Extremus: Year 24

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Future!August did not survive the night, nor did she even wake up. According to Dr. Holmes’ examination, the injuries she incurred from knocking into the bench were not enough to account for her death. Not even the temporal displacement method she used would have led her to it. There were other wounds and broken bones, suggesting she suffered a great deal before she even left the future. Perhaps the Extremus experienced terrible gravitational destruction, and her last act as she was being crushed by it was to jump into a portal to warn everyone.

Present!August refused to speak with a grief counselor about her loss. She claimed to have no strong feelings about an alternate version of her dying in front of her. Captain Belo ended up having to order her two counseling sessions before she could return to duty. It took her a long time to complete them, so Kumara had to step up as the primary temporal engineer in the meantime. They needed it too, because they had to come up with a solution to the Feizi problem. That’s the name they settled on to replace Theia-2, since that one didn’t really make any sense. Of all people, Consul Vatal is the one who came up with it.

Right now, the right people are having a bit of an unofficial meeting of minds. Omega, Valencia, August, and Kumara have been trying to work the problem this entire time. They’ve been keeping the captains and admirals apprised of the situation as they do it, but they’re not usually in the same room together. Halan has taken the scientists under his responsibility, so the others can deal with other matters. Vice Admiral Thatch has retaken his place as the main goto source of advice.

While Lieutenant Moralez deals with ship issues, the four other executive leaders are literally sitting on the sidelines while the four engineers yell and scream at and over one another. Halan sighs, and lifts his hand. He places his middle and ring finger against his thumb, and raises his pinky and index fingers. This is called quiet coyote, and it’s usually used for children. The scientists accepted it begrudgingly, because they know that things can get out of hand when they try to work together. In this case, it’s a magic signal. Even if they’re not looking directly at their supervisor, they can tell when it’s happening, and they immediately go silent, almost like they can smell it. Kumara once accused Valencia of writing a time spell that forces them to go quiet when the hand gesture is present, but he’s never been able to prove it.

“Omega. You were saying,” Halan prompts.

“We have to vote on course correction. It doesn’t matter if they move the planet, we know where they are now, and continuing on this path is foolish.”

“The foolish thing is thinking you can outsmart them,” Kumara argues.

Omega braces to explain himself for the upteenth time. “I can plot a random course through interstellar space that approaches each star system that we pass.” They all start to argue at him again, so he raises his voice more and more to compensate. “Feizi is massive and dense, but it’s gravitational pull is still nowhere near that of a star! Therefore, if the Extremists try to get too close to one, they won’t be able to hold their weapon in place!”

“Basically, you want to avoid being shot at by the enemy but running real close to all the mines in the minefield on purpose!” Kumara threw back at him.

“Yeah, because we can see the mines! We can’t see the bullets!” The mines being the stars, and the bullets being the Feizi. It’s not a great analogy. It’s more like risking tripping the visible mines because the hidden mine can’t have been buried too close to any one of them. This theoretically gives you a dangerous, but possibly safe path. The possibly part is what concerns Halan the most.

“We can’t do that,” Future Captain Leithe contends. Kaiora has been taking on a lot more responsibility lately. She’s a few months away from taking over officially, so it’s time for Interim Captain Belo to take a backseat sometimes. “The course you think you can plot is obviously dangerous, and I’m obviously not one of the people who can explain why it’s dangerous. But I can tell you the politics. You would have to change course on the fly, in case something new comes up. The law doesn’t allow you to do that. We don’t have time to vote every time, and I don’t know how you change that law. That’s not up to any of us here.”

“Yeah, it’s up to the people,” Omega says. “So let’s not vote on a course correction. Let’s vote to change the law so the bridge assumes complete control over our vector.”

“Oh, and I suppose you’re gonna be the one driving,” Kumara spits.

“I never said that. I said the bridge. Most ships do it like that. I don’t know why we have this law.”

Halan is about to explain it, but Thatch stands up first, and walks forward. He waits to respond, first letting his gravitas draw all the words in the room to him, so no one else can use them to interrupt. “We are not headed to a planet. We are headed to our future. Our people voted on our literal direction before they stepped on board. Changing that direction would be like suddenly deciding to take your colonists to Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida when they all agreed to go to Varkas Reflex. No one person has the authority to make that call. It’s for everyone to decide. That, Omega, is why we vote.”

Omega places a hand on Thatch’s shoulder, and speaks calmly, “fair enough. But I’m trying to save lives the only way I know how. I don’t hear any other good ideas. Because the truth is...dead people can’t vote.”

“Just because it’s the only idea,” Valencia begins, “doesn’t mean it’s a good one. Face it, there are too many variables. Stars are too far apart. There are plenty of opportunities for the True Extremists to move their rogue world where they need to. That’s what a rogue world is.”

Omega frowns. “What would you have us do?”

“Give up.” It’s Consul Dvronen Vatal. He’s on the top of the steps.

“This is a closed session,” Halan warns. Dvronen wields a lot of power, but he doesn’t have full privileges. He has no reason to be here.

Dvronen chuckles and begins to walk down slowly. Saunter, even. “I can see the eight of you are where you need to be. You understand our power. Well...” He chuckles again, but louder. “You don’t understand it, but you fear it. That’s all we’ve been trying to get you to do.”

Halan isn’t sure it makes sense, that this man would be a True Extremist. He got the Captain to step down, but he didn’t take all of his power away. He had plenty of times to kill him too, but never did? This must be the part where the villain lays it all out for them, so the final pieces of the puzzle will fit together. This is neither the time, nor the place, for this conversation. “August,” he orders simply.

She takes out a teleporter gun and shoots Dvronen with it. He doesn’t seem the least bit perturbed during the second he remains standing before he disappears.

Halan turns to Olindse. “I strongly recommend that all eight of us sync to that room to interrogate the prisoner. His words may help these fine scientists come to a real solution.”

The Captain reaches over to her teleporter, quickly calibrates the range, and transports everyone else to the hock. Dvronen is already sitting on the bench. In fact, he looks like he’s exactly where he wants to be.

The Captain looks at the engineers, and nods her head towards the bench on the side wall. They all go to sit down. They’re here to observe, not question. She bows a little, and gives way to Admiral Yenant. “It ought to be your show.”

“No,” Halan says. “It should be hers.”

They all look to Future Captain Kaiora Leithe. She’s anxious for a moment, but she doesn’t want to show any self-doubt. She performs the Picard maneuver on her uniform, and steps forward. Then she simply says, “report.”

“We are the oldest human civilization in the Milky Way galaxy of Salmonverse. We were building starships before your ancestors were building ocean vessels. We’ve since built an empire in our little pocket of space, and we don’t appreciate your interference.”

“But you came from us. We are your ancestors. You wouldn’t exist without The Extremus.”

“Which is why we let your ship take off. We were worried about the timeline. Some wanted to destroy you in the dock, but cooler heads prevailed. As it turns out, my side was right. We’re living in a stable timeloop, not an alternate reality.”

“Why destroy us at all? What have we done against you? Space is very big. You just wouldn’t believe—”

“Save the speech,” Dvronen interrupts. “It’s not about space. It’s not about resources. I was born on a planet called Extremus. We take offense to your mission to colonize your own world of the same name.”

Halan goes on autopilot, and can’t stop his lower brain from attacking. “That’s it? You tried to destroy this ship, and kill thousands of people, over a fucking name! Fuck, we’ll name it something else if you’re that pissy about it!”

Dvronen remains in control. “It’s not the name, it’s the principle. Our ancestors went to a lot of trouble to build our civilization. They went millenia into the past. We deserve both the name, and the recognition as the rightful owners of the galaxy.”

Captain Leithe takes the interrogation back. “You stole that from us. Quite literally. Oaksent stole embryos and time travel technology.”

Dvronen takes a moment to consider his response. “I know, from your side of the bars that makes sense. But you have to understand that none of us was there when that happened. Me, Vesper, no one was born yet. We get that we come from you. No one has ever tried to diminish or ignore that truth. I’m just telling you that we have thousands of years of history that tells us we are true descendants of the Extremus mission. And none of those people who first landed on that inhospitable planet—thousands of years ago, from my perspective,” he adds, tapping on his chest, “ever set foot on this ship. To us, you seem like invaders. We tried to stop you without shedding blood. We hired Old Man to repair the recall device, so it would send you back to Gatewood. He said he would, and then he betrayed us.”

“Betrayed us how...by closing your timeloop, which is what you wanted anyway?” Leithe asks.

Dvronen picks a little at his cuticles. “Old Man, Rita, Oaksent, and Airlock Karen. They did not use the recall device to transport off this ship. They used a completely different invention, of incredibly similar design, but only superficially. If he did end up repairing the original device, it’s never been used. It could still be in his lab; I don’t know. Vesper was supposed to look for it. Perhaps he found it, and had it on him when he died. ”

“Why did he so desperately want me to touch it?” Halan asks. “If he had had his way, I would have gone instead of Rita.”

“Our assumption,” Dvronen begins, “is that Old Man knew that you were the only person in the universe who could have stopped Oaksent from realizing his dream of seeding a new civilization. He wanted you to stop us from ever existing.”

“That’s an interesting development, but it doesn’t solve our problem,” Kaiora goes on. “Bottom line, what do you want? What can we do to avoid any more conflict?”

Dvronen shrugs. “Turn around.”

“You want us to go back to Gatewood?”

“It doesn’t have to be Gatewood. Just go somewhere within Earth’s stellar neighborhood. We don’t want no trouble with them, so we’re leaving them all alone.”

“How are you dealing with Project Stargate, or Operation Starseed, for that matter?”

“You let us worry about that,” Dvronen answers cryptically.

Omega stands up, and approaches. “We can’t turn around. We have our own mission. And it was ours first. How dare you co-opt it just because you went back in time, and technically lived earlier? That’s so human of you. We’re time travelers, the lot of us. Time is not linear, therefore, we were here first by every single measurement of time, except for the one the people like us have no use for.”

“Oaksent traveled back with his embryos, to father us on the homeworld. No one has time traveled since then. We...live in linear time.” Dvronen adjusts his position to look more serious. “This galaxy is ours. We’ll let you lease some space, just like we do the vonearthans, but if you don’t want to follow our rules, you can leave.”

“Leave?” Valencia questions, also standing up. “Leave the Milky Way? You’ll stand down, and not try to stop us if we leave the galaxy?”

“Well, yeah, I guess,” Dvronen confirms. “Though the next galaxy over is thousands of reframe years away, so I’m not sure you can sustain your population for that long, but if you think you can, go for it. We won’t stop you.”

Valencia draws nearer. “Can you do that? Are you authorized to speak for your people?”

Dvronen laughs. “I know you don’t know who I am when it comes to respect on the real Extremus, but...that’s a riot. Yes, I’m authorized. I speak for all of us.”

Omega smiles. “I want that in writing.”

Valencia pulls Halan and both of the Captains over, and transports them to a secure location. “I have an idea, but it’s going to require us to go against that rule Admiral Thatch was trying to explain to my husband. We can wait for a vote, but I guarantee that we’re gonna lose. Now, Dvronen said that Project Stargate is in trouble.” She consults her watch. “In a few years, the quantum seeder ships are probably going to pass far enough out of the stellar neighborhood for the True Extremists to consider them a threat. Omega and I have to try to stop whatever evil plans they’ve cooked up.”

“Where are you going with this?” Halan questions. “You’re all over the place.”

“I know, just...” She sighs. “The Captain can’t make a course correction unilaterally. She would have to put that up to a vote, right?”

“We follow,” current Captain Belo says.

“But the Captain can also refuse to put it to a vote. The people can’t just create one out of thin air. You start it, they finish it, so all Captain Leithe would have to do is not let it come to a vote at all.”

Kaiora starts trying to work it out. “You want to change course, because once you do, you’re going to escape the ship anyway, and all I have to do is prevent a second course correction from undoing your decision.”

“Correct,” Valencia says.

Halan shakes his head. “I can’t let you do that, Valencia. You need to go help with Project Stargate. I understand as much. But you may one day need to return, and for the good of the ship, whoever is running the place at that point needs to be able to trust you. I, on the other hand, am actually expendable. I’ll make the course correction, against the reported wishes of everyone in this room, and in the hock section. I’ll suffer the consequences, and everyone else will move on.”

“But, Admiral,” Kaiora tries to say.

Halan holds up quiet coyote, and shushes everyone. Maybe it is magic, and maybe it works on anybody. “You’re gonna do a fine job.” With a fatherly smile, he taps on his teleporter, and jumps to the bridge. For his last act as a ranking member of this crew, he inputs his authorization code, and makes the ship teleport only an astronomical unit away. It’s the easiest way to point it in a different direction. It keeps going without missing a beat, but it’s now begun a journey into the void.

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Microstory 1785: Through the Vela

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I reach out and shake the baby bear’s little paw. He smiles wider, and looks a bit relieved. The old man tells me as much. People are often so reluctant and unsympathetic when they meet him. They’re too afraid. They just came through something called the Vela, and still think they’re about to wake up from a bad dream. It’s not a dream. It’s all real. The man built this cabin near Big Bear Lake deliberately because it happens to be some kind of focal point of instantaneous travel. People from all over the world spontaneously wake up here having never transited the space in between. Every night someone new arrives somewhere in a kilometer radius of this cabin. For some reason, I showed up earlier than usual, which is why mama bear wasn’t ready for me. She’s normally tasked with going out, and nudging the arrivals to the cabin. She’s not as smart as her son, but she knows that she can convince people to go this direction simply by placing herself on the other side of them. She was probably pretty surprised that I wasn’t scared of her, and was able to pass by her with none of her usual form of coercion. Very rarely, two people will show up on one night, so she continues to patrol until morning. That’s why she didn’t come back with me. When I ask the man what happens next, he tells me that the Vela chooses people using whatever parameters it’s decided upon, if it’s even sentient. He doesn’t know. He only knows it’s my job to find my own exit, but only after new clothes and hot tea. I’m not sure I’m going to go look for an exit point. It might be nice, renting a car, and driving back myself. It’s not like I have anywhere better to be. I don’t have to work until Monday, and my parents will be okay on their own for now. Anyway, I don’t have to decide anything right away. I’ll just sit and enjoy my tea.

A half hour later, the mother returns, but she’s not alone. A woman about my age is accompanying her. She doesn’t appear to be scared of the beast either, nor worried about where she is, or what the hell is going on. She too is naked, and isn’t even shivering. I didn’t think there was anyone else in the world who likes the cold as much as I do. She asks the same questions, and the man answers them again. She asks a couple more, like how the bears are so smart. The mom had her own Vela experience while she was pregnant, and it changed the both of them. Brown bears aren’t even native to this area, but they chose to stick around so they could help the humans. This calling has been passed down the old man’s family for generations, but the incidents became more and more frequent, and he never found the time to meet someone, so the bloodline ends with him. When he dies, people are just going to have to deal with their situation themselves. The woman and I exchange a look. Little bear nuzzles her knee, so she pets him. All my life I’ve been trying to figure out whether I had some kind of purpose. Folding clothes, and returning them to their tables surely isn’t it. I’m sure my sister can take care of our parents on her own. She prefers it, and I’ve never been much help anyway. Perhaps this is what I’ve been looking for this whole time. This old man needs to retire, and the lost souls who pass through here need a way to return home. I tell him this, and he thanks me. He doesn’t even try to argue, or talk me out of it. He’s obviously been hoping for a replacement for awhile now, but he’s never known how to go about asking. The woman stands and informs him that now he has two to take his place. We all smile, even me.

Microstory 1784: Little Bear

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There are a few things you would expect to find in a cabin in the middle of the woods, especially in an area that experiences very cold temperatures. The place is small, and you can tell as much from the outside, so you wouldn’t expect it to be a comfortable glamping getaway with multiple rooms, or even electricity. The logs are rotting slightly, and the porch swing has one broken chain, leaving it dangling against the floor awkwardly. I would have bet on a few essentials once I stepped inside, like a wooden table with wooden chairs; a bed that’s low to the ground, or even just a cot; an old black metal stove thing that I feel like Benjamin Franklin invented? None of that is here. None of what’s in here makes any damn sense, and if I would leave if it weren’t freezing out there. It doesn’t look dangerous, just bizarre. The first thing I notice is the arcade game. Besides a novelty table lamp in the shape of an elephant that’s hanging on the wall, the game machine is the only thing that’s giving off any significant amount of light. I don’t recognize the name of it, but that’s no surprise. I’m too young, and not hip enough to know anything about the history. Bear Bonds could have been the most popular game in the 80s, for all I know. Anyway, the screen isn’t the only thing producing light. The whole thing has what look like Christmas lights strewn about, except they’re built into the paneling, so I think that’s just how it comes. Next to it is one of those Japanese toilets with a touch screen, and probably a bidet, and I’m sure it talks to you. I can’t tell if it’s connected to the plumbing, but on the other side of it is the real bathroom. There’s a metal prison sink, and one of those space-age shower pods from the 1970s that I saw on a funny picture website once. There’s no toilet in there at all, so maybe he just likes to spread out more. I best not think about it. There are plenty of other weird things in here.

There seems to be no closet, but there’s a rack on casters. He has one three piece suit on it. It looks really nice, like maybe it was tailored by an expensive professional who only serves an average of one client a month. That wouldn’t seem so weird, maybe this guy is a stock broker who comes here to unwind. Except the rest of the rack is occupied by hanging fish, a few of which are still flopping on their hooks a little bit. How are they still alive in the least? I also swear to God that the suit was on one end of the rack, but now it’s spontaneously moved to the right. I kind of hope that didn’t happen, and I’m suffering from exposure delirium. That is a fancy platter of rotten strawberries, right there on the floor. Next to it is a ship in the bottle without the bottle. The way it’s staged, it’s like a child was eating the fruit, and playing with the ship, but they haven’t been back in a long time, and the man never cleaned it up. There is no dining table, and no chairs whatsoever, nor a bed. The curtains are made of Latin language newspapers. I don’t mean they’re taped on the glass to prevent snipers on the roof of the next building over from spotting the bank robbers. He carefully glued the pages together, and hung them up on the rod. I suppose that’s one way to reuse, reduce, and recycle. A mail cart has been upturned near the corner. A whole encyclopedia collection is stacked on top of it. I don’t know why he didn’t just put them inside the cart, but it’s not what matters. That’s not the strangest thing. Hiding behind that cart, I finally notice a baby bear. It’s sitting up and peeking out from behind the books. When it sees me see it, it comes out of the shadows, and smiles at me. Then it holds out its hand like it wants me to shake it.

Microstory 1783: Big Bear

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One thing to know about me is that I prefer the cold. I live in a midwest state with seasons, but I hate the summer. I could work in retail anywhere, but my parents had me when they were already pretty old, so I’m kind of obligated to stick around. Still, I blast the air conditioning when it’s hot, and keep the windows open. Is that illegal? I don’t know. Is it wrong? I guess we just have different definitions of morality. The A/C stays on during a lot of the winter, and I still at least have my bedroom window open while I’m trying to sleep. I say all this in preface, so you’ll understand that I don’t know how long I was outside on the ground before I even realized it. Had it been my sister, it would have been a different story. She keeps her house like a friggin’ sauna, I can’t stand it in there. She would have noticed right away if she had suddenly found herself in the spring air, let alone this freezing cold place. I finally wake up, and that probably has more to do with needing to relieve myself than anything. I might never have noticed until the sun came out, and maybe not even for a long time after that, because my alarm clock didn’t accompany me. I have no idea where I am, or how I got there. I see trees and dirt, and that is pretty much it. I see pine needles instead of leaves, which I find unusual. I like the cold, but not the outdoors. I would never go camping in a million years, so there’s no chance I got so drunk last night that I made this choice on my own. Someone would have had to bring me here against my will. They might have left me to die because they underestimated my ability to survive these temperatures, or maybe something went wrong, and they had to scrap their original plans with me. Either way, as okay as I am like this, I know I’m no superhero. I will die out here without shelter and clothing.

I start walking, hoping to catch the scent of a campfire, or the rumble of late night traffic. I could be moving even deeper away from civilization, but there is no way for me to know. I don’t have those lizard brain instincts that normal people have kept. Walking is warming me up, if only just a little. If I don’t come across someone’s tent, or a cave, staying in place would still be foolish. Besides, if someone did leave me, but planned on coming back, I’m better off as far from the drop site as I can get. I can see a lake in the moonlight, but I don’t know if I should go for it. Am I more likely to find salvation there then elsewhere? I’m proud of myself. I’m not too keen on walking either, but I haven’t stopped once to take a break. Maybe this ain’t so bad. I spoke too soon, or rather thought it. I finally do stop when I run into a gigantic creature. It’s dark as all hell, but my assumption is that it’s a bear. It was low to the ground, but now it’s raised itself up, meaning that it started on four legs, and now it’s on two. That’s something I know bears can do. It doesn’t growl, or even seem that menacing. Maybe it’s just trying to get a good look at me. I also know that you’re supposed to pretend to be bigger, and make a lot of noise. I don’t think I’m gonna do that, though. I just adjust my heading, and walk away. It doesn’t get mad or try to follow. I doubt it eats people, and it can tell that I’m not a real threat. Lights. I see lights through the trees. As I approach, I see that it’s a cabin, and it’s occupied. This could be who took me, but this is my only shot at survival. I knock on the door, and a scruffy old man opens. He’s not surprised to receive a visitor, even though we’re in the middle of nowhere, and I’m completely naked. He lets me in, and I ask him where we are. “This is Big Bear Lake, son. California.” Yeah, that tracks.

Microstory 1782: Tukana Is All

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We live our lives by the Tukana. It is an ancient text, which lays out the ways of the Tukan. It provides us with the guidance we need to make the best decisions, and be happy. Some go against the Tukana, but we fight them, and we always win. We will always win. For the Tukana is everything. The Tukana is all. I am known as the Dominant, which means that I am in charge of this entire tropicas. I did not simply fall into my position, and I was not selected. I had to fight my way to the top. Literally. The main social activity, according to the Tukana, is fencing. The practice is even more ancient than the prooftext. Our ancestors once used it to determine who amongst them was the bravest and noblest. They did not become rulers, though. That is something the Tukana demands of us. I am obviously the best. Many have attempted to thwart me, but I put them down every time. Unfortunately, our laws dictate that fighting for dominance is not the same as sparring. The better must kill the lesser in order to become the winner of the challenge. Until then, nothing is settled, and it would throw our world into chaos if I let them live. This has threatened our population before, and I can’t let it happen again, so I outright reject any challenge that comes my way when there is no hope that I’ll lose. It would not be fair to the challenger, and it only places us in greater danger to our enemies, the Buseros. They follow a similar path to enlightenment, but it is corrupted. Their inferior prooftext, the Buseron was plagiarized from our own; the one true book of salvation. The writer paraphrased nearly every sentence in his work, and passed it off as original so he could make money. The Tukana is not about making money. The Tukana teaches us to embrace the fruits of our destinies.

We are fruitarians. That is our number one rule, and as far as I know, no Tukan has ever broken it. We are aware that our ancestors once killed for their food, as the Buseros still do. That is perhaps our main difference. We do not destroy what we eat, but spread it around, and make more of it. We pollinate what’s left of our beautiful and precious Earth, and we do not take anything for granted. I may need to break our rule, though. I have been held captive by the Buseros for the last two weeks, and I’m starving. They have deliberately locked me up with a garden of plants, and small furry creatures. They want me to fall apart, and become more like them. It would be the greatest victory they’ve ever seen...dare I say the only victory. I’ve tried to hold on this whole time, but the pain inside me grows by the minute. The guards have left me alone for the next half hour, or so, as they do every day. They will notice if I eat one of these plants, or of course, an animal. We’ve become friends, I certainly don’t want to harm the latter. The former deserve to live out their lives as well, even though they do not have faces. The insects. They can’t possibly know how many insects are in here with me. They crawl and hop in and out at will. They’re still alive, so I don’t want to kill them, but I suppose if it’s me or them, it has to be me. I look around to make sure I’m not being watched, and then I snatch one off of the ground. It doesn’t taste good, and it’s not much, but I keep doing it, and I eventually start feeling energized again. I can’t eat much before the guards return, but I keep doing it every day. The Buseros are so impressed after I show them I’ve survived for four whole months, and they have no choice but to let me go. I return home to tell my people of the tasty insect, and its many rewards.

Microstory 1781: Triangle Water

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There was originally nothing special about the Bermuda Triangle. There are many explanations for why there seem to be more lost aircraft and oceancraft in the area, and not all of them are supernatural. Yes, some believe it leads to another dimension, while others think that there’s some kind of glitch in the magnetosphere over this spot. Even the more logical explanations aren’t necessary, because the truth is that it mostly comes down to math. Why are there more disappearances in this one region of the sea, as opposed to, say, the middle of the South Pacific Ocean? Simply because there is more travel happening in this area. It’s like asking why there are more deaths in cars that are driving on the road, as opposed to cars that are parked in people’s garages. Well, they’re not moving, so there’s not as much opportunity to suffer an injury. It’s not impossible, but not as common, and not reported as a traffic accident. In the 1950s, sensationalist media began to suggest that there was something different about the Bermuda Triangle, and people began to contrive their conspiracy theories. Once this happened, the Triangle began to distinguish itself. Just the suggestion that it was special was what made it special, and that was what gave it the temporal properties that it otherwise would not have had. To be clear, supernatural disappearances did not start to occur in the 50s. It was still perfectly safe to sail or fly over these waters, and expect no more problems than you might encounter elsewhere. Neither activity is without risk, but that’s true of anywhere. The best thing you can do to protect yourself is to be prepared, and again, this is true of anything. At any rate, you won’t have to worry about an undersea demon rising up to eat you. It’s more that becoming so important to the global consciousness has allowed the natural laws of temporal sciences to exploit it for other purposes.

Time travel is real, and so is immortality, but reaching true immortality is a pretty big chore. It requires obtaining eleven sources of water. Catalyst primes the body to accept them, and Activator binds them together. Each of the sources in between imbues you with a different flavor of non-mortality. Bermuda Triangle water is called Existence. Most of the waters are fairly obvious in regards to their purpose, while Existence is a little more vague—though not quite as vague as Death—at least if all you’ve heard is its name. Youth keeps you young, or even youngifies you, if necessary. Longevity lets you keep going throughout the years. Health cures you of disease, and immunizes you against all future disease. The others are just as apparent when you first hear of them. You can take any of the waters you want, and exclude any you don’t, but once you drink Activator, it’s over. You are permanently at least one kind of immortal, and you can never benefit from any of the ones you missed. Heck, you could theoretically not drink any of the middle nine, and become permanently immune to them. Some choose to ignore Existence, but it is the absolute most important. Time water keeps a time travel event from preventing you from ever reaching your goal of immortality in an alternate reality. Existence is similar, but instead it prevents a time travel event from preventing you from being born in the first place. If you never existed, you can’t become immortal, can you, even if you drank Time in your first timeline? The closer to the center of the Bermuda Triangle, the better, and it only counts for the water found after 1950, but if you did manage to drink it, and then Activate, no one can take it away, even in the past.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 15, 2373

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To be honest, no one really knew how Tamerlane Pryce did it. That wasn’t to say it was so shocking and impressive that there were no words to describe it. It was just that no one had taken the time to study Level Elevens, to find out exactly how he resurrected certain people with unusual temporal properties. He seemed to have limitations. He couldn’t transform anybody into any kind of artificial choosing one he could think of. If that were possible, all humans throughout history probably would have eventually ended up with time powers, like that episode of Heroes where they go into the future, to a world where superpowers are apparently ubiquitous and affordable. There appeared to be a difference between, say, being able to teleport a target’s individual molecules, and simply skipping chunks of time. Relatively speaking, it was probably pretty easy to give Mateo, Leona, and Angela the one-day-per-year pattern, but something like Nerakali’s brain blending abilities were likely out of his reach. One thing about this process—however it worked—they recently learned was that he did it with both a corporeal component, and a neurological one. When Mateo and Kestral swapped their bodies, both of them found themselves jumping to the future come midnight central; Kestral because she was now inhabiting a body that experienced accelerated time, and Mateo still because his consciousness was also involved.

This made a bit of sense, from an evil mastermind’s perspective at least. Pryce wanted the three of them to be on this pattern, whether they were happy about it or not. He didn’t want any one of them to be able to just jump to a new body, and suddenly be free from his choice. All of Mateo and Leona’s experiences leading up to their temporary deaths, and all that came after it, resulted in both of them deciding that this was what they preferred anyway. They were time travelers, who were gonna end up in the future faster than most people. It became a part of them a long time ago, and they wouldn’t want to give it up. All the times they did, like when they took a break from it on Flindekeldan, or when they were on the Bearimy-Matic pattern, they were uncomfortable. They may have thought they liked it, but they have since admitted to themselves that this is the pattern they want. Kestral made no such declaration. There had to be a way to switch them back. It wasn’t fair to her.

Dr. Mallory was here, as was Six Turner. The latter was the sixth incarnation of Paige Turner, and evidently histories’ foremost expert in consciousness transference. She probably understood it better than Pryce himself. She didn’t say how far into the future she lived, but she made it sound pretty far. She had the two patients sit next to each other in a loveseat while she stood behind them. At the moment, she was sifting through Mateo’s head as if hunting lice. Or rather, it was Kestral’s head, but Mateo was using it at the time.

“Can you see my brain right now?”

“Shh,” Six hissed.

“You mean my brain,” Kestral argued.

“Shh!” she hissed louder. She continued to use her magical powers to investigate their minds. When she was finished, she sighed greatly, practically blowing the two of them over with her breath.

“What is it?” Leona asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Him,” Six answered, indicating Kestral. “It seems to be a failsafe.”

“Failsafe for what?” Leona pressed.

Six pet Kestral on Mateo’s head, like she was a puppy. “I don’t know why he would do this, but Pryce seems to have decided that Mateo had the right to change bodies precisely once, and then never again. This tech is illegal. I mean, think about it, you would be able to imprison someone you don’t like in a non-infinite substrate. It would be like murdering them. It might take a century or two, but if you can’t transfer your mind to something new, you will die.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Angela pointed out. “We’ve already transferred our minds before, when we cast to Teagarden.”

“That wasn’t full transference,” Leona explained. “It was just surrogacy. That’s why things got so crazy when the time jump came.”

“Oh.”

Leona redirected her attention back to Six. “Pryce’s technology technically predates whatever laws were passed to regulate mind-uploading. It probably can’t be considered a crime.”

“Yeah, well if I were you, I wouldn’t call the cops either way,” Six began. “They’ll focus on making the rest of Mateo’s life as comfortable as possible, like he’s in hospice.”

“What can we possibly do?” Leona asked. “Surely you can break through this...body lock?”

“What can we do?” Six echoed as she consulted her watch. “Kill him within the next twenty-seven years.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Leona was going into fight or flight mode.

Six didn’t understand why Leona was mad at her. This wasn’t her fault. “Like I said, it’s a failsafe. He will die, and if that happens before The Edge, he’ll return to the afterlife simulation. If he dies after the year 2400, he’ll just die. And nobody knows what happens to people upon true death, if anything.”

“The simulation shuts down after we reach the Edge?” Angela questioned.

“Yeah, the two developments are tangentially related to each other. The public finds out about time travel a number of different ways, one of them being the sudden appearance, brief disappearance, and reappearance of the Matrioshka Brain, along with the introduction of the Patrioshka Brain.” Six clearly had no qualms about warning people of future events.

“If we kill him,” Leona began, “and I’m not saying we’re going to do that—but if we did, there’s no guarantee that Pryce will give him back.”

Six released a highly exaggerated grimace. “You wouldn’t be dealing with Pryce anyway. The politics up there get really complicated around the time that it returns from the center of the galaxy. I’m not recommending this because it’s a good idea. It’s just Mateo’s only hope. I know what happens on the other side of the Edge. Vonearthans are expected to deal with death on their own after that. His condition is a thankfully rare exception to those solutions.”

“Wait, he’ll die,” Ishida started. “What about her?” She pointed to Mateo’s body.

“Oh, Kestral’s fine. Yeah, you can make her a clone body, or whatever you want, and she’ll be all right. Well, she can’t return to her original body, of course, and I don’t know how you feel about that, so maybe it’s not all right, but she’ll live.”

“Don’t be so sure of that,” Dr. Hammer warned. She was doing her own thing throughout all this, running her own tests.

“What?” Six asked.

“You may know more about consciousness transference than I do, but I know about time powers and patterns, and the transfer of those.”

“Oh, no,” Kestral said. “I’m on his pattern now, permanently.”

“That’s what the test says,” Dr. Hammer confirmed. “And not just because you’re still in his body. As soon as you made the transfer, the damage was done.”

“I knew I should have done it!” Olimpia argued.

“There’s no way anyone could have known,” Kestral reminded her.

“At least you wouldn’t be enduring a disgusting penis...no offense,” Olimpia contended.

Mateo wasn’t sure if he shouldn’t take offense, or should.

“That’s not a real problem!” Leona jumped back in. “She can suppress the pattern all she wants, be it with her own Cassidy cuff, or something else! I’m confident they’ll figure it out! The problem is my husband is about to die, and return to a terribly dangerous place, or die later, and possibly not survive at all! What are we going to do about that? I don’t want to hear any more problems! I want solutions!”

“I’m sorry,” Six said to her. “The body lock is beyond me. It’s airtight. It has to be, or it doesn’t exist at all. That’s why it’s illegal.”

Leona continued to scream at her, but it wasn’t at all productive. Six was the bearer of bad news; not the source of it. Besides, Mateo made peace with his own mortality a long time ago, even before the time traveling. If it’s over, he’s okay with that. “Leelee,” he said. “Stop. Please.”

He didn’t have to say another word. She knew what he was feeling, and she knew that pushing the issue would only make things worse. Six was a Paige, and they had yet to meet any version of her that couldn’t be trusted. If she said there was no way to save him, there was no way to save him.

“I can save him,” Ramses finally spoke.

“How do you figure?” Six was skeptical.

“If we kill him right now, he’ll go to the afterlife sim, regardless of who is in charge of it, correct?”

“Yes,” Six followed.

Ramses nodded. “So, that’s the loophole. The digital mind system that Pryce uses is different than the ones that normal people do here in the real world.”

“True,” Six agreed, “but that makes it worse. His system is also airtight. I’ve already tried breaking into it.”

“We don’t have to break into it,” Ramses began. “We just have to trick Mateo’s consciousness into thinking that the simulation we build is the right one. When he dies, he’ll go there, where he’ll be free. Then we should be able to move him into whatever substrate we want.”

Six thought about it for a not very short amount of time. “That’s beyond my expertise, which is why I didn’t think of it. I don’t know how to code simulations. It could work, but only assuming you can.”

Ramses smirked, and popped his knuckles. Then he reached over and did something to his own Cassidy cuff. “Oh, I can do it. I just might need a year to complete the programming, and send it through the testing phases.”

“Okay,” Kestral said. “I don’t think you need me for that, so I’m going to transfer my mind to a base model while I wait for my clone to grow.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Dr. Hammer said. “Your connection to the year-jumping pattern is unstable. Your mind is still getting the hang of it. That doesn’t mean you can stop it, but you shouldn’t mess with it either. You need to let it play out; make another jump or two, and then suppress it permanently.”

“Olimpia was right, I don’t like having a penis,” Kestral argued.

“This is my professional medical opinion,” Dr. Hammer said bluntly. “You don’t have to listen to me.”

“If I skip time, who will monitor the portal?” Kestral reasoned.

“I can handle this end,” Ishida assured her. “Leona can suppress the pattern instead, and go back to the AOC. Right, Leona?”

Leona didn’t like the idea of sticking around for a whole year without her husband, but five minutes ago, she thought she was going to lose him forever. This was certainly preferable. “Very well.”

And so five people stayed, and five people went. Six spent more of her time on the AOC with Leona while Dr. Hammer spent more of her time on the Jamil. Ramses was there too, since their ship had far more processing power, and more sophisticated technology. He worked all hours of the day, but he would occasionally join them for a meal, which they usually had on the AOC. He either had to get this done in a year, or another, or another. There was just no thirteen-month option here, and that was a lot of pressure for him. It wasn’t the first time for him either. He was working with the same time constraints when he built their ship in the first place. People were relying on him, and he was paranoid about letting them down. They would be fine, of course, if they had to wait for another timejump, but that would have messed him up psychologically. And so, 363 days later, he announced that the new simulation was ready. It wasn’t.

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Extremus: Year 23

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Things have been going incredibly well. The crew has fallen into a nice rhythm. Shifts are lasting as long as they should. The Captain garners the respect she deserves, and the Future Captain is learning everything she’ll need to know to take over when the time comes. Even Second Lieutenant Callaghan is doing okay, and has accepted his role as the primary liaison between the crew and passengers. Speaking of the passengers, things are going well for them too. The government was duly elected, and is making reasonable choices for the people. They live in a time of peace. Tensions between the two camps have abated, and the risk of civil unrest has been thwarted. There is still the looming threat from the True Extremists, who have yet to make a move since Vesper tried to kill then-Captain Yenant. At least they’ve not made any noticeable moves. Perhaps they’re slowly replacing every person on this ship with a robot, but so far, all evidence is to the contrary. The Admiral filled Olindse in on all of that, but until they come across some new information, there is really nothing anyone can do about it. That is about to change. The original bridge section has been returned home.

As the Earthans were first beginning to sail away from their homeworld, and visit other planets in person, the Four Pillars of Spaceflight were devised. They were Safety, Compartmentalization, Redundancy, and Modularization, and known as SCR&M for short. This is how Vice Admiral Thatch was able to send the entire thing into the future without disrupting the rest of the ship in the slightest. It was relatively easy for the engineers and their vacuum bots to replace it without so much as stopping for supplies. The new one looks exactly like the old one, except in one major way. They constructed a special platform on the bottom of it, which was designed to allow the old one to return at some point, and reconnect. When teleportation and time travel are in the mix, you can’t assume that something, or someone, that disappeared won’t one day come back to you. The Earthan researchers who came up with SCR&M didn’t include this kind of contingency in their paper on the subject, but the crew of the Extremus knew that it was a fair possibility.

The idea was to have any visitor or returnee come in through the quarantine, but seeing as both Omega and Valencia are temporal engineers, it isn’t that hard for them to break through teleportation restrictions, and jump right onto the new bridge. Security surrounds them with weapons immediately. Captain Belo stands from her seat. She spends more time on the bridge than Halan ever did, and a lot of that is thanks to the Second Lieutenant, who deals with a lot of the issues Halan always had to handle personally. Olindse knows who these three are, and expects to be able to trust them, but she can’t be sure, and that’s not protocol. “You were meant to go straight to quarantine,” she argues.

“We don’t have time for that,” Omega contends.

“This ship is about to hit a brick wall,” Thatch reports, knowing a real explanation is needed quickly. “You are on a collision course towards a planet roughly the size of Mercury.”

“How do you know this?” Olindse questions.

“We’ve seen it,” Valencia explains. “We were there, in the future. We couldn’t save the Extremus in time. There was no way for you to course correct, so we decided to travel back in time, and warn you now.”

“Are you sure you are not subject to fate?” Olindse presses.

“Pretty sure.”

“You don’t have much choice,” Omega argues. “You’re headed for a darklurker, which has been deliberately shielded from the void telescopes, and all other sensors. It’s massive, and extremely dense, like a planetary neutron star. We barely made it out of its gravity well. It interferes with our teleportation drive and time drive. If you don’t alter course now, we’re all done for. We have already made the calculations for you.” He tries to hand her his handheld device. “All you have to do is input them.”

She looks at the device like she just saw him come out of the bathroom, and knows he didn’t wash his hands. “That is not procedure. Major course correction requires a shipwide vote.”

“We don’t have time for that!” Omega raises his voice just a little too much to be respectful. “Where is the real Captain?”

“I am the real Captain,” Olindse fights back. “You will have your opportunity to speak with Admiral Yenant, but we are following procedure. We shouldn’t even be talking to you right now.”

“He’s being dramatic,” Valencia says, trying to calm the room. “You have time for the vote. All it means is we have to change the specific calculations to account for the time difference. But do understand that we cannot just wait and see if anything changes. Someone put that rogue planet there, and they did it on purpose, because they know our route. All of those meteoroids we kept hitting, those were just the foreguard; a...side effect of the massive gravitational disturbance that Theia-Two is producing.”

“Theia-Two?” Olindse questions.

“Historical reference, it’s just a placeholder. You can call it whatever you want, because no matter what word you use, you’ll have to spell it D-E-A-T-H.”

Captain Belo takes a regal deep breath. “Take them to quarantine. Callaghan, please covertly find out if any of the passengers noticed their return. I’ll alert the Admiral. The rest of you...?”

Everyone freezes in place, nervous.

“Not a word. Everyone in this room just signed a new NDA. You may not remember, but trust me, it happened, and trust what will happen to you if you break it.”

Two weeks later, the executive crew has convened for an official briefing in what was designated as the crew courtroom, but it’s never been needed. It’s kind of the best setup they have, especially if they want to remain covert. Omega and Valencia are leading the presentation. Before them are the two captains, the First Lieutenant, Admiral Yenant, Dr. Holmes, Temporal Engineer August Voll, Future Temporal Engineer Kumara Bhasin, and Head of Security Armelle Lyons, along with Passenger First Chair Nuka Bloch, and Second Chair Poppy Ogawa. Second Lt. Callaghan is busy running the ship while the rest of them are busy with all this. He has a small case of FOMO, but he’s mostly excited to pretend to be completely in charge, at least for the next few hours. Vice Admiral Thatch is sitting on Omega and Valencia’s side of the room, but he’s not really part of the presentation, because he mostly served as an auxiliary crew member on the bridge ship while the smart team investigated the gravity problem.

Most of the crew have already heard nearly everything about what the team went through, but they have to go over it again in an official capacity, especially for the Chairs, who had heard very little. Now that everyone has some perspective, they just sit there, unsure how to proceed. Halan knows what to say, but he feels like he needs to stay quiet. The pause is taking too long, though. “Thank you, Valencia and Omega Strong. That is quite a tale. We will do everything we can to get you back to your son, should you so wish. Until then, we still need you.”

“Thank you, Cap—Admiral,” Omega has to correct himself. In the rest of the galaxy, admiral is a more respectable rank than captain, but on Extremus, it just means they have less power, so Omega feels guilty for the mistake. It’s the way things are, and it’s the way they should be, so each next captain can have uncomplicated control over the ship, but everyone here got real used to considering Halan their leader. The transitions should get easier as time goes on, but for now—for most—it’s surreal...even after three nonconsecutive years without him. Dwelling on all of this, Omega has forgotten what else he was going to say, or even if he had anything more at all.

“Until then,” Halan goes on, “we have to deal with this brick wall problem. We always knew that rogue worlds could be in our path, because they’re so hard for the void telescopes to detect. So what steps did we take for our original flight path that were designed to insulate us from accidental collisions?”

“Hold on,” First Chair Bloch jumps in. “We’ve yet to see any proof that this isn’t an accident.”

Omega rolls his eyes, but doesn’t even get the chance to open his mouth before his wife stops him with a hand on his arm. She knows him well enough to know when he’s about to find himself on the wrong end of an HR report. “We found the rogue planet 683 light years from our present location after studying the gravitational disturbance the Extremus has been fighting through for two decades. Space debris is unpredictable, chaotic, but it is relatively uniformly distributed, congregating only when a significant source of gravity attracts them...like a solar system?” She takes out her hologram pen, and begins to draw a visual aid in the air. “They don’t form lines like people at the post office. Here’s the planet. All of this is the debris. You see how they kind of form a trail? It stretches thousands of light years across, and we’re flying right through it. There is nothing in the universe like that. Quite frankly, sir, I don’t see how anyone could look at this image, and see anything but an unnatural attack by a shadowy enemy.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Second Chair Ogawa points out. “This meeting was not called to discuss how we’re going to deal with the True Extremist problem at large. We’re only here to vote on releasing a referendum for the general public to vote on a course correction to protect ourselves from an impending collision. It’s irrelevant how the planet got there. It’s there, and we have to do something about it.”

The first chair is probably going to be their one holdout. That’s okay, it doesn’t need to be unanimous; just a majority. “I’ve not heard how much this is going to add to our flight time.”

Admiral Thatch literally slaps his face with his palm. “This is a 216-year mission. We’re not going to a specific planet. We always talk about there being nine captains, but we’ve always known there would probably be ten—or now eleven.” He indicates the interim captain, who changed the math. “The last one is going to be responsible for the search for our descendants’ new home. There are a few ways they might do this, but my point is that the course correction doesn’t add any time to the journey, because we don’t know what we’re looking for. We’re merely assuming that there will be a hospitable world out there, somewhere. It might take this ship a little extra time to find it, but the course correction has nothing to do with that.”

“Very well,” Chair Bloch concedes. “I’m ready for a vote when you are.”

“Thank you for your permission,” Omega says with snark. He can’t just leave well enough alone.

Before Captain Belo can call for the vote, a person flies out of a violent portal, and slides across the room, stopping quickly when the justice bench gets in her way. Dr. Holmes, more spry than one might think for her age, hops over the railing, and kneels down to tend to her unexpected patient. Everyone else crowds around to see what’s going on. The doctor carefully rolls the young woman to her back to straighten her spine. Upon seeing her face, they look up at the Present!August Voll, who is not particularly surprised at seeing her alternate self. Time travel is illegal on the ship except for vital purposes, such as needing supplies from a star system that’s going to be too far away within minutes, or in case of emergency. If anyone’s going to use the technology for the latter, it should be the temporal engineer, who understands the dangers and consequences.

Alt!August opens her eyes.

“She’s hurt,” Dr. Holmes says, “but probably just needs pain meds.”

“First,” Alt!August manages to say, “I have to warn you. Don’t bother voting on the referendum. A course correction is not going to work.”

Valencia kneels beside her, and takes her hand in both of her own affectionately. “Why not? What happens?”

“This isn’t protocol,” Captain Belo argues. You don’t just ask a time traveler what happens in the future. The conversation on the bridge when Omega, Valencia, and Thatch returned was a bit of a gray area.

“Shut the hell up...Captain.” Good save.

Alt!August closes her eyes for a few seconds, like she’s about to fall unconscious, but she pushes through it. “They just move the planet. They have all the time in the universe. We’re doomed.” Now she really does passout.

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