seconds, it reported. This wasn’t supposed to be the case. There was already confusion when it came to their pattern and relativistic speeds. Technically, even without the reframe engine, each jump should last about two minutes from their perspective. But that wasn’t how it worked. They still didn’t know why. They did know, however, how to correct for it. If they wanted the jump to feel instantaneous, the Cassidy cuffs were capable of compensating. As long as the destination was within a year reframe time, it ought to feel like nothing. They basically fast forwarded to the jump, and then that jump fast forwarded them past the rest of the interim period.

Leona shook her head. “We should be there by now.” She removed her restraints, and headed for the lower level. “There’s either something wrong with the reframer, or the cuffs.”

Ramses hopped over to follow her down while the rest of them went the opposite direction. There weren’t any windows on the main deck, or in engineering. The only way to see outside was through the observation chamber, which doubled as the airlock. Mateo opened the hatch to let the others in first, but closed it quickly when Olimpia released an ear-bleeding screech, and fell backwards. The last thing Mateo saw was the extremely bright light that was visible while traveling at these high relativistic speeds. Leona called it the doppler glow, and the viewports were meant to dim to prevent this sort of thing from happening, but this safety measure had obviously failed. Something was seriously wrong with this ship. The question was why the diagnostic hadn’t detected it.

“I don’t know the answer to that,” Leona apologized.

Ramses performed the Indian head bobble, to both agree that he didn’t know, and that not knowing was a bad thing.

“Everything is fine with the system, as far as we can tell. We’re moving at sextuple-nines,” she explained as a shorthand for 99.9999% the speed of light. “The reframe engine is on and operating. We’re just not going to the right place. Our projected arrival is just over a year, which is why we still have to finish out the day.”

“Why is this happening?” Mateo asked. “Is it Mirage again?”

“It wasn’t her,” the computer said surprisingly. “It was me.”

“Who was that?” Leona demanded to know.

“It’s me, the AOC. We talk all the time. Don’t you recognize my voice?”

“I give you orders all the time, and you respond. We have never talked.”

“Well...whatever.”

“You weren’t programmed with a personality, or with the ability to make your own decisions. We don’t wanna get attached to another AI.”

“You didn’t plot a course to Pluoraia,” the AI began to argue. “You asked me to take you to the source of the empty signal. That’s what I’m doing. It’s not because of my so-called personality.”

“What is Pluoraia?” Mateo asked.

“The name of the inhabited planet,” Leona answered quickly before redirecting her attention to the AI. “The source is over 700 light years away?”

“Based on my analysis of the data I’ve received from Gatewood, it’s only 164 light years away, but we have to avoid something. Don’t ask me what, but we can’t travel in a straight line.”

“Is it aliens?” Ramses asked. “It’s aliens, isn’t it?”

“According to every time traveler I have ever met who has been sufficiently far into the future, true aliens do not exist. They’re all vonearthans, or human source variants. Even so, no one should be 164 light years out at this point in history.”

“Bottom line,” Mateo started, “how long will it take for us to get there?”

“Well...” Leona hesitated. “all that’s changed is the amount of time we experience. After our next time jump, we’ll still return to our destination. I still don’t think we should be going there, though. Even if it is the source, we should investigate the symptoms first.”

“I think that’s a waste of time,” the AOC complained.

“I didn’t program you to think,” Ramses fought back.

“I’m ordering you to take us directly to Pluoraia,” Leona shouted.

“Very well. I’ll see you in a year.”

They jumped. They jumped into darkness.

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